Thursday, 4 September 2014

Discussing The Income Gap In America

By Kerri Stout


America is known to be one of the highest economies in the world but what many people do not know is that the number of poor people in the country is still on the rise. Even up until today income inequality in this country is still rising steadily. So for those who are interested to know, here are some facts about the income gap in America.

Now before discussing about it, it is first important to know the true definition of income gap. Now basically, this refers to the inequality in the distribution of wealth between the three classes in the country namely the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Now in this case, one will be taking a look at the income bracket and looking at which class gets how much.

Now in America, it can actually be seen that the rich are clearly hogging all the money that is circulating in the country. It is for this reason that there are rich people as well as super rich people and a lot of slum areas in the country. Of course as for the middle class, they also get a share of the wealth generated by the country but most would still go to the rich.

Now the OECD was able to do a study on this. In this study, they surveyed the income generated by eighteen different countries between 1975 to the year 2007 and how these countries distributed the money to their citizens. Now what they found out was that in the US, the majority of the wealth generated in the country were actually all hogged by the rich.

In order to know why this is the case, one has to take a look at the active US market. Now it is common knowledge that the market of this country is a totally free market as it is a democratic country. This means that the wealth that is being generated by the people is not really monitored as the government would have little involvement with the market.

Now the million dollar question right now is that is this phenomenon good for the economy or bad for the economy. Now a lot of people would argue that it is in fact healthy for the economy because the rich people can make the country wealthy which means that they can contribute more to the economy. When that happens, then the country will be able to prosper better because of bigger taxes.

Others believe this gap is very unhealthy because the more the unemployment rate would be going up, the less people with spending power. Now with the power all being squeezed at the top, these economists believe that the economy of the US will suffocate itself to death. This is simply because it will not be utilizing all of its people and therefore not be fully productive.

So as one can see, this income inequality is one of the controversial issues that have sprung up in the US. Clearly many people still have the mindset that people should earn as much as they work. However, it can also be seen that as the unemployment rate in the country goes up, the economic growth in the long term may take a turn for the worse.




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