American Wealth Inequality

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America’s Disproportional Wealth Distribution The United States of America is a nation known for being wealthy. In fact, we are the wealthiest country in the world. There is not a doubt that Americans are responsible for a large amount of wealth, but how that money is distributed among the population has been argued. Over time, the wealth gap has progressively grown in this nation. The rich have gotten richer while the size of the lower and middle classes have shrunk. Inefficiencies within our government have in part caused this growing social problem. The American wealth distribution is distinctively uneven due to improper taxation and limited social mobility. The wealth of the United States is unevenly distributed within its citizens, …show more content…
When President George H.W. Bush left office in 1993, the marginal tax rate for the highest level of income was 31 percent, which was in part a cause of the countries 1.5 trillion dollar deficit at the time. President Clinton followed up this deficit with a jump in taxes from 31 to 39.6 percent for the highest income citizens, and this led to an elimination of the federal budget deficit and resulted in a surplus (Parry 52-53). However following this in 2003, the Bush Administration made tax cuts on capital gains, stock dividends, and estate taxes (Morris 21). President Bush also cut the marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent down to 35 percent which once again led to the rise of the federal deficit to over a trillion dollars (Parry 53). These factors have contributed to the increased wealth gap in the twenty-first century. Cutting income taxes as well as the taxes on investments and real estate allows the highest income groups to save billions of unneeded dollars that could be used to improve the lively hood of others less fortunate. According to Dr. G. William Dornhoff of the University of California Santa Cruz, as of 2010, the top 1 percent of Americans accounted for roughly 35.4 percent of the nation’s total wealth. In a country that defines social classes by financial standards this could be considered to be a …show more content…
The majority of lower class citizens are born in to poverty and the ability they have to change social classes, also known as “social mobility,” is very limited. Government programs such as social security and welfare are designed to help lower income citizens to gain financial stability, but when the government sends a check to a lower class citizen who has minimal social mobility, practically no utility is gained for anybody. Sure any amount of money would help in these situations, but only on a short term basis. The root of this social problem is that educational opportunities for low and high social classes are unbalanced. Children of families in poverty earn college degrees at a rate of nine for every hundred, while 80 percent of children from the highest quarter of income earn college degrees (United States Senate). Statistics have proven that people who earn college degrees make substantially more income than those without them, so in order to expand social mobility it is easy to see why a degree would be important. In order to provide an opportunity for the lower classes of Americans to improve their social status, we must educate and provide the proper guidance to the young people who are unintendedly placed low on the social totem pole, and give opportunities for them to elevate from their ascribed social
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