...Huyen Tran Prof. Boyd English 100 4/21/2014 Inequality in America Time has brought about many changes in America since the 1960’s to the present. Many of them have been positive, like advances in technology in regards to the health care system, but some have created a growing concern in the eyes of many citizens. People like Robert Reich have noticed a growing sense of inequality in America and are worried it will only increase over time. Reich in his essay Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer he talks about the problems we are facing in the 21st century and what must be done to prevent them from spiraling out of control. The economy pre-1960 in America use to be a solid unit, what happened to one happened to all but this is simply not true anymore. “We are now in different boats, one sinking rapidly, one sinking more slowly, and the third steadily rising” (Jacobus 516). The worst hit has befallen the routine producers who now have to compete in a world economy where massive amount of people are competing for cheap labor. Reich claims the increase in outsourcing being done by American companies since the late 1970’s is a major factor. A company that shows this exact change in the seventies in AT&T, which prior to 1970’s relied on “routine producers in Shreveport, Louisiana, to assemble standard telephones. It then discovered that routine producers in Singapore would perform the same tasks at a far lower cost” (Jacobus 517). Then in 1989, AT&T...
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...racial inequality has powerfully shaped American history from its beginnings. Racial inequality has integrated into American culture and simulates a false presence of true freedom and equal justice for all. From the assassination of early Native Americans, slavery, black codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, the civil rights movement, mass incarceration, to present day black lives matter movement, racial inequality is a hard barrier for the United States to overcome. The true impact of racial inequality in America is belittled. Racism in America is the unjust treatment of collective individuals based on the color of their skin due to historical contexts and systematic oppression (Baber 1). Racism roots from the belief of one race has qualities that defines it as inferior or superior to other races. Inequality is the...
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...Income Inequality in America: An Analysis of Policies from Reagan to Obama and What Policies Can Help Close the Gap Income inequality in America has been of great importance in recent election cycles. Candidates from both sides of the political aisle have addressed the growing economic and social concern of increasing income and wealth inequality throughout the country. However, policies to address this growing concern are vastly different. This paper seeks to examine policies from Reagan to Obama that contributed to today’s massive income and wealth inequality. Was it tax reform throughout the 1980s and 1990s that contributed to inequality? Did the Federal Reserve perpetuate policies through massive quantitative easing that led to...
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...Inequality for Women in America Equality has always been an issue in America. Inequality in America has had many different reasons. One reason for inequality is that men have always been superior to women. Women didn’t have the same rights that men did. Women couldn’t have a job or vote. Women finally got the right to vote in 1929. Now even though women have pretty much the same rights as men do, inequality is still greatly noticed. Women still don’t get treated as equals. Women get higher prices in auto shops and hair salons. Because men don’t think of women as equals when in an auto shop, women are taken advantage of and given higher than average prices. In hair salons or barber shops women are given higher prices than men, even for the same haircut, because women will generally pay more to have the look that they want. Women also get the “credit” for poverty. Poverty is usually feminized completely. If a family is at or below the poverty line, the woman in the house is blamed for it. Inequality in America is not gone, it is just under the surface where not many people may see the truth behind it. In America the average price for a woman’s haircut is $44, but the average price for a man’s haircut is $28. (Risen) Some would blame the difference in price on the difference in price on the length of hair. The price for a woman to get a haircut is almost double what a man’s haircut price is all over the nation. The most expensive haircut in the nation for a woman is $73....
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...For there to be a perfect society, the wealth of a country should be shared evenly by everyone. In other to find out if this is happening you have to use the Lorenz curve, which was developed by an American economist called, Max Lorenz in 1905, it’s a graph that represent wealth distributed in a society. A coefficient of 0 means everyone has exactly the same income, while a country with 1.0 means only the rich takes home everything while everyone else earns nil. American is the richest and most unequal nation, at 0.42, America’s level of post-tax-and-transfer inequality outranks Israel, Britain and Canada, and dwarfs the figures in Japan and Scandinavia. Ms Gornick’s light-blue lines reveal a less well-reported story. Those lines show pre-tax-and-transfer income inequality, and on that count America doesn’t fare badly in comparison to other OECD countries. At 0.57, America is neck-and-neck with Spain and every Scandinavian nation, and less unequal than Britain, Greece and Ireland. But the American taxation and welfare state clips only 0.15 off of the pre-tax-and-transfer Gini coefficient, while more aggressively egalitarian countries slice off 0.20 (Luxembourg, Norway), 0.24 (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden) or 0.28 (Ireland)....
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...Although Latin America has faced many social, political, and economic issues within the last three centuries, inequality remains one of the most important, historical, and omnipresent aspects of the region’s culture. As Europeans took over Latin America during the time of colonization, they implemented many elitist social structures that have held strong and are evident today (Harris). Income inequality is the most visible and greatest disparity that the region faces; yet inequality between gender, ethnicities, and education remain strong and significant problems with a necessity for improvement. Inequality of wealth and disparity of power and influence are Latin American’s greatest curses and are at the root of many of the developmental, social, criminal, and political problems that continue to plague the region (De Ferranti). Since inequality has pervaded into every feature of Latin American society, it is important to measure inequality accurately in order to obstruct the causes of the discrimination and prevent new ones from beginning. The Gini Coefficient is an effective way that people indicate the inequality of a country by measuring a frequency distribution of income or wealth. Using the "Gini Index" of inequality in the distribution of income and consumption, the researchers found that Latin America and the Caribbean, from the 1970s through the 1990s, measured nearly 10 points more unequal than Asia, 17.5 points more unequal than the 30 countries in the Organization...
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...Matthew Andre ENC1101 Professor Neuman December 8, 2011 The Problem Even Congress Cannot Fix: Inequality in America The big story that has been all over the news in recent times is none other than the massive bear of a problem: inequality in America. This not so white elephant has dominated American news stations, but nonetheless has not been resolved. There is without a doubt financial inequality in America, and the main problems with this financial inequality are the flawed educational system where rich dumb kids have a much better chance to graduate college than a hard working poor kid, and the increasingly large gap between the rich and the poor. The cause for the problem of unequal opportunity in schooling is inherently the quality of instructors and schools across the nation, and the cause for the overwhelming rift between social classes is a flawed tax system which punishes success and benefits the poor. Furthermore, the solutions for these two massive problems would be to reform the American educational system to a performance based system and a reformed tax system that broadens the tax base and encourages success. Certainly, the level of financial inequality is an issue. But, why is it such an issue? One of the major underlying problems with financial inequality is the face that rich dumb kids that maybe be in the bottom twenty-five percent of their school but come from families that are in the top twenty-five percent of the socio-economic spectrum have a significantly...
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...Americans strive to be the best, but our nation is one of the highest to discriminate both racially and economically. One issue within the American Dream is the wealth gap that exists based on race. According to “Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America” families of color will soon “make up a majority of the population, but most continue to fall behind whites in building wealth,” recent statistics prove that “the average wealth of white families was over $500,000 higher than the average wealth of African American families” compared to the past where the wealth gap between races were lower and the “average wealth of while families was $117,000 higher than the average wealth of nonwhite families”. This racial and economic discrimination...
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...Tobi Kehinde University of Oklahoma The Leadership Experience Steven R. Gullberg March 20,2015 Michael Alfonzo took charge of the USS Florida, a submarine ranked among the world’s most dangerous weapons. When announced to the crew of the submarine that he was elected the next commander the crew welcomed him knowing that he has a career in the Navy joining as a teenager and eventually moving up the ranks to become commander. They associated him as one of them. He was thought of as a polite man and past shipmates remembered him as a loner. Upon becoming captain, Alfonzo admonished his sailors and pushed them to their limit, which is what a good leader should do. The downside was his strict and irreparable behavior, loudly reprimanding crew members he believed where unfit for certain duties and even yelling at the chief chef for the absence of coke in the soda dispenser. His behavioral patterns made the crew scared of reporting issues to him in order to avoid being scolded. At the end of the journey when the crew hit shore although under Alfonzo the best ever grades were recorded for certifications the rear admiral Sullivan relieved captain Alfonzo of his duties because of the alienated crew, and strained relationship between the captain and the crew. This was the first ever dismissal of a trident submarine commander. In relation to the Dyadic theory we can highlight the difficulties associated with the Michael Alfonzo case study. Although the leadership method employed...
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...Introduction In 2014 it was estimated that 46.7 million Americans were living under the poverty line* (Bureau U. S., 2014). That same year it was estimated that women accounted for 30.6% of those living in poverty, while men only accounted for 15.7% (Bureau U. S., 2014). Women living in poverty have become a prevalent trend due to the feminization of poverty* and the glass ceiling* that they face when attempting to achieve upward social mobility*. As a result women and children often account for majority of those who are poor. A whopping 50.7% of those living in poverty today are women and children (Bureau U. S., 2014). Occurrences such as racial discrimination, low educational skills, single parenting, low paying jobs, and lack of opportunities and resources only contribute to the continuance of the cycle of poverty (Mahavappallil, 2015). According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) in 2014 “More than 48.1 million Americans lived in households that struggled against hunger (Center, 2015).” The fact that these numbers closely relate to the 46.7 million living in poverty is no mistake. Women and children are not only the highest in number living in poverty, but also the highest to report living in food insecure homes and at risk to becoming obese. Obesity is another major problem in the United States. It is estimated that an average of $223 billion dollars is spent on medical, weight loss products and services related to obesity in the U.S every year (Cawley & Meyerhoefer...
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...Equality for African Americans in America is extremely lacking. Because of police brutality, older generations and people in power that neglect people who are not. As a result, equality is continuing to lack in America and we still have significant progress to make. An example of a police brutality case in 2016 is in Genesee County the case involves William Jennings. According to court records, on the night of the arrest, Jennings was pulled over during an investigation that indicated “he had been in a fight at a Flint bar, fired gun shots in an effort to threaten a neighbor and had smoked crack cocaine (Baldas, Tresa)”. “They attacked him in the jail. Then they handcuffed him and continued to assault him, smashing his face into the wall,...
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...Racial inequality a topic completely relevant today. The African American people have experienced all sorts of inequality for centuries. From being forced into a different country to becoming slaves for hundreds of years. It is proven that if you are born African American you will live a much harder life than somebody who is white. From police brutality, financial inequality, and social injustices. For years, African Americans have been fighting for their equal rights. The movie SELMA (2014) shows how the Civil Rights Act legally desegregated the South. Even with the ending of slavery blacks struggled to live a civilized life in the United States. The movie shows us the 3-month campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led. King, believed that a second bill was necessary in all places buts mostly places like Alabama where only a short percentage of blacks were registered to vote. With such low amounts of registered black voters King as well as other SCLC members began protesting. On February 1st, Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy started a march of approximately 250 people. They all protested to the Selma courthouse for slow voter registration. At that point both King and Abernathy were arrested and had to spend five days in jail. Another activist Malcom X visited Selma and wished the best for King. It is after that visit...
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...Many Americans across the United States are faced with income inequality. These income inequalities have many negative effects on communities and neighborhoods. These income inequalities also have a couple positives changes as well. Only time will tell how the economic state of the middle class and lower classes will improve or continue to fall into harder times. Johnson and Rhodes state “where you live clearly affects how you grow up”, which is absolutely true (p. 387)! Those that live in poverty may also deal with school systems and other institutions such as clinics that don’t have enough funding to go around. The wealth distribution has been a continuous problem that has no simple answer, what once may have seemed like a private trouble...
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...Inequally in America,” I was not surprise but disgusted. What happen to the American dream; working hard and going to school can change your life. Are we living into a “bamboozle” want-to-be fantasy? It seems like reality does not exist anymore; everything is a make believe society. Reality is often not what we think it is, is the American dream a hoax? Is it still possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich? Recently, I watch this show “Undercover Boss” just to sum it up wealth CEO pretending to be a laborers which at the end offering workers various funds. According to the video “CEO pay is 380 times average workers,” (Politizane, 2012). In the past 40 years,...
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... the unfortunate truth in America is that men and women are not receiving equal pay. An issue since the 1960’s, pay inequality based on gender still seems to an issue running rampant in today’s business world. While many people believe that equal pay is a must for men and women, there are many reasons why bridging the pay gap would hurt the economy, thus actually reeking more havoc than gender pay inequality ever has. Pay inequality is a major issue for many that remains in the forefront of the news. Pay inequality, otherwise known as the pay gap was brought to light in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act of 1963 labor law was amended to abolish wage disparity based on sex (“The Equal Pay Act: Equal Pay for Women”). While this amended law...
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