Capitalism: Inequality In The United States

Throughout this semester in class we have discussed inequality from many different perspectives but the overarching theme of the class was the fact that something needs to be done about inequality particularly here in the US. I am not saying it is right to have people living on the streets while there are people driving million dollar cars down that same street but is that not what makes Capitalism work? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Capitalism is defined as, “An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by privation decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.” Early in …show more content…
Having little to no governing of the economy it would force companies to compete with one another to make the best product. A lot of people associate the idea of competition in the economy with two things, monopolies and unions. Now obviously monopolies are not beneficial in an economy based on the principles of Capitalism because they would completely eliminate any competition between companies since there would only be one company. So with that being said the government would be needed to prevent companies from merging into one large company. The other thing that people often associate with competition in the economy is the idea of unions. In the early 1900s the US saw a rise in unions and laborers wanting representation since they had been working long hard hours in terrible conditions. Unions continue today under many of the same laws that were established the Wagner Act in 1935. The world has obviously changed since then and we have seen a decline in union presence in the United States. One reason that some people are so against unions is because unions have a tendency to eliminate competition and provide protection to people who do not contribute to the company or society. Based on the definition of Capitalism unions would inhibit a capitalist economy because it eliminates the concept of a free market. Supply and demand and a free market are two reasons that Capitalism is great. If you want to …show more content…
This would cause a lot of pushback amongst the Americans. The group that would be best to increase the tax rate on would be the 1%. They have the most money to give so a few percent increase would results in millions of dollars. However if the government were to increase tax rates on the rich those people that fall in the 1% could hide their funds in many different ways such as Swiss banks. All the different ways that they can hide their capital makes it nearly impossible to truly tax them the government does not know exactly what they have. That is why it is so difficult to get true statistics on the upper class unless you take a survey and ask the people how much capital they have and how much they