Urban Inequality

Introduction. For quite a while in areas all around the world, there has been an income gap between the richest five percent and the poorest twenty percent of the country. However, in NYC the income gap between the two classes over the past twenty years has increased greatly. So to find a solution for the inequality issue I posed the question: What are the causes and effects of the income gap in New York City over the last twenty years?

The movie "Roger and Me" by Michael Moore is a documentary about CEO Roger Smith's takeover of General Motors in the late 1980's that led to the economic decline of Flint, Michigan. Michael Moore being from Flint, Michigan returned to his hometown after a failed job attempt in San Francisco, only to see it decline and wanted to answers. He started on to his interviewing journey with citizens of Flint, lobbyists, hometown celebrities and many others to try and get to the Chairman of GM Roger Smith. In Flint, the automotive industry was the backbone of the economy. After GM hired Roger Smith, they began to lay off up to 30,000 workers in the area. Moore documents the transition from prosperity to poverty in the city of Flint, Michigan. The series of events that happened in Flint, Michigan can be analyzed with sociological theories. The economic decline could have been because of one power decision or it could have been a negative causal relationship. In the film, Moore shortened Roger Smith’s plan: close 11 plants in the U.S and open 11 in Mexico paying workers only .70 cents/hour, use increased money intake to take over high tech firms and weapons manufacturers (where the money was), tell the union you’re broke so they’ll give you billions in wage

Last semester, one of my sociology professors showed us a documentary called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream. It 's a Canadian documentary that was released in 2004 and it even won a few awards.

In Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore, Robert H. Frank paints a picture to the reader about the struggles of pier pressure. For example: an upper-classmen chooses to buy a big house and fancy clothing. This acts as a “frame of reference” to the changes and norms of the society. If he spends money on something nice, a middle-classmen will then go and decide to do the same thing, and then a lower-classmen…all the way down the social hierarchy. This is what he calls an “expenditure cascade.” Robert relates this with a person’s downfalls, which can be traced due to lower income inequality. Income inequality basically means that in a given quantity, the dispersion of income is underlined by the gap between individuals and or households with

Roger and Me is a documentary that was made in 1989 and it was a Michael Moore film. The film focused on the General Motors (GM) layoffs that happened in Flint Michigan, Michaels home town, in the late 1980’s. The CEO, Roger Smith, decided to layoff over 30,000 people and to close down the GM factory that is in Flint. Smiths new plan after closing the factory is to open one down in Mexico and to hire people in Mexico because the labor cost would be a significant decrease. When Moore found out about the layoffs he wanted to find out more about it and to also speak with Roger Smith. Many of the people of Flint were very angry with Smith. There was a production of people who wanted to interview and talk with Smith and also the people who were laid off and also the people who just lived in the town of Flint.

Income inequality has a direct relationship with middle class Americans’ destructive and poor lifestyle. In the poor areas of South Chicago, the black communities suffer “higher crime rates, poor performance in school, and family management,” said Robert Sampson, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. Similarly, Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson found “patterns of racial exclusion” and “concentrated poverty” among the middle-class Americans in South Chicago “are much more likely to be exposed to crime and other manifestations of social dislocation and social problems…” Poor minority groups are not only affected by destructive and poor lifestyle due to income inequality but also, poor whites are affected. Poor

In any given population, there is a difference between what people within the population earn. The uneven distribution of income in any given population is income inequality. In order for there to be income, there has to be several sources of income. These sources of income may be combinational or independent per person receiving the income. Income may result from wages, rent, bank account interests, salaries or even profits made in business transactions ( Stiglitz, 2012).

The barriers that separate men have existed for centuries. Race, class, status, these are all ideas that have created a divide among humans. This divide creates competition and tension. Throughout the history of the legal system, justice has been used to validate slavery and other forms of racial inequality. Our system now has changed, but the basic concept has remained the same. According to one study, the judicial system was invented by whites to protect whites and keep people of color at bay (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2017, p1). This idea of preserving a one superior racial system resulted in a bias still existent today.

Inequality is not favorable in society. There is inequality in many aspects of our society, such as race, and gender. The main inequality we look at is income inequality in the United States. The one percent of the population control a vast majority of the United States currency. The Gini coefficient has been increasing ever since the Industrial Revolution, a period where education, manufacturing, and economics has shown growth. However, income inequality has increased in the Industrial Revolution. There are many events, and causes that have led to the rise of income equality in the United States.

Living in a peaceful world would mean that no one (and I mean NO ONE) would go hungry or be without basic medical care; denying individuals access to food, clean water and basic medical care is both in-humane as well as ignorant. The inhumanity of denying food to individuals who cannot by no fault of their own feed themselves when we have supermarkets, refrigerators, and pantries over flowing a bounty of food. Turning away from a person who is hungry, while the US as a nations spends more on its household pets than it does in donations to local food bangs demonstrates ignorance of our understanding that perhaps the stem of violence both here and overseas could be stymied if we’d only offered not only bags of rice but a safe place to grow

In recent years and over the course of the past fifty year history dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, the city of Chicago has been a center stage for violence, protest, racial clash, and inevitably segregation. Since the days that Martin Luther King Jr. led marches in some of Chicago’s most historic moments, the city’s sizable black population has hardly witnessed an upturn in their quest for equality. In fact, many studies have identified a pattern of poverty, violence, bias, and pre-mature mortality. All of which have led to the systematic oppression of an entire population in one of the nation’s largest cities. As a result, over the course of the past fifty years in Chicago, poverty has expanded, neighborhoods have become

Income inequality is growing in the United States, and the problem is much worse than most people believe. For children, growing up poor hinders brain development and leads to poorer performance in schools, according to a study published this week in JAMA Pediatrics.

People can not put on the news without seeing at least one story about social inequality or injustice, if everyone knows about these inequities why are they not being solved? Inequities are not limited to America, social inequity is a global problem making it extremely important to raise awareness of the topic. Inequities such as racism and sexism impact teenagers in America, but to counteract this persecution authors can use various genres of literature to promote tolerance and reduce the effects of inequities. Racism and sexism violates people’s rights in schools, the workplace, and almost every place in the world. Through the words of authors, society can learn the harmful effects of these inequities, and learn how

In Jeff Ferrell’s “Tearing Down the Streets Adventures in Urban Anarchy”, it introduced themes of image of the city, rights to the city, and given different examples of anarchist activities in urban environments. In my opinion, I enjoyed the book’s narratives on urban cities trying to clean the streets of unwanted acts and people; along with the collective movements attempting to retake the open space and streets. However, Ferrell’s actions in his daily life to retake space are questionable. Ferrell considers cities are changing their images by undergoing “Disneyfication” (Ferrell, 2001, p. 8) with unnecessary security, planned entertainment and making it ‘beautiful’. Ultimately, it forces authorities to restrict and isolate unwanted acts

Income inequality has been a major issue in American history. There are many different factors that contribute to inequality. These include education, wealth, discrimination, ability, and monopoly power.