I was just reading about the U.N. Development Program's rankings of nations according to income disparity.  The US is third worldwide for income inequality, which I guess is not surprising.  The interesting thing about the situation in the US is that we really don't seem to mind all that much. 

I'm as guilty as anyone else of sympathizing with the rich.  I mean, it's either that, or this.  But occasionally the rich take it a little too far, too.  Like this fellow in Worcester who has spent twelve grand on a four-story tree house.  He has no children.  He did it for himself.  Life-long dream, and bla bla bla.

According to Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Worcester, Massachusetts is the third least affordable state in the country for housing and about 20,000 children live in emergency shelters each year.  20,000.

I know: big buzzkill.  And that's only one way to look at this.  But you have to admit there is something grotesque about this manner of whimsical excess when viewed in that context. 

And if you think the local context is a buzzkill, I wouldn't recommend looking at it in a wider one.  For the cost of one four-story treehouse in an affluent neighborhood in Worcester you could build from two to five real houses someplace like Haiti, according to Project Hope, which does. 

Of course, the rich with their four-story tree houses aren't really the problem here.  It's the poor.  They're the real buzz kill.  And those homeless children are the worst kind of buzzkill.  We really should do something about them. 

Maybe a Swiftian solution would work in Worcester.