Russian middle class

I read an article in the SF Chroncle by Mchael Mainville, on how great the russian middle class was doing (" Russia bears fruit
The West may fault Putin, but a growing middle class savors his vision of democracy" February 1, 2007).

The article was all about Russian's growing middle class. I was really struck by the following paragraph:

" To be sure, salaries still lag far behind the West, with the average income in Moscow about $800 a month. And millions of Russians continue to live in abject poverty, especially pensioners and rural residents.
But a large, affluent middle class, especially in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg, is burgeoning."

Now, I agree that it is a good thing that Russia's economy is doing better. What bothers me is the way that the fact that millions of Russians are living in abject poverty is treated as an aside, like "Yeah, this sucks but HEY, Zara and Ikea are diong super well!"

This is the same attitude I see in this country - SF in the late nineties was full of rich people and stories of rich people, all of whom were either literally walking over or figuratively stomping on the poor on the way to their expensive condos and six figure salaries. We concentrate on the fact that one sector of the population is doing well, and ignore the fact that there are still millions of people who aren't doing well.

I'm not proposing that the rich not buy expensive things, or that we all just sit around and feel guilty. However, I don't think we can really consider ourselves successful if large portions of our population are struggling. We need to do more looking out for each other, and less looking out for ourselves. We should measure our strength and our success as a nation and a society by our ability to make sure that everyone has access to food, shelter, medicine, and education.