Income Inequality In The United States

James Madison once stated inequality of the rich and poor predicament to be “evil” and believed that the government should avoid an “immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches” (Johnston, 2016). As one of the founding fathers of our nation, James Madison had a concern about the separation between the rich and the poor. He felt the government should do what it could to avoid the separation, which one can infer that he meant for the government to tax the rich by a greater percentage, thus reducing the financial burden on the poor. A rift has always been present between the rich and the poor throughout history. Depending upon the job, the working class may or may not make enough to support a family. At this point, the

Income Inequality in America is a problem that’s been going on for decades, and many feel that it hardly exists, the many people that feel that way are highly uneducated, and seem to not really care about this tremendous problem that in one’s eyes really has no end in the near future, in fact it has been gradually rising and one feels that it’s just not fair. 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: 1. Upper Class, 2. Upper Middle Class, 3. Middle Class, 4. Working Class, 5. Poor.

According to Inequality.org, “We equate wealth with ‘net worth,’ the sum total of your assets minus liabilities. Assets can include everything from an owned personal residence and cash in savings accounts to investments in stocks/bonds, real estate, and retirement accounts. Liabilities cover what a household owes: a car loan, credit card balance, student loan, mortgage, or any other bill yet to be paid. In the United States, wealth inequality runs even more pronounced than income inequality” (Wealth). Wealth disparity affects everyone in America. When the top twenty percent of earners in America take over fifty percent of total earnings in any given year, It can be see as very unfair by anyone who is in the middle class and especially the lower class of citizens in the U.S. It is safe to say that both sides of the political world (Republicans and Democrats) are equally worried about how economic inequality will affect their children and future generations. No matter who you ask, rich or poor, and whatever their opinion on the shape of economic distribution in America is, they most likely have a unrealistic sense of the state it is actually in.

Wealth inequality in the United States has grown tremendously since 1970. The United States continuously reveals higher rates of inequality as a result of perpetual support for free market capitalism. The high rates of wealth inequality cause the growing financial crisis to persist, lower socio-economic mobility, increase national poverty, and have adverse effects on health and well being.

Today in America, income and wealth inequality has continued to grow at an unsettling pace. The rich continue to get richer, while the number of people categorized as lower class grows exponentially. As Joseph Stiglitz has explained, many theories that are seen as strongly Republican, such as the trickle-down effect, has caused the rich to take money from the poor, and as a result the lower class grows and the middle class disintegrates. The top 1 percent of America’s households currently holds 30 percent of America’s economy, which is much more than other first-world countries and helps to emphasize the extremity of inequality currently in America today. This increased inequality has in turn caused America to become a much more divided society; those born in poverty typically stay in poverty, with little to no chance of self-improvement due to a lack of education provided in their areas. In contrast, those that are born wealthy typically go to better schools, have better health care, and are all but spoon fed information on how to remain wealthy. These two sides of society almost never cross, and this causes the country to be more divided than ever. In order to limit this inequality, drastic changes must be made, such as large corporations paying their fair share of taxes and giving back to the lower class, and minimum wage should be raised. If everyone in America works together, we can raise social mobility and re-unite what has become an increasingly divided country.

The issue of income inequality is a reoccurring theme in Maria Konnikova’s article “America’s Surprising Views on Income Inequality” as well as Barbara Ehrenreich’s memoir Nickel and Dimed. To commence, Konnikova writes about the rapid growing gap between the rich and the poor. In particular, she elucidates, “Income inequality has grown by record amounts since the 2008 recession: between 2009 and 2012, incomes for the top one per cent of the population rose by more than thirty per cent, while those for the rest of the country-the bottom ninety-nine per cent-increased by less than half of one per cent” (Konnikova 1). Clearly, it is difficult for low-class individuals to make enough money to support themselves and their families. Furthermore,

Furthermore, the equality of opportunities as one of the foundations of the American dream turned into evident inequality. “The lion’s share of economic growth in American over the past thirty years has gone to a small, wealthy minority, to such an extent that it’s unclear whether the typical family has benefited at all from technological progress and the rising productivity it brings” (Krugman 586). Income inequality has been steadily growing since 2008 when the global financial crisis erupted. Moreover, the gap in prosperity between the group of Americans with high income and all the others had never been such extreme as it is now. Thus, not everyone has the opportunity to become wealthy through hard work. The increase in socioeconomic inequalities,

The final three decaded of the 19th century spanned the Gilded Age; one of the most contentious and volatile periods in American history. It has been portrayed as a period of greed and corruption, of brutal industrial competition and harsh exploitation of labour. Sounds familiar? Wealth inequality refers to the one sided distribution of financdial assets among U.S. residents.

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.

Wealth in the United States is generally thought to be distributed fairly as the highest earners have a higher percentage of wealth. Although this common notion is technically correct, the wealth is not spread as fairly as people might believe. The United States uses a free market, capitalistic economy, which entails wealth inequality. However, the amount of wealth inequality depends on how the government limits the wealthy. Interestingly enough, the government does not have regulations to distribute the wealth more fairly as the top 1% of earners in the United States own about 40% of the financial wealth in the country and the bottom 80% of earners own a measly 4.7%. Astonishingly, the financial wealth for the top 20% increased from 1983 to 2010 meaning the wealth became more concentrated at the higher socioeconomic tiers as time passed. These economic inequalities benefited the wealthy as they gained political powers, controlled a large portion of the economic market, and used capitalism to manipulate the public’s perspective of the wealth distribution in the United States. While wealth inequality is a result of capitalism, extremely wealthy people use their wealth to exercise political power,but the average person does not understand that this is a corrupt method of crippling the economy in favor of the ultra wealthy.

Wealth inequality is rooted in the American idea of capitalism because capitalism is creating a name for yourself and making the most money you can, capitalism also includes the fact you can do whatever you want with the money you acquired. Krugman talks about how capitalism created wealth inequality when he says, “…‘capitalism,' in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties…” (Krugman). If generations ago your family was one of the first families in America and became exceedingly rich off of trade or land you probably still have a large majority of their money. Because we live in a capitalistic world people can choose to spend every single penny they have, or give their money

Twenty years into democracy, the high poverty rates of the post-Apartheid government is an indication of the high income inequality and also a clear view that improper policy formulations or planning. The ANC at some point forgot to create policies which could be consider or uplift ordinary citizens instead of benefiting those who are already better off, and to add up, the current situations encountered by the current leadership is an indication that they have not advanced to narrow down the income or economic inequality gap between the rich and the poor. However, let’s give them credit that at least there are few rich black people than before even though there still remain the dominance of white people on the economic platform of getting

Rashbrooke argues that inequality in society is often associated with the large income gap; as a result societies are categorised into certain ethnic groups, birthplaces and financial backgrounds. The significant difference between the rich and the poor has widened to a point where the humanity slowing becomes non-existence. The financial struggles of low-income families are more likely to be stress and affect their value of life. The responsibility to allow individuals to be aware of the rising inequality relies on each person in the country to make a change

Capitalism has been the central force behind the growth of the United States’ progressive economy. Within such advanced economic system the chances of economic disparity are significantly high. In fact, over the past three decades there has being a steady increase in unequal wealth distribution among the economic classes. To sustain the current unequal wealth distribution among the classes of the American population, there are numerous factors that influence and shape this trend. For some members of the population it is alarmingly disturbing to know that recent statistics have shown that, “In the US [alone] the wealthiest 1% of its population owns more than the bottom 95 %” (Gutman). As for the difference in economic wealth, it resulted

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