Ranking at number nine on the current Forbes Top Ten Richest Americans with 33.7 billion dollars, whose last name isn’t Trump: Jim Walton. Walton happens to be a part of the one percent of Americans with the whopping ninety-nine percent of us fellow Americans in their pockets. Briefly put; that miniscule one percent has a grasp on this country, taking ownership of most private and managerial wealth, leaving only eleven percent of America’s wealth to the bottom feeders of America, wage and salary workers. Bear in mind that the federal minimum wage is only seven dollars and twenty-five cents, and has not nationally raised since 2009. The rapid gains achieved by the upper class during the past century has created inequality in the social …show more content…
Barbara finds away to elaborate on the general idea of workers vs. the big cheese, or the super affluent few of Americans. Her overall focal point happens to be the super rich inhabitants within the states, and she supports the main idea through four coherent details. Ehrenreich’s primary defense is stated as “A great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor”. Multiple examples are greatly utilized; one expressing how top-notch company owners’ companies are continuously kept alive by their minimum wage working employees. The author continues to adhere her main idea with another fact of how the financial industry makes money off of the average citizen effortlessly; not one bit of labor involved in the process. Ehrenreich finds a way to pinpoint an area of truth within each and every type of extremely wealthy citizens; stating, “The overclass bids up the price of goods that ordinary also need—housing, for example”. The paper is thoroughly concluded on the author’s strongest supporting detail, discussing how wealth controls the favor of political processes including …show more content…
My agreement with Chris Rock’s bold and distinctive synopsis on the unknown irrelevance of a wealthy man’s perks, a spot on assumption us citizens should be aware of. In my opinion, most of our rage should be substantially aimed at the thirty-two percent of the rich population that have inherited their fortune. The other sixty-eight percent of assumed evildoers were also once struggling in the lower and middle classes before their rise in fortune. If only the 1.2 million homeless school-enrolled children of America knew that spoiled rotten celebrities like Avril Lavigne, Drew Barrymore, and even daughter of multi-million dollar rock legend Kelly Osbourne were opposed at the thought of school and willingly dropped out. To think that working their butts off in unwelcoming vibes of a classroom is only an utter waste of in the eyes of their favorite musicians, actors, and moguls. Why should these famous Americans get generously paid for products, appearances, or wearing their favorite brand of clothing while we scrub and scrape to make ends
Sklar, Holly. “The Growing Gulf Between the Rich and the Rest of Us”. They Say I Say. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but should it be broadcast for everyone to see? In David Sirota’s article “Kenneth Cole Gets Schooled”, Sirota highly criticizes Kenneth Cole’s controversial billboard ad about teacher’s unions. Kenneth Cole, a high end clothing company, placed an ad that pits the idea of teacher’s rights against student’s rights; Sirota explains that Kenneth Cole’s advertisement created the idea that corrupt teachers are safe under teacher unions but doesn’t expand on the true purpose of a teacher’s union or talk about the struggles of not being wealthy. In Sirota’s view, Kenneth Cole’s ad symbolizes the power of the wealthy and their political opinions which can cause people to overlook actual issues in the schools. Sirota exposes Cole’s bias by examining the truth about unions, the effect of poverty on education, and the complexity of accountability.
Economic inequality and injustice come in the same hand. Poor people are more likely to experience inequality and injustice. The negative assumptions of poor people are created by the media and politicians. Promoting economic justice by offering people living in poverty some form of social support. Barbara Ehrenreich found in her experiment the workforce for low-wage was difficult. Conley talks about the different types of social inequalities and how they have been unsuccessful.
By using the points listed previously, it is evident that a small portion of the population control what policies are implement in America and hold most of the nation’s wealth. I believe this two factors, the wealth one possesses and the amount of control an individual has, are interconnected. America has become a nation where money can get you anyway because it significantly increases the amount of opportunities available to the individual. Many people can attest to the presence of this class, including individuals from Kansas City who participated in a cross-section study with detailed interviews. The citizens of Kansas City referred to these people as “big rich” or “blue bloods” (pg
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
Women in the 1930 were a significant part of everyday life, they just did not get credit for it. Women were not recognized for all that they did because men were put on a pesistool. The inequality in this time period affected everything women did. Women were important in American history because of their family roles, careers, and wages.
The United States is the most developed capitalist economy in the world. The markets within the economy provide profit-motivated companies endless potential in the pursuance of pecuniary accumulation. Throughout the twentieth-century competitive companies have implemented modernized managerial procedures designed to raise profits by reducing unnecessary costs. These cost-saving procedures have had a substantial effect on society and particularly members of the working class. Managers and owners of these competitive and self-motivated companies have consistently worked throughout this century to exploit the most controllable component of the production process: the worker. The worker has been forced by the influence of powerful and affluent business owners to work in conditions hazardous to their well being in addition to preposterously menial compensation. It was the masterful manipulation of society and legislation through strategic objectives that the low-wage workers were coerced into this position of destitute. The strategies of the affluent fragment of society were conceived for the selfish purpose of monetary gain. The campaigns to augment the business position within the capitalist economy were designed to weaken organized labor, reduce corporate costs, gain legislative control and reduce international competition at the expense of the working class. The owners have gained and continue to gain considerable wealth from these strategies. To understand why the owners of the powerful companies operate in such a selfish manner, we must look at particular fundamentals of both capitalism and corporation strategy. Once these rudiments are understood, we ...
"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara is not just a spirited story about a poor girl out of place in an expensive toy store, it is a social commentary. "The Lesson" is a story about one African-American girl's struggle with her growing awareness of class inequality. The character Miss Moore introduces the facts of social inequality to a distracted group of city kids, of whom Sylvia, the main character, is the most cynical. Flyboy, Fat Butt, Junebug, Sugar, Rosie, Sylvia and the rest think of Miss Moore as an unsolicited educator, and Sylvia would rather be doing anything else than listening to her. The conflict between Sylvia and Miss Moore, "This nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree" (307), represents more than the everyday dislike of authority by a young adolescent. Sylvia has her own perception of the way things work, her own "world" that she does not like to have invaded by the prying questions of Miss Moore. Sylvia knows in the back of her mind that she is poor, but it never bothers her until she sees her disadvantages in blinding contrast with the luxuries of the wealthy. As Miss Moore introduces her to the world of the rich, Sylvia begins to attribute shame to poverty, and this sparks her to question the "lesson" of the story, how "money ain't divided up right in this country" (308).
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)?
Inside of this video, this guy really targets an issue nobody has really been presented. He shows charts that talk about how we Americans think our wealth is distributed. We think distribution is doing alright. Americans think that the bottom 40% is getting a bit of money. They also believe that the middle class is doing reasonably well. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In the video, he breaks it down a little bit getter. He shows a graph that shows how money is actually being distributed. The poorest of poor don 't even register on the poverty line. The middle class is barely making it. And then there is this huge difference between "the rich" and the poor. It is proven that the 1% of America has 40% of the entire nation 's wealth ("Wealth Inequality in America."). The bottom 80% of America only share 7% of the nation 's wealth among themselves. The top 1% has 50% of the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of Americans only own 0.5% ("Wealth Inequality in America."). The poor is not just getting by but they are scraping and fighting to get by. Now that it is clear that there is a lot of poor people in America, it is important to figure out how to fix
In Rousseau’s book “A Discourse On Inequality”, he looks into the question of where the general inequality amongst men came from. Inequality exists economically, structurally, amongst different generations, genders, races, and in almost all other areas of society. However, Rousseau considers that there are really two categories of inequality. The first is called Natural/Physical, it occurs as an affect of nature. It includes inequalities of age,, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind and soul. The second may be called Moral/Political inequality, this basically occurs through the consent of men. This consists of the privileges one group may have over another, such as the rich over the poor.
Reich, Robert B. “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer.” A World of Ideas:
America’s upper class has been getting richer since the past three decades, and we have still not found a way to stop this. We have been unable to find a way to distribute America’s wealth equally, so we can have a decent lower class and a good middle class. Inequality has caused many people to struggle in various ways, but their is alway another side to the story.
Income inequality continues to increase in today’s world, especially in the United States. Income inequality means the unequal distribution between individuals’ assets, wealth, or income. In the Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes, a liberal journalist, states the inequality gap between the rich and the poor are increasing widening, and there need to have things done - tax the rich, provide better education - in order to shortening the inequality gap. America is a meritocratic country, which means that everybody has equal opportunity to be successful regardless of their class privileges or wealth. However, equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcomes. People are having more opportunities to find a better job, but their incomes are a lot less compared to the top ten percent rich people. In this way, the poor people will never climb up the ladder to high status and become millionaires. Therefore, the government needs to increase all the tax rates on rich people in order to reduce income inequality.