Wealth Inequality In The United States

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

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.

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.

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.

In this paper I will be discussing the wealth gap. I will also be discussing if there should be a “special” tax to redistribute the wealth. I hope to enlighten the reader of the issue of the wealth gap, and if a tax would help.

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.

What is wealth inequality? “It is the difference between individuals or populations in the distribution of assets, wealth or income.” [1] In sociology, the term is social stratification and refers to “a system of structured social inequality” [2] where the inequality might be in power, resources, social standing/class or perceived worth. In the US, where a class system exist, (as opposed to caste or estate system) your place in the class system can be determined by your personal achievements. However, the economic and social class that an individual is born into is a big indicator of the class they will end up in as an adult. [3] What are the effects of this wealth inequality in the US and what causes it as well as some possible solutions

For example, redistribution of wealth, education, and equal taxes for everyone. Redistribution does nothing if people are not educated in how to invest their money. In an article by Noah Smith named "How to Fix America's Wealth Inequality: Teach Americans to Be Cheap" he gives the best answer to the problem. “The best way to address wealth inequality is to provide basic financial education in schools and encourage people to be more frugal and save more” (Smith). By providing financial education in our schools, it will teach the generations to come how to save money and obtain more wealth so they will not have to rely on programs like Social Security. Also, in Smith's article what wealth is happens to be the amount of money that a person can save that does not go towards his or her basic needs like food, water, and housing. In a survey that Michael I Norton of Harvard did, “[w]hen we asked respondents to tell us what their ideal distribution of wealth was, things got even more interesting: Americans wanted the top 20% to own just over 30% of the wealth, and the bottom 40% to own about 25%. They still wanted the rich to be richer than the poor, but they wanted the disparity to be much less extreme” (Norton). In article by Michael I Norton, and Dan Ariely named "Americans Want Less Wealth Inequality than Currently Exists" people agree that wealth inequality is too high and the wealth should be redistributed and most

According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook America is now the most unequal of all advanced economies (Eric Zuesse). The 185 richest families in America are worth 1.2 trillion dollars combined (Dolan and Kroll). Additionally, the 400 richest Americans have more wealth between them than the bottom 185 million (Social Problems 33). Now it is often thought that the one percent in America controls one-third of the nation’s wealth. The sad reality is that the Americans in the top one percent actually control 35.6 percent of the wealth which is more than one-third of the nation’s wealth. What’s even sadder is that the top ten percent of America controls over seventy five percent of the total wealth (Dave Roos). What this means is that the remaining twenty five percent of the nation’s wealth is distributed among ninety percent of the United States population. There are approximately 321 million people in the United States, and approximately 289 million of them are only responsible for twenty five percent of all the nation’s wealth (United States Census Bureau). The inequality gap has increased for a number of reasons. For

The biggest problem in today’s economy is wealth distribution also known as income inequality. Income inequality is the unequal distribution of income across various participants in a nations economy. This unequal distribution can be seen when looking at things such as property, valuable possessions, stock, savings, and investments. While the wealth of the US is clearly distributed unevenly, a “gap” between the rich and the poor continues to grow. Wealth distribution and the gap between the rich and poor is directly related to the concept of unequal opportunity. Economists such as Andrew Carnegie and John Kenneth Galbraith both believed that the economy is unfair and everyone should be given an equal opportunity to become wealthy and successful. People who are more fortunate should also try to help better the community and put there wealth towards society. Other economists such as Thomas Malthus and Garret Hardin believe that there will always be some percentage of humans

There has been quite an increase in the level of economic inequality in the United States since the onset of the 1970s despite the fact that the country has experienced several years of stability.  This tremendous growth can be attributed to the fact that the United States is a greater supporter of free market capitalism which as a result has led to the consistency in its higher rates of economic inequality as compared to the rest of the developed nations. The country’s support for free market capitalism is evident in its economic policies (Gilens 38).  There has been a "middle class “emergence where the median income levels have doubled. Economic inequality is also evident in terms of wealth. The wealth imbalance in wealth is unequal to income

When most people hear the word inequality they go directly to the issues of race and rights of the people. I myself, was one of these people and had never stopped to consider the inequality within our economy. This is a very big problem, but there are many potential solutions to bridge the gap.

Wealth inequality has existed between humans for as long as humans have existed. It is a defining aspect of human nature that people want to improve their situation through hard work and ingenuity. But since the dawn of civilization, wealth inequality has evolved into more than just a discrepancy between individuals on those bases alone; it has become a global issue. Wealth and income equality are key components in establishing successful capitalism; they are absolutely detrimental to societies when they exist to a very high degree, as they diminish social mobility and create an inherently unfair society. Wealth inequality has escalated past the point where it is reasonable; unfortunately for the majority of people, it is increasing as a result of globalization. Nations can combat this global issue by implementing progressive tax rates and improving education opportunities. As Barack Obama famously said during a speech in 2013, “I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American.” This must also be true for every person in every nation in every part of the world.

The wealth gap is the unequal distribution of assets among residents. Wealth includes the values of automobiles, homes, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments. Most of the population globally recognizes three classes; the poor, the middle and the rich. When I was in high school, I believed the same thing. Now that I am in college, my outlook on it drastically changed. We are not taught about the ruler class or the top 1% in school, we just face the reality that it exists while our experience in life evolves. One can imagine English classroom with roughly twenty students, and we are given $100 to share. one can imagine that two lucky students will get $67 out of the $100, and the other eighteen students are left with $33 to split among them, that’s roughly $1.83 per student. Ironically, enough the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the United States own 80 % of the nation’s wealth and to top it off, the top 1% owns about 40% of the wealth in the United States. Let that sink in for a minute. It keeps getting worse and worse. How unfair can it be that we live in a society where that for every dollar of the American assets which includes home, stock, and savings, 40 cents of those assets belong to the top 1%. We reached a time where that the top 1% holds more wealth in America than the bottom 90% of the country combined, *and almost all that money gets passed to their heirs which includes children or their children’s

Wealth in the United States is generally thought to be spread fairly as the highest earners have a higher percentage of wealth. Although this common notion is technically correct, the wealth is not spread as fairly as people might believe. The United States uses a free market, capitalistic economy, which entails wealth inequality. However, the amount of wealth inequality depends on how the government limits the wealthy. Interestingly enough, the government does not have regulations to distribute the wealth more fairly as the top 1% of earners in the United States own about 40% of the financial wealth in the country and the bottom 80% of earners own a measly 4.7%. Astonishingly, the financial wealth for the top 20% increased from 1983 to 2010 meaning the wealth became more concentrated at the higher socioeconomic tiers as time passed. These economic inequalities benefitted the wealthy as they gained political powers, controlled a large portion of the economic market, and used capitalism to manipulate the public’s perspective of the wealth distribution in the United States. While wealth inequality is a result of capitalism, extremely wealthy people use their wealth to exercise political power,but the average person does not understand that this is a corrupt method of crippling the economy in favor of the ultra wealthy.