Many small businesses face the same inevitable outcome when facing the opening of a corporate business. According to Wolff-Mann, a 44-year-old rural grocery store in North Carolina faced a “30% sales drop” (“Walmart Closes”) immediately after the opening of Walmart. In reaction to the drop in sales, the small mom-and-pop shop cut their prices to attract more customers to their store in order to sell more products and maintain open. In return, Walmart matched or undercut their prices to reduce the surrounding competition, and with this major devastation, the supermarket finally “succumbed to the inevitable last October, closing up entirely” (“Walmart Closes”). But this outcome of Wal-Mart's “corporate monopol[y]” (Frick “Is Wal-Mart”) doesn’t …show more content…
Some may communicate that the differentiating factor and “The foremost generator of inequality under capitalism is not markets but capital… Capital is money, or the realizable money-value of collateralizable property” (Hodgson 361). Capital is what is gained every year from companies under any economic system. A lot of the capital gained stays within the upper class in the United States and “By the 1980s, a staggering 64% of all earnings by males went to the top 1%. … [and when] measuring income…The top 1% absorbed 90% of income gains” (Thurow 16). The top 1% that holds the most capital makes it harder to climb the ladder of social class resulting in a social mobility lock. Recently, “developments in technology, finance, and international trade have generated new waves and forms of insecurity for leading capitalist economies, making life increasingly unequal and chancier for not only the lower and working classes but much of the middle class as well” (Muller 1). The middle class also is affected because they are apart of most small businesses and the working class is in control of the elite wealthy business owners that control most of the economic system because of the place where capitalism placed
According to Gregory Mantsios many American people believed that the classes in the United States were irrelevant, that we equally reside(ed) in a middle class nation, that we were all getting richer, and that everyone has an opportunity to succeed in life. But what many believed, was far from the truth. In reality the middle class of the United States receives a very small amount of the nation's wealth, and sixty percent of America's population receives less than 6 percent of the nation's wealth, while the top 1 percent of the American population receives 34 percent of the total national wealth. In the article Class in America ( 2009), written by Gregory Mantsios informs us that there are some huge differences that exist between the classes of America, especially the wealthy and the poor. After
In order to gain the success it has had, Wal-Mart has no doubt affected small businesses. But in the place of small business Wal-Mart has been able to do far more for Americans than small businesses could. It provides consumers inexpensive necessities for life, it provides work for those who would otherwise have none, and it has a stake in the global economy that benefits our own with trading. Wal_mart
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
I don't see Wal-Mart as a huge retailer trying to take over the world with cheap prices. I see Wal-Mart as business that has played their cards the way they were dealt. Our economy is poor right now; banks are hurting because people a...
Wealth inequality did not always exist in human life. In fact, “Human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past hundred years” (Carnegie 1). There used to be
We can argue that Wal-Mart’s pursuit of profits does not lead to the greatest collective good for society because many small business owners and Wal-Mart employees have to declare bankruptcy.
The highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.
A plethora of research studies exist on the topic of wealth inequality in America. There is no question that the top one percent of earners consume a large portion of wealth in this country while the other 90 percent of earners share the left-overs. Some of the related questions that I found during the course of my research are 1) Why are wealth and income distributions so vastly disproportionate? 2) Can America bridge the wealth gap? 3) If so, how? 4) Has the wealth gap increased over time? 5) Are there public policies that influence wealth inequality? And, 6) Is America’s middle-class growing poor? Those are just a few of the many questions that circulate the discussion on wealth inequality in America. However, the two
In the United States there are four social classes : the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class. Of these four classes the most inequality exists between the upper class and the lower class. This inequality can be seen in the incomes that the two classes earn. During the period 1979 through the present , the growth in income has disproportionately grown.The bottom sixty percent of the US population actually saw their real income decrease in 1990 dollars. The next 20% saw medium gains. The top twenty percent saw their income increase 18%. The wealthiest one percent saw their incomes rise drastically over 80%. As reported in the 1997 Center on Budget's analysis , the wealthiest one percent of Americans ( 2.6 million people) received as much after-tax income in 1994 as the bottom 35 percent of the population combined (88 million people). But in 1977 the bottom 35 percent had about twice as much after tax income as the top one percent. These statistics further show the disproportional income growth among the social classes. The gr...
Time and time again we hear politicians and office holders preach the need for a powerful middle-class. You may then be surprised to hear that “about 82% of America’s net worth belongs to the top 20%, the next 80% of people only own about 18% of America’s wealth” (UCSC). Some may argue that this disproportion is the beauty of capitalism, the chance to create an empire. I argue that the proportions are simply unfair. Why is it that “ the average CEO makes 350X as much as his/her employee” (UCSC)?
Divisions within the social stratum is a characteristic of societies in various cultures and has been present throughout history. During the middle ages, the medieval feudal system prevailed, characterized by kings and queens reigning over the peasantry. Similarly, in today’s society, corporate feudalism, otherwise known as Capitalism, consists of wealthy elites dominating over the working poor. Class divisions became most evident during America’s Gilded Age and Progressive era, a period in time in which the rich became richer via exploitation of the fruits of labor that the poor persistently toiled to earn. As a result, many Americans grew compelled to ask the question on everyone’s mind: what do the rich owe the poor? According to wealthy
While the the 1%, are secured, no one is addressing the rest of the people. As the economy flourishes, housing, higher education and health care, and child care increases with it to the point where 30 percent of a person’s income goes towards housing. People are finding it impossible to purchase a house with their middle class incomes. People begin to fall out of the once stable middle class because too much is needed to be sacrificed in order to live in a stable home. In the shrinking middle class, “40% or more of the residents live below the poverty
Inequality exist and is high in America because the amount of income and wealth that is distributed through power. In America the income distribution is very inequality and the value of a person wealth is based on their income with their debts subtracted. “As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff, 2011). In contrary the poor do not get ahead and the rich get more. Americans are judged and placed in class categories through their home ownership which translates to wealth. Americans social class is often associated with their assets and wealth. “People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure, and to live long and healthy lives” (Domhoff, 2011). Power indicates how these “values” are not distributed equally in American society. Huge gains for the rich include cuts in capital gains and dividends and when tax rates decrease for the tiny percent of Americans income is redistributed. Taxes directly affect the wealth and income of Americans every year.
The ratio of power and frustration as well leads to the emergence of social classes: lower, middle, and upper class. Depending on how much power one has access to and how frustrated one is, depends on the type of equality one will experience. Thus, the dynamics developed from the social classes can cause dramatic social change between all three (Mahault 1). Deregulation on wealth brings inequality, which dispositions around fifty percent of the population, thus causing limitation on wealth
Rosenbaum, E. (2013, August 8). A new species? The elusive nature of the global middle class. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/id/100949800