Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the priorities of Americans shifted from a patriotic concern for the country’s welfare to a concern for self-advancement. “A 1980 study by UCLA and American Council on Education indicated that college freshmen were more interested in status, power, and money than at any time during the past 15 years. Business Management was the most popular major” (Whitley). Similarly, in the graphic novel, Sin City written by Frank Miller, wealth, power and status play an important role in the outcome of and setting of the book. The main character, Marv, is a strong, lonely man who has a personal vendetta against the most powerful man of Sin City, Cardinal Roark. Miller shines light on the culturally prevalent desire for power, status and wealth, which ocurred in the late 1970s. The purpose of this book is to show his readers, the adults of the 1990s, what kinds of mistakes and corruption occurred in the generation before them. He does this by portraying wealthy figures as all-powerful, exposing the environment that unequal distribution of wealth breeds, and he uses Marv as a figure for the audience to identify with.
Despite being a cliché, “being drunk with power” can be true to its meaning, for people with power can act quite senseless. Based upon the information given to the readers by Marv, Cardinal Roark is publically known as a man of god, a war hero, a philanthropist, an educator, and the most powerful man in the state (Miller). Marv believes he is the most powerful man in the state because he has the ability to bring down mayors and to get the governor of his choice elected. No matter what a person may believe is the definition of “power,” it is a fact that a way to power is through wealth. Roark is a m...
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... warn them about their future in the financial market. Even though Miller wrote this novel in 1991 about the trends of the 1980s, the graphic novel is still current today. In fact the distribution is even more skewed then it was 20 years ago. “As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff). This data shows that we should be extremely worried about the trend of the distribution of wealth in the United States. A more equal distribution is healthy for average citizens because it allows us to thrive in an environment which gives us more opportunities to move up in the economical society.
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
The main problem encountered by the Gilded Age era was the administration of wealth, at least according to Andrew Carnegie. In his piece, “The Gospel of Wealth,” he proposed a solution for the abuse of wealth, and assigned duties to the rich in regards to how they should handle the responsibilities brought on by excessive wealth. However, he also addressed the concerns of the working class. He stressed the welfares of individualism and argued that it was: contemporary and innovative, enabled the affordability of luxuries to all classes, and thus ensured that money controlled by a few people would be more effective for the prosperity of the economy than it would to equally distribute national wealth amongst citizens. Carnegie intended to clarify the reasons why the newly industrialized economy and the new administration of wealth were ultimately for the benefit and harmony of both rich and poor.
“As a child who had dropped in from a parallel universe of purchased educational opportunity and order, I had no idea why such difference existed, nor of its consequences” (Ford 2012). Wealth and status play a major role in power and with power comes great opportunities. For example; a family that comes from a rural or remote area, will not have the same resources as one who lives in a more suburban area, where resources are in arms reach. Someone who lives in rural areas,
People who have money want to be powerful. People who have power have money to back them up. Fitzgerald writes this book with disgust towards the collapse of the American society. Also the purposeless existences that many people live, when they should have been fulfilling their potential. American people lack all the important factors to make life worthwhile.
The three issues about status raised by Ronson, or his interviewees, revolve around class, money, and making it in America. Ronson, a man who makes $5,000 a week, and author of Amber Waves of Green, contends that "the gap between the richest and the poorest among us is now wider than it has been since .... the great depression." To prove his point, Ronson presents the secret financial life of six different people on the economic ladder-- from Frantz who washes dishes and earns $200 a week, to B. Wayne Hughes, a self-storage billionaire, and four other people in between, including Ronson himself.
Inside of this video, this guy really targets an issue nobody has really been presented. He shows charts that talk about how we Americans think our wealth is distributed. We think distribution is doing alright. Americans think that the bottom 40% is getting a bit of money. They also believe that the middle class is doing reasonably well. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In the video, he breaks it down a little bit getter. He shows a graph that shows how money is actually being distributed. The poorest of poor don 't even register on the poverty line. The middle class is barely making it. And then there is this huge difference between "the rich" and the poor. It is proven that the 1% of America has 40% of the entire nation 's wealth ("Wealth Inequality in America."). The bottom 80% of America only share 7% of the nation 's wealth among themselves. The top 1% has 50% of the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of Americans only own 0.5% ("Wealth Inequality in America."). The poor is not just getting by but they are scraping and fighting to get by. Now that it is clear that there is a lot of poor people in America, it is important to figure out how to fix
Time and time again we hear politicians and office holders preach the need for a powerful middle-class. You may then be surprised to hear that “about 82% of America’s net worth belongs to the top 20%, the next 80% of people only own about 18% of America’s wealth” (UCSC). Some may argue that this disproportion is the beauty of capitalism, the chance to create an empire. I argue that the proportions are simply unfair. Why is it that “ the average CEO makes 350X as much as his/her employee” (UCSC)?
Divisions within the social stratum is a characteristic of societies in various cultures and has been present throughout history. During the middle ages, the medieval feudal system prevailed, characterized by kings and queens reigning over the peasantry. Similarly, in today’s society, corporate feudalism, otherwise known as Capitalism, consists of wealthy elites dominating over the working poor. Class divisions became most evident during America’s Gilded Age and Progressive era, a period in time in which the rich became richer via exploitation of the fruits of labor that the poor persistently toiled to earn. As a result, many Americans grew compelled to ask the question on everyone’s mind: what do the rich owe the poor? According to wealthy
In the October 10, 2011 issue of Time, there is a feature called “The Great American Divide” that reports on money: who has it, who is spending it on what, and how as a country Americans feel about it. This feature also reports something troubling, how the gap between rich and poor is once again growing wide (Sachs, 2011). Shifts in spending, shifts in money control, and a struggle with how to deal with the great money crisis America and Europe face are all discussed in this feature. This feature pulls together how GDP, unemployment rates, consumer consumption, and pricing affect this era of volatility and the shrinking middle class (Foroohar, 2011). This feature also reflects on inflation, economic growth, political stability in emerging markets and taxes play in as well. The answer to solving this imbalance of wealth and the struggling economy may be found by government action, but will it be too late?
Reich, Robert B. “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer.” A World of Ideas:
Inequality exist and is high in America because the amount of income and wealth that is distributed through power. In America the income distribution is very inequality and the value of a person wealth is based on their income with their debts subtracted. “As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff, 2011). In contrary the poor do not get ahead and the rich get more. Americans are judged and placed in class categories through their home ownership which translates to wealth. Americans social class is often associated with their assets and wealth. “People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure, and to live long and healthy lives” (Domhoff, 2011). Power indicates how these “values” are not distributed equally in American society. Huge gains for the rich include cuts in capital gains and dividends and when tax rates decrease for the tiny percent of Americans income is redistributed. Taxes directly affect the wealth and income of Americans every year.
In his essay “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%”, Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, speaks about a problem that has been developing in America for years: the inequality gap of wealth. Stiglitz’s essay essentially goes into detail about how the problem of financial inequality is being neglected by the groups that the problem has the greatest impact on, the lower class and the middle class. Stiglitz also provides statistics to illustrate how the wealth distribution has changed from 25 years ago to modern day. Moreover Stiglitz mentions that the wealth gap alienating American society, and how the concentration of wealth is directed causes worse conditions to arise in the lower and middle classes.
Carnegie’s essay contains explanations of three common methods by which wealth is distributed and his own opinions on the effects of each. After reading the entire essay, readers can see his overall appeals to logos; having wealth does not make anyone rich, but using that wealth for the greater good does. He does not force his opinions onto the reader, but is effectively convincing of why his beliefs make sense. Andrew Carnegie’s simple explanations intertwined with small, but powerful appeals to ethos and pathos become incorporated into his overall appeal to logos in his definition of what it means for one to truly be rich.
Although we live in a democratic nation, many job opportunities are offered mostly based on race, nationality, and social class. The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara illustrates how the society limits lower class citizens, mostly African Americans in New York, from career prosperity. The undemocratic economy system in America positions the values of money and limits career opportunity based on social class difference. Bambara demonstrates the harsh realization of reality for the financially unfortunate kids after they went to “F.A.O. Schwarz”, an expensive toy store in New York. Miss Moore took the children on a field trip to Fifth Avenue to show them the important economic issues many Americans currently faced. Miss Moore’s effort is to teach the children about how much ...
Wealth inequality is the uneven distribution of resources in a given state or population, which can also be called the wealth gap. The sum of one’s total assets excluding the liabilities equates the person’s wealth also known as the net worth. Investments, residents, cash, real estates and everything owned by an individual are their assets.In reality, the United States is among the richest countries in the world, though a few people creating a major gap between the richest, the middle class and the poor control most of its wealth. For more than a quarter of a century, only the rich American families have shown an increase to their net worth.Thisis a worrying fact for the less fortunate in the country and calls for assessment (Baranoff, 2015).