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Income Inequality In 'Richer And Poorer' By Jill Lepore

703 Words3 Pages

In the essay, “Richer and Poorer” written by Jill Lepore, and published in The New Yorker on March 16, 2015, the author discusses the income inequality in the United States and uses the rhetorical stages logos, ethos, and pathos as methods for trying to inform the educated middle class about the economic inequality and the effects on the individuals.
Jill Lepore used various other sources to prove her point. Using the Gini Index, Lepore states that “income inequality is greater in the United States that in any other democracy in the developing world” (1). She goes on to give a few statistical points influencing her statement on how the inequality has increased throughout the decades. Including how in between 1975 and 1985, for U.S households from .397 to .419; compared to other countered such as Netherlands. France, Germnay, Sweden and Finland …show more content…

Jill Lepore targets the feelings of viewers to catch the attention and how serious it really is to have such a drastic inequality in our country. This is a great representation of pathos at play. She talk about a portrait called “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by authors Simon and Schuster” of four generations. It has a story behind it as far as the lives of poor young people. It embodies how no matter what background a child comes from, equal opportunity is a right. The fact that it is the best way to get Americans to care about poverty. A quoted verse says, “ is a split-screen American nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks that bisects the town can barely imagine the future that awaits the kids from the right side of the tracks.”(3) Pathos is very obvious for the fact that Lepore is feeding into what people care about most; kids. So the educated middle class can really feel the situation and picture

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