Well, in Palm Beach, at least:

Wander along Worth Avenue, Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue and you’d be hard-pressed to even think America has a soaring poverty rate. But it does.

Whether high-enders want to acknowledge it or not our poverty rate has been climbing for the past few years, according to the Census Bureau. Figures just published show that in 2010 the poverty rate hit 15.1 percent. That’s the highest rate since 1993 and up from 14.3 percent a year earlier (2009). Since 2007, the rate has moved from 12.5 percent to the most recent 2010 figures.

That 2010 rate of 15.1 percentage means 46.2 million people are living in poverty and represents the largest number of people since the rate began being published 52 years ago.

And the reason?

If I were a blaming person and wanted to point my figure at only one group to blame our growing poverty rate and stagnant wage levels on, I’d have to begin with corporate America. Typically guys and gals at the upper-middle and top levels haven’t had to deal with stagnant wages.

I’ll throw in something else for consideration:  all of the left whines about the Tea Party.  But the corporate types, by and large, don’t make up the Tea Party.  Small business people do, as do working stiffs.  It is in reality a revolution without the collectivistic vanguardism (how about that to hurl at the academic deconstructors) the left likes to see.

I’ll be the first one to admit that much of my worldview was heavily influenced by my years in Palm Beach.  But getting out to see “how the other half lives” (especially in my years in the Church of God) has been an eye-opener.  It’s one I wish some of my fellow elitist snobs could experience, our country would be a better place.