In America, closing the wealth gap will be the issue of 2016

Remember the poor door? The separate entrance that developers in New York were setting aside for tenants renting the small number of “affordable housing” units that were incorporated into new luxury residential towers in return for special zoning dispensations? The very notion caused quite a stir.

Particular outrage was reserved last year for a tower on the Upper West Side, where renters of the proposed 55 subsidised units were to be asked not only to use their own second-class entrance but also to accept that the multiple facilities offered to those buying full-priced apartments – screening room, pool, gym and so forth – would be off-limits.

The city’s liberals, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, were offended; this kind of socio-economic apartheid was not to be tolerated. Indeed, Mr de Blasio set about rewriting regulations introduced by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, to guarantee there would no longer be any street-level separating of the chaff from the super-rich. A single door, for prince or pauper. The review process is under way, but, of course, it’s entirely beside the point. The income divide that exists in New York and across all of the US is about much more than entrances.

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If it really mattered, New Yorkers would boycott the Upper West Side building. It is now completed and every full-market-price unit – up to $25m (£17m) apiece – is spoken for. Meanwhile, those in line for the 55 below-market rentals number no fewer than 90,000, we learned this week. Clearly they don’t care which door they must use.

We don’t often equate New York with the rest of the country. But it is worth pondering the depth of its housing crisis. Over the past year, it has offered just 698 new affordable apartments. To get one you must first prove your income is almost at the poverty level. Then you are obliged to join a lottery. Right now there are almost half a million New Yorkers chasing those 698 units. Yes, you read that right: half a million. The city’s housing divide – Demi Moore’s apartment is on the market for $75m – echoes the much greater scandal of the income divide that is the shame of all of America.

Last week, Mr de Blasio gave a speech in Iowa in which he evoked Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, warning that the widening chasm between the top 1 per cent and everyone else risks destabilising the entire country. No single domestic issue in the 2016 presidential election will be more important than this.

If the only real answer is to increase the tax burden on the rich then every Republican has a problem. You’d think it’d be tricky for Hillary Clinton, too. We know she is more attached to Wall Street than to the Waffle House. Yet in the 10 days since the sole serious Democrat so far announced her campaign there has been little doubt that she has indeed got the memo. “The deck is stacked in their favour,” she said of the rich and powerful in Iowa last week. “My job is to reshuffle the cards.”

Blankfein, Clinton and even De Blasio may be fine ones to preach about the income gap. And the Mayor shouldn’t waste any more time trying to rewrite the poor door rules. The only thing that matters is finding ways to ensure there are fewer people needing to go through them – like finding the funds to build more affordable housing, legislating for a higher minimum wage and changing the tax code to thumb the scales back towards the poor and the middle class. Ms Clinton supports all of these things.