The most obvious cause contributing to economic inequality in the US is the economic system; capitalism. Capitalism is what the United States was built from, and what we owe our current lifestyle to. However, whether our current state of living is positive or negeative is a matter of opinion. The bias of capatilism is to reward people for making money, the more money the better and more immediate the reward. So, it is only natural for a divide to occur between the rich and the poor, as the rich see their accumulated capital grow and earn intrest and the poor scrape by on minimum wage. It is not to say that this would not occur under a different economic model, or that capitalism is the root of the problem, but it does go hand in hand with a government who has a history of perverting the tax system, and global corporations driving wages down.
