MEDIA ROOTS — The top 1% hold 40% of the nation’s wealth. But the bottom 80% hold only 7% of the nation’s wealth. This infographics video provides an arresting presentation of widening wealth inequality in the USA. It also compares and contrasts our perceptions with actual reality.
A notable segment is a graph showing perfect equality, which is summarily disregarded by our society because it’s labelled socialism. The logic goes that people need protive motive, which means we choose to have socially-stratified classes, where we always have a lower class, an underclass. However, we only hear about the mythologised middle class in our national discourse. This means we idealise having an elite, ruling-class as well, to which we’re supposed to aspire entry. However, when over-allocated crony capitalists prey on the working-class (which includes the celebrated middle class), we wonder what went wrong.
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