Economic Disparities Between Rich And Poor Summary

Upon reading Bell’s article I found that I agree with most of the author’s assertions. In my own experience as a child I too would categorize my family as being poor. Although my father was employed, his job was categorized as janitorial and as such paid minimum wage. As a child of the late and sixties and seventies I did realize that my family did not have some of the luxuries that other children enjoyed but I nor anyone in my family was ever treated as lazy, untrustworthy or lacking integrity.

From my perspective it was not until I entered high school in the early 1980’s that socioeconomic status became important. The 1980’s gave rise to the yuppie and people became obsessed with being self-centered and materialistic. In the article the author indicates that he too noticed a social shift that he called liberal individualism where it became morally acceptable not to share. This ideology was spread by

I happen to agree with this statement and as an example I will use the financial collapse that occurred in 2007. The financial collapse hit America hard as income disparities between rich and poor widened as government regulations eased and bank failures rose. Financial disparity did not hit classes equally as ethnic minorities and the poor bore much of the burden. During this period wealth inequality grew to levels not seen in decades which prompted the occupy Wall Street movement. The occupy Wall Street movement purpose was to bring attention to the fact that one percent of the population held more than 90 percent of the nation’s wealth. This level of inequality has created a stacked the deck where it is nearly impossible for the nation’s poor to move up the social ladder. As a result wealth inequality is one of the top issues of 2016 presidential election