...The wealth chasm: a dangerous cocktail The street demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 are still fresh in our minds. Thousands of voices chanting, “We are the 99%!” and blockading the stock exchange have not left the psyche of American’s, and were successful in getting their message across. Before 2011, it was heard in whispers: “They have too much.” Now, it’s a shout. The rich are indeed doing very well for themselves. In fact, the wealth gap is almost unprecedented, except for right before the great depression, and the subsequent rebellion that shook the United States that ultimately resulted in the New Deal. (DeSilver, 2013) History doesn’t necessarily repeat, but we are seeing a world eerily similar to that which was in place before 1929: The rich hoarding all the money and anger simmering in the proletariat. Globally, the reaction against this sort of systemic looting of the people by the capitalist class is taking form and is becoming increasingly better organized and more violent. The global wealth gap is a combustible recipe for insurrection, and will result in a collapse of capitalism and the rise of radical left, and right wing ideologies if it is not fixed. The wealth gap in the world is at astonishing levels. A simple browse of the news, or the Facebook feed of any liberal-leaning page will bring up statistics that would seem like they were made up if we weren’t bombarded by them at all times, and the data to back them up. According to William Domhoff of the University...
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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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...Katiana Rachev Sociological Final Paper Capitalism is what our society is based upon and the effects of this not only cause inequalities but racism. Capitalism is a system that is established on trade in private parties, also known as businesses. It might not seem like this would be linked to inequalities of class and gender but the link is stronger than others. If you look at the wealth distribution in the United States, the difference between the upper class and middle to lower class is astonishing. The upper class receives, which is 10% of the population, more than 2/3rd of the wealth generated. This leaves less than a quarter to distribute between the middle to lower class (Johnson 43-44). The biggest inequality is with the money in America itself....
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...Thesis Capitalism has been the subject of ethical criticism since it was first introduced into society. I defend the morality of capitalism because it gives people incentive to work, establishes a web of trust between them, satisfies their material well-being, and generates a wide spectrum of prosperity. Exposition As citizens of the United States, we are members of the leading capitalist economy in the world. Our production and distribution is mostly done privately and we operate in a “profit” or “market” system. The capitalist system has been a target for criticism throughout the last three hundred years and is being discussed now more than ever due to the recent recession and financial crisis (Shaw and Barry n.d., 1). Its effects, structure, varieties, and possibilities provide for a large field of study and writers from several different disciplines have provided their input to the debate. Most fundamental is the question of whether our capitalist system is a morally justifiable one. This question can’t be answered by reviewing the efficiency and productivity capitalism provides, but instead requires a thorough analysis of ethics. A capitalist society is characterized by the private ownership of property and a free market that grants citizens the right to use their resources for their own benefit. Private property is the ownership of productive resources like companies, stocks, and bonds and should not be confused with personal property. Personal property consists...
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...west is home to the ideologies of democracy, capitalism, and consumerism. The idea of democracy has been forced upon many nations in the world by the Western states. Democracy however has been shown to be a very easily manipulated system. Capitalism has shown the need for expansion and exploitation over Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The west has always been in contention with other nations, along with contending with each other. Competition between western nations has led to a technological race and an arms race, which is now more apparent than ever in the United States. With military might came the need to take over other nations and thus the ideas of imperialism, and nation aristocracy. Africa, Latin America, and Asia has suffered and continues to suffer a great deal because of the triumph of the west through exploitation, expansion, and wealth, all major goals of capitalism and imperialism. The West has retarded the development in all facets for many countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia and thus led to the suffering of the world. One of the oldest ideologies from the west to the world is democracy. Democracy comes from the Greek words “demo” meaning people and “kratia” meaning rule, therefore rule of the people. Democracy is an egalitarian system of governance where all citizens together decide public policy, laws, the actions of the state, and public representatives. It makes sure that all citizens of a state have a say in the politics of a country. Although...
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...between capitalisms and socialism is the extent that the government interferes with the financial countries growth of the society. Under capitalism, private citizens can own their own business with limited government interference. Under socialism, the government owns all businesses. Socialist believes that private citizens should share the wealth of the financial growth to equalize out the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Capitalist Society vs. Socialist Society Does one live in a country where they can have the opportunity to have personal wealth or live in a country where the government makes all the decisions? In Belgium, the socialist system believes that everyone should have equal equality; the government does not permit much freedom when it comes to the economy because it controls all forms of capital. Living in a capitalistic country everyone is concentrating on their own personal wealth and success, Socialism is concentrating on society as a whole. Concentrating on a society as a whole can impair society by putting hard working people in the same financial group as the non-hard working people. The same person working hard in the United States can secure success and wealth. In Belgium, that same person is not able to profit from his success or wealth because he has to give his earnings to the government. Julie, who lives in the United States, might try to persuade Jean-Paul that moving to the U.S. would be more beneficial to his overall wealth because...
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...Michael Hargrove Soc 4010/5010 Instructor Montez de Oca 10/19/12 Beyond Capitalism America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy, by Gar Alperovitz claim’s that our political/economic system can no longer sustain equality liberty, and democracy to the American working class. Alperovitz argues that a radical change to our political-economic system is needed. He also believes that it is at the lower or grassroots level that this change has to take place, but that it is going to take some time and a lot of commitment on their part. An analysis of Alperovitz’s book America Beyond Capitalism provides a unique but radical perspective on overhauling our political/economical system. However, his perspective depends on the American working class people to create a new political/economic system in order to restore equality, liberty, and democracy. This idea is plausible, but reducing the federal government down to the city and state level is highly unlikely. Alperovitz claims that our political/economic system can no longer sustain our equality, liberty, and democracy for working class Americans. Alperovitz’s first argument is on equality. His concern is that globalization, changing technologies, and sectoral balances are creating a widening gap of inequality. The decline of labor unions has enabled the corporations to lead a number of campaigns that have challenged redistribution programs. Globalization has increased the influence of large...
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...produce? How much should we produce? And who is making those decisions. Capitalism is the economic system agreed upon in the United States of America. In the recent discussions of the efficacity of...
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...Pure capitalism is the best form of economic system because people are almost completely free to buy and produce what they need or want without any or very little government restrictions. Pure capitalism is also known as “Laissez-Faire” or hands free, it’s when the government has little or no control over the economy. The movie “Atlas Shrugged” takes place in 2016 where the economy is the complete opposite of capitalism, the government takes control over, almost everything and the whole economy crashes. Pure capitalism is best because there is no or very little control or limit on what people can produce. There’s five characters of a Capitalist economy. One characteristic is a Two-Class System, this means that society was historically characterized...
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...Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Capitalism and Socialism 1 Varieties of capitalism arise from a number of institutional characteristics that prevail in the developed economies of the globe. Such institutional characteristics include; education and vocational training, industrial relations, inter-firm relations, corporate governance and intra-firm coordination (Soskice & Hall 23). These characteristics differentiate two forms of capitalism, coordinated market economies- CME’s and liberal market economies- LME’s. Aside from differing in their institutional characteristics, these two forms of capitalism differ in certain macroeconomic aspects especially industrial specialization and comparative advantage. The table below pinpoints the differences between the forms of capitalism based on the institutional characteristics; Institutional characteristic | Liberalized markets (LME’S) | Coordinated markets (CME’s) | Education and training | Formal learning from high schools and colleges | Apprenticeship, bestowing industry specific skills | Inter-firm relations | Competitive | Coordinated/collaborative | Industrial regulations | Deregulated, anti-tax, tax breaks | Motivates information sharing and coordination among firms | Comparative advantage/specialization | High-tech and service | Manufacturing | Income distribution | Largely unequal | Generally evenly distributed | Mechanism | Competitive market arrangements | Non-market relations | An example of...
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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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...Bryant Dr. Obi. Iwuanyanwu BUS309 Business Ethics October 5, 2012 Discuss the moral and economic implications involved in the movement. The Occupy movement was a protest that gathered local organizers, students, and activists in response to the economic disparity of countries around the world. The protest gained momentum after a continuous series of protests took place in Zuccotti Park in New York City's Wall Street financial district (Manhattan) on September 17th, 2011, where it was named Occupy Wall Street (OWS). This is an international protest movement where the moral foundation of the OWS Movement appears to be focused around fairness, care, and liberty from oppression. The main moral issues are against social and economic inequality, greed, corruption, and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS primary goal is to make the economic structure and power relations in society fairer. The majority view of the protesters and moral implications is to fight for more government involvement and concern for the 99 percent that are not rich. OWS protesters believe the economic system is not fair and is set up in way such that now only the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. The rich--those on Wall Street (“the “1 percent”) got rich by taking without giving. OWS protesters view the rich as cheaters who often exploited their way to the top. They further suggested that the taxpayers had to...
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...Inequality for All After watching this extra-ordinary and well presented idea of inequality in United States of America by Robert Reich I kept on thinking for hours as I see many of the workers all around every time and every day I come across so many people who are low-waged and living a middle class life. I feel myself as one of those middle-class person as I see them surviving the odds and still trying to lead a respectable life. Since I got deeply touched by the documentary here are some points that I would like to discuss regarding my reflection about inequality for all. Inequalities of many kinds exist in our society. The society itself is a big structure of many social divisions. We can divide any society in many social groups like religion, caste, class, sexism, racism etc etc. The biggest difference in all of us comes with class that is lead by our capacity to consume. The main criteria for division in social class are dominated by occupation and property. We can never fully eliminate this inequality factor among us, however it can be managed by state to provide welfare to its citizens. Here, our main focus is inequality of social class. The distribution of wealth is unequal and half of the wealth of entire country is possessed by only few men. Giant fast-food companies have the largest gap between the pay of CEOs and workers of any industry, with a CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of more than 1,000-to-one. The practical choice isn’t between capitalism and Welfare-state...
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...Higher taxes would be put in to place to pay for everything that would be considered “free”. Healthcare is a principle that would be provided for all, but how would the United States fund the healthcare? Raising taxes for everyone funds this program along with many others. In a socialist economy there would be more bureaucracy. This often means that more political committees and groups will decide how things will be run. Without profits being made, the incentive to make processes and services quick can disappear. This can lead to poorer goods and services for public consumers. Since everyone is “equal” in terms of the government there is a lack of innovation. There is less or no financial incentive for people to develop new products and services or for businessmen and entrepreneurs to set up new companies. The low motivation interferes with employees to better themselves by working towards a better paid job. Irresponsible public spending can eventually lead to runaway inflation. America is built on the foundation of a capitalist economy. As a nation, we are too advanced and diverse to conform to a socialist economic...
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...equality by essentially sharing all profits and land with the community. Unlike socialism however,Communism believes that there is no need for a profit to be given to the worker or for land to be owned by any workers because it creates inequality and this must be done to ensure social order. A Lot of the communist ideology is totally opposite and against capitalist views. There is no competition in communism and wages and salaries are equal across all carers and work. In Communist theory, government leaders should only be temporary and used only to gear the population towards true order and then step down and let the work cycle continued. Many of the communist ideology is predominantly theory and is highly criticized by many nations. In today's day and age many countries have decided to opt out of the communist social structure because it is unpractical and does not provide true equality as theorized. Communism was a fairly modern ideology founded only about 120 years ago but has lingered throughout history. The majour man honoured with the creation of communism is Karl Marx who lived between 1818-1883 and was born in Germany but then fled to the United Kingdom. Marx was a major activist during the time period he lived in witch was the boom of capitalism. Marx joined a communist political party and was a newspaper journalist. He also wrote many books on his views most of which were considered communist. Marx's detested the capitalist ideology and saw many flaws...
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