The Rich and the Wretched of the Earth  As it happened I watched
Neill Blomkamp's science fiction thriller "Elysium" (2013) just
the day before I read the BBC report on the state of poverty in
the United States.   In "Elysium" – by the same director whose
"District 9" (2009) had explored themes of racism and xenophobia
with unnerving power and audacity – we are transformed to the
year 2154, when the world is drastically divided between two
classes of people: the rich and powerful who have gone
heavenward and are living in a luxurious space station called
"Elysium" and the poor who are suffering on a ravaged,
overpopulated, dangerous, and degenerated earth. The wretched of
the earth are mostly dark-skinned policed by ruthless robots,
while the Elysian residents are mostly white (who prefer to
speak French with an American accent to each other) floating in
space in paradisiac comfort.   In the BBC report we read how
"the income gap between the richest 1 percent of Americans and
the other 99 percent widened to a