I'm afraid our inequality of income, (wealth) will get worse.
First, we as a country have to own up to the fact we have economically cheated our population, whether or not it was intentional or not.
Second, we as a country have to accept that something must be done, and that it may require non-conventional means to get results - REAL RESULTS, and not merely media sound bites.
Finally, that it will require decades of real hard work that economically empowers our population.
My solution is simple: economically empower the bottom 25% living in poverty....
I'm not saying what is right or wrong in terms of wealth distribution, but how different is the distribution today vs the early 1900s? It seems to me that there were rich people and poor people then as well. The Rockefellers had way more than the small farmer living in the dust bowl. How did those distributions fall? The story just says we are the most unequal now. Once again, right or wrong, have we changed in the 240 years? Maybe we should change. Social mobility may be less for the masses. I make more than my parents by going to college. I could go back and get an MBA and make even more. I had my chances. Do all? Probably not, but why not?
According to Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, we're currently in another Gilded Age quite similar to the first:
also:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/
USA Gini: 0.486
South Africa: 0.65 - worst in the world.
Sorry, here's a link to the Pinketty book that Krugman writes about. It's been getting tons of attention, supposedly one of the most important books written in recent years:
Income disparity is the root cause of many social evils. Something needs to be done to address this issue.
Most of this problem is the direct and INTENDED result of the tax cuts for the rich by st. reagan and his idiot philosophical son, dubya. Those tax cuts are the most destructive economic acts in American history, and until repealed, will keep this country in an economic death spiral.
Lovely read. Very useful to understand the economic inequality which we feel is not that worse. As said in the article "The great divide between our beliefs, our ideals, and reality."
Keep writing Nicholas Fitz.
Suresh
Inequality in the US has absolutely exploded since we started down this path of implementing trickle down economics in 1980- http://politicsthatwork.com/blog/inequality.php
You can see at that URL what your income would be if we still had even the same- already highly unequal- distribution of income as we did even just in 1980.
Money or wealth is something like like matter, it has gravity and the more you have the more you get.