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 switched to factories in Thailand, where workers would work for even less. Constant striving for lower high-volume production costs have left many workers jobless or receiving a decrease in salary, which cannot provide adequate living condition for them in the United States. “Standardized production continues its ineluctable move to where labor is cheapest and most accessible around the world”