This diary http://www.dailykos.com/... is a good graphic exposition of our income inequality problem.
Some of the graphs aren't well-executed (I'm looking at my classmates who went to work for Deloitte) but overall it visualizes the issue and numbers a whole bunch of ways. One or more might make sense to you.
A comment by lineatus motivated me to do some math.
Imagine the total income of the country divided up into an equal share for every person.
The top 1/10th of 1% of the population get an average of 104 shares each. The bottom 90% get just about half a share each.
So as much as the baggers might bitch about the government taking 20% of their money, the very wealthy are taking a much bigger share of it.
(And now, a word from our sponsor: the Squiggle).
Take total income divided by the population. Let's say that comes out to $1000 per person. Everybody gets to take their cut of the county's total income based on where they are: the top 1/10 percent, in the middle, or the bottom 90 percent.
There are "X" thousand people (use the real number) who each walk away with $104,000 to spend. That's a tenth of one percent of all Americans.
Meanwhile, X hundred thousand people come to pick up their share. They each walk out with $500 to spend. That's 90 percent of the people living in this country, every woman, child and man."
So, "pretend it takes ten seconds for each person to pick up their money at the U.S. Government ATM."
Everyone understands time.
The line of people picking up $104,000 would be done in Y hours. The line of people waiting to pick up $500 would still be there Z years later."
So. 309 million people in the USA.
90 percent = 279,000,000.
1 percent = 3,100,000
1/10 percent = 310,000
The people picking up $104,000? The poor sucker who's last in line would wait 36 days.
(Even I'd camp out 36 days for that much money)
Those picking up $500? Nine Years.
To wit:
4,650,000 minutes
77,500.0 hours
3,229.2 days
107.6 months
9.0 years