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Causes and effects of poverty in the US
What is the gap between rich and poor in america
Poverty in America and its effects
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The image above portraits a political cartoon that was found on definitelymaybe.me. It was published on April 7, 2007 by Columbia Daily Tribune and the artist is John Darkow. A reason that Darkow could have created this cartoon is to display the difference and the relationship between the persons which would be considered rich or in the upper-class and the persons which would be considered poor or in the lower-class. Upon first glance, one notices a big fat man whom seems to represent one of the very few in upper-class and about 30 other men and women which are looking at each other in confusion and disgust. He undoubtedly made the rich man bigger than the rest of the other men and women on the opposite side to illustrate the difference in …show more content…
On the other side, the men and women are labeled as “The Bottom 90% (The Great Unwashed),” which means that majority of the people are middle or low class. By what Darkow means by “The Great Unwashed,” is that there are poor people who are looked down upon by most of society. Many would display income as dollar bills, but the author cleverly takes a different approach and illustrates the income by utilizing a pie. The rich man takes half of the pie which means that he gets half of the income and the other half is for the other men and women. The rich man is also saying “Well, I left you half! What are you. Greedy?” The rich man is taking half of the pie for himself which is half of the income while there are a bunch of other people who are left with the other half of the pie, the other half of the income, and they have to share it among themselves. Also, the rich man thinks that the people are being greedy because he at least left half of the income for them instead of taking it all for …show more content…
The manifest of this cartoon that the wealthy man is taking advantage of the middle and lower class people. He is doing this by taking half of the income and leaving the lower and middle class with half as well but they have to equally distribute it amongst each other. He is also calling them greedy, when in fact he is the one that is being greedy because he gets half while the others get a whole lot less because they have to equally share it. In the book, Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism, Robert Henier states that there was a substantial expansion in the economy but the ones who benefited the most out of this were the upper class. In addition, the wealthy man is wearing a tie which could mean he is a CEO of a company. With this being said, this would be the latent content because it also states that Congress has cut the tax rate for the wealthiest taxpayers by more than half and instead of paying taxes they actually receive money back as a tax benefit (Heiner, 2013). In addition, wealthy people pay similar or lower rates of tax than lower and middle class people (Heiner, 2013). This means that wealthy people and companies are getting to keep all their profits plus a tax benefit, while the middle and lower class owe the government tax money at the end of each year. The underlying message is that the
The video “Nick Hanauer: Beware, fellow Plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming” is a powerful speech made by Nick Hanauer to address the growth of inequality among social classes. He also states how to prevent the effects that would come to the plutocrats’ class group if the social inequality continues this fast paced growth.
The heart of the whole notion of wealth lies in the setting of the novel, the east and west eggs of New York City. The west egg was a clustering of the "Nouveau riche" or the newly acquired rich, and the east egg was where the people who inherited their riches resided. The eggs divided the people rich in two with the poor being limited to the middle, the "valley of ashes". Even the way the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes the two communities' gives off a feeling of superiority. Nick describes the east as " the less fashionable of the two, through this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them" (...
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
My first source, “The Rise of Consumption Equality” by Andy Kessler, published in The Wall Street Journal, discusses how the different social classes are becoming more alike and more different from each other. At the beginning of the article, Kessler’s talks about how wealth used to be popular, but now it is hard to be wealthy without being guilt-tripped by the lower classes. Kessler then moves on to say that most often the rich work themselves to death to make their fortune, and with the rise in new technology and equality, they only get to enjoy the same things as the middle class. He questions the fairness in that in the next sentence. In the following paragraphs of the article Kessler describes many of the dif...
On the other hand, Carnegie understands that there exists inequality, but he believes that the superior can cooperate with the inferior to gain equality. In fact, it the document he clarifies, “There remains…only one mode of using great fortunes…in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor−a reign of harmony” (Carnegie, 54). Carnegie does not particularly consider inequality a problem. He understands that in order for wealthy to facilitate the lives of the poor, there must be inequality to establish status, but he also discerns that by helping the poor they are given a chance to reach equality. In fact, Carnegie says, “Individualism will
Michael Moore used comical tactics as a way to appeal to his audience in this piece of literature. Michael Moore’s argument is that capitalism is destroying the nation’s economy rather than helping to develop it. The poor are suffering, while the richer are getting richer. The arguments that Moore used may not be considered tangible by all, but he definitely did have the evidence to support his argument. Michael Moore purpose was to expose this ground breaking issue of the dominance of corporate America through video. He used the web source as a source to get his message across because he knew the internet would be accessible to many people. Moore in this film used the different elements of reasoning to identify the message he was sending to his audience.
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
The upper class men had all the wealth in the world at the tips of their fingers while the lower classes didn’t have two pennies to rub together. “… The rich should share with the poor, especially those rich persons who had acquired their property from trade or had otherwise won it from the poor.” (#8) The favoritism is eye-catching, it says that the nobles had won the land from the peasants but stereotypically upper classes have had the land in their family for generations. The trade among the people was unfair to the farmhands. The farmhands fashioned the land and “they were supposed to be brothers with one another” (#8) they should have the right to property and not have to just work it for the lords. On the contrary the upper class “purchased this right for a considerable sum of money… [if the peasants want to be released from their duties to us, nobles, then] the peasants shall pay us a reasonable amount of money.” (#4) Until the sharecroppers started attacking the nobles they “looked on, unaware that misfortune was creeping up on [the peasants]” (#11) Instead of the peasants adopting and modifying their way of life they challenged the nobles to a war and lost. A total amount of the souls that were consumed by the sinful acts of the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants was 100,000.
Furthermore it creates a rhetoric that states it is the responsibility of the middle class to change the circumstances of those in need. This makes those in the middle class have a pressure they did not choose, and also those in poverty an expectation that they might not otherwise have had. Other than when Beegle states, “If the teacher had been exposed to Poverty 101, she would have the skills needed to find out what motivators made sense to me (342),” she makes no other suggestions on just how exactly the middle class would end the cycles of
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
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.
He shows us that every privilege, and attitude that the middle class have, is a direct result, of the exploitation of the working class; and their deplorable
The poor gets poorer, and the rich gets richer. Economically speaking, this is the truth about Capitalism. Numerous people agree that this inequality shows the greedy nature of humankind. The author of the source displays a capitalist perspective that encompasses an individualist approach towards an “un-ideal” economic system. The source articulates a prominent idea that capitalism is far from perfect. The reality is, as long as capitalism exists, there are always those people who are too poor or too rich in the system. We do not need elitists in our society but that is exactly what capitalists are. In this society, people are in clash with those who “have” and those who “have not”, which creates conflict and competition. Throughout
While demagogic statements like these have high emotive worth, they reflect resolute, near incurable stupidity about the sources of income. Listening to some of the talk about income differences, one would think that out there somewhere is a pile of money. People who are wealthy just happened to get there first and greedily took an unfair share. Justice requires that they "give back." Or, there's talk about income distribution. The way some people talk, unequal distribution of income means that there is a dealer of dollars who shells out $1,000 to one person, $100,000 to another and a million dollars to yet another. Thus, the reason why some people are wealthy while others are not wealthy is that the dollar dealer is a racist, sexist, a multi-nationalist, or just plain mean. Economic justice requires a re-dealing of the dollars, income redistribution, where the ill-gotten gains of the few are returned to their rightful owners.
Over the past few years, a number of occurrences have displayed the growing economic and political inequality of the United States. The currently dissipated Occupy Movement did draw the general public’s attention to the ridiculous strides made by the rich, whose incomes have skyrocketed within the past four decades. Those pertaining to the middle-income and poor have sadly had their incomes stagnate. According to Caroline Fairchild from the Huffington Post the middle class incomes steadily is on the decline. In 1968 the middle class earned about 53.2 percent of national income in 1968. This number has now fallen to 45.7 percent. Super PACs became a concern as more individual donors willingly wrote up enormous checks to support their particular candidates. As a result, this gave prominence to the growing political inequality, as well as highlighting the rich’s ability to have their words have much more weight over the average citizen in America.