What Is Income Inequality?

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.

Bernie Sanders ran for political office in the town of Burlington, Vermont in 1981 and was elected mayor. He created many projects to improve the town in ways of housing, taxation, child care, women’s rights, and youth programs. In this same context, he created the Burlington Community Land Trust, an award winning project. He has also shown that he is no stranger to competing with those who have money on their side. In 2006 Bernie Sanders became a candidate for Vermont’s seat in the senate, running against the richest man in the state. To the voters of Vermont, upbringing, education, and political awareness mattered more than wealth. Despite the odds, Sanders won the seat, proving that money is irrelevant in a truly democratic race.

John Nicholas interviewed Bernie Sanders for the Nation, a journal on politics, about his views on a few issues being addressed by the candidates (12-6). During the civil-rights movement, Sanders was a supporter of Martin Luther King Jr’s vision. A non-white person has the right to freedom, like any other person. To this present day, inequality and discrimination are a real issue. Police brutality against African-Americans is not new in this country. However, his main concern is that people know about inequality toward blacks, but does not know that the unemployment rate for the African-American youth is at fifty percent. (Nicholas 14) A percentage that high on unemployment rate is an economic problem for the country. Racism continues to exist in America. Racial equality is a vital issue to

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” said Franklin D. Roosevelt in his second inaugural address. Today, social inequality is highly apparent and many of the United States’ political candidates are unable to do anything to resolve it. Bernard “Bernie” Sanders, a democratic socialist, is the best candidate to resolve social inequality along with other problems the nation has today. Bernie Sanders has proven himself to be a defender of the people with his stance for social inequality and his plans on reforming the nation.

As Senator Sanders states, the top 10% of families in America currently possess close to 75% all income in the country and 16,000 families in the U.S. possess assets equivalent to the total wealth of the bottom two-thirds of all American families (). This disparity is incredibly unequal and Bernie, along with his supporters, believe that this inequality should be corrected to better most citizens instead of one in every ten U.S. citizens. Almost all new income is going to the top 10% of citizens and, although Bernie hasn’t created a formal plan to resolve the issue, on his campaign he stated he believes the way to fix this inequality is to tax the rich at much higher percentage and cut taxing loopholes and breaks, and also raise the wages of all lower class citizens by raising the minimum wage that millions of adults are currently having to live and struggle with. The total income of the country doesn’t represent the total population and the citizens negatively affected by this, and so Bernie plans to resolve this issue and fight to make the poorer citizens live on a more livable wage that they can fully support them and their

Income inequality is one of the greatest problems facing the United States today. It is important for everyone to understand what this means and why this is a problem.

Opponents claim that having the rich pay more in tax is class warfare. For example, former speech writer for former President Richard Nixon, Ben Stein, said on CBS's Sunday Morning, "I am not quite sure what my sin is. I worked for almost every dollar I have." He argues that the wealthy are being punished. "But for what? I don't own any slaves. I employ many people full- and part-time and they are all excited with their pay... what did I do wrong?"("Extending Tax Cuts") Ben Stein reports this as class warfare, Since it requires him to pay additional tax for working hard and earning more money. The bottom 40% of all income earners benefit greatly from the income tax code. "In fact, they actually pay negative income tax rates due to refundable credits, such as the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit wipe out their tax liability and pay out more money to them than they ever paid in. The income tax burden of low-income earners has trended for years"(Dubay). Since low income earners don’t have enough money to spend on their kids, the government gives them money. In some occasions the government gives these families more than they pay in taxes. Those who oppose this say that raising tax rates on the rich damages economic growth, because it reduces the incentives to work, save, invest, and accept economic risk. Raising taxes on the rich hurts workers at all income

Stereotypes In Society In today’s generation, Cosmopolitan has raised the sales of their magazine due to their monthly tips regarding fashion, sex advice, and beauty tips. The image I chose was one of the new issues of Cosmopolitan’s magazine and was located at a local Walmart on Innes Road. I was drawn to this image because unlike the other magazines around it, Cosmopolitan used bright colors and a photo-shopped image of a model to bring the attention of customers in which brings my question into play, how does this image reflect the changing values in society?

America conceits itself on being one of the greatest positive fairly ruled districts. Income inequality not only troubles us financially, but disturbs our intellectual and bodily comfort; so, it is significant to categorize the true conducts to governor capital delivery between individuals. The knowledge of the American vision is all people have equivalent public rights and an open administration. Yet, the use of fairness is actuality endangered by growing inequality in the United States. “The dominant view holds that economic development and modernization are the key to the continued growth of democracy” (Snider and Faris 2001; United Nations, 2011). The pay openings have not just been rising among the unfortunate and the rest of the world but amid the rich and the middle and occupied seminar.

Income inequality is increasingly becoming a significant concern for many countries around the world. The income difference between the highly-educated, skilled, wealthy class and the poor, low to mid-skilled workers is growing larger and larger. In fact, the incomes of the rich are increasing significantly, while the low skilled workers’ incomes have been declining (The Economist, “Wealth Without Workers”). According to The Economist, real median wages have been decreasing since 2000 in half of the member countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the United States, there was a 4% increase from 1980 to 2012 in the share of national income that was distributed to the top 0.01% (The Economist, “True Progressivism”). Canada is facing a similar problem of rising inequality.

Vermont Senator and presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, said it best when he said “A nation will not serve morally or economically when so few have so much, and so many have so little.” This quote perfectly describes the issue that The United States is currently dealing with: income inequality. Income inequality is the gap between how much money is made by the rich and everyone else in the nation. It also refers to the unequal distribution of wealth among people in a population. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States has steadily been rising, making it seem as though economic growth is stable (Inequality for All). However, it does not take into account the increasingly widening gap between the 1% and the 99% of the nation’s population. Government officials should pay closer attention to income inequality in The United States because ignoring the issue ultimately hurts American citizens.

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.

There are many codes and all of them are special in their own ways. It may not be obvious but the differences are there. Like with Novels, many seem similar until you begin to read them. You might have thought the codes are all the same thing reworded, but they are not. I’m going to use three different examples from three different civilizations. The three codes are the Justinian code, the Ten Commandments, and the Hammurabi’s code. Each is a code put into work to work justice and they work differently. The Ten Commandments are meant to be peaceful and to teach you to treat others as well as you would yourself. Hammurabi’s code is more intense and is full of punishments made to be gruesome so the people would not be encouraged to do wrong. The Justinian code is somewhere in between with gruesome punishments but is made to be fair and keep it at a nice pace.

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).

Take a look around in your everyday life; what do you see? People, animals, life in general maybe, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean when you first open google on a day of celebration and another design takes place of the original logo; or when you flip through a magazine, the advertisements for your favorite shoe, makeup brand, or clothing retailer catches your eye .When picking a new reading material, do you judge a book by its cover? If it appeals to you, maybe you’ll open it up and read it; perhaps there’s an inspirational piece of artwork you just can’t keep your mind off of. What about when you watch a movie, all of the sets, all of the cover designs, how? Who? Where does it come from; who creates it; how do they do it?