Wealth Inequality in America

[Egann]

Raistline said:

Poverty in the US once meant you literally could not put food on your own table no matter what you did. You simply could not exist except for the welfare of the local church. You owned nothing and likely had no shelter. Now poverty in the US means you don't have enough money to own many things or not enough income to consume as much, while being able to live a reasonable life through government assistance. You now are guaranteed food and shelter, things that once only a the wealth could guarantee. In this retrospect today's poor in the US live virtually wealthy in comparison.

There is no way to get rid of the poverty, there is no way to get rid of the wealthy. The income equality gap has nothing to with this at all. The way it is presented it is as if the rich are taking money from poverty making them more poverty stricken, which is not the case. Instead people in poverty are just becoming wealthier at much slower rate. Make no mistake as quality of life increasing for everyone in the US including the poor. The only thing that is changing is the income of the wealthiest is increasing faster than with the poor.

One way to think about it is societies income and quality of life is growing exponentially across the board. The lowest on the scale go up but 2^2 is only 4. While the rich, say are 100^2 is all the way up to 10,000. They are both improving just at different rates based upon their starting position. This does make the difference more and more vast as time goes on. This is, however, exactly how capitalism works. The major difference in income inequality is that despite the growing difference, anyone at anytime can jump from the bottom to the top or the top to the bottom. (another way of saying all boats rise during a rising tide)

This is more or less correct. It's called exponential growth, which basically means the more you've got the easier it is to make more. That, and in some places--the United States especially--it is entirely possible to make fortunes from nothing, especially with questionably ethical tricks like selling stocks short.

The real problem is the millions of people who don't know how to make a comfortable beginning with money and can't make the common sense decisions to keep it once they've got it. In so many words, the culture of poverty. The combination of having nothing and knowing how to make nothing is uniquely unfair.