Mar
23
Jessica: Class 16
March 23, 2015 | Leave a Comment
After weeks of learning about income inequality and reading all the different articles, I feel none of the articles are encouraging any new information. The three articles states 1) the rich are getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer, one at the expense of the other, 2) people are not looking for jobs anymore, and 3) raising the minimum wage may be an effect of raising wages. From all this information, I know I have seen this before. The last article may be considered new as it is the findings of the fact that raising the minimum wage is good for employment and those trying to find jobs, however even as the article states, it may not be causality. Additionally, while the data is new, the facts have already been presented. Although, in essence, the end statements are similar to those I have seen before, the new information presented can be alternative indicators of income inequality.
One thing that I found shocking was that some people left the job market and, as the article stated, may not come back. What does this even mean? Where are these people getting their income from? I have so many questions from that sentence that I stopped reading to think about that fact. I wonder how they are making ends meet and if they are doing okay financially. Even though there is welfare available to those in need, my faith in humanity is not that abhorrent that I believe people are willfully putting themselves in that situation. Although welfare is available, I do not think the American welfare system is so grand as though no one needs to work. I could be mistaken, but in my opinion, people who are collecting social welfare are doing so to make ends meet, not so they do not have to work. The charts confused me a bit as the numbers converted from percentages to points, however I did understand the overarching theme of the charts and their purpose. Overall in the end, the workers cannot be blamed for being unwilling to work in a poor employment market. Once the conflict of the job market is fixed, then people will want to be employed again.
Furthermore, the fact that some industries are gaining employees and others are not also says something of the skills needed and the workers available. Executive search and recruitment is a difficult hiring process in itself. It can take three times longer trying to find someone in an experienced position than a modest manager or analyst position, although these positions take some time as well. Using information from the other articles, maybe a reason to gain employment again is to access the higher wages and benefits.
Meanwhile, the mayoral article seems to be a pertinent, ongoing problem. Although only studying income inequality for the past few weeks, this problem seems to be ubiquitous and no one seems to have an answer to fixing it. How will we fix the ever increasing gap between the rich and poor? No one thinks the gap should be eliminated just a little less pronounced. How does one go about solving a problem such as this? I think this is the most confusing part about income inequality personally. People do not agree with the solution of income equality, however, society is slowly crumbling with this widened income gap.
Generally, income inequality is an inevitable aspect. Jobs will come and jobs will go, and while the employment market shifts up and down, income inequality will always remain. However, hopefully not as bad as it seems to be today. I feel the problem with income inequality is no one is really trying to solve it, we are just trying to make its effects less prominent. Everyone seems to be trying to solve a problem that doesn’t need to be solved, just less impacted. In my opinion, I do not think there needs to be a solution to income inequality to make it income equality, just a process to make income inequality more bearable to the larger aspect of society.
