Sunday 7 December 2014

Doubts About America




Wealth Inequality In the U.S.
Image 1
I chose to analyse the inequality between the rich and the poor in the US.
According to research the top 5% of America’s population own a massive 72% of the country’s wealth, with the top 1% owning 43% of that. The article ‘Inequality gap between super rich and poor continues to widen’ demonstrates that it is not the top 1% that inequality is mainly evident but the top 0.1% with them, on average, earning around six million dollars a year (roughly 206 times what the average family in the US earned in 2012). Many of the top earners work in the finance industry and live in major US cities such as New York or Los Angeles.
The Image 1 clearly shows the inequality of wealth within the US however it doesn’t show the somewhat delusional state that Americans seem to be in. Many know that there is an inequality however it is unclear to them just how great the difference is, as shown in Image 2. Furthermore, Pizzigati voices his opinions on Forbes 400, criticising the fact that the super-rich can earn over 1000 times the wealth of someone with $5.2 million and can still have the power to cut jobs for those in the ‘middle class’ that on average earn a net worth of $81,200 per annum. For reasons like this the rich have the opportunity to get richer whilst the poor struggle for jobs and inevitably get poorer. Even the column (in image 2) showing wealth of ‘what Americans would like it to be’ doesn’t fairly distribute wealth to the poorest. Overall inequality is still set to grow in the United States although many experts agree that to reduce it would be to raise/ have a better taxation system, trying to control the power that major corporations and banks have and finally to put emphasis on the younger generation- making sure even the poorest have education and healthcare so that they can ‘fulfil their aspirations’.
Image 2

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