Economic Injustice

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Economic Justice Between Classes

We live in a country today misrepresented by its own peoples' perception. The consensus that we live in the greatest nation in the world is not so much a feeling of nationalism as it is a forgone conclusion in the minds of millions of Americans. What a great many of these millions do not realize is that they are the victims of a government set up by our founding fathers to uphold a class system based on a very unproportional distribution of wealth. As the old saying goes, you need money to make money, and this is never more true than it is in the United States, the land where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. Howard Zinn asks, "What is economic justice?" There is no clear answer, except to say economic justice simply does not exist.

Founding Fathers Promise Equality
One might ask when all this came about. The nation started under the greatest of pretexts. A nation of democracy, equality, and freedom. But freedom from what?
Taxation without representation? Or maybe just taxation. The argument has been made that our country was started by land and slave owning men who did not want to pay their taxes. But the truth is the nation was started by a group of very wealthy men, who did not intend for "all men are created equal" to apply to the distribution of wealth.
True, times were very different then. But many ideas and laws from the late 18th century that have no place in the 21st century still apply in situations today. Look no further than the recent election. An old system of choosing the nations leader by electors, created in fairness to southern slave-owners who counted each of their "possesions" as two-fifths of a person, is preventing the nation from electing the majority's choice as president. The debacle that is now being called "Indecision 2000" should be a wake up call to Americans living under laws past in another age for a much different nation.
No one denies that poverty is a problem in the United States, and even more so globally. Lack of sufficent food, decent education, proper housing, and sufficent medical coverage are all very apparent. The constitution guarantees life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, while these basic necessities of life are being denied to millions of families in the United States.

The Laissez - Faire Approach
Some are actually a...

... middle of paper ...

...nly distributed, and no traces of economic justice even exist. People living in poverty need some kind of hope, some sign that their government has not forgotten them. The truth is, there are plenty of people who do care, and there are many efforts to help. The discrepancies are simply too big to go unnoticed, and a change is inevitable. As for right now, the trend continues. The rich get super-richer, the poor get poorer

Works Cited
Zinn, Howard. Declarations of Independence. New York: HaperCollins, 1990.
Raymond W. Baker: A 150-to-1 Ratio Is Far Too Lopsided for Comfort, 1999/02/05, Intl.
Herald Tribune, pg.6.
Mohammed Dore: Poverty, Global Inequality and the Foundations of Redistribution
Policy, 1996 <http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~dore/poverty/>
"Forbes 400 Richest in America." Forbes.com. 2000
<http://www.forbes.com/400richest/>
U.S. Department of Labor. "U.S. Employment Standards Admin.".
<www.dol.gov/esa/public/minwage.>
U.S. Bureau of the Census "Poverty". 26 September 2000
<http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html>
Henwood, Doug. "Boom for Whom?." Left Business Observer #93 Feb. 2000: 2

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