Neil Gilbert The Inequality Unhealthy Summary

As the middle class continues to dissolve, the issue in America becomes more chaotic. The article, "The Inequality Hype", by Neil Gilbert, criticizes, quite simply, the hype on the income inequality between the classes in America. Although Gilbert does agree on the inequality present, he brings up many good points as to why this issue is more exaggerated than should be. Gilbert brings up the point that America is doing better than it believes to be doing according to recent data. Moreover, Gilbert explains, "Progressives tend to think that inequality is the story and that, as already noted, nearly everything wrong in U.S. society stems from it. ..Conservatives are less concerned about rising economic inequality than progressives. They accept inequality as the tribute that equality of opportunity grants to merit, productivity, and luck in the free market,

Lastly, Gilbert bring home a hard-hitting reason that this hype is unnecessary: "The U.S. middle class boasts among the highest disposable household incomes in the world. The average U.S. family has 38 percent more disposable household income than a family in Italy, 25 percent more than a family in France, and 20 percent more than a household in Germany, when adjusted for differences in purchasing power...With the average family’s disposable household income in the United States among the highest in the world, inequality is perceived less as a source of social friction between the “haves and the have-nots” than as an imbalance between those who have a lot and others who have even more". I would agree that this has become an issues between who has more than others rather than who has nothing and who has something. I definitely agree and have understood as Gilbert explains, poverty and inequality are two different things. Poverty is having little to nothing while inequality is an individual having money, for example, maybe a lot of money, but not as much as the