It’s not every day one high school dropout gets to challenge a billionaire dropout, and likely the only dropout ever to reach outer space.

I got this challenge idea reading in a recent edition of The Morning Call about the Horatio Alger-like story of Jared Isaacman, the “local boy does good” phenom who’s one of the growing number of billionaires in the U.S.

Isaacman said he “was disappointed as a child when he found out that there wasn’t much left to discover on Earth,” which surely fueled his aspirations for space exploration. He seems to believe the Earth no longer offers frontiers to conquer. I vehemently disagree. Frontiers abound, if you refuse to look away.

Here’s a frontier — more challenging than going to Mars — I propose to him and others of obscene wealth they cannot truly believe they rightfully possess, while others starve. Share your wealth to change this national embarrassment, stemming from the worst wealth inequality:

Poor Black children born in the bottom 20% in the U.S. have just a 3% chance of rising to the top 20%, poor Hispanic children just a 9% chance, and poor White children just a 12% chance.

Such injustice isn’t accidental. Isaacman admits that a “lot of luck” figured prominently in his ascent to the top 20% — actually, as a billionaire, to the top 0.00027%.

It’s not luck that generates success. More determinative is luck’s cousin, privilege. And whether we call it “white privilege” or privilege of economic class, being born in the right ZIP code is the path toward moving up in America.

For too many children the ZIP code they’re born into is a death sentence to their American dream. Perhaps this is what comedian, George Carlin, meant when he insightfully said “they call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” Certainly, it’s a lie, at least for poor children. Or as Abigail Disney, the Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, says, for too many children, it’s “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” a movie everyone should watch.

Wealth inequality is the moral cancer destroying our society and our planet. Images make this point powerfully. Let’s look at wealth inequality in pictures.

Isaacman spoke to students at the Zoellner Arts Center on Lehigh University’s campus in Bethlehem, a venue large enough to seat all of the 902 U.S. billionaires. Those handful of billionaires collectively possess $6.8 trillion of wealth — yet they fit in one single room. Picture them.

How much money is $6.8 trillion? How immoral is it to hoard such huge mountains of wealth? Especially considering that the bottom half of the U.S. population —167 million citizens — collectively possess a paltry $4 trillion?

The image of 902 billionaires sitting in that small auditorium, controlling 170% as much wealth as half the country, depicts how condensed this runaway accumulation of wealth has become for the “haves.”

Here’s the other picture. The 167 million in the bottom 50%? What’s needed to seat them all? Answer: 3,340 baseball stadiums each with a 50,000 capacity. That’s how diluted wealth is for the “hardly haves.”

These two pictures side-by-side capture the vast, indefensible chasm between the superrich and working poor.

Wasteland images of poverty created by greed are everywhere. See one of five children hungry in this allegedly great nation. See dilapidated schools, outdated textbooks, mold spores filling the air, asbestos exposed, in schools built 150 years ago. See infants dying, the U.S. ranking 54th out of 227 measured countries in infant mortality. See babies in car seats in front of a TV, for lack of universal quality day care.

Here’s the U.S. photo album in stark terms. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. has the highest poverty rate among the world’s 26 most developed countries.

And abject greed is exploding:

•In one year, the top 1% — 3.5 million citizens — increased their wealth by $4 trillion, hitting a record $52 trillion.

•In one year, the top 0.1% — 350,000 citizens — doubled their wealth to $23 trillion.

•In one year, the top 10% added $5 trillion of wealth.

These statistics give the lie to the greatest swindle in history: “trickle down economics”, a magic, neoliberal shell game that disappeared the working class and poor.

Think you’re insulated? See artificial intelligence, standing in the wings, poised to launch wealth injustices to the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, unconscionable wealth funds private launches to space and $100 million weddings in Venice, while our children go without. Close to 42 million Americans are now being asked to eat cake as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are cut and millions will soon be unable to afford medical insurance — while child poverty has nearly tripled just since 2021.

Greed destroys people, empires and souls. Renowned historian, Ramsay MacMullen, in his classic study, “Corruption & Decline of Rome,” summed up the greed that toppled an ancient empire with just three words: “fewer had more.”

This is a contributed opinion column. Ettore J. Angelo is a criminal defense attorney in the Lehigh Valley. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.