A mid the day-to-day drudgery of life, most of us don’t feel like lottery winners. But the fact is that, just by living in a country such as Canada, we are already incredibly fortunate. To avoid the fate of many lottery winners, who just fritter away their new-found wealth, we need both smart policies and greater individual awareness of the consequences of our good fortune.

Much of the world makes do with far less than we do. But, thanks to globalization, workers in the developing world are seeing their wages and standards of living rise. The World Bank predicts that will only continue as developing economies become more powerful over the next 25 years. However, not everyone is benefiting, and that threatens to spoil the party. In the developing world, sudden wealth in certain parts of the population is creating social stresses.

In the developed world, outsourcing production to cheaper countries boosts corporate profits, but leaves many workers facing wage pressures. The benefits are accruing largely to shareholders, but even more so to top corporate executives who have leveraged the spoils of globalization into fatter pay packets.

The result is growing economic disparity here at home, too. Recent data from Statistics Canada show that the bottom fifth of Canadian households owe more than they own and that the depth of their debt has been growing over the past six years. About 30% of the population has no private retirement savings. At the same time, the rich are getting richer.

The consequences of this growing disparity could prove ugly. According to one poll, Canadians fear rising crime in response to increasing inequality. Greater demand for government services and, thus, higher taxes could result, too. At the global level, there’s the risk of renewed protectionism.

Policy-makers must do what they can to facilitate the adjustments needed to cope with the evolving economic environment. Labour must be mobile and flexible; saving and investing should be encouraged; and inefficiencies, such as internal trade barriers, must be eliminated. Individual action is called for, too. The beneficiaries of globalization should recognize how much of their wealth is due not to their own genius and hard work but to accidents of birth. Sharing the wealth is not just the right the thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do — to keep the global economy running, and our privileged place in it secure.