What seems to go unnoticed by many Americans is the glaring and growing wealth gap. According to the Pew Research Center, current US income is at its highest level since 1928. This great dispersion of wealth can be attributed to the “fall [of] routine producers” (Reich). Where jobs that were once attainable in the 1970s are declining due to technological progress and companies finding workers in poor countries willing to work at half the cost of routine producers. What also drives this wealth gap is the power of corporations in an age of extravagant consumerism. Through the media, the demand to buy what we want is inevitable. Businesses are able to earn revenue while people remain unemployed because of America's vast opportunities to buy what we want when we want it. Added to this is the idea that “the richest are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer”. (Reich). When the income of the middle and lower classes is the same or decreases while the income of the upper class improves, the wealth gap is evident (Scott). What proves this is that today the richest 10% of Americans hold 40% of all wealth in the United States (Scott). Another aspect of the maintenance of wealth by the very rich is the ability to pass down one's wealth; otherwise known as inheritance. Even with estate taxes, the rich still manage to find loopholes where they don't have to pay as much, or even have to pay anything at all. In other words, “low-income people pay a larger share of sales and payroll taxes than higher-income people” (Henchman). In America, the rich are favored while everyone else has to pay. While it's hard to believe, education and heritage may play a role in the growing wealth gap in the United States; along with the government's fluke... half the paper... "Save capitalism". Current History 112,757 (2013):304-310. Academic research completed. Network. May 5, 2014."Paul Krugman Tells Bill Moyers Inherited Wealth Is Destroying Our Country."Alternet. Np, April 18, 2014. Web. May 5, 2014. Scott, David. “Economic Inequality, Poverty, and the Provision of Parks and Recreation.” JournalOf Park & ​​Recreation Administration 31.4 (2013): 1-11. Comprehensive academic research. Web. May 5, 2014. Corporations: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. Dir. Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. By Joel Bakan. 2003. YouTube. Network. May 5, 2014."The Growing Cost of Not Going to College." Pew Research Center Social Demographic Trends Project RSS. Pew Research Center, February 11, 2014. Web. May 4, 2014. "Who Goes to Prison? Matt Taibbi on America's Injustice Gap from Wall Street to Main Street." Truthout. Np, 15 April 2014. Web. 05 May 2014.