IN the telling of Branko Milanovic, a Serbian American economist who formerly led the economic research team at the World Bank, inequality is now at the 'forefront' of the global conversation, especially among economists, after years of either ignoring or eliding the consequential topic. He has a new book on that subject matter, 'Visions of Inequality,' which begins with an accounting of the gross inequalities present in the society that led to the French Revolution and then to that intractable problem's 21st-century ramifications. Several books by Milanovic on the same theme preceded the new one. He and French economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez are probably the current generation's most prolific writers on inequality.

Maybe other countries and other societies are deeply discussing inequality and taking the issue with the seriousness and gravity that it deserves. One hoping to find the same enthusiasm and intensity in the discussion of inequality in the Philippine context and one hoping for the validation of Milanovic's thesis is bound to be disappointed. Our public intellectuals have never shown the slightest interest in probing deeper into the whys of the great divide. Our libraries and related depositories of intellectual output — including mass media — have almost zero literature on inequality, a tragedy given this reality: the Philippines is one of the most unequal societies in the world. The return to capital has exceeded the most impressive of economic growths, and the gains from capital have never trickled down to the huddled masses below.