In this video, the creator is trying to open the eyes of the average American about the startling facts about the wealth distribution in America. At the beginning, the voice over explains that he can't believe the information he had come across and that he felt that he had to view it in different graphs and charts to get his head around it. This shows that the way the wealth is shared in America and the reality of it shocks Americans, which therefore shows how extreme the numbers are.
The chart, the data of which was collected by a Harvard Business Professor, shows what the people of America think the ideal distribution of wealth is between the five different percentage groups, what they think is the actual distribution of wealth and then shows what the actual distribution of wealth is in the US. The first two graphs show a pretty reasonable distribution between the 5 percentages, which the voice over agreed with and thought that even the small, but not unreasonable, difference in the first two graphs shows that Americans already know that the distribution was already warped from what they though the ideal was. This shows that most of America are aware that something is wrong and even think what they assumed was the ideal was getting close to what they thought was unacceptable as it meant that the poor were getting poorer and the middle class was getting squeezed. When the voice over then reveals the reality of wealth distribution, he points out that the difference is as warped and skewed as the first two graphs are from each other, which shows how much of a difference the ideal is to reality. He also points out that the bottom 40% have hardly any wealth and the top 20% has over double the amount of wealth than what most Americans think that they did. This points out how poor the poor actually are and how such a big percentage of the US have pretty much no share in the countries wealth. The creator of the video expresses his astonishment of the fact of how different reality is to what Americans think is reality and even goes on to put the information in the context of America as a whole due to the fact that he still can't comprehend the data that he is studying.
The voice over firstly shows the wealth of America shared equally and points out that the system of Socialism, even though fair, wouldn't work as it doesn't encourage people to work hard or try to achieve anything. He then proceeds to put the numbers from the previous graph into a line graph to show the curves of the first two previous graphs and then explains that in fact this distribution would actually encourage people to work and have an incentive to go further in life as they would have the money and resources to achieve it. On the other hand, the graph showing reality, therefore shows how there is a lessening of incentive as people are unable to get anywhere due to the fact that the top 1% of the country take almost a quarter of America's income home and owns half of the countries stocks and shares, while the rest own 0.5%. The creator also puts into context what a CEO makes compared to an average worker. He points out that a CEO earns 380 times what an average worker earns and that they would have to work for a whole month to earn what a CEO does in an hour.
The creator voices the view that the country wouldn't have to go the extreme of socialism to find a system that would be fair for all five percentage of America. This show that he believes that they way America is today is an extreme of what it should be and that the top 10 and 1% are too rich and that the poor aren't living, but barely surviving. Astonishingly, this means that 40% of America are only surviving and have hardly any chance of living the American Dream.
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