“Richer and Poorer” is an essay about economic inequality in America and the ways people have approached the subject in the past and the solution to fix it. “Richer and Poorer” was written by Jill Lepore an American Historian who is also an Professor of American History at Harvard University. “Picher and Poorer” published on The New Yorker, where Lepore also works as a staff writer, and the date of publication was March 16, 2015. “Richer and Poorer” uses many different references, statistics and stories about economic inequality. Lepore also talks about the Gini index, which is a scale from zero to one, used to show the amount of inequality. How it represents this, is if Gini was one it would mean that one person earned all the income, the rest did not earn any, and Gini would be zero if everyone earned the same income. Lepore uses Logos, Pathos and Ethos to show that inequality can be reduced by having more representation in Congress. …show more content…
An example of this is when she explains what the Gini index, so you can understand fully what the numbers mean, and how the United States have been using this to calculate the inequality since 1947. She then informs the reader that the Gini has been rising since 1968 when it was at .386 to .476 in 2013, which has made the America the largest in inequality than any other developed democratic country. Lepore talks about a study done by Alfred Stephan and Juan J. Linz where they studied twenty-three democracies and found that when looking at the number of legislative seats and the size of the population they could calculate malapportionment, which correlated with the county’s Gini. They found the less representation the higher the Gini, she uses this to draw the conclusion that the United States can lower the inequality by having more representation in
Federman, M. et al. What Does it Mean to be Poor in America? 1996 (2009). Pp. 296-310
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.
In this paper, Gregory Mantsios compares and contrasts class in America. He uses facts to support his point that things are getting better for the upper class, while things are increasingly getting worse for the middle and lower classes. Throughout the paper, he demonstrates comparing and contrasting by using “myth” versus “reality”.
Another idea that he brought up was that the American government tends to give less help to the unemployed than other rich countries. List 2-4 supporting points or arguments the author uses to bolster the main ideas: A good supporting point that Jencks used to show that the American government tends to give less help to poor people than other countries, is a study done using the 90/10 ratio. In the study it showed that within the English-speaking world the United States was the most unequal of all. Another supporting point that helps his argument is when he talks about the United States doing little to limit wage inequality. List three facts the author uses to support the main idea: Jencks included a lot of studies and charts into his article that helped his argument.
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
"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).
"The Poverty Of Equality." American Spectator 45.3 (2012): 26-30. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Dec. 2013.
In “How The Poor Are Made To Pay For Their Poverty” Barbara Ehrenreich argues the poor are getting exploited for their poorness not only is it the creditors and businesses it is also local government that are syphoning off money of the poor. In Jonathan Kozel’s “Preparing Minds For Market” he’s research how public schools are now leading students down a particular path of careers and marketing systems set up for just this purpose. In both essays, there are examples that the poor or less fortunate are trapped by local government and businesses and put in situations they can’t get out of which is a cycle that seems unbreakable if you don’t know the traps they set.
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
The connection between both pieces have is that people, whether they be students in school or well educated, are ignorant of classism and its affects. Therefore, they also ignorant of the fact that children who are poor cannot achieve success at the level a rich child can, even though the statistics are available to the
In Confronting Inequality, Paul Krugman discusses the cost of inequality and possible solutions. Krugman argues to say that it is a fantasy to believe the rich live just like the middle class. Then, he goes into detail about how middle class families struggle to try to give their children a better life and how education plays a factor in children’s future lives. For example, children’s ability to move into higher education could be affected by their parents economic status. Also, He discusses how politicians play a role in the inequality, because most of politicians are in the upper economic class. Finally, Krugman says how we could possibly have solutions to these various inequalities, but how America won’t get
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
Throughout American history, wealth inequality has taken many different forms, and has affected many people and groups in different ways. In the following analysis, two measures of 'wealth inequalities' will be used. First is a more traditional view, regarding the distribution of income and wealth among the upper to lower classes. The size of the gap has varied over time, widening and compressing throughout American history. While America has been thought of as a middle class nation, this is a fairly recent phenomena that began after World War II. In this context of today, this idea appears to be fading as wealth is becoming more concentrated towards the upper classes. Additionally, these effects of both the concentration and equalization of income distribution can differently affect groups of people.
Wilson, William J. "Jobless Poverty." The Inequality Reader: Contemporary and Foundational Readings in Race, Class, and Gender. Ed. David B. Grusky and Szonja Szelenyi. 2md ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011. 159-69. Print.
To start off people in the upper class are foreseen as better people and in control on what they can say and or do whereas lower classes are foreseen as unimportant. Take Stetson’s The Yellow Wall-Paper for example John’s wife wants to be able to speak to her husband like her husband and not her physician. “John does not know how much I really suffer” (Stetson, 649). This just goes to prove