Comparing Jill Lepore's Essay 'Richer And Poorer'

Rhetorical Analysis: Richer and Poorer
In the essay “Richer and Poorer” written by Jill Lepore and published in the New Yorker in March 16, 2015, the author argues how the United States has the largest economic inequality in the world, and how it’s been going on for years. The audience the author is pursuing for this paper are those who are either well educated, those who are up to date in recent political regimes, and the affluent to acknowledge those who must stomach economic inequality. The author demonstrates the use of logos, pathos, kairos, and ethos effectively in the paper; the main point of this paper is to analyze her rhetoric. Ms. Lepore paper was written to explore the views on economic inequality. She puts evidence in her paper

by using other authors, stories, and numbers based on research and data collected over the years. The essay the author wrote uses all the rhetorical devices in different areas within the paper, to keep the reader engaged with it.

It is important to realize that the author is to educate her audience by using factors that activates the left side of the brain or the logical part of it. Jill Lepore’s essay enlightens the readers’ understanding of her paper through logos. The author effectively uses data from research from the tax data and Gini index, with logos when she writes, “Income inequality is greater in the United States than in any other democracy in the developed world. Between 1975 and 1985, when the Gini index for U.S. households rose from .397 to .419.” (Lepore, 1). This piece of information shows the data gathered from a time that isn’t so far in the past, and how inequality has been very high just twenty-six years ago. Another part of this is from, Piketty and Saez tax data (Page1, Paragraph 3), which goes with the information of economic inequality by finding the percentage of groups’ income. This data discusses the amount of income for households and views the income of individuals who belong to either the low, middle, or high class giving an idea of what these people receive as income. All of this makes those who suffer from inequality to consider what happened, and what can they do to

rectify what has happened for a better future. However, a person needs to gain support not just through data, numbers, research, and logical thought, but through emotion as well.
Jill Lepore uses a few stories, where it reveals her use of pathos. She writes “The book Our Kids proceeds from the depressing assumption that presenting the lives of poor young people is the best way to get Americans to care about poverty.” (Lepore, 3). It goes on to discuss how an individual who falls on hard times, this being a fear that any rational being would have in life, the story compares the poor kid with the rich family who lives a life of luxury in a ‘what if’ statement. Within the story, it points to a certain placement, which talks about a woman named Wendy, “Wendy, who is part of a rich family who worked hard to get there, who wants to keep their kids successful and not pay to for kids who just sit around.” (Lepore, 5). This statement from the story is to discusses how Americans don’t care about the children from other people and only care for their own. This view that people have is an “everyone for themselves”, not to better our fellow humans. The paper makes it a point to divulge that children are important for society and the future. That the children that we see every day from different economic backgrounds are to take the places of those who are at the helm of our society and if every child doesn’t get the same opportunity given to them a lot of other chances will disappear within society. The children who live in a place that can’t give them a well-educated background aren’t just numbers that don’t have feelings, that don’t want to make a change, it’s that they weren’t given the chance to make the change. That all of them inside the machine we call society are important cogs, that need help so they can be a part of the machine and help make it run smoothly. Although Ms. Lepore isn’t the author of the story she uses it in her paper to help her make a case upon economic inequality, because she is a writer for a large magazine.
Ms.

Lepore effectively meets the requirements of kairos with her publishing this essay in the year 2015, which was just a year and four months ago, this date indicates that the issue is still taking place and has been an issue far too long. Adding to that point is it was published in the New Yorker, a company well informed on political and national issues. These situations help the author make her points and where she is coming from. In addition, to her job showing how credible she is, her credibility is viewed in the way she uses her research, and the way she

writes.
Ms. Lepore demonstrates her understanding of ethos inside the essay so her audience will take her seriously. She accomplishes this goal through her publisher being the New Yorker which has access to political cartoons, essays, and other material. It also is one of the most widely read political magazines, this should indicate that she is up to date on political and national issues and is knowledgeable on the subjects. Within the contents of the paper she explores the findings from the two researchers named Stepan and Linz who discovered that twenty-three democracies having advanced economies. In the paper she writes about their findings, “The veto players within each of the governments. More than half of them have only one veto player; most of these countries have unicameral parliaments. A few countries have two veto players; Switzerland and Australia have three. Only the U.S. have four. Then they took the veto player numbers: The more veto players in government, the greater the nation’s economic inequality.” (Lepore, 9). This information, she adds, is from two researchers who studied the twenty-three governments economy, and she uses these two to give her points more meaning by using the research from others to strengthen her claims and to show it isn’t just her opinion or her view alone. Equally important as well is the conclusion the author comes to at the end of the paper.
Jill Lepore had read and viewed these stories and researcher to strengthen her papers content this allowed the audience to see her capability with this paper. She does this from using stories that sway people’s emotions, to different researchers, ideas and theories that have been around for at least a century or more now coming into focus a bit more. All these strengthen her claims, her argument, and help inform her audience how economic inequality is affecting their nation. She in the end writes about this so the masses can see what has been happening for decades with their economy and how Americans need to change it not just through treating children differently, but to change it with the nations congress.