Wealth Inequality In America Essay

Improved Essays
Wealth inequality in the United States, also known as the wealth gap, refers to the unequal distribution of assets among residents of the United States. Wealth includes the values of homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments (Inequality, 2014). The ideal idea of how distribution in our country should be is not even close to what most Americans think it to be. The reality is far off from what we think it to be and what we consider it to be ideal (you tube, n.d.). It’s time Americans wake up and face reality, because the reality is that the top 1% of Americans have so much money that is beyond believe. 1% of the wealthy Americans own stocks, bonds and mutual funds and the bottom 50% of Americans own ½ of a 1% of the investments which means most Americans are scraping scrapes to survive (you tube, n.d.). A CEO of a company does not need to work as hard as an average worker to get paid. A CEO gets paid in hour, what the average worker gets paid in over a month. Now, what’s fair now, I’m pretty sure the CEO worked hard to where he is now, although most are just born lucky and into wealth, but the bigger picture is that the distribution is totally off (you tube, n.d.). Knowing this helps us into not needing to go into socialism to find out what is fair for Americans. It’s evident that no matter how hard we …show more content…
It’s time we wake up. It’s scary knowing where most Americans take place in a chart of distribution. The poor are so poor that a placement in a chart is not even located and the wealthy are so wealthy that they go off the charts. The wealth gap is too big, to even think about, but the idea is, knowing that the majority of the Americans are being treated unfairly. The system is unfair and upsetting. This assignment has awaken something in me. Something I had never given thought to. This whole idea is mind blowing (you tube,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    American wealth gap has been significantly wide since the 1970s. Families with the median income have been paying higher taxes since then, in addition to high costs of housing and other utility bills. This problem is seen affecting those who work multiple jobs for the minimum wage.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved 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. Economists, such…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gilded Age Inequality

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages

    During the Gilded Age the wealthiest 2 percent of American households owned more than a third of the countries wealth, while the top 10 percent owned roughly three fourths of it. This was due to big names such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Vanderbilt, and many other business leaders who capitalized from the newly industrialized economy of the Second Industrial Revolution. This was the first time in American history where we had a new class of the super-rich people, that practically dominated the United States. Many people were not happy about this new class of the super-rich and labeled these industrialists as “robber barons” because some believed that they made their fortunes at the expense of the working class. Although this is true to a certain extent since these industrialists gave the workers horrible conditions, which led to the highest rate of accidents in the world with 1,972 workers killed on the job, and low wages; some of these industrialists also donated a large part of their money. Thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums, academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, and charities were paid for by private money. John D. Rockefeller donated over $500 million to various charities, slightly over half his entire net worth. Since the Gilded Age the problem has actually gotten worse; today the income inequality is the highest since 1928. Now the United States ranks around the 30th percentile for income inequality, meaning that 70 percent of countries have a more equal distribution. Income inequality can lead to many problems for the country, such as less consumer consumption, since the wealthy have more money and spend less of it, also more middle and lower class people borrow money which can contribute to financial crises, and finally the wealthy have more political power, resulting in policies that benefit…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The majority of American citizens are seeing their share of the pie shrink more and more, while a tiny portion of the populace is gaining funds and influence in leaps and bounds. Is it fair that less than 1% of the total population controls so much of the wealth and are given special considerations when it comes to tax laws? This can be debated back and forth until our faces turn blue. The real question is why are they given these favorable circumstances? Why should they be seen as better than the rest of us? Paul Krugman suggests, “…aside from shouts of ‘class warfare!’ whenever such questions are raised, the usual answer is that the super-elite are ‘job creators’- that is, that they make a special contribution to the economy” (para 8). Krugman,…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America is experiencing a large gap in income inequality between the working class and the wealthy class. According to Derek Thompson, the new wealthy class, which is the top 1% of America population, holds nearly 40% of America’s wealth; while the new working and social class holds significantly less than 7%. There are opinions thinking that this gap is caused by the rich, who only think about their profits and don’t even care that America is having job a shortage or people are working low wage for several years. On the other hand, some blame the working and social class for their “immobility”, saying that they are not trying hard enough to climb out of the bottom while depending too much on the government subsidizes. Both opinions are true…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 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

    The wealth inequality in the U.S. has been growing gradually for decades and still, showing no signs of resolving it from any political candidates. It has been a vicious cycle that delivers detrimental outcomes to everyone. The rich people are getting richer due to the wealth they already have or inherited and resources that are ready to invest in lucrative activities or trades that are able to accumulate and could produce more rapidly new wealth. Additionally, children that were born or grown up in a rich family are more likely to attend college due to their tremendous influence and economic advantage, which may increase their chances to earn higher wages than any other social class. Whereas poor people are getting poorer due to individualism…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 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. The effects that this dilemma is setting forth for our United States’ economy, environment, and even our education is repulsing.…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The documentary Inequality for All focuses on what happens to an economy when income inequality rates begin to sore sky high. Narrated by Robert Reich, he talks about how America came to be a nation of massive income inequality, the consequences of it and how to solve it. One of the most impressive things the film does, is a take a topic people study for years and turn it into an easily understandable 90-minute film. The documentary Inequality for All effectively got its message across through, accurate statistics, memorable visual aids, and real-life stores and firsthand accounts.…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, this has not always been the case. While college attendance is at an all time high (“College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2016 High School Graduates”), the portion of our population living in the upper class has increased by 50 percent since 1971, and the portion living in the lower class has increased 16 percent in that same time period. Consequently, wealth disparity has made it difficult for the lower classes of Americans to achieve the level of success that the highest class has. In addition, the share of aggregate income held by the upper class has increased from 29 percent to 49 percent.(“The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground”) This means that the richest portion of the population possesses nearly half of the wealth,…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The wealth gap in the United States, while staggering, did not strike me as completely unexpected. It is, however, an issue that is a problem for our culture; the distribution of wealth causes other problems, such as deviance, to rise. Though there are many schools of thought regarding wealth distribution and income caps, adequately addressing the basic needs of society will most likely produce the most significant impact.…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wealth Inequality Essay

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In 1976 , the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 19% of all the private material wealth in the US Today, they own over 40% of all wealth. Their share now exceeds the wealth owned by the bottom 92% of the US population combined. (Edward N. Wolff, Top Heavy: A Study of Increasing Inequality in America Twentieth Century Fund: 1995). From 1976 till the present , the power of the wealthy has increased greatly meaning their power has increased as well. When a certain group constantly gains power they will abuse it and this can be seen with the unfair wealth distribution in this country. Although each person has the right to make as much money as possible, in the United States the government should however keep the income rise proportioned by taxing the wealthy more and the poor less. In recent years the opposite happened where the taxes on the wealthy were cut from a top rate of 68% in 1980s to 28.5% by 1988. The share of federal tax revenue paid by corporations has dropped from 33 cents of every dollar collected in 1953 to less than 10 cents today. (Donald Barlett and James Steele: America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? Andrews and McMeel:…

    • 567 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). In most recent figures, “17.3 of the United States Population falls below 50 percent of the median income” (Cochran). This figure is staggering considering that the United States has the largest GDP in the world. There are many people who feel this number is fine…

    • 1676 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    As a capitalist nation, the United State of America is facing a serious problem, which is the inequality of wealth and income. In pace with the growth of the economy, the rich people are getting richer and the poor people are getting poorer. The gap between the rich and poor is widening unprecedentedly fast. Why is that happening? Most of the rich people believe the strategy of trickle down economic. When their corporations earn money, and they can create more job opportunities for the lower class people. However, the goal of trickle down has never existed. The wine stayed on the top cup. As Nicholas Fitz expressed in the article “Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think” People have no idea how worse is the gap between the rich people and the poor people.…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    10 Americans Reflection

    • 754 Words
    • 4 Pages

    While watching the clip 9 out of 10 Americans I was shocked. I often have heard about the top 1% of the news or when my brother is talking politics, but I didn’t understand the extent of it. I thought that our wealth was much more equally displayed among all Americans. It shocked me to see how skewed it is in reality, and even more how little we really know as Americans about how our economics really work.…

    • 754 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays