...Domhoff’s article, Wealth, Income, and Power, he examines wealth distribution in the United States, specifically financial inequality. He concludes that the wealthiest 10% of the United States effectively owns America, and that this is due in large part to an increase in unequal distribution of wealth between 1983 and 2004. Domhoff also states that the unequal wealth distribution is due in large part to tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions. Most of Domhoff’s information is accurate and includes strong, valid arguments and statements. However, there is room for improvement when identifying the subject of what is causing the inequality. The most important points made in Domhoff’s article are his statistics, the reason behind the unequal wealth distribution, and his closing statement concerning the top 10%. In his article, Domhoff cites many statistics regarding the distribution of wealth between America’s top and bottom percentiles. There is quite a bit of research to back up his claims, and his data is generally very accurate. However, when it comes to the cause of such gaps in wealth distribution, there is more to consider than simply tax cuts and labor unions. Domhoff begins with a broad overview of wealth distribution in the United States. He states that the top 1% held 34.6% of all privately held wealth, with 85% in the hands of the top 20%, leaving the bottom 80% in control of only 15% of privately held wealth. In terms of financial wealth, he states that...
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...Abstract Research has shown that economic inequality can adversely affect us as an individual and society. Economic inequality does and can affect an organizations performance through employee development which will affect its individual employees and their interactions at work. I will provide an overview of the relationship between economic inequality and management. Introduction Inequalities have been on the rise and on the public’s mind since the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests which have been noted by many government agencies (i.e. Congressional Budget Office, 2011), international economic organizations (i.e. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2011) and researchers (Piketty, 2014). Inequality debates still capture headlines and continue to stir debates, for example, Oxfam’s assertion that the 85 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the world, but also occupied a central stage in the discussions at the annual meeting of World Economic Forum (Oxfam, 2015). This has been researched and studied for years. The earliest article accessible through Web of Science was published in 1930 and discussed the effect of rural migration on urban–rural economic inequality (Rutledge, 1930). Since 1930, research has been done in a range of to examine the relationships between economic inequality and socioeconomics, including economic growth (Kuznets, 1955), public health (Marmot et al., 1991), socio-political instability (Alesina...
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...Final Paper Wealth Inequality in U.S. and Economic Efficiency Over the last decade, income inequality has become one of the most important issues in the U.S. and a subject of a lot of debate. There is a prevalent idea in the society that the wealth inequality in United States is currently at the highest level in the history after steadily raising for a number of decades. The financial crisis is said to have contributed to this significant gap between the top 1% and everybody else. People view it as an inherently negative thing, and fight hard to promote the equality and income redistribution. This paper examines the causes of inequality; the relationship between wealth inequality and economic growth and the hypothesis on how policy measures can be designed to mitigage the income disparity both in U.S. and in the rest of the world. The researh is based on the theory that inequality is an essential aspect of an efficient free market economy that adversely affects economic growth when in excess. When it comes to global wealth inequality, people often tend to accuse capitalism. In fact, the real laissez-faire capitalism doesn't exist anywhere on our planet. According to its definition, laissez faire is "an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from intrusive government restrictions, tariffs, and subsidies, with only enough regulations to protect property rights." It has been previously proven free markets lead to the most efficient use of economic...
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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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...Income inequality is one of the big issues in 21st century. Unequal distribution of income in society is considered to be an obstacle to economic growth. The income allocation of a country’s population can be measured by a Gini coefficient. The value of Gini coefficient can be between 0 and 1 and used to define the income gap between the rich and the poor. The value 0 shows perfect equality and value 1 illustrates perfect inequality. The US can be an example of country with high income inequality. The US Gini coefficient has risen by 20% between 1979 and 2010 (Frizell, 2014). Factors like family structure (i.e. how many earners are there in family), technology (i.e. changes the way that we live), and immigration (i.e. changes the supply of...
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... By Shiyu Song Dr. Nikolaev Econ 385R 03J 21st November 2013 Abstract Since 1978, China has seen a sustainable rapid growth in its economy. China’s real GDP has already surpassed 7 trillion US dollars in 2011 in current dollars, and it has replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy. People in China also have significant improvements in their standards of living and material life. However, my findings contradict the notion that an increase in income and standard of living will gain people happiness. My major findings show that income inequality and other major social problems, such as lack of religious belief and faith, political problems, and family burden have contributed to the decline of happiness among Chinese people. Other negative feelings emerging with the rapid economic growth, such as greed, interpersonal distrust and less compassion show adverse effects on Chinese happiness. I conclude the research by suggesting possible future researches for further studies. 1. Introduction After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1978, China launched a comprehensive reformation in its state controlled economy under the new leadership, Mr. Deng Xiaoping. Since then, China has gradually opened its door to the world and begun its transition into a market economy. (Chai, 1997) Over the past thirty years, China had the most enduring and rapid economic growth in the human history. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, China’s average GDP growth is nearly...
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...economic inequality in order to better assess living standards across and within countries? Discuss the factors affecting economic inequality and the implications on a local and global scale. Before even getting into the debate of assessing living standards, inequality and its measurement, let us first define income and consumption and how these measures are used to assess living standards in mainstream economics. According to Folbre, income encompasses all resource inflows to the household while resource outflows make up for the consumption variable (Folbre, 2009). In today’s world, living standards are assessed by looking at either of the two measures; however, most people agree that looking at living standards from the consumption angle gives us a better, more accurate feel for disparities. That being said, we recognize that these two measures do not provide a full picture: we look at resource inflows and outflows to and from households; however, we do not take into account what actually happens within the household. In recent years, more and more economists have shifted their attention to those non-market factors that directly impact standard of living among the population. In the following paragraphs, we will first examine how economic inequality is currently measured and the limitations underlying those methods. We will then elaborate on the additional parameters (household production and leisure) and their importance in better accounting for household wealth. Last, we...
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...THE GLOBALIZATION RORSCHACH TEST: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION, INEQUALITY AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT NANCY BRUNE and GEOFFREY GARRETT* November 2004 Forthcoming in Annual Review of Political Science vol. 8, 2005 In this review essay, we address the three principal questions that have dominated the debate over the distributive effects of globalization. First, how has globalization affected inequality among countries? Second, how has globalization affected inequality within countries? Third, how has globalization affected the ability of national governments to redistribute wealth and risk within countries? We conclude that despite the proliferation of social science research on the consequences of globalization, there is no solid consensus in the relevant literatures on any of these questions. This is because scholars disagree about how to measure globalization and about how to draw causal inferences about its effects. Keywords: globalization, inequality, economic growth, government spending, privatization ___________________________________________________________ * Nancy Brune is a doctoral candidate at Yale University. She can be reached at nbrune@isop.ucla.edu. Geoffrey Garrett is Vice Provost and Dean of the International Institute, Director of the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations, and Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He can be reached at ggarrett@international.ucla.edu. The authors Alexandra Guisinger, David Nickerson and Jason Sorens...
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...of the disease to the social and economic dimensions. Many social studies have revealed that HIV and AIDS is fast becoming a social cancer and it can be understood if one was to assess the social structure and the availability of resources in the society. The most affected persons are those who live in the lower strata of the social stratification due to inequalities that comes with social structure. This paper serves to explain that HIV and AIDS is a social problem of poverty and it also looks at other factors such as religion, promiscuity and child rights which also result in the spread of the disease. It is undisputed to say that poverty is implicated in the prevalence in most developing world. Because these countries are generally poor people are normally forced to engage in activities that end up putting them at the risk of HIV. United Nations (2004) revealed that in South Africa more than 6 million people where living with HIV. The paper also revealed that the majority number who were affected were blacks who are generally poor who have no proper housing facilities, mal-nutritional, lack of safe water. Further research has suggested that Botswana and Zimbabwe have high prevalence of the disease due to the poor conditions which prevails in these countries. In Zimbabwe around 2 million people are said to be contracting the disease and an assessment shows that those who are infected are mainly the poor people as compared with those who stay in low density suburbs. The general...
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...Income inequality Name Date Abstract In any given population, there is a difference between what people within the population earn. The uneven distribution of income in any given population is income inequality. In order for there to be income, there has to be several sources of income. These sources of income may be combinational or independent per person receiving the income. Income may result from wages, rent, bank account interests, salaries or even profits made in business transactions ( Stiglitz, 2012). In his hypothesis, Karl Marx foresaw income inequality in a capitalistic as a major problem that would lead to an economic evolution. The main reason he foresaw an evolution was due to the recurrent nature of income inequality. In an income inequality situation, the richer keep getting richer due to a better income, while the poor keep getting poorer. The gap between the top earners and the low-income earners keeps widening in an income inequality situation. In America, almost 95% of the national wealth is under 5% ownership; this situation leaves 95% of the population to scrounge for the limited 5% wealth (DeNavas et. Al, 2005). Introduction In order to understand the complexities of economic inequality, the best specimen to use for the study is a family. In the study, the family’s income is under analysis, and then the family members ranked from the lowest income earner to the highest income earner. After the ranking, the incomes aid in establishing a Lorenz...
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...has been debated for decades and has kept the attention of many economists. Since this disparity leads to inequality, the role the Government has been subject of analysis in order to stablish the level of involvement and the mechanism to solve the problem via taxation. The paper starts pointing out an example of disruption of a utopic economy where a new entrepreneurial idea has come up. In this case, everyone wants the new product, but there is only one provider; therefore, the demand exceeds the supply and the entrepreneur ended up being richer that the others. This unequal redistribution of well-being started as a voluntary exchange, so there are two questions the author brings up, related to contribution of the entrepreneurial to the alteration of the public policy and whether or not this policy should remain unchanged. This is a reflection of what has been happening in the United States where the income has grown, but not in a uniform way across the income distribution, which leads to the question for policymakers to make taxation more progressive. The second issue in the paper is related to inefficiency as a result of inequality. Taking as example the Pareto criterion, no-one could possibly object, since there is a way of make people better off without making others worse off. However, the author also refers to Kaldor - Hicks criterion which states that inequality is inefficient in the sense of shrinking the size of the economic pie this is assuming that if the top 1 percent...
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...Democracy, Religion and Inequality University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business Bachelor Thesis International Economics and Business Name Student: Yitian Jing Student ID Number: s2012790 Student email: y.jing@student.rug.nl Date Thesis: Jun. 5th, 2012 Name Supervisor: Dr. Robbert K. J. Maseland First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my advisor, Dr. R. K. J. Maseland, for his academic guidance and encouragement throughout the research. He has been very generous sharing his experiences on institutional and cultural determinants on economy, as well as on academic research methodology and beyond. I would not have finished such a thesis paper without his support. His effort and patience would never be forgotten. Abstract The democracy’s inequality decreasing effect has been appealing to researchers for long but lacks concentrated argumentation and empirical evidence, as well as the interaction between democracy and religion. This paper conduct an empirical analysis covering time period of 1978-2010 with 86 countries to test the hypotheses of whether democracy decreases inequality and whether an egalitarian religion decreases the influence of democracy. The result shows the direct effect of democracy is weak, however, the hypothesis of religion’s effect on the democracy’s influence is partially confirmed. Therefore, democracy itself has minor influence on inequality while a large proportion of the effect is...
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...SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND ITS EFFECTS: THE ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE IN OUR SOCIETY Submitted By: Tabor, Ben Jayson Raymundo, John Joseph R. Bautista, Sean Karl T. Gregorio, Prince Jairus J. Medenilla, Mark Johann L. Submitter To; Prof. Don Emmanuel Nolasco II. INTRODUCTION Rule #1 - “Life is not fair, get used to it!” –Rules of Life by Bill Gates We always see differences in our lives in different ways. Let’s accept the fact that some people are gorgeous and handsome while others look like Frankenstein. Some are rich because of fate and some are poor with no food on their plate because not everywhere is blessed by a golden spoon on their mouth. Most likely, people with a higher status in life always get the privilege to be educated, healthy lifestyle and threated well by the society. Why this kind of inequality occurs in our society? Social inequality within a society is an issue in which its existence has never been erased throughout the history of the world. Classified as a dynamic trend to which it keeps on changing while the time goes by. The human condition has so far been a fundamentally unequal one. Indeed, all known societies have been characterized by inequalities of some kind, although of course the extent and type of inequality has been quite variable. Social inequality like racial inequality, gender inequality and other types keeps on sprouting like a mushroom growing anywhere most like in the dark places and these can have effects that have the power to influence...
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...relationship between income and subjective well-being; by tracing back to works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Veblen and Duesenberry, the authors revive significant attention to the neoclassical economic theory that portrays well-being and absolute income to be highly correlated. The data was retrieved from the European Social Survey (ESS) to examine a potential relationship between income and happiness (self-reported satisfaction), the authors execute their study across 19 European Countries. With utilisation of Easterlin (1974) as their seminal paper, the research draws attention to the Easterlin Paradox (Easterlin, 1995) that suggests there is no relationship between economic expansion in industrialised countries and its average level of happiness. The authors look to assess topical contradictory findings that conclude absolute income is correlated with levels of happiness (e.g.: Frijters et al., 2004). The research purpose of this paper was to re-examine this controversial link for a number of European countries, specific consideration was given to whether relative income was a chief determinant of well-being. The results show that for the sample of 19 countries, income is positively correlated with well-being and life satisfaction. However, reference income wields a negative effect on individual wellbeing. This means that the overall results support both the absolute and...
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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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