Growing National Concern in the United States - Income Inequality - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 7 Words: 2149 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2019/07/01 Category Finance Essay Level High school Tags: Income Inequality Essay Did you like this example? My main focus in this paper will be to discuss income inequality as it is a growing national concern in the United States. When we think of income inequality, we usually determine it means unequal pay for a certain gender primarily women. This is not the case, however as more and more men also are generally affected by the economic gap caused by American politics which intentionally keeps the United States on the welfare system. In a perfect world, it would seem the U.S could indeed have a shared system of income distribution, though we are very far from that perfect world and across North America it is in fact economic inequality that is the biggest problem Americans deal with across the nation and as one of the global countries out in the world that other countries have come to respect. What makes income inequality a problem starts with the government placing restrictions on every individual’s right to access resources from having an adequate income to support your household. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Growing National Concern in the United States Income Inequality" essay for you Create order Income Inequality is the single biggest issue facing Americans today and a list of who will come close to being at risk is very alarming to say the least. The population groups appearing to be at high risk does include the homeless, women and men from all backgrounds, and illegal migrants. Homeless individuals are seen as high risk when it comes to economic inequality because there is little consideration for them to make it out of their poverty situation. Women and men from all backgrounds and walks of life face the possibility of becoming trapped at the poverty line making it difficult to escape poverty. The way that Economic Inequality affects illegal migrants is proven in the way they obtain a small portion of the distribution of wealth. The contributing factors leading to a great concern in Income Inequality are somewhat related. The following risk factors begins with the causes that income inequality has economically, then I will discuss the relation between Income Inequality and Demographic factors; followed by explaining why Political factors play such a big role in determining how income is spread around from the rich who control the country’s riches to the poor who want to stand up for themselves and be considered equal as fellow human beings and not be treated as less. A relation between income inequality and the cultural factors that is associated with it are one of the causes. Environmental factors have also been seen to contribute to this main issue of income inequality. Lastly, at the governmental level, there is a wider gap occurring among macroeconomic factors coming all the way down to the micro level to individuals and families. Economic factors include the country’s wealth (mostly measured as GDP per capita), the financial well-being of a nation, technological advancements and how well the nation’s economy progresses. The next contributing factors to the concerns over income inequality is a result of the demographic causes. These are for example, the overall mortality rate of a population, the make-up of households, a population’s educational level, education inequality, and money set aside for the educational sector in an economy. The first reason why political factors play such a huge role in income inequality is because a large proportion of the government’s share of wealth in the U.S economy is not at an even split since shares between the government and the private sector on things like pensions, subsidies, grants increases for one sector and decreases for the other sector. The second reason is still the fact that in the U.S., which is a more democratic country, there remain s the one main difference between access to resources for families rich and poor and that is how the poor people democratic views, political rights, and a promise to greater redistribution of wealth. An example of cultural factors affecting income inequality would be that of government corruption. The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Shapers Annual Survey 2017 of 25,000 young people from 186 countries including the U.S. asked young people to name the three most pressing issues of concern in the U.S, then they listed them. Here â€Å"Government accountability and transparency/corruption† comes out on top with 46.9%, followed by â€Å"Inequality† (38.1%) and Lack of opportunity/employment (30.5%). More cultural factors playing an important role in income inequality are the abundance of natural resources which does increase income inequality especially in the case of minerals and metals where production of these resources is solely dependent on making money rather than using people from a lower income group who will not increase production of natural resources. Shadow economy is probably one of the biggest problems and a contributing risk factor of income inequality because of the relationship among the two. Both shadow economy and income inequality were looked at closely in Rosser and Rosser’s (2001) abstract and were finding out that if corrupt governments took a large piece of the share for themselves, shadow economy will continue to move upward plus this will make such things like taxes and the redistribution of wealth to decrease over time. Income Inequality in North America is also caused by the influence of cultural variation when it comes down to cultural factors increasing income inequality. The final cultural factor that impacts income inequality is land concentration. Higher land concentration means an increased amount of income inequality. This does not always have to be true though, as the result of land concentration can become weaker over time. Because of the recent attention that income inequality has gotten over the last two decades, it is important to know how macroeconomic factors have shaped the national picture of income inequality. Inflation, unemployment, financial development, export, import, and foreign investments are all major problems of macroeconomic factors. Inflation is believed to affect poorer people by carrying out a careful means and calculating those individuals fixed incomes on certain things like their pensions and subsidies. This further raises the level of income inequality (Gustafson and Johansson, 1997; Parker 1999; Xu and Zou, 2000; Cornia and Kiiski, 2001). Unemployment is also a serious concern on the topic of income inequality. Yet, according to Gustafson and Johansson (1997), and Parker (1999), there are more ways than one to determine the inequality-increasing factor of losing one’s job than analysis showing the opposite. Although financial development might be thought to increase income inequality, the opposite is truer, there is a reduction, but it is the primary cause affecting economic inequality all the same. If a country like the U.S. is a financially secure developed nation, the government would have no trouble at all providing better access to loans, the probability of owning a home, and good quality education to poorer people, setting them up for the right to stand among the wealthy, thereby increasing their incomes by investing in education and opening businesses. Both importing and exporting of products coming from the developing countries into the United States, a developed country having more and more increases in their imported goods can lower wages in the competitive field of production of develop countries and because of this, the U.S is ranked amongst the top countries in the world on income inequality. Incoming foreign investments increase allowing income inequality to also do the sa me too. The U.S. is currently addressing this issue through congressional hearings, bill introductions, and laws. Political groups also spend money on public policy agendas which they feel would reduce the lack of income opportunity for the less privileged. This policy topic of a rising inequality between the wealthy and the poor has created a policy conflict which both groups disagree who should be favored more when it comes down to who has more political rights and which socioeconomic group will benefit from the US congressional agendas. Legislators have taken it upon themselves to rely entirely on rich donors and political action committees to deal with this growing inequality and the income gap that exists around the country. Outside of the United States, a country that has been successful in reducing inequality in terms of differences between the incomes of the wealthy and the poor is that of the Netherlands as compared to that of the U.S. In the Netherlands, there is a low level of pre-government property that is the amount of taxes and other monetary fees the government can claim from each individual making for the redistribution of wealth by the government in terms of reduction of pre-government poverty about as low as possible to equally share income evenly for all Dutch citizens. Pre-government income could include incomes the average household in the Netherlands would receive in the absence of public benefits. The Netherlands has a huge impact on its government to reduce poverty and those who might suffer from income inequality. As a socialist European country, there is a method used to calculate how much of the redistribution by the government is handed out. The procedure is simply to calculate th e poverty rate for pre-government incomes subtracted by the poverty rate for post-government incomes divided by pre-government property, then multiplied by 100%. Direct income inequality has the negative effect to impact society whether you are at the top or the bottom of the income distribution ladder. If those at the ninetieth percentile increase their share of resources at the expense of those at the eightieth percentile, direct social and economic impacts on both average health and health disparities will be relatively small leading to lowered costs in the long term. If those at the twentieth percentile increase their share of resources at the expense of those at the tenth percentile, the direct impact will be greater and this can have a greater burden financially on average health and health disparities. In the United States, one of the impactful factors creating this cycle of income inequality is a population’s education level as well as the access or inability to access education. The year 2000 saw the age-standardized mortality rate was 1,574 per 100,000 people for less educated white men compared with 774 per 100,000 people fo r college attendees. In the United States, disparities in life expectancy by both income and education increased sharply among both men and women from the 1980s to 2008 (the most recent year available). Society has dealt with the policy topic of income inequality in the past by focusing on studies comparing rich and poor countries and census tracts in the United States showing an increase in the frequently occurring mortality ratios in the late twentieth century. Because the U.S. has a high level of income inequality, the country often has a higher poverty rate or lower average income and this has been what has changed to make this national problem worse for all people especially poorer individuals. If this problem persists, the implications on future social work practice may affect the well-being of the United States as a whole and further discourage policy decisions about environmental regulation risk factors, cultural norms about risky behavior, and historical influences. Poverty is a serious problem, both in the United States and in the world today. It has implications for the stability of society and the health of democracy as well as safety in the world. From an individual perspective, being poor is costly in terms of both life chance and potential contributions. As this chapter has shown, industrial age poverty and income maintenance programs and policies are inadequate for protecting people in an information society. As the transition from an industrial economy to an information economy continues and the environment deteriorates, the nature of poverty will change and the actions that are necessary to deal with poverty will also evolve. This will provide interesting challenges for social workers, advocates, and policy makers. To conclude, it has become clear that in terms of income inequality, social welfare systems as that in place in the United States, as in other nations around the world measure how much government intervention people rely on to properly distribute income at all levels of society from the bottom poor to those working to provide adequate resources for their households. One lesson that this paper has proven is that income inequality is a very real national crisis and to fight to end the war on poverty among poorer income households will take a lot of public assistance from social service providers, social workers, legislators, a government that is not corrupt only allowing the wealthy individuals to take advantage of needed resources like education, affordable housing, job security, equal employment for the families who are poor just trying to survive daily on relying on government interference to make equality like it should be elsewhere around the world where inequality has not risen i n the past two perhaps five years putting into consideration the average term of a country’s economic development and to add to that a nation’s laws made up to reduce inequality.