Just so that you know. The chattering class care more about income inequality than poverty.

From Sentiment and Facts, Academic Cheating, Paying on Dates by Rob Henderson.

Three interesting findings:

1. A man is more than twice as likely as a woman to have a car accident and almost three times more likely to have two car accidents. Even when not driving, men are more careless; twice as many men are killed simply crossing the street. (source).

2. Women are more willing to let a man pay on a date if he is attractive, and men are more willing to pay on a date if the woman is attractive. Attractive men and attractive women are less willing than average to pay on dates. (source).

3. U.S. college graduates say, "closing the gap between rich and poor" is a more important goal than "ensuring Americans don't live in poverty." In contrast, adults without a college degree say, "ensuring Americans don't live in poverty" is a more important goal than "closing the gap between rich and poor." (source). The educated class want to reduce “inequality,” but everyone else (vast majority of U.S. adults don’t have a college degree) would prefer to not be poor.

The first two are interesting, the third critical.

The overwhelming majority of our public policy is set by the 30% of the citizenry who have college degrees.  In fact, it probably even worse than that.  It might be fair to say that 99% of our public policy is formulated by the 10% of the population who have degrees from the better third of universities.

On issue after issue, we see the 10% obsessed with feel-good marginal issues (things that affect only a small number of people or only have a small affect or only have a small probability of coming to fruition or only have a small probability of success) while ignoring the fundamentals of civil rights, public safety, public security, economic prosperity, equal access to good education, trade-offs between costs and benefits, income inequality, etc.  

The public policy mavens drawn from the 10% are chasing the wrong goals, which is bad enough.  It is worsened by the fact that most of the public policy solutions they come up with involve actions incompatible with civil rights.  They depend on coercion, ignoring the consent of the governed, circumventing due process, ignoring rule of law and equality before the law, etc.  

This is the real polarization and why it is so bitter.  It is more class-based than partisan, more credentialed caste than citizenry.  

Those setting public policy, drawn from the 10%, don't understand the real world, don't understand the goals and values of the 90% and often are not even aware that there is chasm between the 10% and the 90%.