Group items tagged

"Because people are living longer and the birth rate is low, the ratio of workers to beneficiaries is falling. Therefore, the taxes that are paid by workers will not be enough to pay the full benefit amounts scheduled." This article is about how social security may not be around when our current generation retires. The premise of the article is that there are more retired people receiving money than their are people paying the taxes to give to the retired people. This basically states that when we grow older, their will be too many retirees and less people paying for our social security which means we might not get any money from social security.

"The great equalizer in America remains education. A good education or acquisition of technical skills provides tremendous options for everyone, regardless of their birth circumstances. We live in a country where people are free to move without penalty to any state where jobs are available. We need to emphasize the fact that almost any kind of employment confers knowledge and skills that become valuable when trying to move up the economic ladder. One also acquires contacts that can be quite useful for those with knowledge and skill." "Those who have achieved great financial success should be encouraged to invest in their fellow Americans, with the return on investment being the transformation from dependency to proud achiever of the American dream." Explains multiple have vs. have nots issues. Discusses why education is the great equalizer.

"These smarter investments include spending more per pupil in low-income districts, which occurs in most developed countries, while the United States invests more per pupil in high-income districts" This article states the ignorance of the United States to the educational problems of the lower class. Research reveals that although low-income areas require more financial resources to educate their students, only 17 states provide proper funding for these communities.

"Today, more people than ever are going to college, yet the nation's overall college graduation rate has remained low. Only 59 percent of students who began as freshmen at a four-year college in the fall of 2006 received their diplomas within six years. Meanwhile, the high school completion rate reached a historic high: In 2012, four out of five students graduated high school within four years. College students who come from low-income backgrounds, such as Kellam, 19, see the least chance of college success. They are less likely to begin college, less likely to finish." This article discusses the ever growing gap in education, with one of the main reasons being income equality. It talks about students with low-income families and the hardships they go through when they attend college. It touches on the amount of students that are able to pay on time and the amount that has to stop college for a while to find funding.

"The bottom 20 percent of households lost over three times as much in real earnings as did households at the top," says Michael Cassidy, President of The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a Virginia-based independent fiscal and economic policy research organization. "As a result, income inequality in Northern Virginia has grown substantially since the start of the recession. In 2007, the top 10 percent of Northern Virginia households brought in 7.61 times the income of the bottom 10 percent. In 2010, they brought in 8.5 times as much." The article details the increasing difference between the incomes of Virginia's highest and lowest classes. The annual income of the highest 10 percent has grown almost 100% in three years, an unhealthy and irregular amount compared to the rest of the country.

This article explains how public universities across the country have begun to decrease the amount of financial aid given to perspective students who need more help financially and have given more aid to perspective students with much higher incomes. This article also explains how lack of substantial financial aid has prevented many promising students who were accepted into public universities from continuing their education through attending college at all.

The 16,000 families making up the richest 0.01%, with an average net worth of $371m, now control 11.2% of total wealth-back to the 1916 share, which is the highest on record. Those down the distribution have not done quite so well: the top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth $73m on average) hold 22% of America's wealth, just shy of the 1929 peak-and exactly the same share as the bottom 90% of the population. This article discusses, on a relatively small scale, income inequality and disproportionate income growth, as the "top 1% of families grew 3.4% a year...the bottom 90% grew .7%." While the top .1%'s share of labor income seems to have peaked, this article raises some questions about social (and economic) mobility.

""Extreme economic inequality is damaging and worrying for many reasons," the report said. "It can have negative impacts on economic growth and poverty reduction; and it can multiply social problems. When wealth captures government policymaking, the rules bend to favor the rich, often to the detriment of everyone else."" This article talks about the economic inequality America is facing. It also talks about how the rich/upper class people are often more focused on getting more money for themselves rather than even thinking about those who can barely afford a relatively comfortable life.

""We've done a good job in the last decade of calling attention to the achievement gap," said ­Darling-Hammond, who has advised President Obama on education issues. "But what we haven't been doing is addressing some of the fundamental reasons for the achievement gap: the poverty and segregation sets up some kids to have less when they get to school, and then the funding inequities, so that when they get to school, they don't have the resources and instructional supports that we want and need them to have."" This article talks about what the opportunity gap is and how we can fix it. It discuses how we need to start looking at the "inputs" (better teachers) rather than only looking at the "outputs" (graduating and good grades). It talks about working on the inputs to allow poorer students to succeed.

"According to a recent survey by The Associated Press, the number of Americans living at or below the poverty line will reach its highest point since President Johnson made his famous declaration of war on poverty in 1964." Here it is reported that poverty in the United States is worse than it has ever, causing hundreds of thousands to go hungry and turn to food pantries. People in between poverty and the middle class are growing and represent an even larger number than those in poverty. The article also suggests that low-wage jobs are the cause for this with their very low incomes and inform that almost 50% of jobs in the next 3 years will need a college degree.

This article talks about the wealth gap in America between middle and upper income families. Something really important that is stated in this article is that America's upper -income families have a median net worth that is nearly 70 times that of the country's lower-income families, which is the widest wealth gap between these families in 30 years. The wealth gap between upper and middle income families has increased, the wealth ratio being 6.6. 

"The wealth gap between America's high income group and everyone else has reached record high levels since the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-09, with a clear trajectory of increasing wealth for the upper-income families and no wealth growth for the middle- and lower-income families." This article explains how the wealth gap between middle income and upper income families is widest in years. The article talks about median upper income and median middle income families as of 2013. The numbers are staggering ($639,400 to $96,500)

"The wealth gap between America's high income group and everyone else has reached record high levels since the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-09, with a clear trajectory of increasing wealth for the upper-income families and no wealth growth for the middle- and lower-income families." This shows the radical difference in the economy. The rerason for this might be that the upper classes have more money to make investments in stocks, companies, etc. This eventually ends with more money being given to the spender.

Describes the overall averages of spending by grades.

"As individuals, we are each responsible for our own actions and their consequences. If people's actions result in a drop in their well-being, that is their personal responsibility" This article discusses the roll that the government has played in supporting 'have-nots' and the moral and ethical issues that go along with that. It brings up the point that we are responsible for our actions multiple times.

""It's far more demoralizing to work and be poor than to be unemployed and poor," Linda Tirado writes in her book, "Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America," about her own experiences living in poverty. "Being poor while working hard is crushing. It's living in a nightmare where the walls just never stop closing in on you."" This article discusses the wealthy and that the "primary predictor of our economic circumstances as adults, is not our I.Q. or how hard we work, but rather our parent's level of income as we grew up." Overall, it talks about the lives of people below the federal poverty line and how they should be able to get help from those more fortunate than themselves.

"Letting every employee have an identical opportunity to use a restroom located up a flight of stairs may be "identical" treatment but it is hardly equal treatment for a worker who uses a wheelchair. " This entire article talks about what the ADA is and what it is supposed to do; yet also talks about what the ADA is not doing. Additionally, it talks about how the demand for equality for the disabled and how that is what the ADA should be doing; thus not fully delivering on the promises that the ADA made when created.

" In 39 states, welfare pays more than the starting wage for a secretary." This article explains how the majority of states offer a total potential government-provided welfare benefit that is higher than the annual pretax wage of many common jobs. The article also includes a chart comparing the annual welfare benefit and the annual pretax wage earned in a given job in each state.

"Poverty and social dysfunction are what plague us; they cannot be fixed by taking from the haves to give to the have-nots.  To improve the situation, the have-nots must become the do-somethings." This article disputes an article about income inequality being a problem

"The concentration of income in the hands of the rich might not just mean a more unequal society, economists believe. It might mean less stable economic expansions and sluggish growth." This article outlines income inequality and the effect that it has had on our nation. In addition, it discusses the recession and how it could be explained by inequality and the possibility of income inequality greatly affecting us in the next couple of years.

"The gap between people in the highest percentiles of earnings and wealth distributions and the rest of society has grown significantly during the past several decades, a fact that has led to considerable public discussion about the nature of opportunities available in the United States. Often overlooked in this debate, however, is the importance of economic mobility-the extent to which people can move up or down the income ladder. " This research report, published by the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, shows data on the economic gaps in the US as well as ways to attempt to minimize these and the opportunity gaps through different styles of education and where education has the biggest gaps.