From the Hollywood sign to the tipsy top of Wall St., the world views Americans as being an extremely wealthy nation. America does have the highest world GDP at $16.8 trillion, but the problem arises when peering deeper into how that wealth is distributed.

The '1%', as made infamous by the Occupy Wall St. movement, is a term that refers to the richest 1 percent of American's have more capital than the remaining 99 percent. This distribution of wealth disparity is the highest in the world.

The average net worth of the American family is at around $303K, which ranks us 4^th in the world. This ranking becomes extremely skewed due to the hundreds of billionaires that push the average net worth through the ceiling.

The real telling statistic is the median net worth of the American family at $45K per year. This symbolizes that half the nation is richer and half the nation is poorer. Having a net worth of $45K puts America at 19^th in comparison to foreign countries. 19^th on the world median net worth scale puts us behind most European countries and the rest of the western world.

Many factors go into the current state of the American middle class. The recent housing market crash singled handedly brought down the median net worth of American families from $77K in 2010 to $45K in 2014. American's also seem to be addicted to the credit card as banking corporation's hand out enormous limits. Other nations do not rely on the amount of credit living that American's do.

The causes of America's depleting middle class largely have to do with weakening of unions, the implementations of technology and jobs moving overseas. It is not longer profitable for companies to produce their goods in America. Union wages are too high and so rather than keep the money close to home companies are seeking paid labor in foreign countries.

Technology in manufacturing has erased thousands of jobs from the American frontier. Detroit is a perfect example of a city that technology killed. Car manufactures turned to cheaper and more efficient machines to do the work that humans used to do. These trends are not going away anytime soon. Innovative inventions come out everyday making the working man less valuable in the American economic sphere.