#MindTheGap so you can #FeelTheBern

They support a man that wants a $15 an hour
minimum wage, and pays his staffers $12 an hour

The rise of Senator Bernie Sanders #FeelTheBern to potentially win the nomination for President of the United States is nothing short of impressive. Calling himself a "social-democrat" he makes it quite clear that his campaign is aimed at social economic reform, targeting wage gap and wealth inequality, and promoting a single-payer health care system and free tuition for public universities. And he is nothing short of prepared, quoting impressive statistics, presenting a consistent track record of voting for legislation in what he believes in, and rallying an impressive youth following.

The wage-gap inequality has become a huge battle cry all over the country since Obama began running for President. We all remember the occupy Wall St movements from a few years ago, where the term "the 1%" became popular after the infamous corporate bailouts of 2008. Viral videos showing the wealth inequality sparked debates, and sometimes even hatred, fueling the newfound term "Class Warfare" feeding 24-hour news with hours of "entertaining" content.

As long as I get to stay in Florida I'm good

Sanders' stance is that it is "immoral" for 0.1% of the population to own nearly 90% of all the wealth and that this minority can finance an election. These are actually 2 separate issues, and the latter refers to campaign reform, which is a serious issue and it needs to be outlawed, especially the use of tax dollars to finance campaigns, Mr. Sanders, you're right about that. And the wealth inequality appears to be a massive problem when it's shown in charts like this.

I can only afford 1 flat screen this year?
It's the rich folk's fault.

But when it's put in perspective, being in the bottom 99% doesn't seem like it's all too bad. Most people can afford a car, rent, a computer, latest cell phones, necessities and certain luxuries. In fact, we live in a country so rich that the line between what's considered a need or a luxury is extremely blurry. Black Friday sales don't exactly have a reduction in the amount of people waiting in lines and every time Apple releases a new iPhone, the waiting periods seem to get longer each time. So is it really a morality issue that so few have so much, or is it that we just want more than what we currently have?

First, people who speak against wealth inequality seem to forget that the economy is a growing organism, so to speak. The economy is not a limited sized pie and we're just battling each other to get the last slice. The "1%" is not a locked-in group, like it was in feudal times. The people in this minority fluctuate in and out of this wealth group. Yes, wealthy people go broke, and broke people can also climb the economic ladder and they have.

This is the basic difference between us and them. The 99% trades hours of work for money, the more skilled the worker is, or the rarer the skill, the higher the money exchange per hour. But the 1% operates differently. They create money with money. They invest, they manage other people's talents, poorly or wisely, the observe trends in the market and position themselves to make money off it. This is a rare and important ability, that's why it pays more to be an investor than it is to be a worker, in most cases. The market pays better for the skills associated with an investor or business owner, than it does for those of a worker, because of the rarity and wealth creating potential of the later over the former.

But we actually understand this concept a lot better than we believe. The 99% understands market based pay structures perfectly. Let me show you several examples.

You mad I got paid, Bro?

Fifth-round draft pick out of Stanford, Richard Sherman signed a contract making roughly $400k per season in 2011 when he joined the Seattle Seahawks. Becoming one of the top cornerbacks in the league and Superbowl champion in the 2013 season, his contract was improved to about $11M per season, and everyone felt like he was more than deserving based on his solid performances over his young NFL career. According to sports fans, he finally has a "deserving wage" for playing the game at his skill level. I'll say that again, he makes millions of dollars for playing a game. He's playing a game. And we praise these players for their accomplishments, and no one protests that they should share their wealth with their unpaid counterparts at the collegiate level.

Tony Downey? Robert Stark Jr?

Robert Downey Jr is 2015's highest paid actor at $80M. He's very close to actually becoming Tony Stark, economically speaking. And the public accepts this by continuing to flood movie theaters, purchase tickets and break box office records. And now, we are so knowledgeable that we understand when actors evolve into producers or directors and rake in even more money per movie. Ask Jon Favreau. Don't know who he is? In Iron Man, he's Tony Stark's driver Happy. He's actually produced the Iron Man and Avengers movies, taking in a very nice pay check in each of those. For making movies. For making an animated film.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has a salary of almost $10M plus Apple stock value, making him knock on the Billionaire's club front door pretty soon. In fact, when Apple was found to have shifted funds to offshore accounts to avoid taxes in 2013 (and they still do) there were no protests outside Apple stores across the nation. It would be ironic if they did, since the majority of these occupy protesters like to display their charts and stats on MacBooks and iPads, with dramatic videos cleverly edited on iMovie. In contrast, when I worked at the Apple store while in college, I made $9 an hour and received 10% off store merchandise.

So what's the conclusion to all this? Let's stop the hypocrisy. Wealth inequality is not a moral issue, unless it's caused by theft or criminal practices, which we can admit may be the case for a good number of wealthy people. Wealth inequality is an envy issue.

Let's face it, most of us hate our jobs, and most of us feel like we can do our boss' job better than they do, and some even believe they are already doing their boss' job, and for a lot less money. We don't fully know what our bosses do in most instances, let alone what their bosses do, or what it takes to get there, and we follow that chain of thought all the way through to our companies' CEOs. The companies where we work make a lot of money (well, some do), thanks in part to the leadership at the top. We contribute as well, except our skills are easier to find in the job market, there's a lot more people who do what we do, and there's a lot less people that do what they do, which is why we are paid less than someone better skilled than us.

I actually went to high school with this dude, and
he was a ... actually, he was pretty cool. Kudos, Mike.

We've all played a sport at one point or another therefore we understand how far away we are from reaching that professional level, and we can appreciate that preparation and hard work to get there, because we went through it at some level. Actors bring our fantasies to life, whether dressed up as super heroes or playing someone we can truly identify with. We accept and applaud the fact that Instagram founders made hundreds of millions of dollars on a photo sharing app simply because we use it every day. Since we understand it and we like it, we value it. Which is why we also accept (and I will never understand why) that having a camera follow the Kardashians around has value. Could you imagine how much people would learn if cameras followed CEOs around? Entrepreneurs? Business owners? Maybe people will realize how much work is involved and appreciate how far away we are from working that hard and understand that the difference in pay has a reason behind it. Maybe the show will be so boring, it will make us turn the TV off, make us get off our asses and go to work.