{"id":5123,"date":"2013-03-06T17:30:52","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T22:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=5123"},"modified":"2013-03-06T17:42:52","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T22:42:52","slug":"compelling-video-shows-reality-of-wealth-inequality-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2013\/03\/06\/compelling-video-shows-reality-of-wealth-inequality-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Compelling video shows reality of wealth inequality in America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"10\" style=\"float: right; margin:10px 0 10px 10px;\">\n<script async src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:600px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5595881567027133\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"8268618372\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<br \/>\nOne of the reasons I remain pretty optimistic about the United States&#8217; long-term economic prospects is that we have such vast wealth. That sheer wealth will eventually help eliminate the nation&#8217;s debt, fuel investment in infrastructure, and allow the economy to continue growing despite the challenges of the 21st century.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, at the moment, a huge amount of the nation&#8217;s vast wealth is in the hands of a tiny percentage of Americans. Wealth disparity seems to be both a result and a cause of extreme income disparity. We don&#8217;t need to gouge the rich, but we need public policies that slowly bring more wealth into the hands of poor and middle class Americans.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re not going to make those public policy decisions anytime soon, but eventually &#8212; 10 years? 20? 40? &#8212; we&#8217;ll figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to a YouTube user named Politizane, we have this great video that puts wealth inequality in clear terms. It simply takes a look at data from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.people.hbs.edu\/mnorton\/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a paper by the Harvard&#8217;s Michael Norton and Daniel Ariely<\/a> about what Americans would see as the ideal distribution of wealth, what they think the nation&#8217;s wealth distribution actually is, and what the numbers actually are.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the video &#8212; just six minutes:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QPKKQnijnsM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At his talk at the Savannah Book Festival a few weeks ago, Al Gore put the issue in stark terms too, noting that the Wal-Mart heirs have more combined wealth than the least wealthy 100 million Americans.<\/p>\n<p>The Wonkblog at The Washington Post h<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/03\/06\/this-viral-video-is-right-we-need-to-worry-about-wealth-inequality\/\" target=\"_blank\">as some excellent commentary<\/a> on the video and the trends that it captures.<br \/>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5595881567027133\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4374909701\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the reasons I remain pretty optimistic about the United States&#8217; long-term economic prospects is that we have such vast wealth. That sheer wealth will eventually help eliminate the nation&#8217;s debt, fuel investment in infrastructure, and allow the economy&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2013\/03\/06\/compelling-video-shows-reality-of-wealth-inequality-in-america\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[42],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Screen-shot-2013-03-06-at-5.28.32-PM.png?fit=608%2C335","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-1kD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}