...Wealth and Power in the United States POL/443 Wealth and Power in the United States What is wealth? Generally speaking wealth if the value of everything a person or family owns, minus any debts, G. W. Domhoff (2015). Although many of us think of the division of wealth as an equal in the United States, the reality is completely different and shocking; to say the least. Because of this, there are three theories created; pluralism, elite theory, and state autonomy. Each of these theories where created to understand the structure of power in the United States. As we see each of their purpose, a few question comes to mind; who benefits? Who governs? And who wins? In 2013 wealth inequality in the United States was greater than in most developed countries other than Switzerland and Denmark, Weissmann, Jordan (2013). The top 1% (also known at the elites) of the American population owns 42.7% of the country’s total wealth. Meaning the next 19% of Americans owning 50.3%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%, Deborah L. Jacobs (2011). However, after the Great Recession (which started in 2007), the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 34.6% to 37.1%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 85% to 87.7%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36.1% in median household wealth but a drop only 11.1% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99%. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, in September...
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...Distribution of Wealth? Wealth has affected american society and evermore has affect the fabric of families. Has the distribution of wealth gotten so out of control that the effect will reverberate for generations to come and as a society can we do something about it. When we were tasked to write this final research paper on one of the topics from the discussions over the past semester i knew that i had to do a topic that i had dealt with on some personal level even know i have experienced many of the topics over the last semester the one that spoke to me the most is the distribution of wealth because of the simple fact that in my core family unit there is a gap in the distribution of wealth with me now below the poverty line my mother and father who i live with who are apart of the middle class and my birth father who is of the upper class in this paper i will uncover the differences and the similarities between these classes also is it fair that some have all and some have none and will the government do or should not do anything with the situation as well as the themes of what can change and how people feel about the situation at hand and how much is enough and why is it not enough and does the level of wealth make us happy i will also discuss these topics in interviews with my family. In a study conducted by the American psychological association they posed a question money can’t buy happiness? and in reading the article which puts poignant questions to people who make...
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...the poor as lazy; they deserve to be with meager needs because they haven’t shown merit to escape the poverty class, and the underprivileged that they have to pay out of their tax dollars to support them. Sociologists say we need the poor it’s good for our economy out of many various reasons that most of society doesn’t realize. At least journalist B. Ehrenreich saw what it was to not make it in America as an experiment to educate us all in the jobs of the working class from the article “Nickel and Dimed.” I know I became well aware of these differences through reading the article called “Bohemian Grove” by Dr. William Domhoff, through the Rawls exercise, and the class structure activity that was completed in class. As in the United States, social stratification is dominantly subjective by class, which is in turn inclined by variables of what occupation one has, income, education, age, gender, and even religion that separates one from another...
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...in the Modern Era The Commercial Transformation of Material Life and Culture I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. —Thomas Jefferson (letter to Tom Logan, 1816) J 1 ustice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court cited the third president of the United States in his strong dissent to the majority’s 2010 decision allowing corporations unlimited spending on behalf of political candidates.1 Quoting the court’s earlier McConnell decision, Stevens wrote, “We have repeatedly sustained legislation aimed at ‘the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with Jefferson’s animus may seem curious in light of the history of British corporations that financed the settling of the first North American colonies and, as discussed in this chapter, are often credited with providing the model for representative government adopted by the framers of the U.S. Constitution (Tuitt 2006). 280 Corporations in the Modern Era——281 the help of the corporate form.’” The court’s decision, Justice Stevens continued, “will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process.” The essence of Justice Steven’s dissent in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission...
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...April 9, 2014 Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens Martin Gilens Princeton University mgilens@princeton.edu Benjamin I. Page Northwestern University b-page@northwestern.edu forthcoming Fall 2014 in Perspectives on Politics For helpful comments the authors are indebted to Larry Bartels and Jeff Isaacs, to three anonymous reviewers, and to seminar participants at Harvard and Rochester Universities. Gilens and Page Testing Theories of American Politics 2 Abstract Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics – which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, and two types of interest group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism – offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent...
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...Occupy movement From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (June 2013) Occupy movement Part of response to the late-2000s financial crisis and subprime mortgage crisis and the impact of the Arab Spring Combination of October 2011 global protests.jpg Worldwide Occupy movement protests on 15 October 2011 Location Worldwide (List of locations) Methods Occupation Non violent protest Civil disobedience Picketing Demonstrations Internet activism General strikes Direct action Arrests/Injuries/Deaths Arrests: 7,700+,[1] Injuries: 400+,[2] Deaths: 32[3][4][5][6][7] The Occupy movement is an international protest movement against social and economic inequality, its primary goal being to make the economic and political relations in all societies less vertically hierarchical and more flatly distributed. Local groups often have different foci, but among the movement's prime concerns is the belief that large corporations and the global financial system control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and is unstable.[8][9][10][11] The first Occupy protest to receive wide coverage was Occupy Wall Street in New...
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...Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness Author(s): Mark Granovetter Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (Nov., 1985), pp. 481-510 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780199 . Accessed: 18/10/2013 11:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Sociology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 158.143.192.135 on Fri, 18 Oct 2013 11:39:24 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness' Mark Granovetter State University of New York at Stony Brook How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclassical...
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...Anti-Nuclear Movement by Howard Ryan (howard@netwood.net) Preface 2 Part I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Problems of Nonviolent Theory Nonviolent Philosophy 6 Moral View: Violence Itself Is Wrong 9 Practical View: Violence Begets Violence 13 Nonviolent Theory of Power 21 Voluntary Suffering 24 Common Nonviolent Arguments 34 A Class Perspective 49 Part II 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Gandhi: A Critical History Father of Nonviolence 56 Satyagraha in South Africa 59 Textile Strike 66 Noncooperation Movement 1919-22 70 Religious Conflicts 80 Salt Satyagraha 87 Congress Ministries 97 The War Years 101 Independence and Bloodshed 111 Part III 17 18 19 20 Nonviolence in the Anti-Nuclear Movement Nonviolent Direct Action 120 Consensus Decision Making 123 Open, Friendly, and Respectful 136 Civil Disobedience 142 Epilogue 151 Notes 154 ©2002 by Howard Ryan. All rights reserved. Readers have my permission to use and distribute for non-profit and educational purposes. Critique of Nonviolent Politics 2 Preface (2002) Critique of Nonviolent Politics may be the only comprehensive critique of nonviolent theory that has been written. I wrote it between 1980 and 1984, while living in Berkeley, California. Since 1977, I had been active in the movement against nuclear power and weapons which, in California, focused its protests at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant near San Luis Obispo, and at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Labs where nuclear weapons are designed. Nonviolence was the prevailing political...
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