To begin with, income inequality becomes an issue when it begins to affect economic mobility. Economic mobility is when an individual has the ability to improve or lessen their economic status. Income inequality decreases economic mobility for the less wealthy, while it increases economic mobility for the rich. The reason this occurs is because the less money one brings in, the less money they have in their household, decreasing their ability to use their money. Income inequality is directly linked to democracy. As discussed in class, the rich will continue to get richer and the poor will get poorer and I believe in that. Also, in the video Inequality for All it shows that the United States is ranked 64th when it comes to income inequality. There are currently many Americans that are employed but make about $10 per hour or less. Having this much people making that much per hour causes most of them to be below the poverty line. And this means that they may lack benefits such as having no health insurance or sick days because they are low wage workers.
Next, the reason for this is because a democracy includes voting rights. Many statistics show that if people are not economically stable, they tend to not be able to exercise their democratic rights due to a lack of resources. The less wealthy spend their time working to bring money, unable to make time for themselves to go and vote. The less wealthy bring in less money which means they do not have the ability to purchase luxury items, for example a laptop, which means they cannot do research for candidates, not caring to vote because they are undereducated about the politics going on. For a young American to be financially stable in his or her future, it also depends on the income and education of their parents. There are young Americans who live in a wealthy family and do poorly in school and still end up making a really good life of themselves just like their parents. And then we have young Americans who do very good in school and work hard but they will still end up in the bottom half due to their parent’s income and education. I also feel like we are moving away from democracy due to income inequality. Again, as we discussed in class the richest people in America hold more political power. Rich people have more power in the political world because politics is normally a corrupt system, they consistently side with wealthier people because those wealthy people pay for their campaigns and donate to their issues. Some politicians even take bribes.
Finally, the American dream is not real, it is an idealistic recommendation. According to what we discussed in class, some of us think that the American dream is freedom, opportunity, and prosper. The American dream does not exist and will continue to not. The reason I say this is because, I believe that the American dream is living happily, freely, and equally in America. This is impossible because America is filled with income inequality, which eventually leads to not being able to live freely or happily because individuals have to worry about how they are going to live above poverty line. Although some of us may believe that we as an individual have to make the American dream real and work hard to become wealthy. For example, before Bill Gates became one of the wealthiest men in the world, he did not finish his degree as he dropped out. He then came up with the idea of Microsoft and the rest is history. We have to be very realistic because not every American here will ever be rich and healthy, no matter how hard they work for it. If the American dream was real, Medicare, Medicaid, food-stamps, homelessness, and poverty-stricken people would not exist. The American dream is a lie. It is just a stereotype that was created by society to make people want to move to America, but that stereotype does not live up to its expectation.
