This is a Natural Law, but it has become manipulated and compressed into the “the distribution of wealth” phrase, which fundamentally fails to make the distinction between wealth and resources.

Resources are the goods and services, created and sustained by the exchange of human energy, that are vital and necessary for every American to reach his or her fullest potential. Resources are food, shelter, health care, and education.

Wealth, on the other hand, is excess. It buys you golf clubs and a new car, and it’s neither necessary nor vital for personal survival or growth.

What we are increasingly seeing in the United States — a government entity that collects massive amounts of human energy in taxes each year — is an attack on the distribution of resources, not wealth; and a number of studies have emerged that put the systematic stifling of human resources front and center.

“the life chances of a child [in the United States] are more dependent on the education and income of his parents than in any other advanced countries for which there is data.”

-Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz

Stiglitz is referring to a study that looked at data from ten of the worlds wealthiest nations. It concluded that American children had the lowest chance of any other nationality in overcoming the economic circumstances of their parents.

Meanwhile, child poverty in the United States is higher than what exists in virtually all other rich nations. In a study that examined 41 of the worlds richest countries by the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, the United States ranked 37th, with a child poverty rate of 21% over the last decade; and the majority of these impoverished children are going hungry.

According to the USDA, 14.9% of all Americans are food insecure — that’s 50 million citizens, 17 million of which are children, who worry everyday about putting food on the table.

When you look at the data, the fact that American children find themselves frozen in the fate of their parents comes as no surprise.

We have created an environment where your parents income determines everything, from the quality of your education to your chances of eating another meal.

This occurs because, in a world where basic human resources are sold like other private goods and services, the money in your parents savings account determines your level of physical security.

Meanwhile the costs of providing this security are made exponentially more expensive by the companies and individuals who control them, because they are selling goods and services that we need to survive. So we have no choice other than to buy them.

This is why a plastic IV bag in an American hospital, which costs less than 50 cents to produce, costs over 500 dollars for the sick patient using it, and why the cost of getting a college education, which ideally gets you a good job to provide for your family, has risen two to three times the rate of inflation.

While we pay huge portions of our income to the U.S. government, we have created a world where it is increasingly impossible for normal citizens to provide for themselves; and the odds are especially stacked against children born in low income families.

Although the United States’ per pupil spending on education is on par with other advanced nations, the way we distribute these funds stands apart from anywhere else in the world.

According to PISA, a well known study by Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “all OECD countries except the United States, Turkey, and Israel now devote equal if not more resources to schools facing greater socio-economic challenges.” 5

While the rest of the world funnels the most resources to schools located in the poorest regions, in the United States the opposite is the case; the majority of the resource go to wealthiest districts while the poor ones get left behind.

That’s because, unlike the rest of the world, school funding in the U.S. is dependent on local rather than federal funding. Look at the single tax payer who makes 50k annually. Of the $11,000 that she pays in federal taxes, only a portion of 3%, or around 133 dollars, goes to education. Contrast that with what she spent on National Defense, which is over $1,800 or 17%, and you can see why schools from impoverished neighborhoods struggle.

At the federal level, we are spending nearly 14 times more on maintaining a massive military force rather than educating our children.

During the Iraq war, the United States spent more than half of the total military spending on planet Earth. Today, we pay for around 40%.

Meanwhile U.S. citizens are living in an increasing state of survival.

“We lose in Chicago more black kids than the solders in Iraq,” said Illinois Senator Jaqueline Collins in a riveting episode of Vice. “There are consequences, I believe, to failed economic and political policies that most communities of color in Chicago are facing. High unemployment — 23 percent or more — and failing schools. We have the closing of mental facilities…the foreclosure crisis. This is decades of a lack of resources flowing into these communities.”

Allowing whole sections of the US population to fall into a state of survival stifles innovation at every level of society.

When you look at the technology that we have created, it is clear that we are complex beings capable of extremely creative thought. Within each of us is the potential of creating the life that we want; and we all hold dreams of the highest, most creative expression of ourselves.

These inner-visions are showing us the potential of our lives pursuing the things that bring us the most excitement and joy; and within them are the keys to creating a more sustainable world.

But in a world where there is no bottom to how far you can fall — where failure can lead to extreme poverty and desperation — thoughts of survival often smother these higher visions.

For U.S citizens, these thoughts have become a reality. They are the hidden drivers behind staying at a job that you do not enjoy. They are the force that sabotages the college student with the next big idea. They are the resistance that causes us to choose the safer route over pursuing our dreams.

We have forgotten that these fears are illusions; and as crazy as it may sound, they are completely self-created.

We live in a society that has created unquestionable material abundance. The problem is not our supply of resources, but that these resources have been overtaken by industries that no longer serve us. Rest assured, war is one of the most profitable enterprises on Earth. According to a study by Brown University, the Iraq war costs U.S. tax payers over 2 trillion dollars. This undoubtedly made the private contractors, oil companies and weapons producers involved incredibly wealthy. Meanwhile it is estimated that over 190,000 people died in the Iraq war alone.

While defense spending is considered untouchable, 217 House Republicans recently voted on one of the largest cuts to Food Stamps in U.S. history. Right now, some 47 million food stamps recipients, many of whom were laid off during the financial crisis and subsequent recession, live on just 4 dollars a day.

When we remember that money is just a symbol for exerted human energy, and that we collectively pay the U.S. government massive amounts of it, the idea that we should delegate this energy to anything other than ourselves goes out the window.