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Causes Of Income Inequality

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Income inequality may be the most important and divisive topics in our society today. It has far reaching consequences that will affect all of us in the years to come. But in the future, we will all look back and think back to now, and think about how we got to where we did. How the political climate and the division of the country corrupted our ability to sort out what kind of society we want to be. The “Gotcha!” politics of today has devolved our elections and government into a popularity contest of who has the least skeletons in their closet, without much care to the actual policies of those elected. This has led to an almost inevitable spiral down to the rich in power, with everyone else fighting over petty issues. Many try to hold onto an America that only could exist in the mid-twentieth century, the America that McClelland says, “...was a historical fluke, made possible by the fact that the United States was the only country to emerge from that was with its industrial capacity intact,” (McClelland 550). That America is over, and it is time to start looking towards what the country must evolve into. That is where the issue of income inequality comes into play. We must look at its root causes, and change the system to dampen or remove those causes. More specifically, we must look at the increase in overall income of the top earners of society, the shrinking of the middle class, and the role of government in the economy.
It is no surprise that “...the top 10 percent of

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