One of the most interesting social trends of the past 20 years is the rise of residential segregation. So rich are living with rich and poor are living with poor.

The increasing segregation we have in our country geographically and culturally has led to these pretty monolithic views of different classes of people, and because of that, we've lost a certain amount of cultural cohesion.

For complicated historical and political reasons, we associate 'poor' in our public consciousness with 'black.' Terms such as 'welfare queen' and 'culture of poverty' became associated uniquely with the social maladies of African Americans in urban ghettos, despite the fact that poor whites outnumbered poor blacks.

After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children. Which is okay so long as lots of them starve in infancy.

One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children

Liberals have to get more comfortable with dealing with the poor as they actually are. I admire their refusal to look down on the least among us, but at some level, that can become an excuse to never really look at the problem at all.