Economic Inequality Essay

During the years after WWII, wealth was shared and the economic growth was about the same for every economic class and although of course, there was still a considerable gap in between the classes, it didn’t change much at the time. Throughout the years since the 1970s though, the economic inequality in the United States has been growing; the poor are getting poorer, the middle class is essentially disappearing, and the rich are getting much, much richer. This wide gap that divides the rich and poor doesn’t seem to be getting any narrower and in turn, it’s making it difficult for the people with less money to have the necessities that they need to support their families. Economic inequality is defined as “Income inequality refers
The current state of economic equality in the United States is shocking. Since the 1970s when the economic growth slowed down, the gap between the low, middle and high classes has been widening further and further. It was reported by The Federal Reserve that for the top percent the wealth is rising while there is little change for the 10 percent and a decline of the bottom 90 percent; the top 3% rose from 44.8% in 1989 to 54.4% in 2013 and the bottom 90% fell from 33.2% in 1989 to 24.7% in 2013 (Stone, 2015). Now, in 2015, these income differences have become so evident that the nation’s top 0.1 percent now have their own category and are averaging 184 times the amount of the bottom 90 percent (Priester, 2015). Bill Moyers, Jacob Hacker, and Paul Pierson had a discussion about who they think is to blame for the economic disparity in the United States that hasn’t been around since the Great Depression. Hacker and Pierson call the economy today the ‘winner-take-all economy’, These men argue that the economy that is seen today isn’t a factor of expected consequence, but rather the government that has essentially concentrated the effects of their policies and focused it