Wealth Gap

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The income and wealth gap is something that is all over the world, and even in the world’s biggest economy (USA) there is still a huge gap between the richest 1% and everyone else. First of all there is a big difference between wealth and income, one can have very little income but however be extremely wealthy and visa versa. Income is how much you earn per week/month/year. However wealth is measured in assets you have, for example houses, shares, antiques etc. (Pettinger, 2008). In my paper I am going to be discussing what has caused this gap from the 1850’s and also to compare and contrast this with the wealth gap in Europe. Overall I am going to be looking at how Capitalism has had a part to play in this as well as the establishment of wealth …show more content…

With more education not only would the wage gap be solved in my opinion, but also the wealth gap. With more education, more people would be able to acquire jobs which pay more. However to give education to the masses it would obviously cost a lot of money, but would be worth it as it would solve a huge problem in the USA. Anyway compared to the spending this country has on defence, the money needed for free or subsidized college education would be a drop in the ocean. You may be thinking, how would this solve the wealth gap? Well with better educated citizens, who are also getting paid more than they were before would know how to invest and spend their money. It takes money to make money, and with people earning more, along with a better education to know what to do with it, over time wealth would be accumulated, and past down to future generations, and so on, and so on. Something needs to be done soon. This is something that is not getting better, it’s only getting worse. “There is no dispute that income inequality has been on the rise in the United States for the past four decades. The share of total income earned by the top 1 percent of families was less than 10 percent in the late 1970s but now exceeds 20 percent as of the end of 2012. A large portion of this increase is due to an upsurge in the labor incomes earned by senior company executives and successful entrepreneurs.” (Matthews, 2014). This shows that even in this day and age in America poverty and huge gaps are still experienced all over the country. However when you look on the grand scheme of things worldwide, the people below the poverty line in the USA are still among the richest

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