According to Jeff Gates, President of the nonprofit Shared Capitalism Institute and author of The Ownership Solution and Democracy at Risk, between the years 1998 and 2000 the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth grow $240,000 per hour, "46,602 times the minimum wage," for a combined total of more than one-and-a-half trillion dollars. In 1998 the income of America's wealthiest 1% equaled "the combined income of the 100 million poorest Americans." In short, "We have become little more than batteries in a vast social machine so inefficient it produces enough daily bread for an infinitesimally small but powerful minority." In the process, our power, our richness, and our meaning is drained, stolen and stored in someone else's fattened coffers.
As many philosophers discuss it, in order to achieve justice you need to deal with injustice. Daniel Harnett, a Jesuit priest, had discussed the four steps for achieving justice and I think these four steps are truly a simple way of dealing with injustice. Because that's what justice really is, it's the absence of injustice. The first step described by Harnett is "experience". It's an important part of the process because only through experience can anyone see and feel the true pain and sufferings of a person effected by the injustice. Being exposed to injustice will not only show us the pain and the sufferings caused, but it will also reveal to us the mystery of our common humanity. Only after seeing and understanding this pain, will you be able to begin understanding the causes and conditions of the suffering. And this understanding of the cause is the second step that Harnett talks about. In order to understand it, we need to look far beyond the surface of the problem, research and find out who's responsible for the actions. We need to stay attuned to what's happening in society in order to act more justly. The third step of the process is "imagination.