Income Inequality And Globalization

In Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore, Robert H. Frank paints a picture to the reader about the struggles of pier pressure. For example: an upper-classmen chooses to buy a big house and fancy clothing. This acts as a “frame of reference” to the changes and norms of the society. If he spends money on something nice, a middle-classmen will then go and decide to do the same thing, and then a lower-classmen…all the way down the social hierarchy. This is what he calls an “expenditure cascade.” Robert relates this with a person’s downfalls, which can be traced due to lower income inequality. Income inequality basically means that in a given quantity, the dispersion of income is underlined by the gap between individuals and or households with

The issue of income inequality in the United States is complicated and does not have a definite answer. Income inequality can be measured in a few different ways. The first measurement for the income inequality in a country is to look at the percentages on households and group them into income categories, called distribution by income category. The second measurement for income inequality is called distribution by quintiles or fifths. This is when you divide the total number of people, households, families into five groups called quintiles to examine the percentage of total before tax income received by each quintile. Each quintile would then be ordered by income and households in the category.

The insurgents of globalization are exacerbating income inequality, within developing and developed nations. One of the most powerful country’s in the world the United States an Industrialized nation are allowing large corporations to seek maximize profits without regards for the local

Income Inequality is a major problem that has been going on in America for decades. Many people feel that it barely exists today, but those people are very uneducated and don’t really care about the huge problem in front of them the many people that feel that way are highly uneducated, and seem to not really care about which has been gradually increasing instead of decreasing. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done, only of course if the poor class of people decide to actually educate themselves and get a higher education. One says poor class, simply because that’s how they’re classified. There are five types of levels that Americans are classified as, and they are: Upper Class, Upper Middle Class, Middle Class, Working Class, Poor. The highest percentage of Americans fall in the Poor department, and it has been that way for decades, and will continue to be that way for decades to come.

Income inequality is increasingly becoming a significant concern for many countries around the world. The income difference between the highly-educated, skilled, wealthy class and the poor, low to mid-skilled workers is growing larger and larger. In fact, the incomes of the rich are increasing significantly, while the low skilled workers’ incomes have been declining (The Economist, “Wealth Without Workers”). According to The Economist, real median wages have been decreasing since 2000 in half of the member countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the United States, there was a 4% increase from 1980 to 2012 in the share of national income that was distributed to the top 0.01% (The Economist, “True Progressivism”). Canada is facing a similar problem of rising inequality.

In any given population, there is a difference between what people within the population earn. The uneven distribution of income in any given population is income inequality. In order for there to be income, there has to be several sources of income. These sources of income may be combinational or independent per person receiving the income. Income may result from wages, rent, bank account interests, salaries or even profits made in business transactions ( Stiglitz, 2012).

Not only is the American worker affected by globalization, but the countries where corporations are moving to, are naive about “the corporate greed.” This corporate greed needs to be under better control. Corporations strategically move production to countries with poverty or low-income wages in order to take advantage of the cheap labor and materials. These unsuspecting countries and workers have no idea as to the benefits and wages the corporations can produce and /or the hardships they can cause. This is

Globalization has done a lot over the past hundreds of years to influence income and wealth inequality in the United States. Once different nations started to trade goods and services with one another it was a whole new world. Trading with different states is one thing but trading all over the globe became a huge deal. It is the reason some people in the world are as wealthy as they are. Starting years ago during the industrial revolution up until now globalization has caused major changes. Starting back then people who owned small shops and then could trade and invest in larger manufacturing changed their lives. They then became some of the wealthy people during the industrial revolution then the people who used to be their equals now

In the modern world we live in, globalization creates inequality despite its significant role in our economy. Globalization is the integration among nations of political views, products, ideas, and cultures. Utilizing modern technologies, international trade are made possible among large corporations and individuals around the world. With these advanced technologies, these corporations are able to build factories around the world, expand their production, and supply the world populous with more consumer goods. Unfortunately, these pros come with a cost. Despite the amazing contributions that globalization has brought, these corporations have resorted into using cheap labor and regulate unequal rights for workers in the global scale.

Globalization has been a major contributing factor in rising income and wealth inequalities in the United States. All the better paying skilled labor jobs are now being outsourced to cut costs, and as a result we are left with the highly skilled jobs, or the low skilled jobs. The highly skilled jobs usually require a bachelor's degree, and with the rising costs of education, this limits many people's opportunities. With these jobs more in demand, and less people able to afford degrees, these wages are increasing. Conversely, the lower skilled jobs now have more people competing because some people's skills have been outsourced, and they cannot afford to attend college to retrain.This, along with the unskilled nature of the work, will keep these

The weakening of labour market institutions is one key cause of income inequality. The “structural reform paradigm” employed since the 1980s had the undesir¬able effect of reducing the ability of labour market institutions to moderate market inequality. Recent work by the IMF has reconfirmed this (see Figure 6). The research results “confirm that the decline in unionization is strongly asso¬ciated with the rise of income shares at the top” and goes on to say that this “explains about half of the 5 percentage point rise in the top 10 percent income share. Similarly, about half of the increase in the Gini of net income is driven by de-unionization.” (TUAC, 2015)

The world is awash in cash – US companies alone have US$2 trillion stashed in cash and the amount of cash in the G4 economies of the United States, the euro zone, Japan and Britain has expanded five-fold since 2008. The reason, lack of investment opportunities and low returns in all asset classes. Yet, an estimated 4.5 billion people at the base of the pyramid are underserved in healthcare, education, sanitation, financial services, technology, transportation etc. Businesses aimed at serving this segment of the population would create significant social impact and may also get many of the sluggish economies moving again as many pockets at the base of the pyramid remain outside the economic system and with little hope of joining the ranks of global consumers.

Supporters of globalization argue that it has the potential to make this world a better place to live in and solve some of the deep-seated problems like unemployment and poverty. But the opponents general complaint about globalization is that it has made the rich richer while making the non-rich poorer. “It is wonderful for managers, owners and investors, but hell on workers and nature.”

If businesses don’t export jobs overseas, they need to find new ways to remain competitive in the global markets. This can come in the form of pay cuts for employees, which also harms the economy since there is less disposable income (businessweek.com). Again Mourdoukoutas (2011) offers his support by stating globalization can lead communities to escape the unemployment trap by devaluating currency and raising trade barriers. China currently employs the currency devaluating tactic to maintain their edge in American markets. This makes American products more expensive to obtain in China, as opposed to their inferior, cheaper products. This causes American based businesses to seek new creative ways to lower production costs to remain competitive in Chinese markets.

Globalization can be seen as a major threat for manufacturing jobs in the developed world, however, can also be a benefit for developing world citizens who receive thousands of jobs a year although they don’t receive a high salary. Maurice Allais, a French economist states that this unemployment, of course, has only been able to develop because of the existence of low salaries and insufficient flexibility in the labor market (April 10th, 1999). This indicates that globalization has jeopardized Western countries jobs because companies are moving their establishments to developing countries where they don’t need to pay employees as much and where land is cheaper so overall businesses benefit from this. Also, employees in the developed world are at risk of becoming redundant as they are susceptible to face pay cuts in jobs. Employees are less skilled in the developing world as they don’t receive the benefit of an education like developed countries do. So a company may want to build factories in these countries because environmental laws aren’t as strict. Establishments in these areas provides promising jobs for the local people and allows them to learn new skills, however they are set on minimum wage which in developed world countries, this would not be enough to live on, wherein third world countries this is still a low amount so this is not enough to bring them out of poverty meaning that the only one who benefits from this is the company. Although there have been several arguments against exploitation and oppression, the majority of developing countries do not have existing laws which take minimum wage