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Income inequality usa essay
Income inequality research
Economic inequality in America
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In America, income inequality has shown to be a rising problem in the past five years. Most of America is affected by this, however the ones that are not, continue to make more money. In short, the poor is getting poorer and the rich is getting richer. As a result of America’s economic problem, the middle class has been struggling and many Americans can relate, including me. Because of America’s economy, an important social class is diminishing and causing major issues in families across the nation. The middle class is the social group between the rich and the poor. Usually if you are considered middle class it means that you have enough money to afford the typical American wants and needs and you are neither struggling nor wealthy enough to live a luxurious life. About 45 percent of Americans make up the middle class, while the rest are either upper or lower class (DOC). Leaving 55 percent left which makes them either rich or poor, meaning most of America is included in the class between. If that is true then it is fair to say that middle class Americans are a large contribution to the economy and circulate most of the money in it. After realizing the middle class’ role in America, it would be reasonable to also understand why it would be a problem if something bad should happen to it. Income inequality is a rising problem that has been affecting America’s economy. The result of income inequality is the diminishing middle class. Most of America is affected by this problem since a large amount of citizens make an income of a typical middle class resident. Now since the middle class is doing so poorly, it seems as if there is no middle class at all. Americans who once considered themselves “middle class” now distinguish themse... ... middle of paper ... ... of living. Compared to most countries, poor people in America are much better off than the poor from a country like China. In America we have shelters for the homeless so they can still be fed and have somewhere to sleep. Some people in America can be okay with not having a job or a home because they know that they can stay at a shelter. The reason why this counterargument is not effective is because if more Americans do not mind being homeless and depend on shelters, then more Americans will in fact become homeless and lead to an even more problematic economy. That means less people in the workforce to circulate money. Those with jobs are the ones who run the homeless shelters in the first place. Pretty soon if more become homeless and unemployed due to the fact that Americans in the middle class are becoming poor, then there will not be homeless shelters anymore.
In Confronting Inequality, Paul Krugman discusses the cost of inequality and possible solutions. Krugman argues to say that it is a fantasy to believe the rich live just like the middle class. Then, he goes into detail about how middle class families struggle to try to give their children a better life and how education plays a factor in children’s future lives. For example, children’s ability to move into higher education could be affected by their parents economic status. Also, He discusses how politicians play a role in the inequality, because most of politicians are in the upper economic class. Finally, Krugman says how we could possibly have solutions to these various inequalities, but how America won’t get
Growing up in The United States, people are given this idea of an American Dream. Almost every child is raised to believe they can become and do anything they want to do, if one works hard enough. However, a majority of people believe that there is a separation of class in American society. Gregory Mantsios author of “Class in America-2009” believes that Americans do not exchange thoughts about class division, although most of people are placed in their own set cluster of wealth. Also political officials are trying to get followers by trying to try to appeal to the bulk of the population, or the middle class, in order to get more supporters. An interesting myth that Mantsios makes in his essay is how Americans don’t have equal opportunities.
In America, our society is categorized by the poor, working, middle, upper middle, or upper class. Majority of America today seems to be under the working to middle class. It's hard to tell what
Let's take it back to the past in regards to wealth distribution in this country. The fact is that the economy boomed from the end of WWII into the 1970's. “Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s” (CBPP). Through the 70's economic growth slowed, and the wealth gap widened. Middle-class families were now considered lower class. People relied on the government to help them out with welfare programs. The middle-class class was weakened and the gap grew and grew. There were periods of positive fluctuation, however the middle-class simply never regained it's status that was held in more prosperous times in the past.
I consider my family and I to be in the middle class category and from being in the middle class, and the facts that are provided, the middle class is slowly declining as the time goes on. I believe that a lot of people go beyond the middle class to the upper middle class or people go below the middle class to the poor category. I’ve found a graph from Forbes that compares the rates of all classes from 1979 to 2014. From observing the graph my initial hypothesis was right. The middle class has declined by 6.8% between the years 1979-2014.
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 highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.
In the United States there are four social classes : the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class. Of these four classes the most inequality exists between the upper class and the lower class. This inequality can be seen in the incomes that the two classes earn. During the period 1979 through the present , the growth in income has disproportionately grown.The bottom sixty percent of the US population actually saw their real income decrease in 1990 dollars. The next 20% saw medium gains. The top twenty percent saw their income increase 18%. The wealthiest one percent saw their incomes rise drastically over 80%. As reported in the 1997 Center on Budget's analysis , the wealthiest one percent of Americans ( 2.6 million people) received as much after-tax income in 1994 as the bottom 35 percent of the population combined (88 million people). But in 1977 the bottom 35 percent had about twice as much after tax income as the top one percent. These statistics further show the disproportional income growth among the social classes. The gr...
What comes into my mind when thinking on how to categorize those people that belong in the middle class, I look at such things as education, race, family, income, gender and how many people are in your household. I look at it as those people who are making between $40,000 and about $85,000 to be in the middle class while the next step would be the upper middle class and then to the upper class. Maybe I am wrong here, but like I said before, everyone wants to have that “I am middle class” attitude. The most recent Census Bureau survey data shows that the share of households with incomes of $75,000 or more has doubled in the past 24 years. Other studies, however, discover that more people who depart the middle class move down than up, at least temporarily.
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
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
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.
Income inequality has affected American citizens ever since the American Dream came to existence. The American Dream is centered around the concept of working hard and earning enough money to support a family, own a home, send children to college, and invest for retirement. Economic gains in income are one of the only possible ways to achieve enough wealth to fulfill the dream. Unfortunately, many people cannot achieve this dream due to low income. Income inequality refers to the uneven distribution of income and wealth between the social classes of American citizens. The United States has often experienced a rise in inequality as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, increasing the unstable gap between the two classes. The income gap in America has been increasing steadily since the late 1970’s, and has now reached historic highs not seen since the 1920’s (Desilver). UC Berkeley economics professor, Emmanuel Saez conducted extensive research on past and present income inequality statistics and published them in his report “Striking it Richer.” Saez claims that changes in technology, tax policies, labor unions, corporate benefits, and social norms have caused income inequality. He stands to advocate a change in American economic policies that will help close this inequality gap and considers institutional and tax reforms that should be developed to counter it. Although Saez’s provides legitimate causes of income inequality, I highly disagree with the thought of making changes to end income inequality. In any diverse economic environment, income inequality will exist due to the rise of some economically successful people and the further development of factors that push people into poverty. I believe income inequality e...
Income inequality continues to increase in today’s world, especially in the United States. Income inequality means the unequal distribution between individuals’ assets, wealth, or income. In the Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes, a liberal journalist, states the inequality gap between the rich and the poor are increasing widening, and there need to have things done - tax the rich, provide better education - in order to shortening the inequality gap. America is a meritocratic country, which means that everybody has equal opportunity to be successful regardless of their class privileges or wealth. However, equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcomes. People are having more opportunities to find a better job, but their incomes are a lot less compared to the top ten percent rich people. In this way, the poor people will never climb up the ladder to high status and become millionaires. Therefore, the government needs to increase all the tax rates on rich people in order to reduce income inequality.
Money is an essential part of life where every people can satisfy whatever they need and every person in America has a chance to find a job. However, some of the people in the country wanted to go on with their life freely by being a part of a welfare. Furthermore, distribution of wealth is a huge demand of every citizen. Everyone today is trying to look down for every people in the lower class, as they did not give any benefit to the country, waiting for the benefits that they will receive from the government. For instance, when most lower class people have gone through a financial crisis due to overspending, insufficient fund or pay for their work to support themselves and/or their family. The example shows that lower class people made the economy of the country unstable, however, the middle class and the higher class is at fault as well. Furthermore, even though the benefit of that the lower class received is from the middle class, the middle class as well benefits from the higher class. To sum up, every class is at fault towards giving the country’s economy a positive