After watching the video, "Wealth Inequality in America", published by Politizane, I was surprised when finding out that only the top one percent of America has 40 percent of all the nation's wealth. It was also surprising to discover that the top one percent owns half the country's stocks, bonds, and mutual bonds, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans own only half a percent of these investments. One of the notions I had that was challenged by the video was the amount of money the wealthy actually have compared to the rest of the classes. I was aware that wealth mostly distributed to the wealthy class, but I never imagined that the division between the wealthy class and the rest of the classes would be so huge. Its incredible that the CEO's…
This is shown in the fact that 68.7 percent of the world’s population only holds three percent of the wealth in the world and only 8.4 percent of the world’s population has 83.3 percent of the wealth of the world (Doc 6). The 68.7 percent of the world with the least amount of money often works in factories for very low wages, these factories being owned by the most wealthy. This relates to how those who get ahead have to step on others, with the wealthy exploiting the poor for their wealth.…
No one can argue that America is the country of the human rights and freedom and many people around the world dream to live in this great place. However, big problem is going to reshape the American society if nobody tried to solve it. The dilemma is simply that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer as a result of inequality of money distribution among rich and poor people.America had created a marvelous economic machine, but evidently it worked only for that at the top. Both Joseph E. Stieglitz and Timothy Noahintroduce a very critical issue which affects the American society in these days, is the widening gap between the rich and poor people. Stieglitz claims that the American economic system is failing for most of Americans and the inequality is increasing to the extent that one day will be unaffordable. The rising gap is created by the one top percent who are taking advantage of making a huge wealth. They are driven by their greed to accumulate big fortune upon poor’s shoulders. Stieglitz came up with some evidence to support his claim. One of these is the new statistics fromCensus Bureau’s statistics that shows that the one top percent gain 20 % of the total American income. Therefore, Noah says that this inequality income creates and retains the capitalism system which forms a serious threat upon middle and lower class (Noah The Great par 3).…
In any non-communist nation, there will always be people born with an advantage in life, and the way to equalize opportunity is not to distribute wealth into 7 billion pieces, the way to help those in need is through charity. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck……
A redistribution of wealth would automatically cause laziness. The ideology of redistribution is against America's economic system. It will take away from society's growth opportunities like when the rich cannot start a new business or hire new employees, and basically hurting the economy because of this. When you tax income you get less of it. People will have less money to invest, save, and use. When you take away Neil’s money to pay Sam, Neil will either move away or quit working because he has zero incentive to earn money, and won't get a dime, and since Neil is not working Sam will have no money. Redistribution ruins productive habits and investments, which leads to no economic growth. The people who depend on the redistribution of wealth…
In this paper I will discuss the three philosophies explaining differences of income in America. The three philosophies I will be discussing is Utilitarianism, Liberalism and Libertarianism. These philosophies are important because it help shows what should the government do about economic inequality. For instance, it helps us understand if the government should give to those in need or let the individuals who work hard keep what they earn. Income in America is very important because it helps build society as a whole. It has been many policies to reduce poverty in America and to reduce income inequality.…
Wealth inequality is also a major issue between the rich and the poor. Wealth is “the value of assets owned by an individual of family at a point in time. (Gilbert, 277). Even though the rich do pay taxes, it doesn’t affect them as bad as the poor. They are still able to live comfortably because of the property that they owned. These properties are sometimes inherited and passed down to them. Not only that, but it is most likely that they also have some sort of savings or safety net to maintain their lifestyle in case anything should happen. The poor on the other hand, even though they have to pay taxes as well, this can affect them drastically. Simply because majority of the time they do not own much. They do not own any property,…
Over the last decade, income inequality has become one of the most important issues in the U.S. and a subject of a lot of debate. There is a prevalent idea in the society that the wealth inequality in United States is currently at the highest level in the history after steadily raising for a number of decades. The financial crisis is said to have contributed to this significant gap between the top 1% and everybody else. People view it as an inherently negative thing, and fight hard to promote the equality and income redistribution. This paper examines the causes of inequality; the relationship between wealth inequality and economic growth and the hypothesis on how policy measures can be designed to mitigage the income disparity both in U.S. and in the rest of the world. The researh is based on the theory that inequality is an essential aspect of an efficient free market economy that adversely affects economic growth when in excess.…
In the United States, the top ten percent of all households own seventy-six percent of all the wealth in the country (1). Income inequality is frequently highlighted, but why is wealth inequality rarely brought to our attention? The political system has failed to deal with the problem, and the gap will only continue to grow in the future. How can we call this the land of opportunity when the bottom forty percent will most likely stay the bottom forty percent for their entire lives (1)? That is why I offer a modest proposal to overthrow the current system and establish a Utopian society built from the rubble. This Utopia, which I shall refer to as the United Socialist States of America (USSA), is going to be built around the premise of economic equity through the equal distribution of resources and knowledge. This would create a society without greed because money is the ultimate…
Economic inequality in the United States has increased tremendously throughout the past decades and has consequently led to many social conditions that negatively impact the lower and middle class. The unequal distribution of income and wealth is primarily due to the capitalist government economy that deregulates markets as well as globalization and technological advances. Political inequality is similarly another consequence that results from the economic disparity that further affects democracy and political representation of many Americans. This likewise leads to the creation of social movements, in which many unprivileged Americans seek government attention to overcome the inequality that exists amongst the socioeconomic classes.…
In every country and civilization that has ever existed, there has and will always be an unequal spread of capital among the people. Governments have tried to establish balance in society by means of communism and socialism, but it is evident that these methods simply do not work. However, human ethics tells us that helping those in need is a virtue that must be performed. In our society, this virtue has manifested itself in the various welfare programs that the government funds with the money…
One of the many crisis within wealth disparity in America; is our broken, and expensive child care system. Child Care in America is a major crisis right now because it is broken, also, extremely expensive. We as American’s need to come together, and figure out a plan that works in fixing our child care system costs. Nobody ever would say how affordable their daycare is no parents hear that from other parents. Our young children should be in a safe, yet educational school at an early age, and affordable day care for that matter. How could America tackle this wealth disparity crisis, also by solving our broken child care system? Well employers of working parents should have day care centers onsite, and if they can’t do that they should give…
The United States is a capitalism nation, which is a normal phenomenon to have a wealth inequality. Otherwise, it would be a communism nation. However, when the wealth gap is too wide, there would be a big problem. In recent years, the wealth gap has expanded historically and unprecedentedly wide. The middle class and working class people start suffering. If the gap keeps expanding, the United States will be destroying by this economic issue. A better way describing this situation, The United State is having a cancer that cannot be exacerbate and has to cure.…
Life in present-day America is very unequal. There are wide gaps in income distribution which causes negative impacts on the everyday lives of most Americans. This income gap is wider than at any other time in the past century. The United States has the largest gap between rich and poor than any other democratic country in the world. Income inequality has negative effects on the entire society. American minority groups and women earn less money than their white counterparts. The educational system in the country is suffering ranking fourteenth among industrialized nations. Research shows that the wealthier a person is the longer their lifespan will be. Increased crime rates in the poorer inner cities…
After racial discrimination was made illegal in the 1960s, blatant and bigot racism has seemed to disappear, yet remaining racist attitudes have continued to put blacks at an overall disadvantage due to the progression of these attitudes into institutionalized settings and policies. The result of historical and contemporary discrimination and segregation is a widening gap of racial wealth between blacks and whites. Now, America could be argued to be a dichotomized society of black and white, proving that the Kerner Commission was correct to predict that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal (Bobo & Smith 1998: 178).” Although whites didn’t necessarily intend on such a separate and unequal society, they don’t plan to change it either.…