"Tony, where's my cut?:" American Wealth Disparity

            Spiderman, aka Peter Parker, is the only Avenger who has a professional job outside of the SHIELD, SWORD, or any other government agency.  He has to fund his own “super heroing” with the wages he earns as a researcher at horizon labs.  The fact that he is not officially on “Avenger payroll” earning much less than or not being independently wealthy mirrors the disparity in wealth in the United States.  Where is Peter’s cut? 

Wealth disparity is a major issue faced by the people of the United States. Currently the economic landscape of the United States places the top 1% of the nation at a large advantage over the bottom 99%.  The amount of individuals earning wages at the bottom of the economic spectrum continues to grow increasing the ratio of small wage earners compared to large wage earners.  Thus, this change increases the disparity of earning in the United States by reducing the amount of people who earn large wages.  These large wage earners become an even smaller percentage of the population as the amount of wages they earn increase.  This means that the top 1% hold more wealth than that of the bottom 90% of the United States (see graph below).

http://www.eoionline.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/us-share-of-net-worth1.jpg

This wage inequality is also evident in the Avenger analogy.  The only main difference is the fact that Peter Parker having to earn his own wages is the minority.  Most of the Avengers such as Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Captain America are all independently wealthy.  Thor, is an Odinson; the Hulk works as a researcher for SWORD.  These are all examples of how the other Avengers do not fall within the same wage-earning bracket as the other Avengers.  The necessary for Peter to independently hold a high demand full time occupation at Horizon Labs is an explicit example of how there is a wealth disparity in the Avengers.

            The disparity in the majority of the wealth owned by the population is unfair and provides little room for change.  In the case of the United States, those in power holding all the wealth are highly unlikely to want to disburse wealth more or less equally; this is a demonstration of “winner-takes-all politics.”  The trend of keeping the rich, rich increases the amount of individuals living in the lowest bracket of wealth.  In order to correct this imbalance, the United States must bolster the middle class, which will in turn reduce the poverty rate.  This change will put less people in the extreme poverty reducing the wealth difference between the top 10% and the middle class.