The system that you were brought up to believe in, when you were still breathing in the scent of play-dough and saying the pledge of allegiance, is not the same one that you live in. This realization comes to you sooner or later in life. It came to me when I was about fifteen.  My mother was a struggling, single parent and poverty was not a stranger to us.  Then when I was a teenager, she became friends with a very wealthy man. On rare occasions, I was dragged to his mansion on the water, which I despised. He had a daughter my age, who owned a horse valued at half a million dollars, and she gave me her computer, less than a year old, because she decided she wanted a better one.  She had her own apartment in the guest house that she used for wild parties with her friends, over the massive garage that contained many gleaming, vintage European sports cars. My acute sense of the unbalance of riches between us did not bother me in the sense of fairness then. I believed that this man must have worked hard for his money and deserved the fruits of his labor. I just thought that his daughter was obnoxious and I hated how people constantly stroked his ego. But, then the day came when I overheard him bragging about how he spent thousands of dollars for a single plate at a dinner for a politician’s campaign. My ears perked up and I thought, “Who would pay that much for a single dinner?” As I listened, it became clear that it was one of many that he attended to ensure that he would land a business deal with the federal government, that tax payers would cover, and would make him even richer. Then I saw his eyes growing excitedly wild as he talked about this, and as a young girl I wondered to myself, “Doesn’t he have enough?”