Possible Solutions

After careful research and deliberation, I have formulated a comprehensive plan to combat this issue. An affirmative action program that maximized job and educational opportunities for the poor while minimizing the monopoly the rich hold on these domains would create a new culture in which both rich and poor could obtain the jobs and education that they desire. Also, a new complex tax system should be implicated that would relieve hard-working lower-class individuals of some of their tax burden. A department of government officials would analyze each person in terms of how much effort they put into locating and maintaining their job. This way only diligent workers who truly need it will receive a decrease in the amount they must pay in taxes and less hard-working people content with living off government subsidies will not be benefited. I understand that this program would be near impossible to actually institute and would consume a large amount of government funds, but I believe that the benefits of this system will vastly outweigh the negatives.

Social and Political Ramifications

Inherently, such vast income inequality inspires a variety of social consequences, including stratification of the different social classes. Through research it has become evident that people of the same income bracket tend to cluster together in the same towns. As a result of this, people grow up in a certain set of conditions and are almost completely unaware of how people of a different socioeconomic status live. This misunderstanding of others may evolve into resentment and distrust and then into genuine hatred. As a result of this, America is now in a state of class warfare. Class warfare today has manifested itself in in the debates between the upper- and lower-classes over which group should bare the bulk of the federal tax burden. The conservatives argue that taxing corporations and rich people takes money that would otherwise be invested in business growth and thus create jobs, but the liberals have disproven this while pointing to the two trillion dollars on the books of American businesses. Liberals argue that this hoarding of money by corporations is causing a slow economy to become stagnant. They believe this wealth could potentially be extremely helpful in Washington's attempts to stimulate the economy and stress the importance of prying the money from greedy corporate hands through taxes to do so. Despite this logic, it has recently become evident that the business conservatives are winning this war, as the tax burden has shifted in their favor. These immense social problems have inspired debate over whether this current political system is providing enough power to the lower class to allow them to pull themselves out of poverty. Some have argued that our current political system resembles an oligarchy more than a democracy, as our government has accused of supporting the big businesses at the expense of the poor.

The Roots of the Income Gap

There are many theories to how the income gap originated in America. Some argue that it may have stemmed from a discrepancy in education and scholastic achievement between the rich and the poor. Despite great efforts by the founding members of our nation to make education 'the great equalizer' to ensure all children have a chance of success, education is ultimately ineffective in doing so. In fact, it is arguably the source of this widening income gap. Although it is true that education has vastly improved the success of the poor, it has improved the success of the rich at a faster rate. With the rich consistently being more educated than the poor, they continually receive more desirable career opportunities with higher salaries.

Others argue that economic recessions, most notably the one America experienced in 2008, contribute to income disparity. This is because, in economics, there must be a compromise between perfect equality and perfect inequality because the rich are relied upon to invest their disposable income into the economy, and the poor must have enough money to consume goods to drive the economy. With the balance of this scale being disturbed as our nation gradually leans further toward perfect inequality as opposed to perfect equality, the economy crashed and catalyzed one of the worst economic recessions the nation had ever experienced. After careful research it has become evident, that most, if not all, of the recessions that our nation has experienced have been caused by income inequality.