United States of America consists of 50 states and one federal district, with capital in Washington. Unites States has the largest economy in the world, with a nominal GDP of $ 16.8 trillion by the year 2013] .[1The U.S. is a big producer of oil and largest producer of natural gas. It has the second place in the trade after China.[2] Moreover U.S. is the largest financial center in the world with a center in New York. The unemployment is 7.7% by the year 2013, meaning 12 million people,[3] whereas the population represents 315 million. It is a huge country with a huge territory and due to the differences in living standard of the population; the distribution of income and wealth is extremely unequal.

1.1 Current status on wealth distribution

Wealth inequality means the unequal distribution of assets among American inhabitants in the United States. Assets or wealth refers to everything what the family or a person possess minus all debts e.g. the real estate, automobiles, stocks, bonds, businesses, savings, and investments minus all mortgages, vehicles loans, educational loans, financial assets loans etc.[4] According to President Obama (2014) the top wealthiest 1% possesses 40% of the nation’s wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%, which refers to the current state of the wealth distribution. The average employee “needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour.”[5]

Wealth is not something to spend on the daily expenditures, it should be a contribution to the income in order to achieve and retain the desired status and standard of living”.[6] Wealth should support current consumption or should be retained to support the future consumption.[7] Moreover, “wealth should be used for short- and long-term financial security, social prestige, and is a tool to get an access to political power, and can be used to produce more wealth.”[8] The more wealth one has, the more power one has, and the less restrictions there are to live the life one likes. Generally the working and middle class finance all standard living costs through income and wages, while the rich are aiming on gaining more wealth, and making more profit of it.[9]

1.2 Historical change of wealth distribution in the US

Changes in wealth from 1989 to 2001

By observing how the wealth of American households changes with the time, one can notice a general increase in wealthier individuals and a decrease in the number of poor households. Moreover the share of households with more debts than assets (negative net worth) significantly decreased from 9.5% in 1989 to 4.1% in 2001.[10]

From 1995 to 2004, one can notice a significant growth among household wealth in the whole U.S., they doubled from $21.9 trillion to $43.6 trillion, which rely not only on the wealthy part of the country but on all residents of America, however the wealthiest of them used that time to make up 89% of this growth.[11] The situation on unequal wealth distribution in the U.S. was always an issue but during this time, wealth became only more unequal, and the wealthiest 25% became even wealthier.