“The bottom 40% of Americans own almost nothing.” Said the video, Wealth Inequality In America. The lower class are scraping by and are not able to invest in stocks or other consuming items whether it deal with money or time. The video, Wealth Inequality in America also said, “The top 20% of Americans own almost everything.” The wealthy community should contribute more to the lower class, allowing more equality of wealth. The wealthy continue to grow as they get more of everything and the lower class continue to get less. The average wealth has increased over the last 50 years, but it has not grown equally for all. “ Families near the bottom of the wealth distribution (those at the 10th percentile) went from having no wealth on average to being
The essay Inequality Undermines Democracy by Eduardo Porter discusses the income gap in today’s world. The first main point Porter describes how Americans are not concerned with the income gap even though it is wider than other developed countries. The United States government has expressed little concern over this issue as well since they have done little to anything to restrain the trend. I believe this has caused opportunities across classes to shrink and the middle class does not exist anymore. I would consider my family a working middle class and I hear my family talking about how the middle class has diminished and it is either the rich or the poor.
This module addressed environmental issues that contribute to health, including overpopulation, consumerism, and wealth inequalities. People of all classes are affected by this issue in different ways; for example, the poor experience limited availability of healthy foods, and the rich consume a lot of resources. My favorite class activity was coming up with mental models related to the video “Wealth Inequality in America,” because it gave me insight on how the poor eat unhealthily based on circumstances that may be out of their control, not necessarily from personal choice as many people commonly assume. This health topic is a problem because the people in the most industrialized countries consume so much more resources that they don’t actually
One interesting thing the author notes is the wealth inequality in the United States. Even though “1% of the population own nearly half the wealth in the country the American dream persists” (Golash-Boza, pg. 269). People still believe that if you work hard you will succeed. At first glance, it’s clear that white people have a higher percentage of home ownership than any other race. However in saying that, I would like to know what the population totals were by race for each state as well.
That all men are created equal is indisputably a core tenant of the United States, appearing centrally in the Declaration of Independence. Immediately following this decree in that founding document is the compound statement that certain unalienable rights apply to these equal men. Since the founding days of the United States, this has been interpreted to mean a variety of things, but almost always boils down to what modern politicians and political commentators would title “equal opportunity.” Traditionally throughout American history and typically today, this translates into a belief in hard work as a determinant for success, rather than intervention of circumstances at birth. The United States frequently expresses this commitment to the pursuit of equal opportunity for economic and social mobility based on hard work.
In the event that the 1 percent had less, a greater amount of the 99 percent of Americans would not be getting kicked out of their homes or needing to battle to pay rent on account of the absence of cash. In light of the crevice between the wealthiest and the rest, individuals are stressed over the out of line economy dispossessing their future. As stated in the article " We are the 99 percent" they mention how the middle and poor class are getting noting while the 1 percent is getting everything. How unfair is
This is the United States' economy based on, and as Americans people move towards it, the inevitable wealth gap between the top one percent and the rest makes sense. The main goal of capitalism, or of many big corporations today is to reduce the costs of productions and make the most profits out of it. As the more successful they are to become at this goal, the routine workers - the main populations of the United States - started to find out that their income is nowhere near that of the executives of those big corporations. Robert Reich discussed this problem in his brilliant article "Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer". He categorized the people in three boats, of which two are sinking, and one is rising.
Income Inequality Income Inequality or “wage gap” is a big topic for freedom fighters and liberals for the simple fact that it isn’t equal for everyone. Because the wage gap is so prominent it's one of the biggest “facts” that discrimination is still apart of everyday American society. The wage gap from these radical interest groups think the economy is get a dollar take a dollar instead of a free flow economy. This misguided idea of the economy is absolutely not true and isn’t at the fault of the Government, but the people.
Classism is a major issue that plagues American society. Classism separates groups by their economic status in society. America is perceived to be a middle class society, however in reality the middle class does not hold majority of the nation’s wealth. Most of the nation’s wealth is held by 1% of the population in America which consists of 34% of the nation’s wealth, meanwhile “the richest 20% of Americans hold nearly 85% of the total household wealth in the country” (Adams et al, 2013, p. 151). American citizens that are a part of the upper class are privilege because they have access to majority of the resources.
In order to tackle economic inequality in the United States, we must first establish that it is a problem that needs to be solved. American citizens currently live in one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world, a feat only possible by the economic systems that are currently in place. But who benefits from this wealth? When the top one tenth of one percent owns almost as much as the bottom ninety percent, it is clear that our current economic systems are benefitting the prolifically wealthy. This wealth inequality extends beyond income, but includes; quality of health care, education, and political representation.
I live in a society where the top twenty percent own most of the wealth. After looking at some charts in class, I was astounded at how the wealth is actually distributed in the United States. With the top one percent having more than the bottom forty percent combined, something is going wrong here. I do not feel like my voice would be heard among the vast amount of voices in today’s society, which is why I make it a personal responsibility to educate myself on what is going on. If I ever do make it big, I’ll remember that wealth distribution plays a key role in people’s
The last cause for poverty in the unequal distribution of wealth in America. Actually, according to Inequality.org, “America’s top 1 percent… holds nearly half the national wealth…”. It is easy to imagine that with only half of America’s wealth to support 99 percent of the country, that many families fall into poverty. Even in just the top 0.1 percent, many households own up to $20 million. The distribution of wealth in America is truly unfair.
Wealth and Inequality in America Inequality The inequality in America has increased over time; the gap between the rich and the poor has become a problem that many Americans don’t see. Inequality is the extent of income which is distributed unequally among the citizenry. The inequality of the United has a large gap between the poor and the rich making it unfair to the population, the rich are becoming wealthier and the poor remain poor. The article “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%”, authored by Joseph E. Stiglitz describes that there is a 1 percent amount of American’s who are consuming about a quarter of the United States income in a year.
“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer”, the first portion of that statement is true. White the latter is not. While some will argue that it is true with the US economy, empirical evidence contradicts this. First of all, most data that is collected in improperly and confusingly measured. Such as the data for the quintiles collected by the US Census Bureau, which divides the data by household, regardless of household size.
As the great divide of wealth inequality continues to increase, capitalism surely can no longer be sustainable in and of itself, as money is extremely concentrated to a select few. With this paradigm the lower classes can’t and fail the liberty of being able to buy the products or services being produced. In the Marxist view, capitalism will eventually set the stage for a revolution since it promotes poverty, which is what Nick Hanauer (a self described 1%), in “Beware, Fellow Plutocrats, The Pitchforks Are Coming,” attempted to reiterate to his fellow comrades. During his Ted Talk Hanauer states, “So what do I see in our future today, you ask? I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while people like us plutocrats are
Changes in Wealth Distribution in America – 1950 to Present All of us know and have used to the idea that it’s obvious some people are rich while others are poor because it has been so for many centuries even when people didn’t have any knowledge on economy or finance. It’s impossible not feeling sorry for and wanting to help those who benefited less and poor (bottom 99%) or not feeling envy when talking about those who are wealthy (top 1%). It is the result of unequal wealth distribution among population, it is often called wealth gap. This essay will analyze the rate of changes of wealth distribution in the US since 1950s, try to explain its reasons and give recommendations on fixing the raising wealth gap between the poor and the rich. Nowadays the middle class is disappearing as people becoming too poor while some are getting too rich.