I recently came across a series of informational charts and tables highlighting some interesting details about economic divisions in the Unites States in a blog posting entitled It's The Inequality, Stupid. One of these charts displayed in simple graphical terms the differences between the public's perception of what the distribution of wealth in the U.S. is, what the public thinks it should be and what it actually is. Another one of these charts shows how the distribution of wealth has changed over time. (If you have not already seen the article, I urge you to visit the website and take a look.)

In a nutshell, what these graphs show is the age-old axiom that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed. In one sense, nothing we haven't heard or read many times before.

But what makes these and the other graphs in the posting so compelling is how they collectively reveal the extent of the economic disparity. The rich are not just richer. They are A LOT richer, with 10% of the population holding more than 80% of the wealth. And they continue getting richer at a disproportionately faster pace both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the population. It is a mind-boggling accumulation of wealth that, given the limited nature of the world's resources, can only come at the expense of the rest of the population.