Sky High Inequality aims to create an aesthetic comparison between The profundity of the wealth and power of the rich compared to the poor and middle class. The wealthy have obfuscated their riches through market trading, crony capitalism, and deliberate manipulation. This thesis will reveal how design could be used to contextualize the abstract concept of wealth and bring a greater understanding of this profound gap.

Wealth inequality has risen in the U.S. despite a global trend to the opposite. The U.S. in particular has some of the highest wealth inequality in the developed world.1 More middle-class people are finding it harder to live off of their wages while the top 1% are hoarding record amounts of capital. As the owning class steadily increases this wealth gap, the working class wonders why it is increasingly harder to afford the soaring cost of living. It hasn’t always been like this, in fact from 1930 to 1980, the wealth gap was shrinking.2 Something has changed, and recently.

It is hard to imagine the profound riches of the hyper-wealthy, and that is on purpose. In Sky High Inequality I will demonstrate the scale of the issue in more relatable ways and pull back the curtain on the true nature of our systemic wealth imbalance. Wealth inequality is an important and compelling notion to unravel as the working class lies incomprehensibly far down the chain of wealth compared to the ultra-rich, and few of us realize just how grand the problem

1 Income Inequality: Gini Coefficient.” Our World in Data. Accessed February 16, 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/economic-inequality-gini-index.

2 Sommeiller, Estelle, and Mark Price. “The New Gilded Age: Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area, and County.” Economic Policy Institute, July 19, 2018. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-inequality-in-the-u-s-by-state-metropolitan-are a-and-county/.