Maybe Americans are so fed up with growing income inequality because it's so widespread.
The cities with the highest levels of income inequality aren't limited to a single region, but are rather scattered across the country, recent Census data finds. And Americans aren't pleased. A full two-thirds of Americans said they think wealth should be distributed more evenly, a recent New York Times/CBS poll found.
It's that large and growing gap between the rich and poor that some have blamed for the "Occupy" movement sweeping the nation. Demonstrators have been camped out in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park since September 17 protesting income inequality, among other issues, and forty-three percent of respondents to the NYT/CBS poll said Occupy Wall Street represents the feelings of most Americans.
Indeed, for the richest of Americans, the past thirty years have been a period of extreme prosperity, with the top 1 percent of earners seeing their incomes jump 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, the bottom fifth of earners saw an income boost of less than 20 percent.
And the trend is by no means limited to the U.S. Those earning more than $1 million worldwide now control nearly 40 percent of global wealth, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Despite the gap, there are some who don't see see income inequality as a problem.
"I don't care about that" Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said in an interview with the NYT of the possible implications of his flat tax plan on the income gap.
Here are the cities with the highest levels of income inequality, according to Census data:
