Economic Injustice in America :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Economic Injustice in America Class is for European democracies or something else--it isnt for the United States of America. We are not going to be shared out by syllabus.-George Bush, the forty-first President of the United States (Kalra 1)The United States of America was founded on the basis of a classless society of equals, committed to eliminating the past injustices imposed on them by Great Britain. A hundred years later, Alexis de Tocqueville, a prominent sociologist of France, claimed that the nation was the most democratic in the world, a model for the rest of mankind, noble by the equality of condition (Tocqueville in... n. pag.). Today, however, there does exist perceptible classes in this country, and, because of differences in material wealth, Americans have unequal opportunities in politics, education, health care, justice, security, and overall happiness. The discrete class structure of current-day America is the greatest cause of inequality in the United States toda y. This inequality in America is not recognized. The subject is either trivialized or dismissed as untrue. Though the economic injustices of other nations can be easily recognized, their own situation, which is comparable or worse, is free of criticism. Michael Parenti, a sociologist from Yale, states, If the subject of class is introduced, it is usually dismissed as an outworn Marxist notion having no relevance to modern America (Parenti 55). America still represents to many a place of equality where achievement is determined by chance and choice, ignoring that if this was the case, income would be distributed more evenly than the current imbalance towards the upper class. Thus, while overtly acknowledging and emphasizing the discriminations based on quicken and gender, the American public accepts unfair social stratification as very legitimate. The reality is that the economic chap within the classes is great and growing. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the gap between the richest and everyone else in America is the greatest it has been since the end of WWII. Professor Edward N. Wolff of N.Y.U. states that the current era represents the most extreme level of wealth concentration since the late 1920s (Gates 17). capital of Minnesota Samuelson explains that the present income structure is grossly unfairly distributed. If we made an income pyramid out of a childs blocks, with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the peak would be far higher(prenominal) than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground (Kalra 10).