Wealth Inequality In The United States

Nowadays, there is a huge gap of income and wealth inequality in the U.S. and that means the richer people are super rich while bottom people are struggling for basic living standard. There are some direct and explicit statistics from Inequality for All graphic package from which we can tell the phenomenon. In 2010, the typical 1% people earn 33 times of typical male workers but in 1978 the ratio is tenth comparing the male workers with the “1%” people. Also, it says “Today, the top 400 richest people have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together” (Inequality for All). This shows considerable wealth of the U.S. is controlled in the minority people, which is totally unlike the period of 1950s through 1980s. Why has inequality been widening? As we see the diagram from the graphic package, GDP was spectacularly booming from late 1980s. However, the growth of wages and productivity was almost stagnated ever since 1970s. At that times, economic globalization was taken place deeply and manufacture was moved from developed countries like America to developing countries like South Korea and Japan while financial capital field was tended to be more powerful.

Those are: 1. “Women went to paid work in huge amount”, 2. “People worked longer hours (productivity went up and up)” and 3. “People went into debt, particularly housing” (Inequality for All). Since the typical male wages are in stagnation, their household ratio has grown to about 12% in 2010. Thus, the middle class is under quite pressure which is still likely to increase and the middle class would have not spent more money in other consuming, which is bad for cycle of