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15 mind-blowing facts about wealth and inequality in America: A slideshow from "Business Insider." Click on "VIEW AS 1 PAGE" unless you want to go insane, viewing 1 slide at a time.

A new aristocracy is reaping huge unearned gains from our collective intellectual wealth. Our celebrated entrepreneurs and money men are hoisting a cherry to the top of an already existing sundae-and then laying claim to the entire ice cream parlor. Knowledge is the primary source of our national wealth, with or without the elites at the top who claim the lion's share.

"Get Free From Wall Street: An Interview With David Korten How to avoid money games and create real wealth. "

Today, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is considered a Bible for capitalism, but when published in 1776, it was a blasphemous challenge to the big business, big government mercantilism in Europe. Smith's free market theories expanded economic opportunity, promoted competition and encouraged innovation, in large part, by attacking the "concentrated wealth and power" of Britain's commercial elite.

Weller, Christian E. | Helburn, Amy Public Policy Options to Build Wealth for America's Middle Class Publication Date: 11/20/2009

Smeeding, Timothy M. | Thompson, Jeff Recent Trends in the Distribution of Income: Labor, Wealth and More Complete Measures of Well Being Publication Date: 6/3/2010

"Yeldan, Erinc On the Nature and Causes of the Collapse of the Wealth of Nations, 2007-2008: The End of a Façade Called Globalization Publication Date: 3/17/2009"

Our society may simply disintegrate if the rich win the battle in Congress. The top 1% of the national income strata, having bought up just about all depreciating assets at bargain basement prices, will have increased its portion of total national marketable wealth from about half of it to all of it. This is not a desirable situation at all.

"We the people have given away our sovereign money-creating power to private, for-profit lending institutions, which have used it to siphon wealth from the productive economy. Some states are moving to take that power back. "

"The Illusion of Money Liberation from subservience to Wall Street begins with a recognition that money is just a number of no intrinsic value. "

Long, comprehensive, illustrated, well-written (somewhat outdated) article on a paradigm for business where shareholder profits were balanced by social value. Clearly spells out that profits and wealth are not the antithesis of ethics and social responsibility. Rather, they are mutually-interdependent, even synergistic.

Critics of capitalism often argue that any form of capitalism would eventually devolve into corporatism, due to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. A permutation of this term is corporate globalism. John Ralston Saul argues that most Western societies are best described as corporatist states, run by a small elite of professional and interest groups, that exclude political participation from the citizenry. Corporatism has been supported from various proponents, including: absolutists, conservatives, fascists, progressives, reactionaries, socialists and theologians. In the United States, economic corporatism involving capital-labour cooperation was influential in the New Deal economic program of the United States in the 1930s as well as in Fordism and Keynesianism.[36] In the post-World War II reconstruction period in Europe, corporatism was favoured by Christian democrats, national conservatives, and social democrats in opposition to liberal capitalism.[37] This type of corporatism faded but revived again in the 1960s and 1970s as "neo-corporatism" in response to the new economic threat of stagflation.[38] Neo-corporatism favoured economic tripartism which involved strong and centralized labour unions, employers' unions, and governments that cooperated as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy.[39]

It's intellectually dishonest to have a discussion over the fairness of the tax code and welfare programs without FIRST addressing the inherent inequality of our labor markets, capital markets, access to education, access to the judicial system, access to infrastructure, and intellectual property laws. Fundamentally, if a business leader makes his profits from paying his employees minimum wage at $7.50/hour in an area where a decent livable wage is $15/hour, but where workers have little negotiating leverage and few other options, then it is RIGHT to expect government to tax the business/owner at a high percentage and the workers at a low percentage, and to use tax funds to provide the under-compensated workers with housing and food assistance, as well as other forms of aid. In that scenario, the scenario in which most of our country operates (accounting also for middle-class wage-earners that are under-paid), it is disturbingly unfair to demand that "equality" be applied only at the tax code (even moreso that it only be leveled at the income tax, specifically), as if wealth is earned solely in proportion to some fantastical Randian ideal of personal worth and NOT heavily influenced by real-world power dynamics.

KW writes: My goodness. In a wise, creative, and mischievous response to the nasty rhetoric of the press, the Occupy Wall Street folks have answered propaganda with poetry. What a graceful maneuver in the struggle for social change. Beautiful and heartwarming! For a discussion on the media's quest for one, clear demand from the Wall Street protesters, the group created the following consensus document: A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five) Published 2011-09-22 07:51:42 UTC by OccupyWallSt at OccupyWallStreet.org This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street. On September 21st, 2011, Troy Davis, an innocent man, was murdered by the state of Georgia. Troy Davis was one of the 99 percent. Ending capital punishment is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, four of our members were arrested on baseless charges. Ending police intimidation is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, the richest 400 Americans owned more than half of the country's population. Ending wealth inequality is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, we determined that Yahoo lied about occupywallst.org being in spam filters. Ending corporate censorship is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly eighty percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track. Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly 15% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing. Ending political corruption is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of Americans did not have work. Ending joblessness is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of America lived in poverty. Ending poverty is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly fifty million Americans were without health insurance. Ending health-profiteering is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, America had military bases in around one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and sixty-five countrie

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody," she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the "social contract" that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

"The business of America is big business with a strategic long-term plan for co-opting world governments, waging permanent wars for profit, dominating everywhere militarily, ending social safety net protections, crushing civil liberties and freedom, tolerating no concern for human rights, controlling global markets and resources, turning workers everywhere into serfs, and extracting, unimpeded, as much public wealth as possible."