Eat the rich. That is an extreme phrase for some people yet within the United States, it is oddly fitting. Americans are divided on a myriad of things and the wealth divide is the biggest division that this country faces. The rich have too much, the poor have too little. According to Emannuel Saez, an economist, the top 10 percent in America earn more than 9 times the income of the bottom 90 percent. Does that not sound horrifying?  

     The phrase “Eat the Rich” is commonly attributed to Jean Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher during the Enlightenment period. The full quote is, “when the people have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”

     This of course was about the French Revolution and the wealth divide that occurred there. The people of France, sick of the absolute monarchy and years of suffering, chopped off the heads of the wealthy. What is the difference between France then and the United States now? There just has not been a revolution yet.

     There is more divide on this issue than any other. The rich have convinced people of the lower and middle class that they have “earned their money with such hard work and vigorous effort” yet that’s not true. Most wealthy billionaires were already rich and successful to begin with.

      Elon Musk is an amazing example of this. Musk, New York Times’ “Person of the Year” and the richest person in the world, is a child of a wealthy oiler in South Africa. Musk tries to establish himself as a person for the people, yet part of being a commoner goes with having money given to you by your father. A big common misconception is that Musk founded Tesla. That’s not true. Musk bought the rights of Tesla and the rightful owners cannot come out and say they made it. 

     Furthermore, Musk pays no money in taxes. Some people would say, “But it’s his hard work, he deserves to not pay any money in taxes.” False. If a billionaire pays not even half of the amount they earn in taxes, and the middle class pays more than that, doesn’t that mean the system is flawed? Elon Musk has found a way to go around this system by borrowing against the shares in Tesla and not selling them. 

     It’s not just Elon Musk who gets away with their taxes; people like Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, get away from paying their taxes as well. Not only that but he exploits his workers by making them work ridiculous hours without breaks while he receives all the praise. Bezos, now the second wealthiest man in the world, surpassed by Musk just recently, still has too much wealth for anyone to understand. 

     According to the Internal Revenue Service by ProPublica, they found that the wealthiest members of the country only paid up to 3.4% of their taxes. They calculated by estimating their stock portfolios and real estate, as well as other assets and then estimated by the amount of taxes they actually paid. They all paid so much lower in taxes compared to the wealth they had earned. 

     Such extreme wealth gaps should not exist. The United States has been built upon this message to be equal to and for everyone but time and time again it proves that it is not like that. The United States is divided, like the French Republic before the time of the revolution. This wealthy 1 % are sitting at the top without any consequences to their actions and a tremendous amount of wealth that they do not need. Soon the people will not have anything to eat causing starvation, grow angrier, and eventually this will all cause a revolution. History still has time to be repeated.