Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Income Gap in the United States
Through data this article shows the increasingly large gap between the top 1% of our population and the middle class/ lower classes in our society. Such data include the fact that the top 1% income's increased, has grown 281% since 1979 whereas the middle class only grew 25% and the lower class only 18%. This disparity of wealth does not show any signs of slowing down even though the rich lost tons of money during the recession, history shows (2001 market crash and dot-com bust)that the rich recover quickly. The more concerning question is what does this mean for the future, how will our generation be effected by the increasing power and wealth of the rich?
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4 comments:
the top %1 will continue to dominate as it has for the past 30 years. It is hard for the middle and lower classes to get a strong grip on economic prosperity but that %1 is so much more powerful, it isn't affected much by losses in the economy.
It seems that a neoliberal model almost always leads to increased income inequality. This trend shows no signs of stopping and will probably continue. One would hope that at some point, the inequality will become so unfair that people become fed up with it and through protesting/revolution cause a major economic system change, switching to a new kind of economic model (not neoliberalism). But, the current state of inequality is glaringly unfair, and nothing has really been done to alleviate this.
I think that our current economic system is unsustainable, and hopefully this will lead to change. I think that our consumption/world consumption of natural resources will cause us to have to recreate our relationship with the earth and maybe this in general will create a general sentiment of global social welfare that I think we are starting to experience but not as much as one might hope for. We'll see...
This means that the rich will keep getting richer. It will be hard to change this trend. You can tax them more, but that will just give them less incentive to work harder and make money. It's not like the rich are just sitting there doing nothing either. They work hard for the money the earn for the most part. It's just the way our society works and i don't think it will change any time soon.
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