Personal Narrative: The Growing Disparity Of Wealth In America

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

Poverty is everywhere in America, and there will always be poverty. Nobody has found a solution to it. If you live in a city you will probably see it every day. A lot of times people do not have a

Poverty has always been with us from beggars outside the gates of Jerusalem to the mentally ill homeless woman in the park. America is known for our huge difference in culture and class. This is due partly to the dynamics behind the political decisions of this country. The president himself admits that America is more unequal than it’s been since the great depression and many of his own supporters say he has failed. America now has, by many standards, the lowest social mobility of all of the high-end countries, meaning that a child born into poverty is likely to grow up as a poor adult. This is surprising for a country that not only prides itself as being a middle class society, but as the society where anyone can make it and where

In other words, America has a widening gap between its wealthy and poor. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, there is a problem emerging: the disappearance of the middle class. Low-wage workers continue to fall behind those who make higher wages, and this only widens the gap between the two. There has been an economic boom in the United States, which has made the country more prosperous than it has ever been. That prosperity does not reach all people; it seems to only favor the rich. Rising economic segregation has taken away many opportunities for the poor to rise in America today. The poor may find that the economic boom has increased their income; however, as their income increase so does the prices they must for their living expenses (Dreier, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom 19).

Poverty affects millions of people living in the united states, poverty is measured by the amount of money needed to support the basic needs of a house hold. Poverty is measured by the SSA low-cost food budget assuming 1/3 of the budget is spent on food. The people with the highest percentage of poverty is shown to be Hispanic female households with no spouse present. The vast majority of people in poverty are women and children but in recent years the numbers of women considered poor have raised. Percentage rate is the percentage of poor in different counties. Looking at graph that maps Americas diversity shows that the highest poverty rate is in the South the Midwest has the least. I would assume that has to do with the weather, warmer weather

"How Economic Inequality Harms Societies." Richard Wilkinson:. TED Talks, July 2011. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Homelessness in America has gone un-noticed for so long. For America to be the “land of opportunity” there is a large amount of people who have been deprived of what they were promised. There is so much this country offers, but at the same time there are so many qualifications. Not everyone can meet these standards that are sometimes required. This results in homelessness and poverty. Homelessness has become a hidden aspect in life. The government wants people to continue seeing America’s beauty. In order for that to be successful they would have to get rid of the flaws.

The difference of income and workers conditions has been a timeless conflict present throughout history of the United States. In the past workers were faced with deadly work conditions and around the clock hours for little pay. These unjust conditions dramatically increased during the Industrial Revolutions that the United States experienced in the nineteenth century. The latter period of industrialization produced the organization of the first labor unions in the Country, namely the Knights of Labor established in 1869 and the American Federation of Labor established in 1886. In present day countless unions exist, and are a lot less needed than they were in the early industrial days of the United States (Brinkley, 2012).

Homelessness and poverty are no strangers to any United States citizen. On any day you are almost guaranteed to see a homeless person, whether it be a trip to a local Walmart, or a coffee shop in the city, the poverty-stricken are everywhere and completely unavoidable. In the United States there are some sobering statistics on poverty and homelessness. According to an article by Alana Semuels entitled “ The Resurrection of American Slums” the author talks about poverty in the United States. “The number of people living in high-poverty areas . . . nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013, to 13.8 million from 7.2 million” (Semuels, Par 2, 2015). When people think of homeless people they think drug-addict, or mentally insane. What they don't think

In the video, Wealth Inequality in America, there were many things that caught my attention the second time around that i had not understood the first time listening to it. When they had surveyed 5,000 people I was not surprised to see that the ideal for most Americans would be a somewhat even distribution of wealth among the various groups. What I was most shocked about was what most American think about the distribution of wealth is not even close to what the reality has to hold. The fact that lowest 20 - 30 percent don't even register as sharing in the wealth of America as they are behind the poverty line. They are living of “pocket change”. The top 1 percent didn't even shock me as much as how the middle class did.

The crowd began filing into Sister Jean’s soup kitchen on Pacific Ave. in Atlantic City, N.J. well before lunch was to be served, while directly across the street, people with money to burn strolled into Donald Trump’s massive and garish Taj Mahal casino.

Money is what makes the world go around. From day one, people are assimilated with the idea: to consume, one must spend a medium sufficient enough to receive an object that is desired. Every country has that medium. The Europeans have the Euro, the Japanese have the Yen, Chile has the Peso, and the United States has the Dollar. However, this idea of “getting and spending” has done more harm than good in specific countries. Particularly, in the United States there has been a growing issue of income inequality. The textbook definition of income inequality states: the difference between individuals or populations in the distribution of their assets, wealth, or income. The political problem itself, nevertheless, is deeper and

Thanks for sharing Lisa! Great point about the homeless population. It is a tough call. I enjoyed reading the article “Donors Who Lavish Money on Elite Institutions Only Exacerbate the Wealth Gap”. Especially agreeing with the sentence: “America’s multimillionaires neglect the institutions that serve poor and working-class students, community colleges, public universities, and smaller non-elite institutions.”

We as Americans are extremely lucky. We live in a big country with many resources and almost all the luxuries we ever wanted. On the flip side, in America there are also many people who do not have these privileges. The lower class is a struggling class. For many years, people have been trying to pull themselves up from the lower class and the majority does not succeed. Childhood poverty is a large problem in the U.S. It is said that the poorest people in the United States are the children of the lower class. Childhood poverty could lead to a number of problems such as hunger, violence, physical and mental disabilities, educational problems, homelessness, family stress, sickness, and too-early parenthood. The sad truth is that

The answer to poverty is simple. We need to change our education system, so that kids want to go to school. People ask why do kids ditch so much? Why are kids out joining gangs and not staying in school learning? Why are kids committing crimes of drug and violence? It’s a simple answer that we must all face. Our education system is not educating our young; it’s turning them into parrots. Kids are dreading going to school because it’s all tests and notes. Our education system lost its hands on teaching. We need to reframe the education system and make it one kids want to be apart of, not one they want to run from. We need to continue to educate ourselves after high school, but we cant do those if we don’t learn how to educate our selves while we are in school. We need to open up new jobs that are with this time period and get rid of the old. We are no longer in a state of get a job, and work until you retire. Jobs come and go, and we need to educate our kids to understand this, so they will continue to learn after they are out of school, even past a college level.