Wealth Distribution in the US

I found this cartoon on a list called “Top TenOccupy Wall Street Cartoons”. This cartoon really depicts the unfair wealth distribution in the United States really well. The man sitting in “the rich” chair represents the wealthy business class in the US. He is sitting in front of about 90% of the pie labeled US Wealth, while the middle class receives about a tenth, and the poor just receives crumbs. On top of getting most of the pie, the man is being offered whipped cream from a bowl labeled US taxes cuts. The elephant waiter obviously represents the US government. This also shows how much influence big business has over the government.



It is very easy to understand the anger and frustration of the Occupy Wall Street protestors. The United States is seen as the “land of opportunity” or a fluid society where one can improve their economic status if they tried. This dream has become harder and harder to accomplish over the past few years especially with the recent recession. Many of the protestors are students who are frustrated because they are sitting on massive student loans and have no means to pay them off. There are also many small business owners among the protestors. With the recession many small businesses have failed because they were unable to get loans and went bankrupt. So the only people that are able to stay in business are the very rich who are able to finance themselves.

The cartoon and the graphs are also implying a major flaw within capitalism. Since there is little to no government regulation, there is no limit to how much wealth a person can accumulate. This is what leads to unequal wealth distribution. If we look at a list of the wealthiest Americans, we see that many are associated with marketing and business in one way or another. They make almost all of their money through investments. They use their returns to make further investments in a never ending cycle. Majority of Americans work for set wages, which helps them to just get by. The only way they can accumulate wealth is through saving and we all know that with current wages and inflation rates, saving is out of the question. As a result of this, the gap between the rich and the poor has skyrocketed over the past few years.

One can argue that although the wealth distribution is skewed, we cannot blame the rich. However, we have to dig deeper and see how some of these members of the upper class are obtaining their wealth. There was a lot of manipulation and fraudulent activities involved which ultimately led to the 2008 recession. I’ll let the documentary “InsideJob” explain this. I will write more on this topic on my next blog.