Imagine that the U.S economy is a group of ten people making a cake. Despite the fact that everyone contributed, one person would take 90% of the cake. The other nine would be left to fight over the renaming 10%. In what universe would this be a fair situation.
Income inequality is one of the greatest problems facing the United States today. It is important for everyone to understand what this means and why this is a problem.
How it affects you
The majority of growth over the last 40 years has not gone to the average American, it has been funneled upwards into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans. This means that wages have stagnated for the majority of American workers. Because of inflation, wages are falling if they are not rising.
Income Inequality in America is a problem that’s been going on for decades, and many feel that it hardly exists, the many people that feel that way are highly uneducated, and seem to not really care about this tremendous problem that in one’s eyes really has no end in the near future, in fact it has been gradually rising and one feels that it’s just not fair. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done, only of course if the poor class of people decide to actually educate themselves and get a higher education. One says poor class, simply because that’s how they’re classified. There are five types of levels that Americans are classified as, and they are: 1. Upper Class, 2. Upper Middle Class, 3. Middle Class, 4. Working Class, 5. Poor.
Furthermore, the equality of opportunities as one of the foundations of the American dream turned into evident inequality. “The lion’s share of economic growth in American over the past thirty years has gone to a small, wealthy minority, to such an extent that it’s unclear whether the typical family has benefited at all from technological progress and the rising productivity it brings” (Krugman 586). Income inequality has been steadily growing since 2008 when the global financial crisis erupted. Moreover, the gap in prosperity between the group of Americans with high income and all the others had never been such extreme as it is now. Thus, not everyone has the opportunity to become wealthy through hard work. The increase in socioeconomic inequalities,
Superior authorities that are discriminatory and unequal to others because of ones status have shaped our society to the way it is now. To this day we still encounter income inequalities in the United States. Social inequality gap between who can afford the healthcare. Superior people who are in charge don’t make it easy for low-income families to afford healthcare. Minority groups hold far fewer net financial assets than whites. We are categorized in groups, upper class, middle class and lower class. When health is a service, the poor are more likely to experience illness caused by poor diet, to live and work in unhealthy environments, and are less likely to challenge the system. In the United States, a disproportionate number of racial minorities
The income inequality amount all Americans is growing greater amount of stress on the everyday people. For instance, older populations are living longer which means they require medical attention more often because they’re getting weaker and venerable to the world. The ACA was passed to help all American receive coverage yet, problems like this still happen. Robyn Stone talks about how Medicare would have much benefit if they did communities housing for older families, keeping in mind the idea is that they should be able to live where they want too. Diane Rowland contradicts Stone by imploring her idea that states should close the Medicaid’s gap to give medical help for everyone and their need.
Single Black Female BA Seeks Educated Husband: Race, Assortative Mating and Inequality is an article that addresses income inequality in the United States by presenting how people choose their spouses. Rodrigue and Reeves (2015) show the correlation between choice of a spouse and education, income level, and race. They further present data on existing marriage gaps in relation to education, race and income level in the United States. Key in their argument are two issues: “assortative mating” and “marriage gaps”. This paper explores the authors’ arguments on “assortative mating” and “marriage gaps” and presents opinions on how “marriage gaps” can be addressed.
Living in a peaceful world would mean that no one (and I mean NO ONE) would go hungry or be without basic medical care; denying individuals access to food, clean water and basic medical care is both in-humane as well as ignorant. The inhumanity of denying food to individuals who cannot by no fault of their own feed themselves when we have supermarkets, refrigerators, and pantries over flowing a bounty of food. Turning away from a person who is hungry, while the US as a nations spends more on its household pets than it does in donations to local food bangs demonstrates ignorance of our understanding that perhaps the stem of violence both here and overseas could be stymied if we’d only offered not only bags of rice but a safe place to grow
The highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.
At the root of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ highly touted—and shouted—policies was the issue of economic inequality in America. It is no surprise Senator Sanders had great success with this message; a 2015 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report found that the top 10% of Americans hold 76% of the nation’s wealth.
Income inequality in America has been a major issue for years. We can see the uneven distribution by comparing one of the world’s wealthiest man in Bill Gates to the average person. He has made over 50 billion dollars in his lifetime. Comparing him to the average person who makes 37 thousand dollars a year. Although, unemployment rate has decreased in the U.S, the gap between rich and poor in this country has dramatically increased. There are many contributions to the gap, such as different education levels among citizens, living conditions, taxes, difference between salaries, and more. Income inequality in the U.S needs to be addressed. This horrible problem in our country
In the United States, income inequality is obvious and widespread. Presidential candidates realize income inequality will be a major point of any presidential campaign. The major civil rights issue of today is income inequality. Such a large misdistribution of wealth has likened modern economics to slavery. Lower-income workers are forced to work longer hours at a stagnant wage to maintain consumption. On the other hand, to say that the super-rich are beyond fairly compensated is an understatement. The top 10 percent of wage earners received 48.2 percent of total earnings in 2012. The super-rich make the rules of the game (laws) favor the rich. Those with large wealth control the decisions that affect employment, wages, and benefits through
The economics video is an infographic video that addresses the major inequality of wealth in America. The overall theme of the video clip is that the top 10% of the people in America have and produce way more money than the poorest Americans, which makes up the majority of the population. There is basically not bias in the video, other than that the video creator does not talk about the poor people as if he is one, and he does not talk about the upper class as if he in in the upper class. Depending how the viewer perceives the information there could be a positive or mainly negative bias. The video maker made this video to bring awareness to what people say the ideal wealth inequality should be, what people believe the wealth distribution inequality
In America, we can describe wealth inequality as the unequal distribution of assets within a population. “The United States exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation” (Wealth inequality). The way wealth is defined is by equating the net worth which is the total sum of you assets minus liabilities. What includes in assets is everything that you own such as personal residence, stocks, real estate, and retirement accounts. Now, liabilities cover what a household owes such as, credit card balance, student loan, a car loan, etc…
From the Roman Empire to modern day America one issue has plighted all of history: income inequality. Income inequality is when there is a noticeable and evident gap in which income is distributed unevenly between the rich and the poor. We can particularly see income inequality playing a major role in the foundations of the French Revolution and we can see income inequality starting to transcend into becoming a real problem for America today, namely due to a practice of neoliberalism in the American economy. The solution to fixing the American economy would be to start a process of regulation of the economy and funding of social programs.
According to a recent article, it is estimated that “in America, the wealthiest 160,000 families have as much as the poorest 145 million families (Matthews, 2015).” This translates to the top 1% of the U.S. population having as much as or more wealth than the bottom 99%, which is quite drastic. Gilson further emphasizes this fact, noting, “A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household... (Gilson, 2011).” Furthermore, “The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us is $31,244 (Gilson, 2011).” =======================
Education still remains the institution that indorses equality of opportunities in America society as the textbook explains. Even though education diminishes inequality among individuals with different backgrounds, inequality still exists in the sense that not everyone who graduates from high school has the same opportunity to attend college. Individuals born into wealthy family will have more opportunities in attending college compared to someone born to a poor family. Although, opportunities are more limited in America, having education will compensate those that do well in school by rewarding them with life opportunities. Social class, race, and gender play a major role for education success, experiences, and outcomes.