Wealth inequality is so much worse than most people realize, our current economic system is very broken and there's plenty of information that proves it. So, where to start?

[The ultra-rich have as much as $32 trillion hidden away in offshore accounts to avoid taxes.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-offshore-wealth-idUSBRE86L03U20120722) As a way to understand the magnitude of the number 32 trillion (32,000,000,000,000), let's use time as an example. One million seconds is only 12 days, but one billion seconds is 31 years. So there's a massive difference between a million and a billion, much more than people realize. But how much is 32 trillion seconds? It's over a million years.

People know it's an issue but they don't understand just how extreme it can be. Here's an example: **If you had a job that paid you $2,000 an hour, and you worked full time (40 hours a week) with no vacations, and you somehow managed to save all of that money and not spend a single cent of it, you would still have to work more than 25,000 years until you had as much wealth as Jeff Bezos.**

I've been researching this issue for years because I was shocked at just how bad it really is. I've come to the conclusion that the game is rigged, and I've put together some information to help illustrate it.

**Graphs:**

▪[Possibly the most important graph ever: productivity is increasing but wages are stagnant, all the profit is going to the wealthy](https://i.ibb.co/412gVpH/Screen-Shot-2013-03-08-at-11-36-19-AM.png)

▪[Distribution of U.S. income](https://i.ibb.co/0XJVkXH/OSX-Ethics-08-04-Avg-Income.jpg)

▪[Distribution of average U.S. income growth during expansions](https://i.ibb.co/4mn2BNg/qDWnA4s.jpg)

▪[Income inequality in the U.S. compared to western Europe](https://i.ibb.co/JzTswsZ/inequality.jpg)

▪[Inequality is still an issue in Europe though, here's the distribution of German wealth](https://i.ibb.co/Gsy8wpb/screen-shot-2018-01-31-at-12-07-49-am.png)

▪[U.S. economic mobility compared to other developed countries](https://i.ibb.co/sCr7NdS/Relative-Social-Mobility-of-Wealthy-Nations-2-1024x639.jpg)

▪[Taxes for the richest Americans have plummeted over the last 50 years](https://i.ibb.co/mzjm1Sj/Fake-Candid-Dungbeetle-size-restricted.gif)

▪[Amazing info-graphic about U.S. economics over time](https://i.ibb.co/wR3PY5D/e8t78dn0d5h21.png)

▪[In addition to all of that, there's another layer of inequality as well](https://i.ibb.co/bd27TM7/e4uoe4w8z6r31.jpg)

**Videos:**

▪[A fantastic video that quickly illustrates wealth inequality in America](https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM)

▪[How American CEOs got so rich](https://youtu.be/ylLTMYt24lA)

▪[What corporations want has more of an effect on U.S. law than what the public wants](https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig)

▪[The origins of conservatism](https://youtu.be/E4CI2vk3ugk)

▪[Neoliberalism explained](https://youtu.be/7gQFvf19Jec)

▪[Why inequality matters](https://youtu.be/XLJl0AdhPjE)

▪[Beware fellow plutocrats: pitchforks are coming](https://youtu.be/q2gO4DKVpa8)

▪[Rich people don't create jobs](https://youtu.be/CKCvf8E7V1g)

▪[What the 1% don't want you to know](https://youtu.be/QzQYA9Qjsi0)

▪[The Money Masters](https://youtu.be/HBk5XV1ExoQ?t=22)

**Articles:**

▪[Study shows that you're more likely to be successful if you're born dumb and rich than poor and smart](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/would-you-rather-be-born-smart-or-rich/281828/)

▪[Small farms are being consolidated up into big agriculture](https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/07/23/concentration-in-u-s-agriculture/)

▪["Is curing patients a sustainable business model?"](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html)

▪[This scientific study concluded that banks can create money out of thin air](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070)

▪[Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change)

**Relevant subreddits:**

▪ r/LateStageCapitalism

▪ r/ABoringDystopia

▪ r/AntiWork

**Quotes:**

>**“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By workers I mean all workers, and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level, I mean the wages of decent living."** - Franklin Delano Roosevelt introducing the minimum wage (it was always meant to be a living wage)

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>**"The cause of poverty is not that we're unable to satisfy the needs of the poor, it's that we're unable to satisfy the greed of the rich."** - Anonymous

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>**"Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either a lunatic or an economist."** - Kenneth Boulding

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>**"A century ago scarcity had to be endured; now it must be enforced."** - Murray Bookchin

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>**"Capitalism as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion."** - Albert Einstein

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>**"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."** - Stephen Hawking

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