“Inequality for All" reveals our economics problems and cause of this problem. According to the film, 70 percent of the U.S economy is dependent on consumer spending and middle class is in the center of it. However, Reich stated in the film that middle class does not have the purchasing power it needs to keep economy strong. Through this film Reich explains many issues, causes, and solutions to inequality in America. Because of growth of wages and productivity had a gap since 1979’s, cone could tell that something have happened in order to be so. According to the movie, typical male workers made $48,302 and typical 1% made $393,682. However, in 2010, this gap increased tremendously where typical 1% made $1,101,089 and typical male workers made only $33,751. Second statistic from the video is that 400 richest people have more wealth than bottom 150 million Americans put together. Third statistic is that during the year of 2007, top 1% took home over 23% of income according to the movie. Fourth statistic is that one can assume median income of American to be $50,000 according to the movie. However, income of America’s one percent went up to $10,000,000. The reasons or above inequality gap are from the fact …show more content…
However, top 1% does not even get taxed close to middle class. Policies always favored them instead of middle class. Also top CEO’s get extensive amount and there pay has been controversial. In Economic booms, CEO pay skyrocketed. In the 90’s Clinton considered CEO pay to be core issue of his campaign in which he planned to remove corporate tax deductions for executive pay in excess of one million dollar a year. However, this had a negative effect where deregulation of Wall Street was present. This created more excessive behavior where companies began to move executive pay from salaries to stock options. This resulted in CEOs pay to be continuously to
Based on freedom and equality, America is today the country the most unequal amongst developed countries. Today there is a very big difference between the ideal, what Americans think and the reality of the income distribution. There is only a very small share in the middle class. This is a major crisis in the United States indeed, 1 per cent of the rich have 40 per cent of the country’s wealth.
He states that the top 20% of America’s rich population has accumulated 90% of our nations wealth. Mantises also says, that 1 in every 7 people live below the poverty line. My family is fortunately above the poverty line, but still struggles quite a bit. The American lifestyle in this article is portrayed by viewing many people, their jobs, income, family, what they do in their free time, etc. Many of the people who started off in higher class families, ending up having their own higher class family and vice versa when it comes to lower class families.
This left 32% of Americans living at the average income line of $2,000-$5,000 and the final 8% lived at the wealthy or above average line of over $5,000 (Doc 9). Although the United States had accumulated a substantial
(1) In “America’s Wealth Gap ‘Unsustainable’ According to Harvard Study” (September 8th, 2014), Richard Valdmanis acknowledges THAT the economic gap between the richest and its middle and lower classes is accumulating and numerous people are affected by this dilemma. (2) Valdmanis supports his acknowledgement by referring to the study done by Harvard Business School on surveying the effects of the gap on people, economy, and institutions; moreover on how it affects the hope of thriving citizens and struggling citizens to their extremes. (3) Valdmanis’s motive is to present and describe the dilemmas and effects the economic gap has caused on the society and economy IN ORDER for the readers to recognize the crisis and get an idea of what is
The Youtube video titled “Wealth inequality in America” that was shown in class provided a visual description of what our wealth gap looks like. I was absolutely appalled when the narrator stated that the the top 1% of wealth holds 40% of all wealth the bottom 40% only holds 7% of all wealth! He states, “Do you really think that a CEO is working 380 times harder than his average worker’s pay? Not his lowest paid employee, but the average earner in his company.” I found these statistics to be profound and it gives me an insight on how making it in this country is a little harder than
This is the United States' economy based on, and as Americans people move towards it, the inevitable wealth gap between the top one percent and the rest makes sense. The main goal of capitalism, or of many big corporations today is to reduce the costs of productions and make the most profits out of it. As the more successful they are to become at this goal, the routine workers - the main populations of the United States - started to find out that their income is nowhere near that of the executives of those big corporations. Robert Reich discussed this problem in his brilliant article "Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer". He categorized the people in three boats, of which two are sinking, and one is rising.
The top one-tenth of one percent own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent The United
One of the arguments used is that we could regulate and tax the 1% income because that would be “fair” but these numbers show how harmful that way of thinking is. 18% of taxes for the “bottom” of the bracket which is around 20% of the U.S population.
However, since the 1970s, things have changed to allow the economic disparity that has overcome America. The share of income earned by the top 1 percent has gone from 8 percent in 1974 to 18 percent in 2007. The shift of income towards the top has been sustained and increasing steadily from 1980 onwards. Unfortunately,
William Shakespeare states, in his play "King Lear," that "so distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough." Shakespeare simply suggests what men should do in order to demolish the inequality that happens to everyone. Most people think that inequality and equality are similar to fairness and unfairness in society. Considering this, many authors and writers utilize their pieces of literature as a tool to define inequality and equality to help others understand these aspects in a better way. Simone Weil is one good example.
This article is a great explanation of some of today’s economic issues. It gives insight into the economic issues that we still face today and how economic inequality is still of relevance in modern America. Economic inequality refers to how economic metrics are distributed among individuals or groups. In this particular article the economic inequality is applied to America’s economic status.
Income inequality has affected Americans in many different ways. Americans are faced with making decisions that will determine how they will earn enough money to take care of their families as well as send their children to college and invest for retirement. In fact, many Americans have even lost their homes due to the change in their incomes. Regrettably, the American people cannot achieve what they once thought would be achievable. Income equality occurs when there is an uneven distribution of income and wealth between the social classes of American citizens.
Wealth and Inequality in America Inequality The inequality in America has increased over time; the gap between the rich and the poor has become a problem that many Americans don’t see. Inequality is the extent of income which is distributed unequally among the citizenry. The inequality of the United has a large gap between the poor and the rich making it unfair to the population, the rich are becoming wealthier and the poor remain poor. The article “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%”, authored by Joseph E. Stiglitz describes that there is a 1 percent amount of American’s who are consuming about a quarter of the United States income in a year.
In Robert Reich’s documentary “Inequality for All” he demonstrated a great balance of emotional and logical appeal, which resulted in getting his point across to the audience. Reich argued that America is a consumer-driven economy and for it to achieve the middleclass should have more purchasing power to keep the economy as strong as it once was. From the beginning of the documentary I began to trust him by examining that he has an honest and comedic personality. The part of the documentary that interest me the most was the comment that CEOs worry more how fat their pockets are rather than worry if they have enough employees and if those employees are paid correctly. Overall, I view Reich as someone who does not point fingers towards the
The main purpose of this article was to inform the reader about the “1%”. In other words, this essay was further explaining the meaning behind the title. The author, Stiglitz, started out saying that around 25 years ago the U.S richest were the 1% of americans and had 33% of the wealth. The main gist of this article is to inform the fault in the U.S democracy and to open the eyes of the reader and to be knowledged about the 1% of the richest and how they are “ruling” everything. The author also mentions how this problem will continue to get worse and says “an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul”.