In: Economics
I need to write four pages double spaced paper on a wealth inequality in USA. I can use three sources for my paper. Can someone help me please.
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Wealth inequality in the United States is the unequal distribution
of assetsamong residents of the United States. Wealth includes the
values of homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses,
savings, and investments.
The net worth of U.S. households and non-profit organizations was $94.7 trillion in the first quarter of 2017, a record level both in nominal terms and purchasing power parity.
Divided equally among 124 million U.S. households, this would be $760,000 per family. However, the bottom 50% of families, representing 62 million households, average $11,000 net worth
Just prior to President Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address, media reported that the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation’s wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percen.
The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour.
Although different from income inequality, the two are related. In Inequality for All—a 2013 documentary with Robert Reich in which he argued that income inequality is the defining issue for the United States—Reich states that 95% of economic gains went to the top 1% net worth
since 2009 when the recovery allegedly started.More recently, in 2017, an Oxfam study found that eight rich people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race.
A 2011 study found that US citizens across the political spectrum dramatically underestimate the current US wealth inequality and would prefer a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth.
In 2013 UNICEF data on the well-being of children in 35 developed nations ranked the United States at 34 out of 35 (Romania is the worst). This may reflect growing income inequality.
Essentially, the wealthy possess greater financial opportunities that allow their money to make more money. Earnings from the stock market or mutual funds are reinvested to produce a larger return. Over time, the sum that is invested becomes progressively more substantial. Those who are not wealthy, however, do not have the resources to enhance their opportunities and improve their economic position. Rather, "after debt payments, poor families are constrained to spend the remaining income on items that will not produce wealth and will depreciate over time."
Scholar David B. Grusky notes that "62 percent of households headed by single parents are without savings or other financial assets."
Net indebtedness generally prevents the poor from having any opportunity to accumulate wealth and thereby better their conditions. Income inequality contributes to wealth inequality. For example, economist Emmanuel Saez wrote in June 2016 that the top 1% of families captured 52% of the total real income (GDP) growth per family from 2009-2015. From 2009 to 2012, the top 1% captured 91% of the income gains.
For both the wealthy and not-wealthy, the process of accumulation or debt is cyclical. The rich use their money to earn larger returns and the poor have no savings with which to produce returns or eliminate debt. Unlike income, both facets are generational. Wealthy families pass down their assets allowing future generations to develop even more wealth. The poor, on the other hand, are less able to leave inheritances to their children leaving the latter with little or no wealth on which to build…This is another reason why wealth inequality is so important, its accumulation has direct implications for economic inequality among the children of today's families
The nature of tax policies in
America has been suggested by economists and politicians such as
Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, and Barack Obama to perpetuate
economic inequality in America by steering large sums of wealth
into the hands of the wealthiest Americans.
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