I’m sorry, but I do not agree with your views on Income Inequality. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the top CEO makes 300 times more than typical the worker in their company. That is not just including the employees in the company that make minimum wage, that is the including the whole staff of the company and taking the average pay of those that even have a college degree and higher. The definition of income inequality is the unequal distribution of household or individual income across the various participants in an economy. According to Nicholas Kristof in “An Idiot’s Guide to Inequality,” income inequality continues to worsen, so bad that the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 90% of Americans. As of 2015 there are approximately 320,000,000 USA citizens and only 3 million citizens own a vast majority of our wealth. Those statistics are extreme but give a brief overview of the large gap of income inequality. Something in our system needs to change or the rich will continue to get richer and the poor will get poorer and income inequality gap will increase causing a terrible down spiral in society. I do however understand why you think the way you think. Your family makes $300,000 a year and it might not seem like it but that income ranks as the top 2% of income distribution. So therefore your opinion about income inequality might be different than the other 98% of the population that you out rank. According to our Living Wage Calculator, the minimum wage is $7.25 and a full time worker works 2080 hours annually. Your families $300,000 salary is 20 times more than the annual minimum wage salary. You’re entitled to a lot more things than the family that is making $15,080. Since you are well into the top 5% you don’t understand how hard it is for someone not in that percentage can get there. The gap between the rich and the poor
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Some might argue that this is the American dream but is the dream even applicable in today’s society. In the article, “Work and Worth” the writers explain that though some people work hard in society there pay doesn’t equal their importance. A prime example is the “hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen who made $2.3 billion last year”, despite the social worker that only made a measly $38,000. Yes, that social worker is working extremely hard but is making $38,000 living the American dream? There are children that are born into poverty who try endlessly to work their way out of poverty but it doesn’t happen. According to the Washington Post, “Nearly one third of U.S. children live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income in 2008 - about $31,000 annually.” One out of every three children have to fight ad work endlessly to get out of poverty but there are many factors that society offers that can keep them in poverty for the rest of their life. To get a good paying job in our society now you need a college degree. If I am a child in a family making $30,000 a year, which puts me in the bottom 30%, I would need to take out loans to put me through college. Once I graduate and get a job I am already in a tremendous amount of debt due to the student loans, so was it worth me getting a college degree to try and get out of
Some might argue that this is the American dream but is the dream even applicable in today’s society. In the article, “Work and Worth” the writers explain that though some people work hard in society there pay doesn’t equal their importance. A prime example is the “hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen who made $2.3 billion last year”, despite the social worker that only made a measly $38,000. Yes, that social worker is working extremely hard but is making $38,000 living the American dream? There are children that are born into poverty who try endlessly to work their way out of poverty but it doesn’t happen. According to the Washington Post, “Nearly one third of U.S. children live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income in 2008 - about $31,000 annually.” One out of every three children have to fight ad work endlessly to get out of poverty but there are many factors that society offers that can keep them in poverty for the rest of their life. To get a good paying job in our society now you need a college degree. If I am a child in a family making $30,000 a year, which puts me in the bottom 30%, I would need to take out loans to put me through college. Once I graduate and get a job I am already in a tremendous amount of debt due to the student loans, so was it worth me getting a college degree to try and get out of