What Is Income Inequality

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The distribution of wealth in America has been unevenly distributed since 1970. We can see this distribution clearly through some of the wealthiest people in America who make millions of dollars, compared to a homeless individual. There is a huge income gap between rich and poor, the rich stay rich, and the poor, become poorer. Income inequality refers to the unequal distribution of income and wealth between the social classes of citizens. This concept of income inequality has proved over the years, to be a widespread problem, where in the future, economic inequality in developing countries will make up about “95 percent of the entire global population.” Nancy Birdsall discusses this notion of “inequality breeding more inequality” in her article Why Inequality Matters: Some Economic Issues. In her article, Birdsall …show more content…

The phrase “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” isn’t a new concept that individuals in our society have come to understand, but I don’t think we have truly stopped to question what this phrase really means. A good portion of our population, soon to be 95 percent of it, is forced to hold the base of our country in place while hardly being redeemed for their time and effort. Numbers of these people live from paycheck to paycheck, barely getting by, not because they manage their money poorly, but because the value of their time at work is negligible. Our world is living with extreme poverty, where it must be taken into consideration that millions of Americans live off of food stamps in order to get food to feed their family and to be able to survive, while there are individuals spending millions on cars, boats and houses, “objects” that aren’t essential to their health or well being in this

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