Rising Inequality - The stealth Bomber

Paul Krugman made an interesting observation about the reduced egalitarianism in the American society. This is how he sees it:
“To get a sense of just how dramatic that shift has been, imagine a line of 1,000 people who represent the entire population of America. They are standing in ascending order of income, with the poorest person on the left and the richest person on the right. And their height is proportional to their income -- the richer they are, the taller they are.
Start with 1973. If you assume that a height of six feet represents the average income in that year, the person on the far left side of the line -- representing those Americans living in extreme poverty -- is only sixteen inches tall. By the time you get to the guy at the extreme right, he towers over the line at more than 113 feet.
Now take 2005. The average height has grown from six feet to eight feet, reflecting the modest growth in average incomes over the past generation. And the poorest people on the left side of the line have grown at about the same rate as those near the middle -- the gap between the middle class and the poor, in other words, hasn't changed. But people to the right must have been taking some kind of extreme steroids: The guy at the end of the line is now 560 feet tall, almost five times taller than his 1973 counterpart.”
He goes on to explode a few myths (as he calls them), namely:
“MYTH #1: INEQUALITY IS MAINLY A PROBLEM OF POVERTY.
It's not only the poor who have fallen behind -- the normal-size people in the middle of the line haven't grown much, either. The real divergence in fortunes is between the great majority of Americans and a very small, extremely wealthy minority at the far right of the line.
MYTH #2: INEQUALITY IS MAINLY A PROBLEM OF EDUCATION
The richest twenty percent are those standing between 800 and 1,000. But even those standing between 800 and 950 -- Americans who earn between $80,000 and $120,000 a year -- have done only slightly better than everyone to their left. Almost all of the gains over the past thirty years have gone to the fifty people at the very end of the line. Being highly educated won't make you into a winner in today's U.S. economy. At best, it makes you somewhat less of a loser.
MYTH #3: INEQUALITY DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.
It's easier for a poor child to make it into the upper-middle class in just about every other advanced country -- including famously class-conscious Britain -- than it is in the United States. Not only can few Americans hope to join the ranks of the rich, no matter how well educated or hardworking they may be -- their opportunities to do so are actually shrinking. As best we can tell, pretax incomes are now as unequally distributed as they were in the 1920s -- wiping out virtually all of the gains made by the middle class during the Great Compression.”

India would do well to take note of this and try and address the issues so that such an event does not occur here. If it does the results will be catastrophic. Inequalities are visible and will be manifested in rising crime rates. If unchecked, it will further lead to anarchy and breakdown. The price is way too high for comfort.

The rising inequality is like a stealth bomber. It creeps up unnoticed and then creates catastrophe.