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United states wealth inequality
Social inequality and its effects
Social inequality and its effects
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One reason why inequality is bad for democracy is because it nourishes the top 1%. If wealth is unevenly distributed in a society, wealthy people often end up in control of many aspects of the lives of less fortunate. For instance, what kind of jobs are available, what they can buy, and in general what their lives will be like. A second reason why inequality is bad for democracy is because if people in political offices must depend on large contributions for their campaigns, it’s more likely that their support will be coming from wealthier individuals which in turn will increase the likely hood of creating public policy on their behalf only instead of the majority of the population. In the society that we live in, there is an equality/efficiency
Equality in American Democracy American democracy changed drastically after the Civil War. One of the major changes in American democracy was equality. Today, American citizens are more equal than the Americans before the Civil War. Major movements, events, and government decisions changed the way people view equality today. Some of these changes improved the equality between American citizens, but others only increased the inequality.
Wealth and Democracy performs a splendid job of convincing one that democracy is endangered and that the practices of the rich and those in power can be deceitful. For the most part the book is easy to follow, fairly organized and has an exceptionally good index. However Phillips could have done better when making references to his previous works because they are confusing and unclear.
In contemporary times, the rise of capitalism as a dominant economic trend and its ravenous demand to accumulate sources from new markets, has led to the idea of merging political and economic power into one, which is democratic capitalism or otherwise illustrated as “a system where markets allocate income according to efficiency while governments redistribute income according to political demand."(Iversen, 2006). The advancements mentioned earlier, have given ground for questions concerning the possible compatibility of the political ideology which is democracy and the economic ideology capitalism and how would they affect one another. This mergence could be examined in recent times, whereas in the past around the start of the nineteenth century it was considered as inappropriate and unlikely to happen. This paper aims to demonstrate to what degree are democracy and capitalism compatible, by examining the various areas of conflict of the two ideologies, how has capitalism affected the democratic system in the United States and does actually global capitalism have an impact on the developing countries democracies.
First we must understand how inequality started. Obviously like I mentioned before there will always be inequalities such as intelligence and looks no matter what. Ignoring that, lets understand how inequality came to be. As soon as a organization is formed is when inequality takes place. In an organization there are different roles that have different powers and ultimately there is some sort of ranking between people in this organization. Understanding this will help you understand why the world is the way it is now. It helps you understand why there is different economic classes and why some people make more money than others. If you ask any sociologist how did inequality emerge in the first place they will tell you it’s because of social conflict and the division of labor. The division of labor is basically referring to when different people take part in a task to improve efficiency. An easy example of this would be a factory or any job you can find. Once positions of power are crated then inequality is formed. Knowing that general idea will help make sense of why inequality is here and why it is very difficult to get rid
Income inequality not only harms us fiscally, but also affects our mental and physical wellbeing; therefore, it is important to identify the right ways to control wealth distribution among people.
What is wealth inequality? “It is the difference between individuals or populations in the distribution of assets, wealth or income.” [1] In sociology, the term is social stratification and refers to “a system of structured social inequality” [2] where the inequality might be in power, resources, social standing/class or perceived worth. In the US, where a class system exist, (as opposed to caste or estate system) your place in the class system can be determined by your personal achievements. However, the economic and social class that an individual is born into is a big indicator of the class they will end up in as an adult. [3] What are the effects of this wealth inequality in the US and what causes it as well as some possible solutions and their ramifications will all be discussed and answered below.
Inequality as previously mentioned is a subject that gets debated when brought up and in any debate there is two sides. In class we have discussed both side of the story of inequality, and it has give me a better perspectives of income inequality. When discussion income inequality, we brought up the concept of the economic pie in which states that the economic pie is a reference to the way income gets distributed among the lower, middle, and higher class of America. So the concept of the economic pie states that the rich is getting richer, so they are
There is also the damage that the inequality does to the society and the government. Thomas Jefferson once said, “The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.” Today that would mean that the middle class is the most important part of our society, however, the farther we move into the future the weaker the middle class becomes (Krugman, 587). The America that we live in is unequal in income and social aspects. The rich do not live the same lives as those that are less fortunate, and the less fortunate do not get to enjoy the perks that come with the lives of the rich people.
The unequal distribution of wealth is seen as a negative and ongoing problem and debate within American politics and society. There is a great deal of evidence to back up why wealth distribution is damaging the American ideals of life. It also carries inevitable and undetermined consequences for our nation. How resources are distributed within a country depends on where the resources were found. For example, numerous people will move to an area that is rich with resources in order in ensure job security. Just because a country is fruitful in a resource does not mean that that particular country is wealthy. In fact, the laborers are paid very minimal...
Democracy: a government by the people, in which citizens rule either directly or through elected representatives - the latter description more relevant to today’s societies. Quite evidently, democracy is not perfect; like any other political system, it is subject to a plethora of flaws. For instance, it is no secret that voters tend to make illogical decisions – not out of sheer malice, but as a result of being wrongly informed. Politicians also make erroneous choices, whether they do so because they are dishonest or simply out of touch with the true will of their constituents. Further, anyone who has studied the government of a parliamentary democracy knows gerrymandering can have a powerful say in determining elections. Despite these and other flaws however, democracy still seems to work.
If wealth is an essential requirement of democracy, an unequal distribution of wealth imperils the democratic process. The way that this works is when there is too much wealth, the poor feel unsatisfied with their government because they are so impoverished while others are extremely wealthy, therefore they feel that they do not have a say in their government which is supposedly "led by the people" including the poor. When this happens the wealthy end up basically having more power because of their social class and therefore has more control in the government, which then ends up being unfair.
Economic inequality is ingrained in our society. Because of this fact, many would argue that “that’s just how it is,” but in reality this is not how a community is suppose to function. As Michael Sandel writes in his book Justice, “As inequality deepens, rich and poor live increasingly separate lives.” Sandel makes an excellent point. As economic divisions, such as the ones present in the United States, worsen, the classes diverge on every level. Wealthy people attend different schools, purchase luxury cars, and live in gated communities. Meanwhile, the poor live in squalor, use public transportation, and attend failing schools. Aside from the lack of a quality education making it harder to escape poverty, the poor are from birth at a disadvantage to those on the other side of the economic scale. The United States is not a land of guaranteed equality of result, that is...
Income inequality is a big problem in the United States because the top, wealthiest American saw huge increases in their incomes, which the rest had their incomes go down. Bottom people do not have the same amount of money and the opportunity to move up the social ladder as the rich people do. In order to reduce income inequality, the government needs to tax the rich people more, and give poor people more money and more social services - education, food subsidies, health care.
There have been enormous efforts to spread democracy as a political system throughout the world by the developed democratic countries and the international development organizations including the World Bank. By the late 1990s the United States alone spent over a half billion dollars to promote democratic expansion throughout the world (Diamond, 2003). These were done considering that the democratic system leads towards development. As a result in the late 20th century we saw a huge political transformation towards democracy. During the last few decades a huge number of countries adopted democracy as their political system. However, it retain a big question how far democracy is successful in bringing development of a country? At this stage, some people also criticizes the effort of democratization arguing that it is done without considering the context of a country, sometimes democracy is not ideal for all countries and it is an effort to extinct diversity of political system. In studying the literature regarding the debate, we found a paradoxical relationship between democracy and development. Some argue that democracy has failed to ensure expected outcomes in terms of development. While others confronted that democracy has a considerable impact on development. Another group of people argue that form of political system actually does not have any impact on development process. On the verge of these debates, some development institutions and academics throw light on why democracy is not working properly, and what measure should be taken to make it more successful in bringing effective development of developing countries. Consequently, this writing is an effort of revisiting the different views about impact of democra...
Democracy is not bad or harmful but we must be careful when talking about democracy, whether we actually mean giving power to people to or making those in power more representatives of the people views. Because it all up to us as individuals to how we are using our democracy that gone reflect whether it’s the worst or best form of government. Through democracy we can either build or break our country to how we responded to the situations going on around us, if we stand together and fight for our democracy that we were told about or we sit down and relax watch other people using our democracy to their own good