Never mind that Fort Lauderdale is a national epicenter of income inequality due to its ever-widening gap between the city’s stinking rich and its hopeless poor.
    Because as far as the area’s community leaders are concerned, we live in a best-of-all-possible world’s worthy of Candide’s Dr. Pangloss.
    But then fun-in-the-sun has always trumped reality when it comes to the Gold Coast’s denial based gestalt.
    For example:
    Regarding income inequality, Miami and Fort Lauderdale rank among the highest dismal dozen in the United States, according to the latest data from the U. Census Bureau.
    Not that this stark truth will be headlined by the area’s news media.
    Irony of ironies, it took a columnist from the Kansas City Star to properly nail the dark side of South Florida’s emerging Third World economy.
   “2011 will be remembered as the year (some) Americans woke up to the harm that growing disparities in wealth and income have done to our society and our economy,” writes Mary Sanchez from her middle American newsroom. (My irony-laden parenthisis) 
   “The very richest Americans have accumulated wealth and income at staggering rates in recent decades, as the fortunes of the middle and lower class have dropped.
   “The cleavage between the rich and the rest of us hasn’t been greater since before the Great Depression.”
   Anyhow…
   For those tragic few South Floridians not willing to let their less fortunate neighbors “eat cake ” -- or ease their guilt with a few bucks donated to the Sun-Sentinel’s annual Holiday charity drive….

Large Places with Highest Measured
     Household Income Inequality
                                                 Gini Index
                                               (Income Gap)
Atlanta city, Ga.                         57.1
New Orleans city, La.                 54.6
Washington city, DC                  54.0
Miami city, Fl.                            54.0
Gainesville city, Fl.                    53.7
Athens-Clark County, Ga.         53.7
New York city, NY                      53.6
Fort Lauderdale city, Fl.            53.4
Dallas city, Texas                       53.2
Baton Rouge city, La.                 53.0
US average                                 45.0
Israel                                          39.2
Japan                                         37.6
New Zealand                             36.2
United Kingdom                        34.0
Canada                                      32.1

Sources: US Census Bureau
CIA Factbook