Inequality For All

Inequality For All

According to Reich, the reason for the rise in inequality among the American people is that we are not consuming enough. Most people blame the rich, but they are not the ultimate problem. In order to maintain stability, the middle class has be the consumer spending. Taxes keep rising and the wages are lowering. This affects the American people because they are loosing jobs not only because the job creators are laying people off but, interrelated things such as globalization and technological robotics are taking jobs away from them. Reich shows a graph that resembles a bridge, showing the rise and fall of the market between 1928 and 2007, which were the peak years. The great crash happened after both years and the graph appeared to look like a giant shaped letter U. So people wondered how this all happened. Reich figured out that it’s an endless cycle. After WWII people started getting educated and almost have of the people started joining unions, which became a virtuous cycle. Productivity grew, wages increased, workers bought more, tax revenues increased, companies hired, and government invested. This made the market go up. Soon people’s wages stayed the same. In order to keep spending when wages are flat, the American people came up with three ways to do so. Women got jobs, families worked longer hours, and they borrowed money going into debt. This turns the virtuous cycle into a vicious cycle, which completely reverses how it should work. The problem isn’t that the government is controlling the market or rich take all the money, its that no one is looking out for the American people. So, they need to take control and change the way the economy works. The United States needs to invest in the people and put them first or the market will keep crashing and keep going in a vicious cycle. People are worried about undermining democracy, which is only hurting themselves. Inequality was lowest when taxes were highest and vise versa Money isn’t new, the quantity is of it is. In order to solve this problem, the American people need to take action mobilizing and energizing other people and realize we control the economy. As for my family and I being in the middle class, it gets frustrating to know that my father who supports my family has to sacrifice paying enormous amount of taxes for people who sit back and watch the economy go down due to their lack of hard work. I think its hard to change the way society works. I just think the main issue today is that the democrats and republicans both want a better working economy but, they want two different ways of getting there.