Income Inequality in the USA

Top 1% population has the most resources (https://www.cbpp.org)

Inequality term is appeared in many developing countries since long time ago, but as said by Gorbis (2010) that income inequality between workers and CEO is widening since 1950 in the USA.  

The wages for workers almost not increase for 35 years. On opposite side, economic profit is increasing so higher for companies. 20 wealthiest people in America is wealthy than a half of population. It is mean that 20 people only is richer than 152 million people (57 million households) combines in the USA. 

Many experts tried to solve income inequality problem by proposed bunch of ideas, some of them are universal basic income to all population, continuous training to upskill employees and low tax rate for low-income earners. 

Other experts argued that these ideas to cure symptom only not diseases. The diseases refer to “asset inequality.”  The asset is resources where people can produce wealth. These assets include shares, specific lands, properties (houses and apartments), social networks and higher education. More assets mean more income. More income means more money to invest, to access other assets, to buy health insurance for better physical and mental care, to buy good house with crime free and beautiful neighborhoods and so on.

Moreover, American people, include students believe that social stratification exist in other countries not in the USA. As said by McIntyre (2011, p.197-233) that most American or around eighty percent will admire that they are including in middle class in respect to income. Thus, they believe no different between one and another, and no class different exist. 

However, it is fact that there are 5 different group in term of income distribution in the USA. Top 20% income earners have 80% of wealth. Sadly, majority American population have less wealth, share small amount of wealth.

There is a way to measure  whether income inequality exist in one country, called as Gini coefficient (index). The maximum index is one, it is mean that the inequality is widest. If index is zero, it is mean that everybody has equal income. The fact shown that Gini index increase year by year since 1954 in the USA. It is mean that different between rich and poor is widening until recently. Finally, the income in-equality found everywhere, both in developing countries and industry nations like USA.

References

Gorbis, M. 2017. To fix income inequality, we need more than UBI—we need Universal Basic Assets. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1096659/to-fix-income-inequality-we-need-more-than-ubi-we-need-universal-basic-assets/

McIntyre, L. J. (2011). The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology 5th ed.,

New York: McGraw-Hill.  (ISBN 978-0-07-340440-0).