Income Equality Research Paper

Income equality refers to when income is distributed unevenly within a countries population. Equality is the state of being equal, especially in status, rights and opportunities. Much like fairness, it is a crucial part of any society throughout the world. Unfortunately, we are seeing less and less of it as the years pass. One of the growing and most talked about issues of the last 30 years has been that of income disparity. In fact, it has become so pronounced that America’s top percent now average nearly nine times as much income as the bottom ninety percent (Estelle Sommeiller). If you have ever heard the phrase “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer”, this is where it comes from.
The most common perception of Income Disparity is

that it only happens in the big cities such as: New York, Chicago, Detroit, not this is simply not true. This inequality is seen from one end of the U.S to the other, even in little old Paducah, Kentucky. The Income Disparity in the United States has been rising over the last six decades and you can look back and see it throughout the course of history. In a time when incomes were growing rapidly (the late 1940’s and early 1970’s), the income gap between the upper class and middle/lower class did not change much. However, Beginning in the 1970’s the economic growth slowed and the income gap began to widen (Chad Stone). Incomes for those in the middle and lower classes started to shrink, and the rich, their income rose dramatically. From then on there has been a steady increase of Income disparity in the U.S. Today, it is the highest it has been since 1928 (Desilver).
The U.S isn’t the only place in the world today that has this problem however. In fact, the U.S ranks fourth among developed nations. Turkey, Mexico and Chile had worse income equality (Huffpost.com). Chile topped all of them however, coming in at number one in income inequality. Which is shocking considering Chile has one of the most stable economies in Latin America and their GDP is growing and is expected to keep trending upward (coha.org).
If you look at our economy over the last twenty years, you can see it is getting worse and worse. One of the reasons is because of Gap in income between the rich and the poor. If we want to stop this downward trend we are going to have to do something. The most logical thing would be to raise the taxes on the rich. There is no reason for the taxes to be as high as they are for the average working man struggling to put food on the table for his family every month. If this change was made the government could raise large amounts of revenue, while the rich could still take home a majority of their income, and the economy would strengthen.
As you can see Income Inequality is huge problem in the U.S and around the world. If a change is not made the United States economy may never recover and this divide between the rich and poor may never narrow.