America is known as the land of opportunity. People from all over the world move to the United States in hope that one day, they too will have a chance at living the "American Dream." What is the American dream? Well according to the definition on Google, it is "the ideal that every United States citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative." This dream is what made America the envy of the world. The U.S. gave people opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise have in their home countries. Today the United States faces one of its largest problems in the widening gap between the rich and the poor and because of this, the American dream as we know it, is dead. Income inequality is the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a population. A Harvard University business professor and economist did a study on the current issues we face with wealth inequality. The professor asked 5,000 people what they thought was an ideal distribution of wealth versus what they think it actually is. Then the professor took both of those estimates and compared them to what the distribution of wealth actually is in America. As it turns out, the top one percent have more wealth than the people surveyed thought the entire top twenty percent should have had.

The study then took the total wealth of the U.S. back in 2009 (which was around 54 trillion) and broke it down to represent how much money the average person would have based off of the current system in which wealth is distributed and the two estimates gathered from the 5,000 people surveyed. In this example, the ideal distribution was where America was best off. The poor were well above the poverty line and the top twenty percent still had about ten to twenty times more wealth than the poor did. Then they looked at the estimated actual distribution and noticed that it still wasn't all that bad. Less than ten percent of the people fell below the poverty line and the middle and lower classes were beginning to suffer, but the distribution still wasn't all that skewed in favor of the rich. With both of those examples the possibility to make it into a higher social class with some hard work and determination is very realistic. Then the study showed what the actual distribution of wealth was. In our current system 15.1% of Americans are below the poverty line and it is almost impossible to distinguish the middle class from the poor. In this system the top 1% own 40% of the nations wealth while the bottom 80% have a mere 7% of the nations wealth.

There is a very real and clear problem with the way our wealth is currently distributed and the people who are at the bottom of the current system are not given the same opportunities to succeed as the people who are at the top. So no matter how determined they are and no matter how hard they work to achieve that beloved American dream, the odds are completely against them. The American dream may be dead, but it is not extinct. If we as a nation work hard enough to achieve even that ideal estimate of wealth distribution, then all Americans can truly aspire to one day achieve the real American dream.

If you care to watch the video from which some of the information provided was obtained you may do so below.