I'll see if I can have something ready. Better move fast so I can get on MoPac before it starts filling up. Once on the road, I pat the dashboard of my car, old reliable Lilly, thanking the people who built the wonderful machine. The radio is covering the presidential primaries as if I were interested in the candidates' campaign strategies. Month two, year 2000.
Life is full and good in Austin, Texas.
We live in one of the most prosperous cities of the mightiest nation on Earth, during boom times. But the prosperity is hardly shared by all. American society as a whole grows ever more stratified. The income gap between the top and the bottom is at a 50-year peak. Bill Gates is worth more than the combined gross national products of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Jamaica and Bolivia.