...Gerardo Contreras Gene Lee Econ203 March 1 2013 Income Inequality in America Dissemination of income in America has been a major topic of study by many institutions as well as scholars. Statistics have been gathered from numerous sources, which show that the problem of income inequality has significantly risen since 1970. Income inequality was stabilized for many years. Although income inequality has increased amongst the elite countries in the world, America suffers from this problem the most. Research shows that cause of the wide gap in income inequality has not been decided by gender, which by the way has decreased in America in last twenty years. The Income inequality gap has also not been because of race, or the gap been amongst middle class and lower class, however it has increased. The main reason exists and lies amongst the middle class and highest wage earners, with the disparity being extra dangerous as an individual’s income increases. It is stated that upward redistribution can be held accountable for forty percent of the forecasted Social Security deficit in the following century. Research states that in 2011 it was established that the highest earning one percent of families multiplied about 275 percent after federal taxes and income transfers over a period of 28, compared to a gain of just fewer than 40 percent of the 60 percent in the middle of America's income distribution. Additional researchers found that the trend has continually been ongoing since...
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...Well, Uncle Zack it is true enough that inequality has always existed in American, but it is not inevitable or natural and it can be changed. Inequality has changed over time. From slavery to separate but equal, inequality has existed and was written as laws that facilitated and helped inequality to thrive. The concept of inequality can be depicted in many areas, freed black famers could not own land and had to rent land from white owners. When the social security program was first implemented it denied agricultural workers who were mostly black the ability to benefit from the program. Currently in America even with similar education levels minorities typically earn less than whites and home ownership, which is a crucial means by which...
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...Close to the foundation of this country people have asked this question; “What does it mean to be American?” It can be defined as many things or even three words such as; inequality, perseverance, and hope. Thus the meaning of an American is facing the inequality from different races, positions, and classes. To have the perseverance to surpass all things and people who stand in your way. And finally, to hope for the best outcome for tomorrow, for the nation, for the world, and for the generations to come. The following examples will prove this. Ironically, the first word to defining American is inequality for it has and will always be a part of this nation. As stated by Anzia Yezierska in her short story America and I, “America gives free...
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...Huyen Tran Prof. Boyd English 100 4/21/2014 Inequality in America Time has brought about many changes in America since the 1960’s to the present. Many of them have been positive, like advances in technology in regards to the health care system, but some have created a growing concern in the eyes of many citizens. People like Robert Reich have noticed a growing sense of inequality in America and are worried it will only increase over time. Reich in his essay Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer he talks about the problems we are facing in the 21st century and what must be done to prevent them from spiraling out of control. The economy pre-1960 in America use to be a solid unit, what happened to one happened to all but this is simply not true anymore. “We are now in different boats, one sinking rapidly, one sinking more slowly, and the third steadily rising” (Jacobus 516). The worst hit has befallen the routine producers who now have to compete in a world economy where massive amount of people are competing for cheap labor. Reich claims the increase in outsourcing being done by American companies since the late 1970’s is a major factor. A company that shows this exact change in the seventies in AT&T, which prior to 1970’s relied on “routine producers in Shreveport, Louisiana, to assemble standard telephones. It then discovered that routine producers in Singapore would perform the same tasks at a far lower cost” (Jacobus 517). Then in 1989, AT&T...
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...racial inequality has powerfully shaped American history from its beginnings. Racial inequality has integrated into American culture and simulates a false presence of true freedom and equal justice for all. From the assassination of early Native Americans, slavery, black codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, the civil rights movement, mass incarceration, to present day black lives matter movement, racial inequality is a hard barrier for the United States to overcome. The true impact of racial inequality in America is belittled. Racism in America is the unjust treatment of collective individuals based on the color of their skin due to historical contexts and systematic oppression (Baber 1). Racism roots from the belief of one race has qualities that defines it as inferior or superior to other races. Inequality is the...
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...Is it still possible to carry out the original American Dream? The one where a poor kid living in complete poverty can strike it rich in America with a vision, some hard work, and a whole lot of determination. Up until the years within the 1980’s, this dream was certainly one that was realistic. However, the gap in wealth inequality that has been growing since around that time seems to be shutting down hope. The ladder that stretches from the lower class to the upper class is getting longer and more arduous to climb. Opportunities that lead to success are limited the further down one would go into the lower class. Motivation is diminished because of the slighter chance of becoming satisfyingly successful. Because of this, there needs to be a way to narrow the gap between rich and poor. Wealth redistribution poses as a possible effective solution to fix the exceedingly large gap in wealth inequality. There is plenty of evidence to show that the wealth inequality gap in the United States is exceedingly high. As shown in Figure 1 (Wealth Inequality in America 2012), Americans are aware of the wide gap, and even conclude that the gap should be narrower and wealth should be more evenly distributed. However, the chart on the top shows the reality of wealth distribution. It is remarkably skewed, and exceptionally different from the popular vision of the distribution chart, not...
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...Income Inequality in America: An Analysis of Policies from Reagan to Obama and What Policies Can Help Close the Gap Income inequality in America has been of great importance in recent election cycles. Candidates from both sides of the political aisle have addressed the growing economic and social concern of increasing income and wealth inequality throughout the country. However, policies to address this growing concern are vastly different. This paper seeks to examine policies from Reagan to Obama that contributed to today’s massive income and wealth inequality. Was it tax reform throughout the 1980s and 1990s that contributed to inequality? Did the Federal Reserve perpetuate policies through massive quantitative easing that led to...
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...Inequality for Women in America Equality has always been an issue in America. Inequality in America has had many different reasons. One reason for inequality is that men have always been superior to women. Women didn’t have the same rights that men did. Women couldn’t have a job or vote. Women finally got the right to vote in 1929. Now even though women have pretty much the same rights as men do, inequality is still greatly noticed. Women still don’t get treated as equals. Women get higher prices in auto shops and hair salons. Because men don’t think of women as equals when in an auto shop, women are taken advantage of and given higher than average prices. In hair salons or barber shops women are given higher prices than men, even for the same haircut, because women will generally pay more to have the look that they want. Women also get the “credit” for poverty. Poverty is usually feminized completely. If a family is at or below the poverty line, the woman in the house is blamed for it. Inequality in America is not gone, it is just under the surface where not many people may see the truth behind it. In America the average price for a woman’s haircut is $44, but the average price for a man’s haircut is $28. (Risen) Some would blame the difference in price on the difference in price on the length of hair. The price for a woman to get a haircut is almost double what a man’s haircut price is all over the nation. The most expensive haircut in the nation for a woman is $73....
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...For there to be a perfect society, the wealth of a country should be shared evenly by everyone. In other to find out if this is happening you have to use the Lorenz curve, which was developed by an American economist called, Max Lorenz in 1905, it’s a graph that represent wealth distributed in a society. A coefficient of 0 means everyone has exactly the same income, while a country with 1.0 means only the rich takes home everything while everyone else earns nil. American is the richest and most unequal nation, at 0.42, America’s level of post-tax-and-transfer inequality outranks Israel, Britain and Canada, and dwarfs the figures in Japan and Scandinavia. Ms Gornick’s light-blue lines reveal a less well-reported story. Those lines show pre-tax-and-transfer income inequality, and on that count America doesn’t fare badly in comparison to other OECD countries. At 0.57, America is neck-and-neck with Spain and every Scandinavian nation, and less unequal than Britain, Greece and Ireland. But the American taxation and welfare state clips only 0.15 off of the pre-tax-and-transfer Gini coefficient, while more aggressively egalitarian countries slice off 0.20 (Luxembourg, Norway), 0.24 (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden) or 0.28 (Ireland)....
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...Although Latin America has faced many social, political, and economic issues within the last three centuries, inequality remains one of the most important, historical, and omnipresent aspects of the region’s culture. As Europeans took over Latin America during the time of colonization, they implemented many elitist social structures that have held strong and are evident today (Harris). Income inequality is the most visible and greatest disparity that the region faces; yet inequality between gender, ethnicities, and education remain strong and significant problems with a necessity for improvement. Inequality of wealth and disparity of power and influence are Latin American’s greatest curses and are at the root of many of the developmental, social, criminal, and political problems that continue to plague the region (De Ferranti). Since inequality has pervaded into every feature of Latin American society, it is important to measure inequality accurately in order to obstruct the causes of the discrimination and prevent new ones from beginning. The Gini Coefficient is an effective way that people indicate the inequality of a country by measuring a frequency distribution of income or wealth. Using the "Gini Index" of inequality in the distribution of income and consumption, the researchers found that Latin America and the Caribbean, from the 1970s through the 1990s, measured nearly 10 points more unequal than Asia, 17.5 points more unequal than the 30 countries in the Organization...
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...Americans strive to be the best, but our nation is one of the highest to discriminate both racially and economically. One issue within the American Dream is the wealth gap that exists based on race. According to “Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America” families of color will soon “make up a majority of the population, but most continue to fall behind whites in building wealth,” recent statistics prove that “the average wealth of white families was over $500,000 higher than the average wealth of African American families” compared to the past where the wealth gap between races were lower and the “average wealth of while families was $117,000 higher than the average wealth of nonwhite families”. This racial and economic discrimination...
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...Matthew Andre ENC1101 Professor Neuman December 8, 2011 The Problem Even Congress Cannot Fix: Inequality in America The big story that has been all over the news in recent times is none other than the massive bear of a problem: inequality in America. This not so white elephant has dominated American news stations, but nonetheless has not been resolved. There is without a doubt financial inequality in America, and the main problems with this financial inequality are the flawed educational system where rich dumb kids have a much better chance to graduate college than a hard working poor kid, and the increasingly large gap between the rich and the poor. The cause for the problem of unequal opportunity in schooling is inherently the quality of instructors and schools across the nation, and the cause for the overwhelming rift between social classes is a flawed tax system which punishes success and benefits the poor. Furthermore, the solutions for these two massive problems would be to reform the American educational system to a performance based system and a reformed tax system that broadens the tax base and encourages success. Certainly, the level of financial inequality is an issue. But, why is it such an issue? One of the major underlying problems with financial inequality is the face that rich dumb kids that maybe be in the bottom twenty-five percent of their school but come from families that are in the top twenty-five percent of the socio-economic spectrum have a significantly...
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...Minorities, females, and children are all impacted by inequality in the United States. Ethnic minorities and females are impacted by double standards, job inequality, profiling, and discrimination. Children are taught racism and profiling which keeps hatred and negativity going. Minorities in the United States are considered anyone who is visually a different ethnicity than white/Caucasian or a female. I say visually because we are all a mixture of races; however, some are more visually, stereotypically, dominant in a specific ethnicity. When I attend my high school, there is little diversity. This is not because of standards, Licking Valley is a public high school; thus, anyone is welcome to come and receive an education. On the other hand, when I attend COTC, I have come to notice much more diversity than I was previously exposed to. It is a nice change of pace; in turn, I like to learn about other cultures and understanding other ethnicities. What I have noticed, however, is that housing in the Licking Valley district is typically more expensive than Newark housing. This could play a role in the amount of diversity between Licking Valley and schools like Newark High School and COTC. Due to job discrimination, this is a domino...
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...Tobi Kehinde University of Oklahoma The Leadership Experience Steven R. Gullberg March 20,2015 Michael Alfonzo took charge of the USS Florida, a submarine ranked among the world’s most dangerous weapons. When announced to the crew of the submarine that he was elected the next commander the crew welcomed him knowing that he has a career in the Navy joining as a teenager and eventually moving up the ranks to become commander. They associated him as one of them. He was thought of as a polite man and past shipmates remembered him as a loner. Upon becoming captain, Alfonzo admonished his sailors and pushed them to their limit, which is what a good leader should do. The downside was his strict and irreparable behavior, loudly reprimanding crew members he believed where unfit for certain duties and even yelling at the chief chef for the absence of coke in the soda dispenser. His behavioral patterns made the crew scared of reporting issues to him in order to avoid being scolded. At the end of the journey when the crew hit shore although under Alfonzo the best ever grades were recorded for certifications the rear admiral Sullivan relieved captain Alfonzo of his duties because of the alienated crew, and strained relationship between the captain and the crew. This was the first ever dismissal of a trident submarine commander. In relation to the Dyadic theory we can highlight the difficulties associated with the Michael Alfonzo case study. Although the leadership method employed...
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...Introduction In 2014 it was estimated that 46.7 million Americans were living under the poverty line* (Bureau U. S., 2014). That same year it was estimated that women accounted for 30.6% of those living in poverty, while men only accounted for 15.7% (Bureau U. S., 2014). Women living in poverty have become a prevalent trend due to the feminization of poverty* and the glass ceiling* that they face when attempting to achieve upward social mobility*. As a result women and children often account for majority of those who are poor. A whopping 50.7% of those living in poverty today are women and children (Bureau U. S., 2014). Occurrences such as racial discrimination, low educational skills, single parenting, low paying jobs, and lack of opportunities and resources only contribute to the continuance of the cycle of poverty (Mahavappallil, 2015). According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) in 2014 “More than 48.1 million Americans lived in households that struggled against hunger (Center, 2015).” The fact that these numbers closely relate to the 46.7 million living in poverty is no mistake. Women and children are not only the highest in number living in poverty, but also the highest to report living in food insecure homes and at risk to becoming obese. Obesity is another major problem in the United States. It is estimated that an average of $223 billion dollars is spent on medical, weight loss products and services related to obesity in the U.S every year (Cawley & Meyerhoefer...
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