Now the terms of that bargain are increasingly unacceptable to South Africa's poor, threatening to unravel the fragile consensus that kept Africa's richest economy going through a tumultuous transition.
Deteriorating family structure among the poor threatens to trap poor children at the bottom of the income ladder for life.
Ron Chernow's biography of Rockefeller recalls that his philanthropy was inspired, in part, by Andrew Carnegie, who wrote in 1889 that the gulf between rich and poor threatened the very survival of capitalism.
Mr. Sachs said that climate change and its attending droughts and floods, the threat of armed conflict and a persistently high birth rate among the very poor threatened to reverse the decline in poverty.
Officials worry that a widening gap between rich and poor threatens stability.Chinese leaders stress how hard they are trying to keep prices in check and to look after the needy.
"Capitalism simply isn't working…the gap between rich and poor threatens to destroy us," laments The Guardian, which also notes that the last five years in the UK have been "the longest period of falling real incomes in two generations".
Then came a disastrous performance in the shot put – two poor attempts threatening to destroy her lead.
The institute's new mandate, he said, is to pursue strategies for sustainable development: increasing prosperity, especially for the poor, without threatening the planet's future.
At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people.
The story of Boiana and of Palivelupa is that of a good idea gone drastically wrong, devastating the lives of millions of desperately poor people, threatening a banking crisis and revealing the dark side of India's economic growth.
