Brooklyn is a lot more than a popular aesthetic. (www.baruch.cuny.edu)

When it comes to Brooklyn, the rising tide of wealth that has flooded into the borough over the last two decades seems, more than anything, to have lifted housing prices. The well-being of the borough's longtime residents has not, as the New York Daily News points out, been similarly buoyed.

Brooklyn the media darling, the real star of Lena Dunham's Girls, the place of endless New York Times trend stories about farm-to-table restaurants and taxidermy hobbyists and Etsy enthusiasts, is not the only Brooklyn. While this may seem obvious, it is frequently obscured by the massive amount of attention that is lavished on neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Greenpoint and Park Slope. Brooklyn, has, after all, become a synecdoche for a privileged, eminently marketable lifestyle that has nothing to do with the lives led by the vast majority of Brooklynites, residing in unfashionable neighborhoods such as Canarsie and Flatbush and Brownsville.

Perhaps in a gesture to its readers (who tend to be from the other Brooklyn), but also a much-needed gesture in general, the Daily News printed today a number of interesting statistics that highlight the chasm between the two Brooklyns.

Among the most jarring: while handcrafted ISH horseradish sells for $74 a six-pack at Williasmburg Smorgasburg market, 25 percent of Brooklyn residents use food stamps. And they get an average of $277.70 worth of those stamps to buy food for a month.

Also, while borough president Marty Markowitz likes to claim that Brooklyn "has more writers per square inch than almost anywhere in the country," 30 percent of its third-graders cannot read at grade level.

The rest of the list can be read here.

kvelsey@observer.com

Lily, the Muppet with "food insecurity" issues.

As the new CEO on The Office, James Spader has been killing it. The season premiere saw the 80s star return as the enigmatic and semi-threatening Robert California taking Dunder-Mifflin's "winners" out to a special lunch. After asking Jim an innocuous question about Sesame Street, he went off on a diatribe about the significance of one of its major characters.

"Elmo. God save us... the Elmo era. Sesame Street was created to reflect the environment of the children watching it. The complete self-absorption of Elmo is brilliantly reflective of our time. Our's is a cultural ghetto. Wouldn't you agree?"

Yes. We agree! Don't stare at us with your cold, reptilian gaze, Mr. Spader! Not only do we agree with you, but we'll raise you one better: That Sesame Street's introduction last night of "Lily," a Muppet whose family lives below the poverty level, is proof that the show is not even trying to be subtle anymore about reflecting America's current economic crisis.

In a special episode called "Growing Against Hunger," Elmo comes face to face with a character who represents the 99% demographic that Occupy Wall Street is always using for their slogans. Lily is "food insecure" because her family can't afford three meals a day since the recession hit. Welcome to the real world, kids.

The producers of the PBS show have said that they have no plans to integrate Lily into the cast following the special. Right, because we don't want to make Sesame Street into an actual ghetto, right?

For starters, the Census Bureau said the percentage of Americans living in poverty rose to 14 percent in 2009 from 13 percent in 2008 in what it called "the second statistically significant annual increase in the poverty rate since 2004." There were 43.6 million people living below the poverty line, the largest absolute number of impoverished Americans on record. We can thank the Census Bureau for that news -- hey, if you can't save the economy, you might as well collect and distribute bad news about it instead, right?

And then there's the data out from RealtyTrac, the company that has tasked itself with the depressing job of tallying foreclosures. According to its survey, one in every 381 homes has received a foreclosure filing at the end of August. Banks foreclosed on 95,364 homes, during the month, the highest monthly repossession rate on record.

Take heart, America. Even amid all the calamity, the number of millionaires in the U.S. has risen 8% for the year ended in June. Hooray.

The question is how much inequality should there be?  The answer is not so much inequality that people on the bottom of the ladder cannot live a decent life. Not so much inequality that there is hunger, hopelessness, untreated disease, violence and inadequate access to education. We’ve learned that a large middle class makes societies wealthier and can contribute to political stability. But without public policy to encourage a middle class, the logic of the unregulated market leads to greater and greater inequality.  A second part of a solid economy is one that creates and maintains production and wealth over the long term. A concern for the long term is central to the definition of sustainability.

If a nation achieves wealth by oppressing its people or damaging ecological resources, it eventually pays a price for its misdeeds.  In the United States we paid the price of oppression under slavery with a brutal civil war and its racist aftermath. We have also spent hundreds of billions of dollars to manage and clean the poisons we released into the environment and still release in the name of industrial production. China has only started to learn the environmental and financial cost of rapid development. In the end they will pay, and here in the United States we will continue to pay as well. Short-term gains are often bought at the price of long-term pain. This is a concept that is gaining currency. Landing on a carrier in a pilot’s outfit does not mean you accomplished your mission. Sometimes a fund that pays off the same high return year after year is too good to be true and turns out to be an unsustainable Ponzi scheme.  On the other hand, an experienced pilot who knows his stuff and is humble and dedicated just might manage to land a jet plane on a river. Most people can distinguish solid from shaky. Sustainable means solid, dependable stuff that is designed to last for the duration.

What do we need to develop a sustainable planet? There are a number of prerequisites:
•    Reduce the destructiveness of competition between people and nations.
•    End the growth of the human population, end poverty and eliminate extreme levels of income inequality.
•    Develop renewable, non-fossil fuel based energy.
•    Learn how to reduce the damage we do to our environment.

Peace.  With the presence of weapons of mass destruction, we need to develop a system of international law that reduces the probability that these weapons will be used.  Our current system of international law, balance of power and diplomacy has failed from time to time, but has at least prevented unimaginable disaster from taking place. We need to improve these international institutions.

Population and Poverty. The human population continues to grow. Last month, the world’s population grew by about six million. This growth was uneven across the globe. In developed countries such as Japan, that do not encourage immigration, population is declining. Last year Japan’s population went down by 50,000. In the developed world, population growth would end if not for immigration. In developing nations the population is still growing. The reason for these different growth patterns is simple. In the developing world, a parent cannot be sure that their child will grow to be an adult, and in the absence of social security, children are the best form of old-age insurance. Moreover, in an agrarian world, children are needed to grow and harvest food.  In the developed world, children are typically economic liabilities. They cost a great deal to raise and educate. We love and value our families, but do not raise children for the economic benefits they bring.

People who study economic development and population talk about something they call a demographic transition.  This is what happens when a developing country makes the transition to full economic development. Children are no longer perceived to be economic assets, but economic liabilities; and the population stops growing. The best way to end population growth is to end poverty.

Ending poverty also leads to sustainability in two other ways. First, poverty breeds political conflict. People without an ownership stake in society have less to lose and may be drawn to conflict.  Parents who can provide for their children and realistically hope for a better life for them will favor peace over war.  Second, some of the best brains that will one day invent a new technology or the cure for cancer may very well be trapped in a life of poverty and will never get the education they need to help us think our way to a sustainable future.

Energy. To reduce damage to the biosphere, reduce global warming and reduce the cost of energy, we need to transition our economy to renewable, non-fossil fuels.  While there are plenty of fossil fuels left on the planet, extracting those fuels will only get more difficult and expensive in the future. Burning fossil fuels will continue to damage our ecology and atmosphere. Renewable energy is the key to the green economy. Without it such an economy will never be achieved. The Obama administration’s energy initiative is a critical first step in developing this new energy economy.

Ecological Footprint. The year 2007 was a turning point in world history – for the first time a majority of the world’s population lived in cities. One of the great paradoxes of modern life is that given the size of the world’s population, it is better for the planet’s ecosystems if people live together in cities than if they are dispersed throughout the countryside. By living in cities we make it easier to preserve natural environments outside of cities. New York City is much more energy efficient than most other places in the United States. As we learn to more effectively manage our energy, water and waste through increasingly sophisticated technology, we can reduce our impact on the planet and gradually transition to sustainability.

Can we do it? Can we get from here to there? Let’s put it this way, if we don’t learn to grow our economy while protecting our environment, we may survive, but to paraphrase Nikita Khrushchev, “the living will envy the dead.” While the human species has some irrational tendencies, we don’t tend to be suicidal. The opposite of sustainable development is short-term wealth that can’t be maintained. Sounds a little like Wall Street at the start of the 21st century. I like to think we are a teachable species. Let’s hope we are.

Poverty rates also declined in Manhattan, falling from 18.3 percent in 2006 to 17.6 in 2007, perhaps indicative of widespread gentrification and a then-healthy local economy. However, all is not well on Manhattan Island, as the borough's children's poverty rate increased to 27.5 percent (up from 27.1 percent in 2006), bucking the downward trend in the city’s overall children's poverty rate, which fell 0.9 percentage points from 2006 to 2007.

More on the ACS can be found here (pdf).