It is incredible to walk down a major capital city in the U.S. and nearly step on a homeless individual sleeping on the cold floor. The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but we still have a large amount of our population unemployed, in poverty and living in poor conditions. This has set a system in place, which at times feels like a cast system at times. The system that we have established in the U.S is known as social stratification- that’s when social groups are categorized on their ability to attain basic resources (food, shelter, clothing). This helps identify the major earners in our economy; the richest population, upper class or capitalist and the top 1% of the households in the U.S held 34.6% of all privately held wealth in 2007. The top 20%, which would include some upper-middle class members accounted for 50.5% of the privately held wealth. This is an astonishing 85% of all wealth held by the top 20% of the population! When our country is that widely torn, there needs to be consideration for an end or major reduction of this wealth gap. Our capitalist population, aren’t aware of the issue at hand, but many members of minorities definitely are. Currently, 12.5% of Asian Americans, 24.2% of Native Americans, 25.8% of African Americans and 25.3% of Hispanics were officially declared poor in 2009. They also experience malnutrition or hunger, unemployment, income and educational inequities; many times this leads to possible reasons for crime, because they have to provide for their families. Currently there is a robbery every minute, a property crime every three seconds, one burglary every 14 seconds and one larceny-theft every five seconds here in the U.S. It absolutely brings up the question of whether the wealth gap has led to crimes and unlawful actions of individuals who really have no other choice at times. The wealth gap is increasing everyday as "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer", there’s a constant daily struggle for basic resources among 43.6 million of our citizens (14.3% of population), who in 2009 fell under the poverty line. The solution to this social problem is to lobby members of political power to helps get to a more equal state. The president can create more opportunities for the individuals who are in need, and with some founding changes can result. Proposing a solution to level the playing field; that could include higher tax rates for upper class members, provide more founding for those living in poverty, and providing more resources to the individuals to promote ambition to further themselves.