Matt Taibbi's The Divide

In recent discussion of the book The Divide, a controversial issue has been welfare, and how Americans are treated on it because people think that they are abusing it when at the same time powerful CEOs and corporations will do much worse but are still treated completely normal. On the one hand, some argue that welfare is a big issue because people are abusing it to steal money, and that it is more important than stopping these CEO’s. On the other hand, however, others argue that welfare has an extremely small impact compared to what big corporations are doing every day. From the stand point of Americans who think welfare needs to be addressed first believe that welfare is devastating to our economy and has a big impact. Sometimes with people …show more content…
When the mothers tried to apply for welfare an inspector would barge into their houses and try to find any reason for these moms not to receive welfare. The inspectors will go through all of the family’s personal belongings checking to see if there are any men cloths or any evidence that these ladies’ have another source of income. The inspector will make threats that they will take away their children if they lied about anything on their documents when they applied for welfare. This seems extremely unnecessary and intruding of the inspectors which it completely is but it shows how much the government cares about people trying to abuse welfare. Which raises the question if they are so picky about a mother who is trying to take care of her children stealing money to help her family then why aren’t these same precautions taken for CEOs and their companies? Shouldn’t CEO’s have random inspectors to make sure they are doing what they are supposed …show more content…
What he means by this is that top CEOs can steal money and cheat in their companies without much of a consequence because if they are put in jail it would be taking away peoples jobs and hurting the company that they own. So instead of putting these CEOs in jail the government will just make them pay a fine. But the fines they have to pay are not even close to the amount that they made in the first place from stealing the money. So what is to stop these people from doing it again because they made a profit from doing these crimes and got away with it? Part of the reason they aren’t thrown in jail is because of the jobs and company but I think another reason is that the government is just plain lazy. They have to pay lawyers and go through a court case that could take years just to settle so instead of doing what’s right they just let it slide by and justify it by saying that they gave them a fine. Certain banks have misreported taxes, made fake disclosures, or lied outright to investors just to make some extra money but nothing is done about this. Even though this is a big reason why the market crashed in 2008. This has a much bigger impact on people than welfare does but people don’t realize it because it’s harder to see than the lady standing right in from of you in your local grocery store. Also the government doesn’t do anything about