Analyzing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Ever-Growing Gap

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau would diagnose and explain the major wealth gap, that is ever growing in the United States of America by drawing from his manuscripts Discourse on Inequality. There is a serious wage gap between people of color and whites. Rousseau identifies that there is inequality and he explains how we got to this point in society. The Ever-Growing Gap by Derick Asante-Muhammad, Chuck Collins, Josh Haxie, and Emanuel Nieves forces on particular problems I would like to focus on. The Ever-Growing Gap focuses on African-American and Latino families that won’t ever be able to match White wealth unless there is immediate change. Rousseau had believed that there were two kinds of inequality that resided in the human species. One of the two kinds of inequality are natural and physical. The differences between each human was determined by their age, strengths, weaknesses, brains, and their health. The second kind of inequality the human species possesses is moral and political inequality. Political and moral inequality is the amount of privilege someone has, how powerful they are, prejudice, and money. These issues of inequality that Rousseau mentions relatedly differently the article The Ever-Growing Gap. The …show more content…

Money causes conflict, and without money there would be no rich or poor. “After having proved that inequality is barely perceptible in the state of nature, and that its influence there is almost null, it remains for me to shows origin…” Rousseau explains that in human’s natural state that we only need food, water, and shelter. Humans in their natural state must fight to stay alive, it is survival of the fittest. But, with the invention of money and humans expanding their knowledge and making more resources become available we have lost sight of what we need. Humans now force on what they want and what they

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