In our opinion, the skewed distribution of wealth in the U.S. is not a problem in and of itself. We object in principle to a notion that there exists some ideal “fair” distribution of wealth among individuals as it seems patently obvious that different individuals produce wealth in vastly differing amounts and we believe that each individual is entirely due whatever wealth they legitimately create. Rather, we see two problems associated with the massive skew in practice.

1. The concentration of such extreme wealth in so few hands wouldn’t have to have resulted in, but certainly has resulted in the wholesale purchase of all political and regulatory power in the US, resulting in an egregious tilting of the economic playing field in favor of the wealthy few and against the less wealthy majority. Again, it is not the wealth distribution per sé that is unfair — it is the tilting of the playing field, and therefore the illegitimacy of much of the concentrated wealth in the hands of the few that we object to.
2. If those in the middle and lower ranges of the economic distribution were living lives that had an acceptable baseline and were improving, then we don’t think it would matter in any way how wealthy the super-wealthy were. The fact that the vast numerical majority of Americans are leading progressively more difficult and desperate lives while the super-rich get super-richer in an economic landscape that is politically engineered to favor them is a very significant problem.

Watch this excellent video-info-graphic on wealth distribution in America: