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The US income gap essay
The US income gap essay
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For many foreigners, the U.S. has been seen as the “land of opportunity”, where people from around the world are welcome to start a new life and take their chances at making it rich. Even our own citizens are taught from a young age that our country is full of opportunities along with the concept of “upward mobility”, where anyone no matter what class background has the chance to become successful if they work hard enough. But in the recent decade with the Great Recession and the Occupy Wall Street movement, many have begun to question this common belief: if this is indeed the land of opportunity, why are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? It’s a surprising truth that during recent years the so-called “wealth gap” has indeed …show more content…
has some of the worst inequality. When looking at poverty levels, income gaps, and wealth owned by the rich, sources show the U.S. always scores poorly compared to other developed countries. When measuring inequality, researchers use the gini coefficient, where 0 means that everyone has the same income and 1 means that one person has all the income. According to evidence presented by the online database OECD.org, when looking at inequality of disposable income the U.S. scores fourth out of all developing countries. When looking at the gap in income between the richest 10 percent and the poorest 10 percent, the richest 10 percent in 16 times higher than that of the poorest (OECD). The fact that the U.S. has some of the worst inequality compared to the rest of the world is quite surprising, but at the same time it shows that it’s an important issue. OECD also shows that inequality in american has been growing faster than other countries around the world. When measuring with the gini coefficient, the U.S’s level of inequality rose by almost five points or 15 percent. Even most americans can agree that wealth and income inequality is slowly getting worse over the years. OECD states “Two recent surveys illustrate the concern about economic inequality in the US. 65% of American adults believe that the gap between the rich and everyone else has …show more content…
This is important because statistics show that the wealth gap has been growing over the years. According to the movie Inequality For All, there has been a very significant shift shift in income of the average middle class worker and someone in the top 1%. In 1979, the typical male worker made about $48,302 annually , where the typical worker in the top 1% made about $393,682 annually. But when comparing those same numbers to 2010, the average middle class worker’s wage fell to $33,751 whereas the average wage for someone in the top 1% skyrocketed to $1,101,089 (Inequality For All). These statistics show that that the middle class is making less than they were but the top 1% increased their incomes substantially. This further proves that the wealth gap is growing and is indeed an issue of great significance. But even more surprising is the amount of wealth the top 1 percent owns compared to the lower 99 percent of the population. This topic has been brought up in the media many times and is one of the main points in the rhetoric of numerous politicians. According to Jon Slater from the poverty research site Oxfam, “The richest 1% have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014” (Slater). What this piece of evidence shows is that not only is the share of wealth within the top 1 percent substantially high,
According to Gregory Mantsios many American people believed that the classes in the United States were irrelevant, that we equally reside(ed) in a middle class nation, that we were all getting richer, and that everyone has an opportunity to succeed in life. But what many believed, was far from the truth. In reality the middle class of the United States receives a very small amount of the nation's wealth, and sixty percent of America's population receives less than 6 percent of the nation's wealth, while the top 1 percent of the American population receives 34 percent of the total national wealth. In the article Class in America ( 2009), written by Gregory Mantsios informs us that there are some huge differences that exist between the classes of America, especially the wealthy and the poor. After
Smith, Noah. “How to Fix America's Wealth Inequality: Teach Americans to Be Cheap.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Pub., 12 March 2013. Web. 06 April 2014. .
The American dream can be achieved by education, opportunity, and hard work, but is this is not a reality, but just merely a dream. Opportunity in American feels as if everyone has a fair chance of being successful. In America, it seems that the idea of everyone has a fair chance to opportunity. But this is not the case, in Gregory Mantsios essay “Class In America-2012” he talks about how there are many myths that are wide spread about the differing classes in America. Then he further goes on disproving the widely proclaim myths with stats that show in real world the gap between the wealthy one percent of the population owning 36 percent of the capital in comparison to the 99 percent of Americans in the U.S. For the purpose of this essay, the
Why are so a large number of people that beg for money, sitting on the streets, looking for food 's some sort? It is not day-to-day that we consider situations like this, but it is out there constantly without all of us realizing it. A number of states have poverty 's more issues than others, but it is sad to think about how plenty of people are actually considered to be in poverty. This is an inequality concerning me a lot, and is getting worse daily. Poverty in the United States relates to people whose annual household earnings are less than a poverty line set by the United States government. Poverty is common, resulted in by numerous different factors such as failing markets, structural problems, unfortunate mishaps, and poor individual
The U.S. has the highest income gap between the wealthiest and poorest in the industrial world, which is approximately 12 to 1. In 2004, the affluent experienced a wage increase by 12%, whereas the 99% of average income makers saw an increase of 1%.
The United States of America has been touted as the land of opportunity. The American dream was the reason many immigrants moved to this nation, all hoping to rise from rags to riches. Although likely at some point, the current situation exudes a different result. The problem in the United States is that there is a class divide that gives advantage to those who already have sufficient lifestyles over those who constantly face adversity. This situation causes a loop where the children of the educated get educated while those without are never given the opportunity to receive.
The distribution of wealth by country is an amazing thing to look at (see table 3). The United States comes clearly on top with 41.6% of the wealth across the world, with the next closest being China at 10%. This shows that there is plenty of wealth to go around in the United States; we just don’t equally distribute it. The Gini Coefficient is the best way the world economy can represent the income distribution of a nation’s citizens. The United States ranks well below any other first world country (See table 2) This is an embarrassment to our country. We are a wealthy and successful country, yet we have a bigger gap between the wealthy and poor than any other country that compares to
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.
There are many people that think there is economic and wealth equality in the United States , but with all the statistics I provided it can be clearly seen that inequality in America is a serious issue , and it's getting worse with every year. I do believe that there should be some income inequality because that drives people to succeed , but I also believe that too much inequality limits a lot of people from achieving financial success.
Wealth inequality is a real issue that needs to be fixed. The imbalanced growth of the upper class compared to the middle class is a danger to American society as a whole. The rich becoming richer while the middle class remains the same leads to a power imbalance, with the rich using their money to run the country the way they see fit while the middle class speaks to ears that do not listen. The issue of wealth inequality needs to be fixed by raising taxes on the rich.
Income inequality in the United States has increased and decreased throughout history, but in the recent years, the widening gap has become a serious issue. Income inequality is usually measured by Gini coefficient. According to this method coefficient varies between 0 and 100; while 0 represents complete equality (income is distributed equally among all the population of the country), 100 represents complete inequality (only one person receives all the country’s income, while the rest of the population receives nothing). According to the Census of Bureau, the official Gini coefficient in the U.S. was 46.9 in 2010. This is way higher than the all-time low coefficient of 38.6 set in 1968 (qtd. in Babones).
Income inequality in the United States, as of 2007, has reached levels not seen since 1928. In 1928, the top one percent received nearly 24% of all income within the United States (Volscho & Kelly, 2012). This percentage fell to nearly nine percent in 1975, but has risen to 23.5% as of 2007 (Volscho & Kelly, 2012). Meanwhile, in 2007 (see
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...
Wealth inequality is the uneven distribution of resources in a given state or population, which can also be called the wealth gap. The sum of one’s total assets excluding the liabilities equates the person’s wealth also known as the net worth. Investments, residents, cash, real estates and everything owned by an individual are their assets.In reality, the United States is among the richest countries in the world, though a few people creating a major gap between the richest, the middle class and the poor control most of its wealth. For more than a quarter of a century, only the rich American families have shown an increase to their net worth.Thisis a worrying fact for the less fortunate in the country and calls for assessment (Baranoff, 2015).
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.