Most of us learned about the American Dream around a Monopoly board during childhood.

In Spokane County, the folks who live at Baltic and Mediterranean avenues often gravitate to the downtown core. Those who reside in our equivalent of Broadway and Park Place might gather to the north or the south.

Conversations in each of these places reveal the divisions and similarities we face at a time when the political rhetoric is designed to pit one class against another.

Ali O’Neill volunteers at the Women’s Hearth in downtown Spokane, happy to greet homeless women, answer the phones and share her tips on getting by on a minuscule income.

O’Neill is 37, but she uses a cane to help her walk. She has a degenerative disc disease, she says, and lives on a monthly Social Security check of $674 and $130 in food stamps. Her Catholic Charities apartment costs $192 for rent and utilities. She buys beef and pork packages from Sonnenberg’s Market for $69, picks up gently used sweaters at Our Place and Hope House, and hits WinCo and Walmart for brown rice and toothpaste.

In the last three years, since she was homeless herself, she says she’s seen Spokane’s free meal sites grow considerably more crowded.

When Spokane’s homeless residents gather, O’Neill says, they talk about how to find apartments that rent for $250 to $450 a month and jobs in telemarketing or customer service.

Up north, the general manager of Spokane Country Club works with a population on the opposite end of the income scale. John Stone says he doesn’t listen in on his members’ dinner conversations, but he knows more people now are questioning whether they can afford country club dues, health club memberships and lake places.

In 2007, he says, Spokane Country Club had a small waiting list for new members. This year the club has a list of those who want to sell their memberships instead.

As national politicians make speeches about income inequality and class warfare in the United States, relatively few Spokane residents seem riled up about the politics surrounding these issues.

The income gap in Spokane County appears unchanged since 2006, says Grant Forsyth, economics professor at Eastern Washington University.

The lowest 20 percent of Spokane County’s households, with an average income of $11,564, earned approximately 4 percent of the total household income in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The top 5 percent, however, with an average income of $237,048, earned approximately 20 percent of the total. This distribution was nearly the same in 2006, before the recession began.

Occasionally I read an outburst on Facebook aimed at Republicans who seem overly sensitive on behalf of the rich, or hear a sneer from the well-off aimed at a particular group’s work ethic (public workers lately).

But for the most part, the Spokane County residents I encounter seem to see economic issues as an individual struggle, whether they’re facing a reduction in income, a difficult decision to lay off workers, or the need to juggle days in the classroom with nights in a restaurant kitchen. We plug away on our own or listen to polarized rhetoric from one party or another.

For many, it’s difficult to have much sympathy for those at another point on the economic spectrum, whether it’s the affluent employer who lays off workers and forgoes a golf membership, the harried teacher who travels in the summer but may not be hired back in the fall, or the disabled addict who can’t find work.

Income distribution data makes it clear who’s playing the winning rounds on Spokane’s Monopoly board. But before this economy threatens us further, together we’ve got to find a new game, this one in pursuit of the good of us all.