Preview

David Leonhardt's Article On Inequality

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
235 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
David Leonhardt's Article On Inequality
In the article “Inequality Has Been Going on Forever, but That Doesn’t Mean It’s Inevitable” written by David Leonhardt the views of French economist Thomas Piketty are discussed. He discusses that inequality has been around through much of modern history except during wars, depressions, and the time of recovery that follow them. The essay states “and inequality is likely to continue increasing for decades, he says” (Graff, et al. 543). His views are rooted in the idea that the value of capital drives inequalities. When people of a society can have excess profits from capital, this puts them at an advantage over those with capital holdings much smaller and cannot have excess returns. This allowing the person with excess returns to reinvest

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    In Leonhardt’s essay, he recounts a “hypothetical village” with two farmers in an interview with Piketty. Both farmers make the same profit margins (10%) but, the second, larger farmer has nearly ten times the crop yield. The second farmer can invest his extra savings into increasing production, and therefore, his capital, while the first farmer remains stagnant due to not having money left over after paying for their living expenses. I personally agree that the ability to make enough money to have excess does help the rich become wealthier. Last summer, I met Ira Fulton, a $50 million sponsor of ASU’s engineering school.…

    • 1693 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Frank Too Big Too Ignore

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Robert Frank, a professer at Cornell University, published an article for the New York Times on October 16, 2010. The title of the article was "Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore". In "Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore", Frank argues that there are differences in the social classes of the American people and that it is having a negative effect on our economy's growth. Frank explains that middle class citizens are in a struggle to maintain a good financial position. Meanwhile, the upper class citizens are spending copious amounts of money which makes it increasingly more difficult for the middle class to meet their basic needs. He says that the middle class are looking toward upper class citizens, comparing their posesions as well as their financial positions which makes the middle class feel financially unstable.…

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    A recent study done by Marco Cagetti of the Chicago Fed, illustrates that among members of the Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development, otherwise known as the OECD, the United States holds the most uneven distribution of income and wealth. A disproportionate spread of wealth is an issue citizens of the United States understand very well as this issue has made headlines and gained notoriety recently with the Occupy Wall Street movement. A certain economist, Joseph Reich, discusses the causes and effects of this uneven distribution of wealth in America as early as 1991 in his essay “Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer.” Reich’s essay was not only relevant when written over a decade ago, but also remains pertinent to the current economic status of America today. To portray the relationship between the rich as they continued to gain wealth and the poor as they continue to decline economically, Reich utilizes a metaphor of three different boats rising and sinking with the tide.…

    • 1475 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The owner is using the reasoning from Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie would agree with this because the economic success is most profitable for the business and this makes it inequality is good. The business will benefit from this decision by not giving a raise. Then it is okay to not give a raise to benefit the company. Inequality is essential to a business because it increases the standard of living.…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This business plan is developed for opening a new patisserie and cafe in Melbourne CBD for its successful opening, growth and market share of its target audience. This rich and diverse business plan is anticipated to reach out to pastry target market, which are seeking superior product at an affordable price within the business community and general shoppers. The interest by consumers in the coffee house industry is sweeping the city. Puffers are positioned to bring this to the Bundoora area. To date it has been confined to the Central and East areas.…

    • 5273 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhetorical Technique

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages

    No one can argue that America is the country of the human rights and freedom and many people around the world dream to live in this great place. However, big problem is going to reshape the American society if nobody tried to solve it. The dilemma is simply that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer as a result of inequality of money distribution among rich and poor people.America had created a marvelous economic machine, but evidently it worked only for that at the top. Both Joseph E. Stieglitz and Timothy Noahintroduce a very critical issue which affects the American society in these days, is the widening gap between the rich and poor people. Stieglitz claims that the American economic system is failing for most of Americans and the inequality is increasing to the extent that one day will be unaffordable. The rising gap is created by the one top percent who are taking advantage of making a huge wealth. They are driven by their greed to accumulate big fortune upon poor’s shoulders. Stieglitz came up with some evidence to support his claim. One of these is the new statistics fromCensus Bureau’s statistics that shows that the one top percent gain 20 % of the total American income. Therefore, Noah says that this inequality income creates and retains the capitalism system which forms a serious threat upon middle and lower class (Noah The Great par 3).…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In “Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore”, Frank shows the influences in Americans’ lives in different classes by the disparity between the rich and the poor. He arouses people’s consciousness for the “rising inequality” which is being polarized and has been causing immense damages to Americans, no matter which class they are. It is true that the “Income Inequality” in America is very obvious and affecting more and more people. Indeed, “we should just agree that it’s a bad thing”, however, are we able to do something concrete to deal with it effectively? Is the” rising inequality really required in the name of fairness”? I stand neutral towards Frank’s opinion.…

    • 379 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wealth Inequality in U.S.

    • 1964 Words
    • 6 Pages

    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.…

    • 1964 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the essay “Inequality Has Been Going on Forever... but That Doesn’t Mean It’s Inevitable”, David Leonhardt argues that despite the persistent trend of income inequality in the U.S. and throughout history, it is not impossible to change that inequality. He writes that the professor, Thomas Piketty points out the process in which inequality rises and the near inevitability of it. Leonhardt tells of his conversations with Piketty and Piketty’s idea on the possible way to solve inequality, which is to put a global wealth tax that is specifically for income inequality. Leonhardt finds this solution politically improbable and instead advises that the government changes the taxation of the wealthy, healthcare, how we manage the Department of Transportation,…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    In today’s capitalist economy, where economic transactions and business in general is centered on self-interest, there is a natural tendency for some people to make more than others. That is the basis for the “American Dream,” where people, if they worked hard, could make money proportional to their effort. However, what happens when this natural occurrence grows disproportional in its allocation of wealth within a society? The resulting issue becomes income inequality. Where a small portion of the population, own the majority of the wealth and the majority of the population own only a fraction of what the rich own. This prominent issue has always been the subject of social tension from even before the French Revolution and spawns numerous other social issues in a society. In the more recent Occupy Movement, beginning in 2011, protesters used income inequality as a motive. Moreover, they were justified in doing so. In a 2010 statistic, it was revealed that the top 1% of America, own 35% of the wealth while the lower 80%, over the majority of the population, only have 11% of the nation’s wealth distributed between them. Financially the situation is even worse where the bottom 80% own only 5% of the financial wealth and the top 1% own 42% of the Nation’s financial wealth. Not to say the top 1% didn’t work hard to get to where they are, but according to the ideals of the “American Dream,” the top 1% should have worked 243 times harder than the average, not the poorest, worker in America. This extreme of disproportional wealth distribution is not only a source of social conflict, but a catalyst for various other problems that exist.…

    • 1528 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    A crucial controversy of America today is the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor, and the discrepancy is caused by capitalism run wild and only the helping hand of the government can only fix the problem. A question that turns the tables is what if the growing wealth disparity in America is actually caused by the government? For years, the idea that inequality is economically neutral has been the prevailing view not just among traditionalists but also between most Americans outside the further reaches of a political audience. There could be ideological or moral reasons to object to a growing gap between the wealthy and the rest but for economic reasons, there are no such. Furthermore, there are many ways inequality places itself in America. In our society, a good amount of the population is forced to stand up and work for our country while hardly being redeemed for their time and effort, thus the problem of income inequality. An estimate of these people live from paycheck to another, barely coping with life itself, not because they cannot manage their money well, but the reason is that…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Income Inequality

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Over the years America’s inequality income gap has been growing, between the rich and the poor. There are many reasons why this is happening. Andrew Carnegie, John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz may agree with me, but believe there are different reasons why and how it should be dealt with. I would have to say that I agree that Galbraith’s idea is what is better for America now.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inequality exists around us. One of the inequalities is the income received by a person or member of a family. Income inequality refers to the various incomes within a given population. This income includes wages, salaries, pensions, and interest derived from the assets. The economy nowadays is very dynamic and is constantly growing, but the top is absorbing the biggest portion of the growth. As Arthur Okun once said: “Inequality is the price America pays for a dynamic, efficient economy; we may not like it, but the alternatives are worse. As long as the bottom and the middle are moving up, there is no reason to mind if the top is moving up faster, except perhaps for an ideological grudge against the rich—what conservatives call the politics…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inequality is the unequal distribution of valued goods and opportunities in a society. Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in economic inequality in the United States. Four major reasons for this increase is the changing relationship between technological expansion and education, deindustrialization and restructuring, government policies, and decline of unions. Technology in the United States has advanced immensely since the 1970s. This has led to peoples jobs being replaced by technology, for example bank tellers have been replaced by ATMs, and a higher level of education is now needed to use the technology for jobs.…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It would seem that people who are defenseless should not need to be defended if they aren’t willing to help themselves. Usually, there are people who seem to need help, but don’t want it and never get helped in the end. One must be physically, emotionally, and spiritually willing to feel the need to receive help or any type of comfort.…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays