The Other 1%

By Tom Ehrich

Behold the new One Percent.

In New York City, where a simple breakfast (two eggs, bacon and juice) at the swank 44 restaurant costs $29, an estimated 21,000 children sleep in homeless shelters each night.

That’s 1% of the city’s total children. The homeless-children count is up 22% from a year ago, according to The Wall Street Journal.

It’s the worst homelessness since the Great Depression, and it’s happening in other cities, as well.

Meanwhile, the other 1% — those whose relentless greed contributes to the expanding ranks of the poor — is being invited to pay $14 million for an apartment in the Dakota, at 72nd and Central Park West, where John Lennon once lived and urged people to “imagine no possessions…no greed or hunger…all the people sharing all the world.”

It’s easier to imagine than to do, it seems.