American Inequality Essay

Wealth inequality in the United States is at an all-time high with the top 1% being as wealthy as the bottom 50% combined. All is not copacetic. Due to the recent presidential election, there is a divide between the nation’s two major parties and even a divide inside each party. There are school shootings happening all around the country and there is more money in politics than there should be. Despite all of the bad things going on, there is always hope for the United States. There is always hope for the United States of America because, throughout the course of history, it has been able to endure every single hardship thrown its way due to its strong foundation, the US Constitution.

are poor are poor because of their unwillingness to work or their inability to want to do better.

The existing of poverty in the United States is very prominent even in the 21st century. Poverty can affect all race, gender, society, and community. However, if this does occur, no one particular person is exempt from it. There is no labeling on who will be the next individual or family that will reap this unfavorable thing. Unfortunately, poverty in the United States can attack a household at any time. Once this happens, poverty can last for a lifetime or a certain period of time. According to the text, every person has an one-in-five chance of being poor in any given year, but poverty in one year does not predict poverty in the future years (p. 180). The text describes this poverty has short-term or long-term. It depends on their

During the week of 2/21-2/25 the class discussed poverty and welfare in America. 47 million Americans are poor as measured by Federal Poverty line. Poverty is very prevalent in southern states such as Mississippi (23%), New Mexico (22%), and Louisiana (21%). Minorities and female headed family’s comprise much of the poor. Many people are poor because of behaviors such as lack of education, lack of a job, and children. There are two different types of views on poverty and they are conservative and liberal. Conservatives believe that it is the persons fault given that America has many opportunities for a person to earn money. Liberals believe that poverty springs from structures in the economy and our society. Poverty is scattered all over

This is nothing new and history has been repeating this cycle for years . “The Gilded Age America was a highly, unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920’s” Paul Krugman pg. 62 Many of my friends are quite satisfied with just getting by. Just earning enough to afford the necessities of life without any additional luxuries besides food, lodging, and safety. “Some of us are just ppain lazy. Some of us ae driven to get ahead” (Cox and Alm pg.

For most of my childhood, our family had a low socioeconomic status which relates to poverty, lower education and poor health. I was a white male, living as a minority in town with a high crime rate, but the rest of the county was wealthy. More people are arrested in my town in comparison to every other town in the county. My sister was sick all the time and we didn’t have the money to afford all the doctor bills, which only got my father angry and more abusive. We certainly lived below the poverty line and lacked the resources. The elementary and middle school in my area was run down and lacked the funding and resources too. The low socioeconomic status was only delaying my transition into adulthood. Ciabatarri (2017) explains that the middle class is shrinking and the unemployment rate is high for workers in the twenties, which only causes concern and affects the future of these young adults. This

A social myth is that poor people and the underclass are lazy and just want to sit back and let the government pay for them. While I am sure there are people out there that do what they can to work the system, not all are doing it. As the textbook states, “divorce, an accident, an illness or the loss of a job” (Henslin, 2014, p. 282) can result in someone easily going from working poor to underclass. People want to work and have a good life. They may work more than one job and still need some level of assistance to ensure they have a roof over their head. People take great pride in providing for themselves and their family – no matter how high up on the social ladder they are. Many people on the lower levels of the social ladder desire to be at a

Income inequality is been a problem in this country for awhile now. Though the median household income has risen about thirty percent the top one percent has skyrocketed nearly two-hundred percent. Though unemployment is falling the and the distribution of income is rising. Even President Obama said economic inequality is the defining challenge of our time.

Many theories attempt at an explanation for poverty in the U.S. The structual explanation on poverty suggets that there are different people in poverty each year. Meanwhile, the culture of poverty theory takes a shot at explaining the working poor. Basically, the working poor's generation is passed down and the young people experience learned helplessness. As a result, little is done to breakout from the cycle of poverty. One side argues that different people enter poverty, while the other debates on poverty being passed down to the younger generation. The theory that better accounts for the working poor is culture of poverty theory. The majority of the time, many individuals living in poverty who don't have money to go to college or can't

For centuries, Americans have prided themselves in today’s “classless” society, a fair democracy, opening the doors to opportunity and upward mobility. The fact remains, however, that roughly one in seven Americans still find themselves below the poverty line, a statistic given by the Census Bureau in 2010. With poverty so widespread, government officials and scholars alike have turned to other outlets for the reasons behind poverty, including the introduction of the term, “culture of poverty.” However, it is shocking to realize that the blame is oftentimes placed on the poor themselves, despite their numerous attempts to escape the cycle of poverty they find themselves in. With public perception of poverty at an-all time low, more and more of the general population are blaming poverty on the poor themselves due to laziness and lack of effort. If the poor are trying to improve their economical status, then why do they still find themselves in this vicious cycle, and what can we do to prevent it?

A child that is brought up in a broken home where their parents have little property, little power, and little prestige are already categorized to poor when they grow up. This is the hardest challenge when striving for the American Dream, how is it that just because one grew up a certain way they are doomed to stay like that forever? Unfortunately, this is the mindset that so many American have today and cause them to give up on the American Dream. If a child grows up in a broken home, they are more likely to be poor and stay within their social class as their parents did. I believe that this is something of the past, individuals today who take advantage of opportunities with achieve upward social mobility.

1. Social class - One social institution that impacts poverty is social class. People of a lower social class are more likely to live in urban cities and work low-paying jobs than their more affluent counterparts. They are also less likely to hold a college degree, which makes it difficult for them to find a better paying job. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds tend to do worse in school and have a higher chance of being held back or dropping out. Even if these children mange to get into college, their parents can not afford the absorbent costs associate with it. As a result these children end up taking menial jobs in their urban neighbored and hence the cycle of poverty continues on to the next generation.

Many of our nation's poor remain in abject poverty because they see no way out of a viscous cycle that has been their only known way of life for generations. In many ways the poor tend to isolate themselves from the rest of society out of fear of the unknown. There is a strange comfort in things familiar, even if those things are bad. Unemployment remains high among the poor because of social stereotypes and the many ill psychological effects that society imposes on individuals trying to break the cycle of poverty.

If the economy is not having exponential growth in job creation, it makes it that much harder for the nonworking poor to acquire jobs. To add to this, most jobs that the nonworking poor and the working poor usually attain, due to educational deficiencies and poor upbringings, are sadly those jobs being outsourced to other countries. With a large sector of manufacturing jobs leaving the United States, it places many families vulnerable to poverty. Even more, they can be viewed as deviant for not assimilating/acquiring the desired skills that the dominant group sees fit for societies contemporary

Our society places certain preconceptions on the way we view particular roles or define certain classes of people. These roles, or social classes, are all incorporated and become the fabric that makes up our society as a whole. One such class is what we label as the poor. Society’s concept of the poor is a mental image we have constructed to represent the social and economic class of citizens that live below the poverty