Wealth inequality is not just limited in to how much a particular country possesses, but how much wealth is distributed within a society. Every society has its own unique factors that make them different; inequality brings about many problems as various attributes of the society are made uneven, for instance, views, attitudes and beliefs. Financial inequality refers to the level in which wealth is shared unevenly to associates of a given group or society in general. Wealth does not only include individual’s yearly pay but encompasses all assets and resources received by investment, employment, state benefits and royalties. Economic inequality can be felt via wealth and income. Income is a wage received through investment, employment etc. when the inequality is too much, there arises high levels of poverty and lesser opportunities for children to overcome their parents efforts. Levels of economic inequality differs from society to society.
Moreover, there is a huge gap in wealth possession in the US today. A lot of wealth inequality misconceptions have been on rise, but the vicious sequence is as a result of how the society functions, (Peter and Jeffrey, 276). Wealth inequality brings about recessions and high unemployment rates. The government should put measures to ensure there is economic equality among its citizens; failure to do so, an activists movement should compel the state to enhance more efforts into distributing its available resources more equally.
The distance between the goal of parity and its actuality has become wider in the modern society. Over the years, America has made a promise to reaffirm the dream of equality for its citizens. However, America stands as one of the countries with the ultimate levels of inequality today, (Emmanuel and Gabriel, 519. Several reports have dismissed the myths of the US as “the land of opportunities”. A while back, the US government may have been right to claim that it offers equality, but most of the promising stories about America today are hoax. A lack of opportunity and poverty are greatly related to inequality. The two factors, opportunity and poverty, stands out to be the key determinants of economic inequality for many nations. The few persons who had a chance to access resources, tend to grab more wealth the rest of the people who remain without it. This results into an economic gap between the people and therefore, economic inequality. People are generally different, making today’s society adversely unequal.
Today’s society is undesirably unequal. Various reasons have made people different. For instance, people are born in different countries where they get exposed into different circumstances. (Roger, 102), states that, in terms of equal distribution of resources, some parts of Australia are poorer than other areas in the country. Also, inequality encompasses of how children are affected by their guardians/parents income levels and education. There are very high chances that a child born from a low earning family will fail to acquire quality education, and therefore, will not culminate in middle or upper social class. On the contrary, children whose parents are educated and wealthy have significantly higher chances of ending up in middle and upper class. Many children’s prospects are greatly dependent on their background status. In a smaller portion of population, inequality can also be attributed to discrimination.
Moreover, the advancement in technology and industrial revolution results to unemployment to many people. This is because their skills turn out to be irreverent in comparison to technological developments. As technology takes jobs, the gap between business owners and average workers continues to broaden. In today’s era, computers and machinery do a lot of work that employees cannot compete with. For instance, in packaging and manufacturing, a computerized machinery can produce a higher and faster quantity compared to human labor. The incorporation of machinery has led to reduction of routine jobs such as steel motor production.
Additionally, small portion of citizens owns a lot of capital thus controlling a larger part of the economy and society wealth. This makes US to continue experiencing a huge income gap between capital owners and unemployed civilians, (Guoping and Aizhi, 637).In spite of this, there arises a high demand for highly qualified personnel to operate the newly advanced machinery and equipment. This change in workforce demand has resulted into a higher wage difference for skilled and unskilled employee classifications. This shows a clear reflection of how technological advancements has created a disparity between labor supply and the demand. This has thereby brought about inequality in wealth ownership.
The inadequacies of capitalist systems are revealed when opportunities, efforts and money are not shared equally among civilians. Historically, developments in capitalist system have been there yet, inequality has remained constant. At the start of industrial revolution, labor had horrible working conditions. The rules governing safety, child labor, working hours and employee related issues were discriminatively and poorly executed. Regardless of the unforeseen developments, for instance, higher and increased wages during the proletarian revolution, imbalance continued and the gap between the rich and poor widened. This trend has been on the move through time. Shigehiro and Ulrich suggests that a progressive tax system would warrant higher income earners to pay taxes proportional to their salaries (157). It is very vital for the government to implement strategies that will control economic inequality in order to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich.
Conclusion
The upper class citizens have the ability to afford luxuries, good schools and shops while the commoners are only enabled consume basic needs. The gradual movement of inspiring equality has come to stop, as the rich and wealthy continue to exploit the poor. The gap between the rich and the poor is highest in capitalist equated to any other economic system globally. In capitalist, the rich continues to gain more wealth while the poor continue sinking into poverty and lack. The gap between the two classes keeps on widening. The accumulated wealth seems to end up in hands of very few citizens while the rest of the society lacks the resources. This mostly happens in the capitalist and offers a reflection of today’s world. The crashes of the current state of inequality are more prone to be prolonged into future generations. This is because, children have begun to be born unequal from the start and pass along their states into the future.
Work cited
Li, Guoping, Yun Hou, and Aizhi Wu. “Fourth Industrial Revolution: technological drivers, impacts and coping methods.” Chinese Geographical Science 27.4 (2017): 626-637.
Lindert, Peter H., and Jeffrey G. Williamson. “Unequal gains: American growth and inequality since 1700.” Juncture 22.4 (2016): 276-283.
Oishi, Shigehiro, Kostadin Kushlev, and Ulrich Schimmack. “Progressive taxation, income inequality, and happiness.” American Psychologist 73.2 (2018): 157.
Saez, Emmanuel, and Gabriel Zucman. “Wealth inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from capitalized income tax data.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131.2 (2016): 519-578.
Wilkins, Roger. “Measuring income inequality in Australia.” Australian Economic Review 48.1 (2015): 93-102.