Wealth Gap 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

“A Harvard businessman interviewed 5,000 Americans on how they thought wealth in the United States was distributed” (Wealth Inequality video). They assumed that the wealth was distributed a little unfairly, with the top 20% owning most of the wealth in a low but even decline into poverty. Then he asked them what they thought would be the ideal distribution of wealth, 92% of them (at least 9/10) said that they thought an “ideal” distribution had the top 20% barely distinguishable from the middle class with the bottom percent not too worse off than the bottom 20% of the middle class. The reality of how wealth in the U.S. is budgeted looks something a like this: the top 20% owning well of half of all the nation’s wealth, the middle class is now as worse off as what citizens thought the bottom 20%

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

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 a research of Harvard professor 5000 people in America have opinion in how they think about the actual distribution of wealth in the U.S. and the 92 percent choose the ideal would be 20 percent and 20 percent the middle class. However, the reality is very far from it. “The poorest are not even registered, they are on the package change and the middle class is barely distinguished from the poor, even the rich between the 10 % and 20 % are worst off, only the top 10 % are better off. Only the one percent gets ten time higher and 40 % all the nation wealth. The bottom 80 % 8 out 10 people only has 7 % between them.1 % makes a quarter of the national income today”(you tube, 2015). All of this data reflex one of the truly perspectives in economy of the U.S. Not only people with low wages are the most affected, but also those who have good jobs and

There is no doubt that wealth inequality in America has been escalating quickly; the portion of total income earned by the top one percent has doubled since the beginning of the 1970’s. The wealthy are the main beneficiaries

From 1860- 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nations money. But the top 10% owned almost the other three fourths. According to Howard Zinn, the wealth gap started issues of working and living conditions for the working class. There was hope though, from 1870 to 1880 the average annual incomes rose $20, from 1870-1900, there was a gain of 53%! In a recent poll in 2007, the top 1% is earning roughly 24% of all the income. This shows an upward trend that is probably still going on today in 2015. In 2008, during the recovery time of the recession US had, the distribution of money was really thrown off but then as the economy got better, so did the amount the top 1% received. It rose consistently 5 years in a row which each time it increases, it widens the wealth gap. According to a study done by the American Sociological Review, the effects on the other end of the classes have been struggling and businesses are now figuring that they have a higher level of immigrated, less educated employees. Also for all parents, they see that the amount that earn and die with is going to show the progression of their offspring and how they are going to do. Most of the richest people of the world all have something to do with electronics and some technological

The wealth gap, or wealth inequality, is known as the unequal distribution of assets within a population. The wealth gap in America between the lower and upper classes is rising exponentially. This imbalance within the distribution of wealth leaves those who aren’t as financially stable to struggle to achieve the same standard of education, and overall living necessities, such as housing, as those who’s wealth persistently grows. The rising wealth gap plaguing American society is bringing those of the lower and middle classes to a set disadvantage point compared to those who have an affluent amount of money. Although this inequality is contributing to an emergent opportunity gap, a solution can arise through new legislation concerning financial

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).

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 wealth gap is the unequal distribution of assets. The problem is that in the U.S. that if you are born poor you generally stay poor and vice versa for a rich person. The real issue is the middle class, which is becoming stretched due to the gap. The gap which is becoming larger is taking the middle class to the breaking point. The middle class is slowly being absorbed into the wealthy or the poor.

I can assure you that if there were to be a vote in assessing whether the wealth distribution in America should be changed, the majority will abide for a change. In fact, most American’s don’t even realize the severity of the wealth distribution. When Americans were asked what they thought the wealth distribution in America was, ninety-two percent of Americans thought that the distribution was better than it actually is, where the rich were just about a hundred times better off than the poor when in reality the rich are about three hundred times better off than the poor and fifteen percent of the poor are below the poverty line

The film Inequality for All really opened my eyes to a huge and growing problem in the United States, and that is inequality. Our country functions best when it has a healthy and growing middle class. That hasn't been the case for the middle class in over 20 years. The problem that we have is that the rich keep getting richer and the middle class wages stay the same, and sometimes even get lower, causing the inequality percentage to rise. The movie stated that in 1978 the average male worker made $48,302 and the average top 1% made $393,682, and in 2010 that same male worker makes $33,751 and top 1% now makes more than 1 million dollars on average. The richest 400 people in the united states have more money than over half the population combined.

When it comes to the wealth gap in America, let us just say there are several forces in play. One of them is the free market that reaches around the globe. In includes the free markets and this leaves the widen gap between those that have or those that do not have. While 2% of the world's children live in America and enjoy 50% of the world's playthings and games. Compared to children in Nigeria are apart of the workforces this countries, and there are other countries that share in child labor. Although, the U.S. is among the few develop markets, the income gap between the lower and the upper levels of society has expanded. In America a CEO was paid 40 times more than the average worker in 1980. Our society, do accept a much greater inequality than many other countries do. There is more than enough data that shows the widening inequality, this information serves as an incentive for improving an accurate picture of capitalism. (Peng, M. (2012). GLOBAL, 2e, 2nd Edition)

Every American dreams of finding a job that pays well enough so that they may comfortably take care of their loved ones and themselves for years to come. Most Americans hope to find some way to make a living that they enjoy, something that they view as productive. Unfortunately, many do not have this luxury. In our society, a good portion of the population is forced to hold the base of our country in place while hardly being redeemed for their time and effort, and thus the problem of income inequality. Numbers of these people live from paycheck to paycheck, barely getting by, not because they manage their money poorly, but because the value of their time at work is negligible.