Economic Wealth Gap in the United States of America
The financial wealth gap between the top income earners in the United States and
everyone else is ludicrous. The rich continue to see considerable increases in their income while everyone else rarely moves. In the United States, the economic wealth gap tends to increase and decrease over time, the growing gap in the recent years proves how much of a critical issue it is. The wealth gap has not only been growing among the poor and the rest of society but between the rich, middle and working class as well. The middle class is now diminishing. Who is to blame for such a vast wealth gap?
Usually, this gap is connected to career and educational opportunities. An individual is pronounced wealthy when compared to an average individual; their income is assumed to be substantially larger. Everyone is pushed by the society to strive for wealth and power and as asserted by Davis, “In all money manifestations, there is always a prime source of power.” Given the situation, not everyone attains it. Their wealth determines a person's status in society's social ladder. In other words, wealth defines the social class of a person.
The upper class consists of people whose income exceeds the average person’s income. This comprises all those who their political and social importance can provide them with a similar amount of available wealth to the extremely wealthy. The middle class is those whose income is substantially lower than that of the upper level. They make enough for all their needs
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such as rent, food, clothing, bills, and extras such as forms of transportation and communication. However, they do not have enough for the luxuries that the wealthy have. Defining the lower class further identifies them as a weak class of all. Kiracofe asserts that “A lot of individuals are poverty-stricken in cases whereby their income, although enough for survival, radically falls behind that of the community they live in.” In today’s society, the term, poverty, is very well known since it may be defined as anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck and could be as extreme as somebody living underneath a bridge with his or her belongings in a shopping cart. Poverty is not something that has just recently become an issue; it has been around for many of years. To be in poverty in America implies that those particular individuals survive from paycheck to paycheck.
Although most people in America do not face starvation, many still suffer from undernourishment. The poor are often judged by the state they are in rather than how they can be helped to get out. Fortunately, programs such as Welfare, Food Stamps, EBT Cards, and Medicare were created to help the poor get back on their feet. Although these programs have helped many, they are not enough to eliminate poverty. The United States and its government should work together to find a better way to rid of those living in poverty.
In every society, there will be people who are better off than others. For a long time, the American culture was defined where the majority of the people are neither poor nor extremely rich, preferably in a middle class. After World War II, America enjoyed a time of prosperity where everybody’s income rose, and unemployment was at a low. Unfortunately, that trend did not last forever. Starting in the 1970’s, the middle class slowly began to dissolve. From the time after World War II until the mid-1970’s, the graph of annual household income growth rate looks
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like a “picket fence” (Kiracofe). This means and shows that the poorest quintile of the population’s income grew at roughly the same rate as the wealthiest and other middle groups. During the economic crisis of the 1970’s, there was a drop in income for the middle to lower classes. Unfortunately, as time went on, the poorest quintiles of the population began to make less money; meanwhile the wealthy were still able to enjoy a substantial growth of income. This trend is directing America into an era of huge economic wealth gaps between the poor and the rich.
Another way to show the new trend in income distribution is by looking at the salaries of CEOs compared to those of the people who work for them. In 1970, the average annual income among workers in America was about $40,000. By 1990 this number grew to about $45,000. Even though the pay went higher, it is still a small increase as opposed to CEOs. In the same span of time, the average annual income of the top one hundred CEOs went from $1.3 million to $37.5 million. In 1970 CEOs made 39 times the income of average personnel. In 1999, CEO compensation went up by 937%, an increase more than double stock market development and significantly greater than the depressingly lagging 10.2% development in a typical personnel’s compensation over the same period” (Davis). This massive increase in CEO pay shows what is going on in America. While average workers’ salaries are growing at a very small stride, the wealth income is rapidly booming. Conclusively, due to the economic crisis of the 70’s, the lower and middle classes were losing most of their wealth, while the upper level remained mostly stable.
The economic wealth gap in America appears to be a continuous issue. Although it was not as apparent in the years before World War II, the timeline afterward shows periods of the gap
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widening farther between the middle/lower classes and the upper class. Why do students who come from a wealthier background succeed more than those who live in low-income areas? This is a continuous problem that our society must solve. According to an interview with Rohan Mascarenhas, he believes that one of the reasons why kids get good grades in school is because they are actively involved in after-school educational programs. Families who have a higher income, usually sign their kids up for these programs so that their children can learn more and do better in school. These programs also help children get one-on-one tutoring if they are struggling in school while the wealthy take advantage of these after-school programs.
The students with low-income have always struggled with their writing and reading because they are unable to afford after-school programs. That makes up the reason behind their struggling effort because of unavailability of proper assistance. There is an achievement gap when you compare high-income students and low-income students. Affluent parents try to communicate with their children for averagely three more hours compared to poor parents, which is vital for their children's formative early years. That's why, as Stanford Professor Sean Reardon explains, "Rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students," and they're staying that way.
A research scholar at Duke University, Jonathan Wai, and part of the institution's Talent Identification Program analyzed all the global elite and world billionaires. He found that billionaires are, as a group, very highly educated and have higher cognitive abilities than the poor. It is statistically proven that about one-third of the world's wealthy personnel attended elite schools worldwide. The wealthiest of the wealthy more likely to have gone to top colleges or universities. The academic gap is widening because wealthy students are increasingly entering
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kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than the lower class students. This difference in preparation continues from elementary school until college.
Those born into wealthy families are not more intelligent than the average lower class person. What the rich do have is access to highly ranked schools and educational resources that middle class, working class, and poor people can only dream about. In today’s world, success in life is more connected to whom you know more than anything else. The ways resources are distributed are tilted towards helping the upper classes more than the poor.
The economic wealth gap in America is a growing concern. The middle class is slowly being steered away while the wealthy become more productive and richer. The few top families exercise political and social influence over the rest of the country, while the most impoverished families struggle in poverty. The government is taking some actions, but not enough to counteract the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Only time will tell if the measures taken are going to be useful or if the distribution of income is going to split our society for the forward generations forever.