The Growth Of The Middle Class

Global discourse around the issue of growing inequality and specifically inequality of opportunity has come to the fore in recent years driven by violent public action witnessed in the spring of 2011. A little southern town in Tunisia known as Sidi Bouzoid in December 2010 took global centre stage in the push for economic emancipation. Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor vented his frustration with the local corrupt municipality by setting himself ablaze which inadvertently sparked a series of protests across the Arab world. Enter the ‘Arab Spring’ led by disenfranchised youth. Researchers in attempts to diagnose the inspiration for the ensuing revolutions hypothesised stark inequality between economic and political elites and the larger population, as the fuel behind the flame.

Wage is a topic that is constantly covered in the media. One big issue is the growing wage gap between the middle class and the upper class. While minimum wage increases are considered a good method to reduce income inequality, they are controversial since many business owners and economists argue that they increase the unemployment rate.

It is a fact that in the US, 50 percent of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. But is it really such an unfortunate reality that we would need a system other capitalism to stem the tide of upward movement of wealth distribution. In my view, what is wrong is not the 1 percent's hold on 50 percent of wealth but the resulting decline in middle class that is now a major problem for the US.

Every facet in the way of life was affected by the Market Revolution, stopped the

In the reading of Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up, it is very true about the findings about the middle class. Honestly, 35,000 to 100,000 in today’s money are a huge gap differences. This is where now they started calling some individuals upper middle class. The article also, does a great job talking about Social Security. When was brings in Social Security, can a individual who was making 700 every week at Shoprite (which is middle class), at age 64, then retire a 66, and collect Social Security, and only get a paycheck for 600 every week, did they just get moved to lower class? In the reading The Shrinking American Middle Class says age is a big factor, as well as race, family status, and education.

The American Dream is the national ethos that people’s lives would better and more abundant with many opportunities. Although the “American Dream” is still possible, many minorities, a vast portion of people in low to middle class, are affected by the lack of social mobility. As a result, minorities fail to have a sense of the realization of the American Dream because of the fewer advantage and more problems we have to endure. Some advantages comes from the upper class and how they are fortunate to be wealthy to obtain good education and wealth. Ultimately, minorities are suffering within our society because we face intersectionality issues, having fewer opportunities, and are often struggling The article by Steve Lopez, “ LA’s Crisis:

The current widening income inequality is due to the substantial income disparity between the top and bottom workers in the U.S. economy. General decline in wage endangered the standard of living for low income family as they struggle with a tightened budget. In order to battle income inequality, policy makers must raise the income of the working poor by expanding tax credit program and increase its effectiveness through major modification.

Today increasingly American are trying to get better jobs to have and give a better quality for them and their families. That is why poor people go to college or schools to get skills that qualify them to do so to improve their conditions of life. And then changing status socio-economic from poor to middle class. As indicated by the meanings of US social classes announced in 2014 the working-class wage run from 30,000 to 350,000 yearly being separated in lower, middle, and upper working class individually that relate to a 78.5 of the populace. Despite what many would state that the white-collar class is vanishing.It is somewhat unsure if yes or no and that could be wrangled as demonstrated by everybody: The American, working class, is winning because there are components that show the opposite is guessing(Harsanyi)such as more income, better quality of life and gaining economy.

Today in America, there is a specific class of people who are slowly dwindling away into nonexistence. These people had a dream, the American Dream, they dreamed of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For some people, this dream was broken down into having a white picket fence with 2.5 kids, a house, and a car. However, today these people are not dreaming they are hoping; hoping to get through another day by making ends meet. These people—which are the core pillar holding up the American Dream—are a part of the middle class Americans. The middle class in America has been on a quick decline in recent years; in order to restore the middle class America will have to reshape our economic structure by lowering the deficit on the middle

“Approximately 13 percent of the American population- that is, nearly, of every eight people in this country- live below the official poverty line,” (Mantsios 179). I define being wealthy as having an immense amount of money, enough to not be stressed about paying bills.

For decades now, our political and economic policy have been constructed around one idea: that if taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down. This idea has been the backbone of Republican trickle-down Reagan-economics and has been scarcely challenged by Democrats. America’s economy as well as the global economy as a whole are facing extreme income inequality and this idea has only widened the gap. Our political system has been flooded with the money of the rich through lobbyists or super PACs, who then are the ones receiving the tax cuts and are garnering political favors by doing so, effectively moving us farther from a free and fair democracy, but rather towards oligarchy. The middle class has been fading away due to stagnating

According to Gregory Mantsios many American people believed that the classes in the United States were irrelevant, that they believed we reside(ed) in a middle class nation, that we were all getting richer together, and that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in life. But what many believed, was far from the truth. In reality the middle class of the United States receives a very small amount of the nation 's wealth, and sixty percent of America 's population receives less than 6 percent of the nation 's wealth, while the top 1 percent of the American population receives 34 percent of the total national wealth. In the article Class in America ( 2009), written by Gregory Mantsios informs us that there are some hu

The Industrial Revolution began in England around the 1780’s. It was mainly based on the cotton industry and subsequently many of the inventions that came out of this period were mainly for producing and manufacturing cotton. Another stage of the Industrial Revolution was based on inventions. This is when most of the luxury goods were produced for the public. The Industrial Revolution is seen by scholars, as noted in A History of Western Society, as basically moderate and evolutionary. Even though the Industrial Revolution was almost inevitable many people took advantage of the new developments that came about and raised their standards of living because of the goods that were previously

Consumerism often causes people to identify with a product or brand on a personal level. Certain products have come to represent different levels of society, with swankier products like muscle cars indicating high class and such products as generic “store brand” shampoo indicating low class. People feel that they have relationships with their favorite brands and products and define themselves by what they buy and own. The mass production of cheap products uses precious fossil fuels at an alarming rate. This has an obvious negative impact on the environment.

These economic strategies result in environmental consequences such as the increasing carbon emission in the environment (Schmuck and Schultz 7). Also, the exploitation of natural resources enables us to elevate our current consumption level by creating higher levels of purchasing capacity. Ever increasing levels of meat based diets and automobile-centered transportation contribute to the further intensification of the exploitation process (Schmuck and Schultz 7). The material values that have become the norm in the U.S are further distributed to less industrialized countries through advertising leading to a global trend in