Here's where I'm glad I'm anonymous here, so this can't be construed as bragging but rather adding a different viewpoint: I live in a neighborhood (married with kid) where my income is x4 that of my neighborhood (and I'm making less than the national average salary for a sr. software developer). It's humbling and drives me to find ways to care for those around me.
I live not far from a really, really run-down part of town, with a grocery store that seems to attract the most downtrodden of society.
I love shopping there, even though everyone I know has sworn it off, because of how it always reminds me: a lot of people have it much worse off than me, but they are still human and worthy of compassion and respect.
I'll shop there even after I've sold my business and have enough pocket money to share, because I never want to lose touch with the non-shiny, fat, missing-limbs, dirt-poor, you name it, humanity that everyone else wants to forget about as quickly as possible.
You guys bring up a ton of great points. I do want my kids to be aware of other "classes" not to grow up in a bubble but I don't have to live next to a poor neighbor for them to understand poverty and care about the poor.
I grew up middle class most of my life and I have a lot of empathy (I think/hope) mostly because my parents taught me that. I remember when I didn't finish my food as a kid my dad would say "there are children starving in Ethiopia and you want to throw half your plate away" (no offense, i grew up in Egypt as a kid and there was a famine in Ethiopia at the time). Or when a button on a shirt falls off, my mom would fix it instead of just throwing away the entire shirt like many people in the USA would do (I assume). Or collecting money for a struggling family in our church... These are all small examples but they helped me understand that not everyone had it as good/bad as we did.
My point is, you can teach your kid empathy and compassion. Take them to feed the homeless, have them donate money to the poor. make sandwiches for a shelter. etc. etc...
I'm very glad that one of the best friends of my oldest son is Moroccan, and another is half Japanese, although his school is still remarkable white for this neighbourhood (perhaps Montessori schools appeal more to white, educated or affluent people?).
Of course in the end, I don't want anyone to be way richer or poorer than we are, but as long as that's the reality we live in, I'd like my children to be aware of that.
Me, I just want to have good neighbors. Both rich and poor people can be good neighbors.
By keeping the rich away from the poor we can avoid the harms of inequality. We can have poor neighborhoods, rich neighborhoods, etc, each of which has negligible inequality.
Do you disagree with the premise that local inequality is worse than global?
Poor people have no choice but to live with it while the more resourceful can afford to isolate and protect themselves but that's not an equal society or one that aspires to be one. No one can advocate that one should not try to get the best for themselves and their children but the if the bare basics of education, healthcare and safety are reliant on socio economic background that there is little incentive for those in power who are always from a privileged socioeconomic background to actually provide meaningful equality beyond posturing.
I think there is a danger of an exclusionary way of thinking that encourages ghettos and the kind of entitled thinking often seen here itself on hacker news that presumes in spite of all these disadvantages somehow all these children should compete fairly and succeed with their more privileged counterparts and if they don't and get stuck in a cycle of poverty they only have themselves to blame.
This kind of thinking leads to a bigoted society, and you then can't complain when you or your children are similarly excluded by those from a higher social-economic background in neighborhoods and other aspects of life, when not possible legally by financial or social means. This doesn't produce an enlightened and egalitarian society, you reap what you sow.
Ah, see, I'm not a parent, so who knows, my perspective may well change when I am, but if you asked me what a parent's job is, that is not the first thing I would say. I think I would instead say something hand-wavy about raising valuable, high functioning, members of adult society. Certainly, safety is a prerequisite to making it into adult society, but it seems like quite a lot of the stuff parents do to try to provide their child with "the best, safest, environment that they are reasonably able to provide" is counter to the main goal of raising good people. Keeping kids segregated from "those people" (whoever that happens to be in the parents' view) is a perfect example.