Wealth And Corruption In The United States

Wealth Causes Problems

For many years, wealth and corruption have been the greatest debate in our country. Some people say that wealth and corruption are not such a big problem in America, while others say that they are a major problem that we need to solve. People like Huey P. Long and Paul Piff have talked to people about how wealth is a problem in our country and about a solution that could solve this problem. Kevin Phillips has written about what causes corruption and what we can do to fix it. Wealth causes more problems than anything else in the United States. Wealth affects a person’s behavior toward other people, which also causes political corruption. A person’s behavior toward the people around them changes when it comes to wealth.

Political corruption is when someone with higher power is using his or her wealth for their own interest, not for others interest. In this case people who are wealthy are using their money to buy elections for their political interest. In Kevin Phillips’ article, “How Wealth Defined Power,” he states that “[w]ith so much at stake in policy making and regulation, the rich stepped up their political involvement, and more and more money poured into congressional elections… the concentration and momentum of wealth spilled over, just as they had before, from economic self-interest and buccaneering into the corruption of politics.” All the money was not just being poured into the election, but it was also being poured into the pockets of “well-tailored politicians” (Phillips). This kind of actions also cause wealthy people to be self-centered because “financial and political corruption seem to be an inevitable consequence of psychologies and politics unleashed as a long bull market feeds a culture of money and greed,” which is due to the fact that “[w]hen money is king, politicians get bought on a truly grand scale and philosophy bows to avarice” (Phillips). However, not all of these people are selfish about their wealth or unwilling to help

Both Huey P. Long and Paul Piff have come up with a solution for this problem. Piff’s solution is to inform people who are living in poverty and are in need of food, shelter, or clothing. He did a study with his colleagues where people had to watch a short video about “childhood poverty,” which “served as a reminder of the needs of others in the world around them,” Piff said in his Ted Talk. The outcome of this study was that the rich people were willing to help others that were living in poverty, and who were complete strangers to them. Piff says, “[a]fter watching this video… rich people became just as generous of their own time to help out this other person, a stranger, as someone who’s poor, suggesting that these differences are not innate or categorical, but are so malleable to slight changes in people’s values, and little nudges of compassion and bumps of empathy.” In Long’s speech, “Every Man a King,” he is proposing the people a program called “Share the Wealth” that was meant to solve the problem about wealth between the rich and the poor. He says that what the program and him are proposing is “[e]very man to eat when there is something to eat; all to wear something when there is something to wear.” People like the Mayos are giving their fortune to charity and where it can do some good to other people. Bill Gates gave a speech