The richest 1% of Americans now own well over 40% of their nation's wealth.

In an EXCELLENT article in the Guardian, Julian Borger, discusses the HUGE inequities present in the US today. There are some great quotes:

Mr Bush has so far raised $83m for his primary campaign, more than all nine Democratic contenders put together, even though he does not have an opponent inside his party.

This financial superiority flows from the simple fact that the president's backers are far wealthier than those of his rivals. More of them give the maximum contribution to a presidential campaign of $2,000, and more of them are chief executives who vie with each other to become honoured Republican "Rangers" or "Pioneers", by putting together $200,000 and $100,000 "bundles" of contributions from their employees and friends.

"You don't raise that kind of money at barbecues and backyard sales. You raise it from big business," said Charles Lewis, who runs the Washington watchdog the Centre for Public Integrity...

The richest 1% of Americans now own well over 40% of their nation's wealth. It is a skewed distribution that sets the US apart from other modern industrialised nations. In Britain, widely viewed in America as the embodiment of social stratification, the richest 1% owns a mere 18% of the wealth...

Nearly half the benefits of Mr Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001 went to the richest 1%, while 60% of this year's cuts will go to taxpayers with incomes of more than $100,000...

The Bush cabinet also stands out for its big money background. Every member is a millionaire and, the Centre for Public Integrity says, its total net worth is more than 10 times that of the Clinton cabinet...

For outsiders, the absence of class-based politics is the enduring mystery of American society...

Certainly, most Americans appear to take Mr Bush at face value - as a plainspoken, homespun Texan, rather than the scion of a wealthy East Coast family. It is hard to imagine his real social background passing so unremarked in a British election campaign.