Apr
21
Blog Post #16 Andrew Chen
April 21, 2015 | Leave a Comment
The numerous innovations of technology has served the world and how we live quite well, yet drastic changes to life style due to technology has not made health care or education any cheaper. Only through further implementation can further improvements be made that will tackle social issues, and this means it will take more time. Since technological advances have been recently quite new, not everyone is up to speed with the updates. A large gap is in between certain age groups, but this will close over time.
Between 1947 and 1968, the U.S. Gini index was .386, the lowest it has ever been. The closer the measurement is to 0, the more equality that is present. In 2013, the U.S. Gini index was .476, and it’s just been increasing since. With further calculations using tax data, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez reported that the top one percent were earning twenty-three percent of the nation’s income in 2012. Many of the lower income families and individuals are working hard to just scrape by, and as income inequality goes up, opportunities for the less fortunate go down. But this still doesn’t answer how to resolve income inequality.
Robert Putnam’s and Jennifer M. SIlva’s novel “Our Kids” tackles the issue in the form of stories. Despite Port Clinton having a slightly lower U.S. Gini index, the problems for low-income families and individuals don’t change from anywhere else in the United States. These are real stories from real people that have been collected through numerous interviews about poverty. Putnam suggests that the more privileged can advocate changes in family structure, parenting, school, and community. Increasing the earned-income tax credit and protecting existing anti-poverty programs, as well as having better child care programs, funding of public schools, increasing extracurricular activities in schools, and offering mentorship programs can all guide mislead youth. Yet the New Yorker writes these ideas off as admirable and excellent, but not new or realistically achievable.
New York City is known to be thriving with business, and rising entrepreneurs. Many obstacles stand in the way of low-income people, but entrepreneurship offers an opportunity. Manhattan has the highest rate of both native-born and foreign-born self-employers, and I think it’s mostly due to the convenience of having a large population in a dense borough. With more entrepreneurs, gives the future of New York City new jobs for incoming graduates, which all adds up to the success of the United States economy. I feel that income inequality will continue to rise, unless achievable policies are set and implemented.
The future of New York City cannot see change without the help of its people. Throughout the course, I’ve learned a lot of many of the issues currently affecting NYC, and some of the possible solutions we can implement. However, without the firm backing and a clear vision of how to tackle these issues, the plans will ultimately not do anything, and we will revert to what we have now.
