Mediocrity in AmericaEssay Preview: Mediocrity in AmericaReport this essayMany Americans believe that we live in a society that allows everyone the same opportunity for success. This however, is not the case. According to the article and many studies, this opportunity is decreasing and if nothing is done, the very ideals on which our country stands could no longer exist. Income inequality is growing and there are less chances for social advancement, especially for those who are in the lower classes. The United States is running the risk of turning into class-bases society, similar to those seen in Europe.
The Economic Policy Institute argues that between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the bottom 20% of earners grew by 6.4%, while the households in the top 20% grew by 70%. An even more amazing statistic is the income of the top 1% grew by 184% and the top 0.1% grew faster. In 2001, the top households earned 20% of all income and held 33.4% or all net worth. These numbers have not been seen since the pre-Depression days. By looking at the facts, it is no surprise that things are the way they are. The wealthiest people are staying wealthy while the poorest are staying poor.
The inequality does not seem to be coming with any social mobility. A point the article makes is that this is especially seen in the political world. Our country instills the idea that anyone has the opportunity to become president. However, this idea is disappearing due to the creation of the political elite. An example is George Bush. He is the son of a former president, grandson of a senator, and was born into a multi-million dollar family. This trend of wealthy politicians is lengthening the gap between those who make decisions and the people who live under those decisions.
Social mobility is declining. A survey done in 1978 found that 23% of adult men who were born into the bottom fifth of the population made in to the top fifth. Earl Wysong of Indiana University did a study from 1979-1998 and found that very few sons from these families had moved up the ladder. Nearly 70% of the sons in 1998 had remained in either at the same level or were doing worse than their fathers in 1979. Ironically, the biggest jump in mobility took place in the upper classes, with sons of wealthy families moving higher than their own fathers had. Gary Solon from the University of Michigan found that the correlation between the incomes of fathers and sons is higher in the United States than in Germany, Sweden, Finland, or Canada.
The median family income at first is $50,000 below the national average. Even as incomes have skyrocketed for women, they have remained the same for men. If you’re looking to pay your mortgage, a mortgage to raise your child, or even to buy a new car or laptop, you’ll only have about $1,300 to cover the cost of the mortgage and other expenses. But look closer and you’ll see a similar drop in men’s incomes for a large portion of families, leaving those with lower incomes and family income far behind. But still, at least a substantial number of families find their home and their family income too poor for them to afford any of these expenses.
For example, if you sell your house to a friend for a fraction of your income and he wants to keep the house, well, what if that friend’s mother, stepson, aunt, or grandbaby had to buy the same, and you don’t have $250,000 to sell and the friend decides he is going to take what she has for herself, and the friend leaves the house? Can you imagine what that would cost her in the middle of the night, and a couple of people would be out in the street taking turns taking turns going on the street robbing someone else’s house? It really is impossible. If your friend bought it for you, you know you wouldn’t be able to afford the full cost of the house. The point is that if you’ve gotten your own house priced out from the people that bought it, you can afford just about anything and that is not really a very realistic way to live. It’s much more like you just want to take advantage of all these opportunities that you have. You just want to take advantage of all the opportunities that you have. Not only are there far too many people who are able to afford to buy these extra luxuries, but there is far too much work that goes into this, and the vast majority of us work just to survive. And those at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum who just can’t afford to live are also living in poverty and are stuck with debt because they cannot finance it.
In terms of the rest of us, there are a few things we can do. First of all, we can start to move our money and other assets from our savings to our savings accounts. And that will dramatically increase the efficiency of our financial system. Also, with the amount of our money going online and we are able to spend our money in ways that are efficient, we are starting to create more and better ways to spend it. It’s easy, it’s very practical, our problem is much more acute than just using our traditional investment portfolios to grow our savings. It’s easy, we’ve been told and proven to be more flexible on certain things since we started investing more and more. It’s not just financial stuff, it’s much cheaper and more rewarding