The Effects Of Income Inequality On The Working Class

Decent Essays
inequality becomes an issue when individuals are impacted negatively and start to feel helpless. It is when individuals are not able to afford things that are considered outside of their budgets. For the working class majority of their paycheck is put towards paying off household expenses. Specifically, income inequality is causing serious effects on the working class. Many individuals simply do not have enough to stay up with all the expenses, which forces them to take out loans. While debt is primarily becoming a serious issue for the working class, it is also true that for many people the amount of debt is significantly more than what they actually earn. So repaying the debt is becoming very difficult for them. According to Reich, income

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    An article by Neil Gilbert called The Inequality Hype talks about the inequality that we face today. It provides statistics by talking about a survey where seventy-six percent of the public believe that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. About the same percentage was calculated in 1987 which means that for the last thirty years about three-fourths of the population believe that the two classes are separating from each other even more. I believe that this is true because in today’s society there is a huge division between those two classes and the middle classes is either staying the same or changing into the lower class because they cannot afford to pay taxes since the middle class is the class that pays more. For…

    • 224 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the United States money is a representation of the amount of power that a specific individual possesses. In today’s society people are striving to live an average life opposed to living the “American Dream”. Recent studies have shown that there are more people living in America who believe that the idea of going from rags to riches is simply unachievable. The new representation of the “American Dream” is obtaining economic stability for the future. As a result of the rise of income and social inequality over the past few decades, many economists and scholars believe that the gap separating the wealthiest Americans from everyone else will continue to widen unless the United States government puts forth effort to reverse it.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Our society runs rampant with all kinds of inequality. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia are just a few of the problems that plague our world. These problems all have the potential to hurt people socially and emotionally. However, there’s another type of inequality whose impacts go beyond social and emotional harms. Income inequality hurts people psychologically and economically, and its implications span a global scale.…

    • 1431 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Spirit Level Inequality

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Inequality is the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society. In a country with a high level of inequality there are higher levels of health and social problems. Also no one is better off in a country that has a high level of inequality. A rich person in a more equal society is better off than one in a more unequal society. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's book "The Spirit Level" does a great job at pointing out how inequality affects different powerful countries and states in the United States.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After reading the “The Income Inequality Debate”, I started to think more about the financial situations that I am currently in and how I am preparing myself for the future. The videos were very informing on the topic and helped me actually visualize what was going on. The video “Wealth Inequality in America”, seemed like a more detailed version of “Is America Dreaming?: Understanding Social Mobility” so I got more from it while watching it. What stuck out most to me were the aspects of education and how it really influences those percentages.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Devon Kaminski Soc-309 Essay 4 Ch. 2 1. What factors lie behind rises in income inequality in the U.S. in recent decades? While many factors play a role, the few that strike as most pertinent are declines in earnings growth, which is a rise in workers that make less money and an ever growing gap between the higher skilled and lower skilled workers, an economical shift from production of goods to production of services, shifts in demand for high/low skilled workers which opened up temporary positions with little to no benefits, a change in the working age group (thanks to the baby boomers), a rise in uneducated and less-expensive labor in the form of immigrants, declining unionization, downsizing in industries (which could mean cutting less skilled workers), globalization and of course government policies like minimum wage changes, budget cuts and tax reforms.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    There are many reasons for the growing income inequality gap in the United States of America. Research on the current state of the income distribution shows increasing inequality of the wealthy…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Today in America we live in the richest country in the history of the world, but that reality means very little because much of that wealth is controlled by a very small handful of individuals. America is now one of the worst major developed countries in terms of economic equality in the entire world, and at the gap is at its worst point since the 1920’s. The middle-class of the nation has been slowly disappearing and having its money go up towards the upper-class. And to make it all worse 58% of all new wealth in the United States goes towards the top 1% of earners since 2009. Wealth and income inequality is one of the hardest issues to fix that the United States currently faces, because of the Supreme Court decision in 2010 on the case Citizens…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout time income inequality has existed throughout the world. Although, we as Americans have “equal rights and opportunities” to be as successful as the next person, it is difficult to achieve these things while not being paid and treated fairly. Income inequality refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a population. In the United States there is a blatant income and social inequality. The reason being is that people in the United States have been so accustomed to the social norms of living comfortably with the wages they make.…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Income inequality has been a progressively growing issue in the United States, even today. The problem dates back all the way to the Great Depression, although some researchers tend to think that it is older than that. The difference between the wealth of higher-income families and lower-income families has become a great issue. Many people, including our government, think that they know how they can fix it. They have tried time and time again to come up with solutions, yet we are still facing the same obstacle that we were almost one hundred years ago.…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. The main thing American’s do not realize about income inequality is how large the gap is between the wealthiest 1% and the other 99%. America ranks as having one of the largest gaps in distribution of wealth. In 1978, the typical male worker’s income was 48,302; in 2010 the typical male worker’s income has decreased to 33,751. However, the people in the top 1% have increased in income, from 393,682 in 1978 to 1,101,089 in 2010 (Inequality for all, 2013).…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Leonhardt’s essay “Inequality Has Been Going On Forever… But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Inevitable” Leonhardt explains how the middle class is suffering in a prosperous nation. Leonhardt is the managing editor of The Upshot, a New York Times site, and published an e-book, Here’s the Dead: How Washington Can Solve the Deficit and Spur Growth” (2013) based on economic issues. Leonhardt’s concern is the rapid pace in rising inequality, as the wealthy are affluent in capital gains, taxes, and education. I agree that inequality is a concern because living in a society where everyone isn’t treated the same in terms of wealth causes conflict.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In a capitalistic based economy such as the United States, it creates incomes that are small and large. Having an unequal amount of large or low incomes is called income inequality. Income inequality has become a major problem in the United States, increasing 24% from 1968 to 2012” (Cochran). The gap between the rich and the poor is growing at an ever increasing rate. In the United States the gap is measured by relative poverty, or “being below one-half the nations income” (Cochran).…

    • 1676 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All of the topics that are in the textbook is significantly important. However, some of the issues that I am mostly concerns about are social stratification and social class inequalities. In this chapter, I was able to see a broad view of U.S social structure and inequalities, both within our culture and our institutions. Our modern society is stratified into social classes, which is based on income, wealth, educational attainment, occupation, and social networks. Sociologists posited that there are six social classes in America.…

    • 1086 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The culture has been unfairly divided for centuries, including by race, social class and social status. Sociologist, Max Weber implied that individuals ought to be arranged in society by using certain factors. Not to mention there are a number of social classes, each of them consisting of distinctive characteristics. Family structures and neighborhoods are affected in both good and bad ways by these social classes. The social class inequality are perceived differently by the three theoretical paradigms.…

    • 811 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays