Feb
5
Post #3 Nicholas Lee
February 5, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Income inequality was something I knew very little about up until now. My freshman year, I took a sociology class where we briefly watched a video on wealth distribution in the United States but other than that video, I never knew much about this subject and it was rarely discussed in my classes. After finishing the readings, I was very intrigued to learn more about Thomas Piketty’s findings from what was said in the articles but I would still like to hear more before I decide if I 100% agree with what he is saying.
Instead, perhaps I can say that the readings stuck me in multiple ways and sparked my opinion on the topic of income inequality. From all the media, obviously we know that income inequality is an issue in our society but to what extent and severity is it an issue? In my opinion, I agree that some income inequality is good. To have some people make more money than others is one of the sheer founding principals behind capitalism. People need to be encouraged to work in the hopes of making more money so we move forward as a nation.
But to what degree is too much? According to John Cassidy’s charts from Piketty’s work, is it really necessary that the top decile controls 50% of the entire nations income? It is at this point that I seem to have second thoughts on how much is too much and if it should be limited? On the flip side, do we even have the moral right to limit or redistribute the income of these Americans? Wouldn’t that be going against our country’s principles? Why should we limit the wealth of these people if they worked hard all their lives to make their fortune?
That brings up another question I had after reading these articles which is how did these people get so rich to begin with and how did the income inequality in our country get so bad? Although part of me wants to believe that these men and women of the 1% got their wealth from working extremely hard all their lives, part of me also believes that their fortune dates back for years and has been past down generation by generation due to inheritance. By being born into wealth, the children of these families start off with more privileges and advantages than the rest of the population has. That means better schooling and opportunities for this child over that child.
It seems like according to the data from Piketty, the only thing that was able to lessen the wealth and income gap was the effects of World War II, aka the biggest war in history. If it took a historical event of that caliber to have an effect on the income distribution, it makes me wonder if it is even possible to get back to how our economy was in the post WWII era through economic and government policies based on how our government and congress functions currently. Hopefully it will not take another war to do this and we will be able to find a way.
