Imagine having the opportunity to have an amazing job that pays great enough to allow us to live comfortably and being able to provide for ourselves and our beloved family for many centuries to come, but, unfortunately, many of us do not have that blessing and luxury. Coming to America was and continues to be a dream to some people, even to this day people dream about coming to America because we have been known as the land of opportunity. In our community, many will argue that the U.S.A is the greatest country in the world, but on the contrary, it has not been for many years. The United States of America has had one of the worst forms of inequality in the world and that is both the inequality of wealth and income.
Before continuing I should start off by stating that wealth and income are not to be confused to be the same thing. Wealth is defined as the sum total of assets minus liabilities; ‘Assets can include everything from an owned personal residence and cash in savings accounts to investments in stocks and bonds, real estate, and retirement accounts. Liabilities cover what a household owes: a car loan, credit card balance, student loan, mortgage, or any other bill yet to be paid (N.P).’ Income refers to the money that is being earned by a person from his or her work, as well as money received from rental property, royalties, and interest from investments.
Majority of the people, primarily the middle class are having to be the glue to our foundation by having to work jobs while not being properly compensated for all of their effort, hard work, and time. That is what I believe is the introduction to income and wealth inequality. Many of the middle class are living paycheck to paycheck while barely getting by, not because they have poor money managing skills, but because the value of their work and time is not being fairly distributed. Money has always been known for being the root of all evil and it has proven to be true for a very long time now. The only class that is guaranteed money at the end of the day is the 1%. The money, I am mostly referring to is loans and wages. Both come into place with each other the moment we turn 18, at the age you are introduced to the real world of finance.
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Financial inequality is at the highest is has ever been in the past century, and the gaps in wages, income, and wealth in America are greater than they are in any other well developed country. You must have a form of income to live, that’s when wage comes in, you find a job for a certain pay amount per hour; the minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 an hour. Imagine living a comfortable life with that wage; it just does not seem realistic or even reasonable. The jobs that pay a higher wage, mostly require you to have some kind of experience or some form of college education. That is when loans come into play, to get a college education you will need to either pay out of pocket or apply for loans. Loans are great at the beginning, but you do have to pay those off. Loans are given out with a certain percentage that needs to be paid off including the original loan amount. Normally, you will end up paying twice the amount of the loan. Which basically means that you will be working the remainder of your life to pay off that loan if you decide to go to college.
The enormous gap in inequality does nothing more than continue to keep on growing and getting bigger. Inequality has been the most popular issue within our country and it is prohibiting the United States from being the greatest country we once used to be. America’s wealth gap has been at the highest since The Great Depression and unfortunately, it seems as though the rich continue to get richer and that the wealth of the nation is consistently moving into the hands of fewer and fewer people. There has been no question that the top one percent are earning a large portion of the wealth in this country while the remaining ninety-nine percent are given the leftovers. The inequality in wealth and income are far too radical to be considered fair, and there are some underlying causes that have been discussed, that create and perpetuate wealth inequality in the United States.
Surviving in the U.S has become increasingly more difficult to do due to the uneven distribution the government keeps choosing to ignore, which in the end causes the income gap to increase, and the middle class to disappear. Due to this incredible gap of inequality between the top one percent, the remaining middle class is dissolving to nothing because of the unequal distribution of wealth. The poverty and inequality in America is a major issue that should have been addressed a while back because the unequal distribution of wealth has been causing greed, controversy, and hate among millions of people. Although the income gap has been very inherent in capitalism, the government should do more to help combat income inequality and unequal distribution of wealth because it takes advantage of the hard working middle class and completely dissolving the existence of the middle class. The gap between the rich and the poor is rapidly increasing, causing the middle class to become less of a reality and more of just another page in a history book.
We may not be able to make the inequality gap much smaller, but the United States knows how to fix the problem, and for some reason, it continues to be ignored. The gap to this day is continuing to grow bigger and bigger and no one is doing anything to change it, my solution to ending wealth and income inequality would be to raise the minimum wage and making college free or more affordable. Raising the minimum wage would help plenty of people to live their lives comfortably not wondering if their money is going to last until the next paycheck. While making college affordable or even free would benefit us at the end because more people would be determined to get a college education and degree, while opening up more job opportunity and maybe helping the middle class remain in existence. If we were given both a higher minimum wage and free education it would be an endless cycle to ending the inequality, making the United States of America once again the greatest country in the world.
