With each class comes a certain level of financial status, with the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios's "Class in America," the richest percent of the U.S. population owns thirty-four percent of the total national wealth, and during this time, nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the country live in implacable poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a distinct difference in the way these two groups of people live, one being extremely poor and the other extremely poor.