Poverty Vs Poverty

Post the economic crisis in America and the recession during the years of 2008 and 2009, the country saw a great increase in poverty and worsening of living conditions of Americans. Currently, almost 50 million of fellow Americans are living in extremely bad conditions under the poverty line which means earning less than $11490 for a single person or $23550 for a family of four people. That’s about 1 in every 6 people in this country are living under poverty. A person living in this country on minimum wage which is $7.25 an hour also cannot pull himself out of poverty even after working 40 hours a week.

The view that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer has been heard repeatedly in reference to America’s income inequality. Though ironic, it comes as no surprise that America, a continent that easily trumps other countries in terms of wealth would be affected by the issue of poverty at such high levels. While much has said regarding the poverty levels, many economists, educators and scholars feel that the income inequality in America may be the reason why it is difficult to live and maintain a middle class lifestyle or to rise out of poverty into the middle class in the current economic state. With this in mind, the only way America, has a chance of lessening or eliminating poverty altogether is by understanding how it exists.

In today’s capitalist economy, where economic transactions and business in general is centered on self-interest, there is a natural tendency for some people to make more than others. That is the basis for the “American Dream,” where people, if they worked hard, could make money proportional to their effort. However, what happens when this natural occurrence grows disproportional in its allocation of wealth within a society? The resulting issue becomes income inequality. Where a small portion of the population, own the majority of the wealth and the majority of the population own only a fraction of what the rich own. This prominent issue has always been the subject of social tension

In all economies, in all times, and in all places, there has been inequality. Sometimes it has been in the form of forced and immobile classes and sometimes the disparities have been the result of forces outside of the population’s control. There have been those who conquered and those who were conquered. History documents early civilizations organizing class systems within each new civilization. It is human nature to organize in this way. There have always been those who have more and those who have less. Yet, that does not make it okay for those suffering in our lower classes. It does not make it okay for those forced into this lower class who are unable to rise above it. The attitude toward those in the lower classes can be improved upon. There are many who believe that there are “plenty of jobs available for poor people, that government programs breed dependency and that most poor people would prefer to stay on welfare” (Lauter). The standard of living needs to be raised so that the impoverished people in America continue to be richer than those

Poverty and income inequality are clearly widespread in avoidable in an economic system that caters to the wealthy and controls how the wealth is produced and distributed. We claim to want a society free of poor people. The system that people participate in and how they participate in the system has to change but the elephant in the room is how will this change

In the 21st century, the American media has portrayed the wealth inequality in the United States in a very black and white way. Poverty has become an ongoing problem and has accelerated the appalling wealth divide. In 2010, the poverty rate in the U.S. reached fifteen percent which was the highest it had reached in almost two decades. Obligations to providing equality and adequate living conditions have been removed; there is no more “moral code or ethical principle” that can be used to contradict this growing American atrocity. On one side of the spectrum there is the upper class, the esteemed one percent of the social hierarchy in our country; however, on the other side there is the desolate and extreme poor that are constantly being used

Homelessness is an epidemic problem that faces many American’s and families across the United States, especially in Detroit. You may see homeless people sleeping in the underpasses of freeways or walking and sitting on street corners or holding up a sign asking for some support for their next meal. We all have seen homeless individuals and thought it was not our problem for their circumstances or maybe had a belief he/she was lying about their situation. Many of us make a choice to give money or buy food, but there are others who make a choice to ignore or overlook the homeless population. Society has placed a stigma and label the homeless population labeling them destitute by choice, but for many homelessness has become a way of life.

Economic inequality reigns as a massive divide in the United States of America. Many active policies cause people to occupy an economic level which is meant to benefit those above them. With that said, there have been many efforts taken in hopes of reducing the current levels of economic inequality, but with these efforts, money and wealth will have to be taken from the rich to give to the poorer. This is where the problem lies with wealth inequality – many have to sacrifice for those whom they presume to be unworthy of benefiting from their fortunes. Education, wealth, race, and power all play a role as to why action will not be taken to reduce the current levels of inequality in America.

Wealthier individuals often have more power than the poor and are sometimes even able to maintain their wealth at the cost of the poor. Inequality of income is often one of the most significant reasons for the disparity within classes socially and one of the most important reasons that poverty is often intergenerational. Particularly in this tumultuous political time of divisiveness, people who are willing and able to make changes to the status quo in meaningful ways are of the utmost importance. Closing the gap in wealth is one of the most essential ways to ensure that inequality is addressed and that the other social issues surrounding this gap will be lessened and lessened until it hopefully eventually disappears. Change-makers are more important than ever and those groups and nations as well as individuals with power that are willing to be honest with themselves and

Dickens focuses in on one particular aristocrat, Monseigneur, and begins following his life. We are first introduced to Monseigneur after he runs over a child in his carriage and proceeds to exclaim, “ “it is extraordinary to me, [...] that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is forever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses,” (pg. 111). Monseigneur is blatantly stating that lower class folk have no worth and they only get in people’s way. Dickens emphasizes that Monseigneur lacks compunction and is insensate when he states, “you [are] forever in the way,” and “you people cannot take care of yourselves.” Monseigneur is careless about where he is going and how his actions affect others, so he consequently blames everything on everybody but himself. Here, we bear witness to the outrageous and mean attitude of French aristocracy towards lower classes of society. This event immediately sets the stage for some sort of revenge or rebellion to take place in an attempt to rid society of French hierarchy. The idea that the aristocrats are corrupt is further developed when we learn that, “Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way—tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the

Humans are never born equal. These individuals are birthed into the same species, and the government fills the heads of these people that every man has the same basic rights as another, yet it has become increasingly apparent that all sentient beings are born into different situations, with a bias to fit that situation. As a result, some see this wealth gap, and believe that taking wealth from the rich and equally distributing it among the poor would fix the issue. However, Equal wealth distribution will be the catalyst of rapid deterioration in the overall well-being of the economy of a nation, by virtue of past failures in government forms which attempt to close the wage gap, accompanied by the actuality that product payment is based on supply

Inequality plagues every nation in the modern world. Often times, inequality is addressed by governments in an attempt to ease the tensions between the upper and lower classes, by distributing wealth more fairly. However, their attempts do not always work; unhappiness and discontent begin to appear. Nations, however, must realize that equality cannot be forced, as it is entirely too utopian and isn’t desirable or ideal, since it does not inspire growth or development in the people of a nation. Forced equality is a direct cause of inequality and all of the factors that go along with it, such as social stagnation, constant conflict between social classes, and an unfair nation.

In the United States today, inequality in wealth is everywhere. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman are two economists who have done multiple studies to attempt to measure the amount of inequality in today’s society. What they found is this: “In America, the wealthiest 160,000 families own as much wealth as the poorest 145 million families, and that wealth is about 10 times as unequal as income,” (Matthews). This is a particularly devastating statistic, considering how many families in America are dealing with poverty, and yet those few families in the top one percent nearly control the economy. When so many people are struggling just to get by in today’s economy, it becomes crucial for something to be done. In communities, small actions can be taken to improve the economy locally, and little by little the economy can be rebuilt into something that can help everyone, and exclude no one.

Poverty for centuries has been a very severe issue that has troubled many nations while impeding economic developments and progress. Poverty stricken countries are majorly concentrated in the continents of Africa and Asia. Continents like the Americas and Europe have globally been recognized as been wealthier yet still many parts of these ostensible countries face massive cases of poverty. Most at times, countries with high populations owing to high birth rates face the most cases of poverty. The definition of poverty can be boundless in the sense that poverty entails so many subsections as it sometimes gets complicated to group everything under one umbrella. Society tends to focus more on the tangible aspects of poverty because many people associate poverty with lacking money and it makes sense because poverty in terms of lacking money is a major problem affecting almost every country in the world. Even though it is debatable that poverty can be physical, intellectual, spiritual and even emotional, it is best to talk about the lack of money and economic developments in this essay. With reference to the oxford English Dictionary, poverty is state of being extremely poor and the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount. Reflecting on this definition given, I deduced that malnutrition and hunger can define poverty. In the light of this, I think poverty is lacking a comfortable place of shelter, being ill and not having access to a better

Poverty traps are economic anomalies that continually reinforce poverty within a country’s, or multiple countries’, economies. There are many different types of poverty traps such as savings traps, “big push” models, nutritional traps, behavioral traps, geographic traps, etc. that all affect an economy in different ways. Not only can poverty be enforced through these traps, but also through the way an economy is run or the moralities of the government. According to Mark Koyama (2015), poverty traps are important due to more than 3 billion people, nearly half the world’s population, living on less than $2.50 per day, and about 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty on just $1.25 per day. Among these 3 billion some people living in poverty, one billion of them are children of which thousands are dying daily. It is necessary to study these different poverty traps in order to begin to decrease the distressingly high percentages of people living in poverty.