As the current parliament winds down before the expected election call, it is worth noting a major achievement that came to nothing. The achievement was NDP member Tony Martin drawing upon a House of Commons report on poverty reduction to offer legislation that would bring all Canadians up to the low income cutoff level as measured by Statistics Canada.

"This is a vision of a nation in which we're all in it together -- in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority."

More visionary socialist stuff from Barack Obama? Well, not quite.

In fact, the line is from conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. And, in case it isn't obvious, the "small minority" whose burden he is urging everyone to share is: the rich.

Yes, we should all stop focusing so much on ourselves, and think more about the plight of billionaires.

A friend on the left says it may be time to stop fighting for a higher minimum wage and start fighting for a maximum, like those mild compensation limits in the Obama bank bailout bills. But it's Kazakhstan's Prime Minister, Karim Masimov, who's shown the way on this. He says "executives at state-run firms and banks" should make no more than he does, in order to "prevent social unrest." He makes a modest $4,700 a month -- he wrote on his blog -- but it's nearly 12 times the average. Mining and oil execs get way more. His proposal is "likely to be implemented immediately," though only in Kazakhstan, alas.

Economic inequality has yawned ever wider in recent times, especially in the United States, source of the current crisis. Since 1968, when U.S.