The Role Of Wealth In The United States

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.

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

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.

Americans today live in a distinctly unequal society. Inequality is now wider than it used to be in the last century, and the division in income, wages, and wealth are broader than they are in other developed economies of the world. Wealth inequality is the imbalance of wealth or income within a society, and it is one of the most vital economic challenge the US is facing today because the distribution of wealth is more dispersed, making the inequality in wealth distribution at its highest. While the matter has been discussed for many years, the actual income disparity in the U.S. has heightened and is now verging on an extreme gap that portends to impede long-term economic growth. The huge gap between the wealthy and poor is squeezing the U.S. economy, the wealth gap threatens economic growth by diminishing social mobility and producing a less-educated workforce who are not able to compete in the global economy. unrestrained level of income inequality causes political pressures, it discourages trade, investment, and hiring. The present level of income inequality in the U.S. is shrinking GDP growth, and the world's largest economy is struggling to recover from the Great Recession.

This also incorporates the idea that, “economics equates changes in the happiness of a society with changes in its purchasing power” (Layard, ix). In reality this is completely inaccurate, because quantity of things does not determine happiness. Success is merely a aspect of your status and opportunity, highly correlated with education, and employment status. In addition, some countries incorporate cultures that allow them to adapt and form habits of saving, innovation and hard work. Important differences among nations include the way institutions that regulate the economy and govern the way competition occurs. Most income inequality is between countries rather than within them, because money is distributed equally within every country yet the world's income distributed unequally. These dramatic differences in income levels, reflect both massive productive potential of the capitalist economic system and the uneven distribution of the results of the capitalist economic growth process. The growth and distribution are contingent on institutions that manage the processes of production and pattern of international exchange and

This first lecture gave us a close look into the unequal share of wealth and the factors that determine the wealth of individuals in the American society. One of the first factors that affect immensely the inequality in America is the obsessiveness of wanting to classify people and make them mark a box for their gender, race and class. Where men and whites have more privileges than any other person and are not only paid higher, but would most likely spend less time in prison for committing the same crime as an African American. The United states is so unequal that the top 1% of the population has 38.1% of the wealth and the bottom 40% which is a little less than half of the people living in America only have 0.2% of the wealth. And as if that statistic alone was not scary enough, we learn in this

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.

Wealth inequality is already shaping American politics and society, and has the dangerous potential to be the defining problem of the upcoming generation. A sizable cause for wealth inequality in America is a dire lack of

Imagine all the wealth in the United States. Roughly 84.9 trillion dollars, a pretty big number to wrap your mind around, right? Now imagine a third of that number concentrated into the hands of only 1% of the population of the United States. Not only would this seem unfair, but also immoral. Sadly, this unfortunate situation is a reality in the United States. Of all the political issues that face this nation, wealth inequality is often overlooked. This type of inequality is defined as the unequal distribution of assets among a population. The United States has one of the highest gaps between the upper and lower class out of other developed countries. Resolving this issue is a complicated

The wealth gap, or wealth inequality, is the uneven distribution of wealth within the United States. The gap in the United States is one of the largest gaps between the rich and the poor out of most developed countries. The wealth gap is impossible to ignore when “income inequality has been increasing steadily since the 1970s, and now has reached levels not seen since 1928.” (D. Desilver, 2013)

This paper provides insight, reasoning on the wealth disparity in the United States. After all, the social movements that have advocated over the years for equality. The wealth gap remains the same. It continues to be intertwined with politics and racism. Corporation increases the wealth disparity with their political agenda in mind. In the article, "Race, Homeownership, and wealth" by Shapiro Thomas defines wealth and income. Wealth defined as " the total value of a family’s financial resources minus all debts” (Shapiro, 2014); Income “represent the following resources earned in a particular time” (Shapiro, 2014). The two definitions have two very different meanings, but there often misused. Wealth is vague and can refer to many aspects of a person and families "total value" white income is only a particular value. Shapiro argues how “Income and wealth are often confused both in the public mind and in the social science literature” (Shapiro, 2014) Wealth and income carry an important purpose because it represents how society views a person who has wealth. An individual who obtains a significant amount of "money" it is believed because they earned a substantial amount of income. The reality is people who have wealth inherited because of their family. The majority of the one percenters are born into their wealth instead of working for it. The confusion of wealth and income creates a system that does not question individuals on the top of the social pyramid. The society

Often when asked about wealth, you tend to associate wealth with money. Although money is an aspect of wealth, that has not always been the case. In precolonial times, Indians had a much different view of wealth, in fact, money was nonexistent. This concept evolved once the Europeans settled the lands of America.

The distribution of wealth has been a major problem in modern society. The economic system is currently dividing the nation into a society of either being classified as rich or poor. The current system is causing individuals to consume more than what the Earth’s surface can reproduce. Furthermore, the allocation of goods and services are not fairly distributed worldwide. People are supposed to live as one and share goods and services equitably, but because of capitalism, many individuals live a life of self-interest and greed.

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

People all over the United States of America are facing the same problem, the wealth and income gap. In the United States one-tenth of one percent of the population owns as much as 90% of the population combined. To top it off 58% of all new income goes to that same 1%.(inequality.org) These problems have led to the wealthy getting wealthier, and the not so well off getting even more unwell off. To many people this is heartbreaking and is a problem in their everyday lives. People cannot afford to put food on the table, or they might even have to work multiple jobs. With my plan, we can easily solve this problem. No more will such a small portion of the population control all of the wealth in the country. Not only that, but we can take big money out of politics with this move, making it even more advantageous. I challenge you to find a simpler plan that can take care of such issues.