...warns that the love of riches leads men further from the Kingdom of God and into a false idolization of wealth. This monetary worship pulls man away from God, and tears the seams of brotherhood that bond men together. Today, this bond between men has never been so frail and apathy has never been so vigorous. Millions of people die every year from preventable causes, including hunger, disease and countless other conditions, all derived from poverty. At the same time the richest 80 billionaires have the finances to solve world hunger, substantially increase the prevention of AIDS and effectively eradicate malaria. Wealth in itself is not evil; however, when humanity places riches above its fellow humans’ lives, it has reached a sinful state. The world has accepted material wealth at the price of what has become a sacrificial morality and love for mankind. The goal of this paper is to prove that global trends of economic inequality are unjustifiable from an economic/social standpoint, Scripture, and the recent position of the Catholic Church. Financial inequality is no new concept to the world. Since the beginnings of civilization there were the rich and there were the poor; many would argue that this is the natural state of society. From the Roman Empire until today, there has been a gap between the two segments. While almost all major religions warn man of the dangers of wealth and support charity, this gap between rich and poor has never been eradicated. Even so, all modernized...
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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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...levels. Part Three explores the theoretical underpinnings of growth-pursuant poverty reduction, namely the ‘trickle-down effect’. Attention is given to the concept of the trickle down and its intersection with Chinese domestic policy. Part Four highlights the notable divide between urban, rural, coastal and inland regards for growth and development and considers both the reasoning and implications of this dichotomy. Part Five looks at gender discrimination and the one-child policy throughout China and highlights how economic growth has in many ways exacerbated this problem. The problem of gender division is considered through the theme of rural-urban difference and how this is contributing to the brain drain effect. In order to frame the inequality debate in China, it is necessary...
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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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...faces today is the wealth inequality that is spread throughout the country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How can this be solved? Why is it happening? What can I do to help? These are all questions that are asked far too often. It is said, on this topic, particularly speaking of the poor, that, “"The poor in America deserve to be poor because it is the result of choices their choices. They spend money poorly, they don't study in school, and they do not have the discipline needed to succeed." This statement sparked a lot of interest in me and really got me thinking. Do poor people really deserve to be poor? Is it really their own fault? Those are both bold statements – and I disagree completely with them both. The poor are getting poorer for the same reason people become poor in the first place: they are in a hole that is too deep to climb out of. If you ask any child if they want to be rich or poor when they grow up, 99% of them will reply by saying they want to be rich. No one wants to be poor! So why do people end up that way? I think it is because they don’t have the opportunity to become wealthy. I think a lot of the time it is because of the family that they are born in to. If your parents cannot afford to send you to a good high school...
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...Just like after the year 2000, the level of wealth inequality was higher than the level of income inequality before the year 1929. According to the chart in Fig4, the top one-hundredth percent fractile took 79.9% of the average yearly wealth before the year 1929. The nine-hundredth percent fractile after the top one-hundredth percent fractile received 13.88% of the average yearly wealth before 1929. The next four-tenth percent fractile was given 3.79% of the yearly average wealth before 1929. The five-tenth percent fractile after that allocated 1.47% of the yearly average wealth before the year 1929. The next four percent fractile received just 0.68% of the yearly average wealth before the year 1929. The five percent fractile after them managed with merely 0.26% of the yearly average wealth before the year 1929. That left only 0.02% of the yearly average wealth before the year 1929 for the bottom ninety percent fractile. Therefore, there was a wealth inequality rate of 356,900:100 between the top one-hundredth percent fractile and the bottom ninety percent fractile before the year 1929. Which means that for every $100 of the yearly wealth that the...
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...Anthony Giovenco Political Science Inequality Paper 12-18-14 The Effects of Wealth Inequality in the United States Wealth inequality in the United States has grown tremendously since 1970. The United States continuously reveals higher rates of inequality as a result of perpetual support for free market capitalism. The high rates of wealth inequality cause the growing financial crisis to persist, lower socio-economic mobility, increase national poverty, and have adverse effects on health and well being. There is no doubt that wealth inequality in America has been escalating quickly; the portion of total income earned by the top one percent has doubled since the beginning of the 1970’s. The wealthy are the main beneficiaries regarding income inequality. In the latest consensus of wealth distribution, the top one percent of Americans owned thirty five percent of the nations private wealth, and the top ten percent took home about fifty percent of all income in 2012. This figure is greater than the bottom 90 percent combined. The question commonly asked concerning this matter: How and why is this becoming so quickly unequal is to be examined. First, we must explain what is meant by the term “wealth.” Wealth is the collection of the assets people own. This includes homes, stocks, savings for pension, and bank accounts, minus all existing debts. The main issue regarding wealth inequality is income inequality. Income equality has grown increasingly in the past 30 years....
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...There are several reasons which leads to the rising of wealth and income inequality. The first reason is outsourcing becomes more popular in many countries including Canada, because of the development of technology and globalization. Nearly 130 positions in the Toronto financial department of CIBC outsourced to Indian employees (cbc news,2017). It is clearly that this phenomenon eliminates available jobs to Canadian employees. The question is how students can afford to pay the debt from their education if they cannot get job. At the end, only employer benefits from that situation, more money will be made from outsourcing. As a result, the rich is richer, and the poor is poorer. Second, education background has an enormous impact on the shifting of workforce from low-skills to high-skills group. Over the past decades,...
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...My position on wealth inequality is similar to Brandon King's in the sense that I do not believe raising taxes on the upper-class is the solution, since by raising taxes on the rich results in them being less likely to spend money and, therefore, cannot help the economy. King asserts this notion by stating, "money that goes to businesses helps drive the economy, and raising taxes on the rich would be counterproductive." More importantly, I agree with King's sentiment that the upper class should not be scrutinized for their well being, but instead aided in further growth in order to fix the economy. Assisting the upper class by giving them more assistance in their business has the potential to further stimulate the economy and it's growth, as...
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...This article points out the disparity in wealth and inequality of incarceration between whites and blacks with similar family characteristics and education. It also points out that poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than rich black kids. I feel that the whites started out with an enormous advantage over blacks because whites had a longer history of prosperity so a large percentage of whites tend to get more of their family inheritances. For instance, assets like houses are passed down from parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and they appreciate throughout the year. The blacks on the other hand had generations of discrimination, mass incarceration, and voracious finance. This have prevented the blacks from succeeding and disallowed them from building wealth for themselves and their families. They are treated unfairly when dealing with police officers, in the court system, applying for a house loan of any sort and in workplaces. For example, a white man receives a job offer over a black man with more qualification and educational background....
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...video “Wealth 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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...opportunities for anyone to get rich, the inequality between the American working class and the wealthy upper class has only intensified during this shining era of affluence, socioeconomic upheaval, and jazz. It astounded me that the vast amount of wealth presented to me could be concentrated to such an extent in any one place. It was upon my entrance to the Gatsby residence that the detestable inequality of American society reared its ugly gold-plated head and made itself known to me. The stark difference between the desolate plains of the dismal Valley of Ashes and the scene of opulence before me was as irrefutable as the difference between moon and sun, and yet no one in attendance...
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...In-INEQUALITY FOR ALL- The movie is very well directed showing the main problem in the economy and these are the words and statements I learnt from this documentary. Inequality for all is not only making inequality but also its not equal as in this developed country like the united states of America inequality is mainly in income and wealth so because of that the poverty is increasing rapidly. If the system works as it does there might be no poverty. Like some inequality would be productive like capitalism that generates lot of good things, essence etc. When does inequality become a problem and how much we can tolerate? And an economy that will be working for. Surge to greater inequality. Economy was so dropped in 2008 there were no jobs and there were strikes for jobs and people lost their homes and many things happened with the 2008 fall out. The weighty turned to the financial sector because it was in demand and it was very booming that the richest are more towards financial sectors so to make stocks like example like Wall Street. The economy can be stable with the strong middle class because they are the one who work daily and do hard work but they never get to the 1% of them richest American’s. The rich don’t spend much but they spend less and they save money they are not generating enough jobs in other ways they just want to save more and more as it is said in the documentary rich are not wasting the money they are saving it to make more revenue. If the equality in economy...
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...A Limit on Maximum Wealth Must Be Implemented In Canada. Now is the time for the Canadian Robin Hood to step up, and take away from the rich to give to the poor before it’s too late. The inequalities between the rich and poor citizens are so obscene already, and yet still rising quickly. As Karl Marx puts it, “accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery … at the opposite pole.” According to Forbes magazine, in 2007, twenty three Canadians were billionaires. This means, their wealth is considered to be over one billion dollars each. Compare this to the fact, that in the same year, CBC News estimated Canada’s homeless population to be somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people. These are people who cannot afford the bare minimum. A meager amount, of just a couple hundred dollars a month in rent would be sufficient enough to provide them with a bed to sleep on at night. That being said, an important question arises. How much wealth would one need, in order to be happy? One million? Hundred million? One billion? It is believed by Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, that once basic needs such as food and shelter are met, the rest are little increments which have little effect on an individual’s level of happiness. You might be surprised to hear, but research determined that to “buy happiness” one would need just 40,000 dollars per year. A bundle of happiness could be...
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...Michael Capobianco November 2, 2011 Philosophy 108 Moral and Social Problems Essay Topic #3-Distributive Justice “Unjustified Wealth” By: Michael Capobianco Michael Capobianco Philosophy 108 November 2, 2011 Unjustified Wealth In many ways it seems unjust about how wealth and money are distributed in modern America, but there are many cases in which people with excess money have to earn every penny with hard work. In certain cases, people are born with certain talents and abilities that supply vast opportunities of which others may not have. A prime example of this would be Alex Rodriguez, who is considered one of the most talented and highly paid baseball players in the Major Leagues. Due to his talents on the baseball field, Alex Rodriguez is currently making 27.5 million dollars a year to play the sport he was born to play. The public views Alex Rodriguez as an idol for everyone who strives to be the best at what they do. As a college baseball player at Umass Boston I have seen some of the hardest working athletes imaginable, but for most of them being as successful as Alex Rodriguez is completely unreachable. Each and every one of us is born different with different talents and abilities, and the best we can do is maximize our potential. The only way to accomplish this is with hard work. Every person is created different and will have more potential at certain things, which is why I feel that money should solely be earned on the hard work...
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