...Anthony Giovenco Political Science Inequality Paper 12-18-14 The Effects of Wealth Inequality in the United States Wealth inequality in the United States has grown tremendously since 1970. The United States continuously reveals higher rates of inequality as a result of perpetual support for free market capitalism. The high rates of wealth inequality cause the growing financial crisis to persist, lower socio-economic mobility, increase national poverty, and have adverse effects on health and well being. There is no doubt that wealth inequality in America has been escalating quickly; the portion of total income earned by the top one percent has doubled since the beginning of the 1970’s. The wealthy are the main beneficiaries regarding income inequality. In the latest consensus of wealth distribution, the top one percent of Americans owned thirty five percent of the nations private wealth, and the top ten percent took home about fifty percent of all income in 2012. This figure is greater than the bottom 90 percent combined. The question commonly asked concerning this matter: How and why is this becoming so quickly unequal is to be examined. First, we must explain what is meant by the term “wealth.” Wealth is the collection of the assets people own. This includes homes, stocks, savings for pension, and bank accounts, minus all existing debts. The main issue regarding wealth inequality is income inequality. Income equality has grown increasingly in the past 30 years....
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...The end of World War Two marked a time were colonies began to gain their independence. The hopes of these colonies, was that independence would bring democracy and prosperity. However, at this moment most former colonies are fail states. Why decolonization has not delivered on the hope of prosperity and democracy? I would suggest that most decolonized states are still being exploited by the international system. Even though most (developed) countries lost their colonies, they still have a monopoly on their former colonies commodities. They use multi-national companies as a mean to control these commodities and other resources. As a result, most of the profit (generated) by the natural resources in underdeveloped countries, in fact goes to more develop countries. This caused the economies of former colonies to cripple. Furthermore, these states are still suffering from the legacy of inequality and ethnic tension which also prevent them from developing. Whereas, developed countries have used direct military threat to protect their multi-national companies interest. For instance, the United States had orchestrated the overthrown of the Guatemalan government in 1954 to preserve the monopoly of land of an US owned multinational company. A majority of ex-colonies remain under-developed because the economic international system still disfavors them. They are still serving the interest of core countries. (What interests) As a result, it is becoming increasing difficult for them to...
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...Income Inequality President Obama called economic inequality “the defining challenge of our time.” Many would say that income inequality is one of the biggest issues and injustices facing The United States of America today. Income Inequality is a very serious issue with a complex history and a variety of proposed solutions. Income inequality is an issue in almost every way you look at it. The effect of so few people having purchasing power in The United States of America has had and will continue to have a negative effect on the economy. Money needs to keep circulating around in the economy to maintain a healthy economy. The Guardian explained in an article in February 2013, “Money is like blood – it needs to circulate for local economies...
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...THE GLOBALIZATION RORSCHACH TEST: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION, INEQUALITY AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT NANCY BRUNE and GEOFFREY GARRETT* November 2004 Forthcoming in Annual Review of Political Science vol. 8, 2005 In this review essay, we address the three principal questions that have dominated the debate over the distributive effects of globalization. First, how has globalization affected inequality among countries? Second, how has globalization affected inequality within countries? Third, how has globalization affected the ability of national governments to redistribute wealth and risk within countries? We conclude that despite the proliferation of social science research on the consequences of globalization, there is no solid consensus in the relevant literatures on any of these questions. This is because scholars disagree about how to measure globalization and about how to draw causal inferences about its effects. Keywords: globalization, inequality, economic growth, government spending, privatization ___________________________________________________________ * Nancy Brune is a doctoral candidate at Yale University. She can be reached at nbrune@isop.ucla.edu. Geoffrey Garrett is Vice Provost and Dean of the International Institute, Director of the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations, and Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He can be reached at ggarrett@international.ucla.edu. The authors Alexandra Guisinger, David Nickerson and Jason Sorens...
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...1. a) Discuss the effects of income inequality on a nation’s economic conditions. Income inequality is the unequal distribution of income among individuals of an economy (Income Inequality, 2014). In other words, the difference between the wealthy individual’s income and middle-class to poverty-stricken individuals’ incomes continues to increase. Such disparity can have detrimental effects on the economy. Those individuals who have a low-income are less able to purchase goods. As income inequality between individuals increases, money moves from those who used it to purchase their basic needs to those who already had enough and more. This then causes a weakened aggregate demand for products because the middle-class and poor can no longer afford...
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...Guinea while Sri Lanka strides ahead Over the past three decades, India has made good progress on the human development index (HDI), says the Human Development Report 2013, released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). However, India’s rank out of 187 countries is no better than last year’s. With a HDI value of 0.554 and a rank of 136 among 187 countries, which it shares with Equatorial Guinea, India is placed in the “medium development” category. There has been steady improvement in its HDI value, which was 0.345 in 1980. In 1950, Brazil, China and India together represented 10 per cent of the world economy, while the six traditional economic leaders of the North accounted for more than half. According to projections in the report, by 2050, Brazil, China and India will together account for 40 per cent of global output, far surpassing the projected combined production of today’s Group of Seven bloc. | | | HDI is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to rank countries in four tiers of human development. Since 2011, the UNDP report has included an inequality adjusted HDI, also known as IHDI, which attempts to include the effects of inequality on human development. The IHDI for India this year is 0.392. High gender inequality The country fails miserably on the front of gender equality. On the gender equality index, with a value of 0.610, India has one of the worst indicators in the medium human development category...
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...Running head: INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES Income Distribution in the United States and the Lorenz Curve 1 Market economies are favored and well-known for generating macroeconomic growth and progress in industrialized nations, such as the United States. Numerous academic studies and economic research have been done not only to measure economic growth, but also to analyze any disparities in income distributions among the general American population. This paper will examine trends and patterns of American wages since the 1970s, focusing on shifts in income distributions to see if these shifts can be interpreted as income inequality across different sectors of our society. Furthermore, this paper will study two important and interlinked methods of measuring income inequality, which are the Lorenz Curve and the Gini Coefficient Index. The Executive Branch of our federal government and the U.S. Congress keep a close eye on income distributions throughout the entire nation. These bodies rely heavily on data collected and analyzed by non-partisan agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and academic institutitions that provide data and statistical analysis to assist in economic and budgetary decisions made by elected officials concerning a wide array of policy issues such as taxes, social insurance programs and other issues that impact the overall economy...
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...economic inequality Maastricht University | | | | School of Business & Economics | | | | Place & date: | 18th November 2014 | | Name, initials: | Große Entrup, Carina | | ID number: | I6096321 | | Study: | International Business | | Course code: | ebc1009 | | Group number: | 46 | | Tutor name: | Emre Ergin | | Writing tutor name: | Kirsty Donald | | Writing assignment: | Main Paper (Task 10) | | number of words: | 1990 | | carina.grosseentrup@maastrichtuniversity.nl Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Government intervention 3. Government intervention to reduce income inequality 3.1 In-kind transfers 3.2 Minimum wage 3.2.1 Effects of minimum wage on labour market 3.3 Income tax 4. Conclusion 1. Introduction Although income grew by almost three percent per year for all income classes in the period from 1950 to 1980, the ones that were mostly blessed with the highest income growth were the top earners (McDowell, 2012). Income can differ enormously between the different classes of a society and the range between the top earners and those at the bottom of the society becomes larger and larger. Income inequality is a wide discussed topic by all social classes. The well earning upper-class, people who have to struggle with a minimum living wage and the shrinking middle-class, which has to worry most about its future living situation, are affected by it (Mankiw, 2012). Economic inequality can...
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...Abstract This paper explores the direct relationship between income and happiness. The first section of the paper discusses the issue of economics and migration and what this means for people’s happiness. The second section has to do with the correlation between age, money and happiness. It researches to see if your age has any effect on your happiness when it comes to your income level. The paper also talks about the main relationship between income and happiness and how having any kind of inequality can greatly affect your happiness in life. It looks into a certain situation where they look at the relationship between a family’s income and their happiness as a whole. The last section of the paper is one quite interesting because it looks into the concept of being self-employed and what effect, if any, it has on your happiness. One would think that it would cause a positive effect because you are your own boss, but the article goes into more depth with the direct and indirect ways it affects you and also on a national and individual level of self-employment. The Economics of Happiness There are two different sections for when it comes to the concept of economics and migration. The first part has to do with people migrating to another country looking for better opportunities and furthermore, in income. When they migrate from a less developed country to a more developed country, they have a belief that since it is a better economy, they will have more wealth. This belief...
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...Minimum wage is the lowest amount of money that a person can be legally paid. As of January 1st, Georgia’s minimum wage was $5.15 an hour (National Conference of State Legislature). The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but the price remains $5.15 in Georgia for the people who are exempt from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (Johnson). Minimum wage should never be as low as it is now. The minimum wage should be increased because of the increase in the cost of living, it would spur job growth, and it would reduce inequality. Minimum wage is supposed to cover the cost of living in today’s society. As of today, the minimum wage is not enough to cover housing. When the price for these items rose, the minimum wage should have risen as...
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...so many inequalities on an everyday basis. They fall behind their Caucasian counterparts in employment, education, and even longevity. Moreover, minorities lead the categories of incarceration rates, poverty and overall population. I will discuss the most important inequality that should have the most effort put into it to be eliminated. Inequality in our education systems amongst minorities is an issue that every city in every state faces. Our goal as a nation is to help eliminate these inequalities in our educational system. This can only be done if everyone is on the same page and has the best interest for our youth, no matter the race. To understand the inequalities that minorities face on an every day basis, one must understand...
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...The Detrimental Impact of Income Inequality on Social Well-being The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as the “complete state of physical, mental or social well-being,” (2001:3). Through the Quality of Life survey, the well-being of societies is measured, where living conditions and ‘quality of life’ are found to be important concepts to the overall wellbeing of countries (Eurofound, 2012). The United Nations (UN) asserts that global happiness can only be achieved if environmental and social well-being accompany economic development (UN DESA, 2013). While well-being indicates living conditions and resource dispersal, the lack of social well-being relates to “social and income equality, social capital, social trust, social connectedness and social networks,” (Eurofound, 2012, FPH, 2010). Although there is national and patterned variation, academics have found that...
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...HEALTH RISKS & COSTS The Effects Of Obesity, Smoking, And Drinking On Medical Problems And Costs Obesity outranks both smoking and drinking in its deleterious effects on health and health costs. by Roland Sturm ABSTRACT: This paper compares the effects of obesity, overweight, smoking, and problem drinking on health care use and health status based on national survey data. Obesity has roughly the same association with chronic health conditions as does twenty years’ aging; this greatly exceeds the associations of smoking or problem drinking. Utilization effects mirrors the health effects. Obesity is associated with a 36 percent increase in inpatient and outpatient spending and a 77 percent increase in medications, compared with a 21 percent increase in inpatient and outpatient spending and a 28 percent increase in medications for current smokers and smaller effects for problem drinkers. Nevertheless, the latter two groups have received more consistent attention in recent decades in clinical practice and public health policy. M a n y b e h a v i o r a l r i s k f a c t o r s , chief among them smoking, heavy drinking, and obesity, are known causes of chronic health conditions. Chronic health conditions, like cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, in turn are primary drivers of health care spending, disability, and death. This paper compares the associations of smoking, problem drinking, and obesity with health care use and chronic conditions....
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...when the government increase spending on purchases it will create more job opportunities. This will increase consumer spending which will encourage private investment spending to meet the demand. In turns that will create more jobs in the economy. The negatives of increasing government spending are as follows. It is very important to remember that government spending to stimulate the economy is not free. The funds are not going to come from thin air. The government has two options to generate the money without increasing taxes, borrowing the money domestically, or from foreign governments. Both cases increase the national debt, or cut some government programs to stimulate others. Borrowing the money domestically, from local investors, will stop these investors from creating new businesses. This will lead to less job creation in the economy. When the national debt increases the future tax rate will increase which will slow the economy in the future. That will lead us to conclude that stimulating the economy by borrowing is a short term solution. While cutting other government programs can be described as taking water from one end of the swimming pool and adding it to the other end. This will not increase the...
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...dependency theorists criticize modernization theory? Question 2 options: | a. They would point out that the only way for traditional societies to develop is to shed their traditional ways. | | b. They would argue that modernization theory ignores the fact that markets, if freed from state intervention, will develop any society. | | c. They would point out that traditional societies are typically low income because of a history of colonialism and oppression. | | d. They would assert that traditional societies should model their institutions after the United States if they want to develop. | Save Question 3 (1 point) There is significant income inequality in countries in which of the following regions? Question 3 options: | a. The industrial world. | | b. The developing world. | | c. Both the developing AND industrial world. | | d. Income inequality exists between nations, not within nations. | Save Question 4 (1 point) The value of a country's yearly output of goods and services, divided by its total population, is: Question 4 options: | a. global inequality. | | b. global per person output. | | c. per person gross national income. | | d. per capita product. | Save Question 5 (1 point) Which of the following statements is accurate? Question 5 options: | a. Economic development in...
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