Poverty and Inequality

Poverty and Inequality As far as most American people think, U.S. is the most powerful country in the world in terms of gross economy and average people living standards. What’s more, U.S has been labeled as “The nation of Freedom” for a long time, which means that people enjoy the equal rights of all. In fact, while many people are still immersed in this kind of thought, there are millions of people living under poverty or not enjoying the equal rights. Whether people agree with it or not, the poverty and inequality does exist in the U.S., and this is a big issue in this county that needs to be carefully taken into account and figuring out how to solve. For these purpose, we need to ask the characteristics behind poverty,what attitudes people have toward the poor, and how poverty should be solved.We’d talk about the poverty and inequality issue with some points shared by three articles, “Born Poor and Smart” by Angela Locke who mainly talks about the people’s stereotypes on social class and poor people is hard change. “A Great Time to Be Alive” by Matt Yglesias. This article claims that “The twenty-first century has been one of the greatest times to be alive in the history of mankind, (Yglesias, 2010, p.464) yet he also argues that this achievement is not beneficial to everyone.and “Middle of the Class” by The Economist, which puts forward the potential problems of “people’s rosy views on middle class”. (The Economist, 2005) All three articles refer to the poverty and inequality. Characteristics of poverty
One of the characteristics of the poverty is the wealth gap. The shares of fortune held by between the poor and the rich is significantly different, which is pointed out by Matt yglesias in his article. The author says that “A wildly disproportionate share of the material gains of recent technological progress and economic globalization has been captured by a tiny, already rich slice of the population.” (Yglesias, 2010, p.464) In fact, top 10 percent of