America Wealth Inequality

Additionally, America has one of the biggest gaps between the poor and the rich of any nation in the developed world. According to Allianz’s Global Wealth Report comparing 55 different countries America ranks the highest in wealth inequality in 2015. The study which compared countries using the Gini coefficient for wealth inequality, which is a measure of a nation’s wealth inequality where a low score of zero represents perfect equality and a score of 100 equals complete inequality, found that America, with its score of 80.56 ranks the highest of any country on the list, just above Sweden’s 79.90 (Sherman, 2015). The United States of America, for all of its wealth and seeming superiority is in fact far more unequal then other nations and only …show more content…
The revolving door relationship is characterized by those who are government regulators going into the very industry they were once regulators of after they have served their term in the government or vice versa. The rationale behind the popularity of shifting jobs in this way is that the people who have knowledge and experience in these fields are naturally in demand by either the government or industry, and once they leave one they move into the other where their skills put them in an advantageous position. However the problem lies in regulators who expect to go into an industry and try to gain favor with businesses or set up a more lucrative market for themselves by using their position as a bureaucrat. The financial crisis of 2008 resulted largely from lack of regulation on banks which could have been avoided if regulators did not have the conflict of interest set up by the revolving door relationship with the private and public sectors. This issue unfortunately is not limited to one industry, it occurs in a wide variety of sectors but is most prevalent in defense, media, pharmaceutical and utilities (Brezis & Cariolle, 2015). Over the years the government has done …show more content…
On a fundamental level industries will not work to improve themselves without a larger organization putting pressure on them. A business only concerned with profits will not raise wages for employees if it can get away with paying them less, even if it that means its workers don’t have a livable income or are payed unfairly. That’s why the government instituted a minimum wage and prohibits discriminating against workers. If a company can get away with something to increase its bottom line it will, and to counteract this government should support workers by outlawing discrimination and regulating industry to create a fairer and more equal society. In America today almost 15% of people live below the poverty line and that number only stands to get higher if government begins allowing the market regulate itself (Gongloff,