Inequality In The United States

Inequality has been around since man first started to gather in groups. Since the time of the hunter gathers into the middle ages. Today in the United States inequality is worse than it has ever been, even with the significant dip between the 1940s and the 1970s. The increase in inequality is not limited to the United States but it is happening the fastest here. We have to look at the different factors that have played a role in the increase which are: technology, the decline in manufacturing and increase in globalization, and government policy.
Technological advancements are some of the major reasons why we advance as a society but we have to look deeper at these advancements. While some advancements may compliment jobs they also replace others.

This decline had many consequences including replacing good jobs, ones that paid well with bad jobs, and ones that pay less. The “bad” jobs include low-level jobs that many people work in today such as food and service industry, as seen in the book. Even though many people work these jobs the jobs do not pay anywhere what they need to in order to give the person a live able salary. If someone were to work one of these low level jobs they would be considered under the poverty line. The decrease of manufacturing jobs is mainly due to globalization. Globalization allows for the increased import of cheaper goods that are made overseas. The cheaper goods are a result of sweatshop conditions: low wages, bad working conditions and little or no benefits. This decreases the need for manufacturing jobs in the United States. Globalization which is the growing permeability of borders and increased trade of goods, services and people. One of the factors of globalization that have led to increased inequality is outsourcing which is sending jobs overseas to produce the parts for a good, this can even include a customer service representation, as seen in the book. Outsourcing is a common practice today that is frowned upon by most working-class members of society. This replacing of jobs overseas reduces the amount of jobs that are available here in the states forcing people to take

The most important policy from the government that increases economic inequality is taxation as well as the failure to raise the minimum wage. The importance of taxation is their impact on high earners. In a progressive tax system the taxes would be high for richer people and lower for poor people, leading to the idea that everyone would basically be paying their fair share for the amount of money that they are earning. However, in the United States recent tax reforms, as seen in the book, have allowed the rich to create loopholes and get out of paying their fair share of taxes if any taxes at all! Taxes have fallen dramatically over the years from 90% to 39% today. Another factor of government policy is the failure to raise the minimum wage. From the 1940s to the 1960s the book states that the minimum wage had grown steadily. After this minimum wage was no longer being raised, however, that does not mean that inflation also stopped being raised. Today the value of minimum wage has fallen about seven dollars from about eleven dollars from its peak in 1968. The consequences of not raising the minimum wage is that the many people who work in low wage jobs are further falling into poverty. These people are often families with children and according to the book about 70 percent of earners are minorities and women. Not raising minimum wage ensures that the poor stay poor and the rich get richer.