As of this writing, there are approximately 2,640 billionaires in the world. Roughly 614 of these billionaires are in the United States. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), over a quarter of the wealth in the US is held by households with a network in excess of $30 million. This accounts for 0.25% of the population, or 1 in 400 households. The ITEP also estimates that if these same households were taxed 2% annually it would generate an additional $415 billion per year. At the same time, as of 2021, 11.6% of the population, or 37.9 million people, lived below the poverty line. This is a systemic injustice. It’s legal theft that Congress, the Supreme Court and the lobbying industry have allowed to fester and grow for decades. From an elementary moral perspective, it is an injustice to allow even a single citizen to go without adequate food, shelter and/or medical care while so few have so much. Even from a legal perspective, according to the UN charter on human rights, it is a blatant injustice. Yet it is an issue that mostly goes undiscussed and unaddressed. It’s a level of greed and opulence that’s difficult to wrap your head around in one of the most developed nations on earth. I believe that wealth inequality in the US is the root of most of our issues and if we had elected officials and a citizenry that were brave enough to actually address it, we could see positive change in this country unlike any we have seen before.