And technology constantly generates new kinds of inequalities; an example is the current concern about unequal access to the Internet.
Indeed, social science evidence suggests that as differences diminish, those that remain become more intolerable than before, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the ‘narcissism of small differences’ (Horowitz, 1985: 182–3).
This has certainly been the American experience; doubtless, it is more universal (Fogel, 2000).