Tuesday, February 28, 2017
March 1st Blog
While both the essays "The Upside of Income Equality," and "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer," seem to tackle the same topic of income equality, upon reading the two works become drastically different. To begin, "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer," seems to be very objective in presenting its information. Although the title suggests an argument being presented, there is very little argument at all. Instead, the essay consists of mainly, albeit a bit dry, objective facts. The author makes no hypothetical statements about the future, only observations about what has occurred in the past. If there is a bias in this work, it is well hidden. However, "The Upside of Income Equality," seems to have a bias in its own favor. This may seem silly to point out, why wouldn't a work argue in its own favor after all? However, the illustrations presented in this essay are a bit of a stretch to work into the argument. For example, a large section of this work shows the correlation between education levels and income. While there is a strong correlation and it is provable, this evidence has a weak tie to supporting the upside of inequality. The author loosely states that because college-educated people at the top of the spectrum are earning more, they are more productive with the economy. There is no evidence suggested to prove this statement and any facts in the body are showing trends in earnings and education. This shows that this work is not only biased in its own favor, making connections that aren't quite there, but also that the work has lost most of its authority, as any expertise they have are not relevant to the actual argument being made. On the other side, it seems that "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer," regains most of its authority even when scrutinized. This work tediously spells out every connection between every fact presented. While this essay may be a bit of a boring read, it is obvious that the author knows the material and what it implies.
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I agree with your statement regarding "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer," being more informative with little to no argument being fully presented. It seems to be more of look at how past occurrences justify our hypothesis of what is to come in the future. This reading creates really little bias, making me feel as though the author is more creditable versus the author of “The Upside of Income Equality” who seems to favor people who fall into a certain category that they see as superior. Unlike in "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” where the author makes clear unbiased connections, “The Upside of Income Equality” makes the assumption that the reader holds the same values as they do, and would unconsciously see the connections he’s implying. Assuming that we can clearly see the value or correlation of certain societal standards, such as the idea that a college graduate should be considered more of an asset to our economy versus someone who is not. However, because both of these reading were written by people who I can assume do not/have not lived poverty, their accounts and words regarding the subject will always have some bias; intentional or not.
ReplyDelete"Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor Poorer" mainly argues that the rich owners and investors of corporations found cheaper ways to produce or manufacture their products in foreign counties which left the wage workers unemployed and forced to work in lower paying jobs. "The Upside of Income Inequality" argues that the income gap is encouraging more people to get educations in order to earn higher salaries through graphs and data. "Why the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor Poorer" can be useful to many Americans, but excludes those who are college graduates. This essay mainly targets plant workers and factory workers, jobs that you dont attend universities for. It also fails to recognize anyone pursuing any kind of artistic career. "The Upside of Income Inequality" is also useful but does not include percentages of college graduates that cannot find jobs due to lack of jobs in the field, or majoring in a field with diminishing usefulness.
ReplyDeleteJulia,
ReplyDeleteYou could not have said it any better. I also want to add that I feel as though in “The Upside of Income Inequality”, the author uses representations of diversity in gender and race to imply that the system will work for everyone, but fails to mention the huge problem that is affording college, especially amongst lower-class families of color. “Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” is useful for someone who is trying to understand the bigger picture of where the income inequality problem comes from. Although Robert Reich does so painfully slow, he makes sure to walk the reader through every statistic and eventually brings it all back to a central idea or point. This is useful in that it gives the reader or prospective writer plenty of space to make their own connections and opinion about the evidence. The usefulness of “The Upside…” is that it makes a valid and respectable counterargument from the typical negative view of income inequality. Gary and Kevin attempt to present useful, inclusive, optimistic information, for both their point and the counterargument. However, there is no real solution proposed and so it seems this essay is more for feeling better about the situation by ignoring the struggles of many people’s realities. Therefore, for me, I could use it as a counterargument that I would disprove in my essay.
I believe that both arguments had valid points and although I agree with you that "Why the Rich are Getting Richer, and the Poor, Poorer" by Robert Reich, gave good examples, it lacked authority in my eyes because it didn't present as many hard, statistics like "The Upside of Income Inequality". Both arguments leave out certain groups that should be addressed. "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer" focused on lower-income workers in America, and did not go into depth about the increased population of educated Americans, while the second essay did not address the large part that lower income Americans play. "Why the Rich are Getting Richer, and the Poor, Poorer" also lacked usefulness because of the long and boring method used to describe a more general idea about income inequality with examples of situations in a speculative manner. “The Upside to Income Inequality” argument was quick to the point with statistics obtained from passed occurrences. This made the second essay a more useful resource because it was more credible. It also provided examples that can relate to students in the process of obtaining a degree. I definitely think Robert Reich knew what he was talking about, I just wish he had been less hypothetical and more factual and to the point.
ReplyDeleteJulia, I completely agree with you when you say that both essays, "The Upside of Income Inequality" and "Why the Rich are Getting Richer, and the Poor, Poorer", do tackle the same subject. Although, they set very different standpoints. While in "The Upside of Income", they give very strong evidence and explanation, the author of "Why the Richer are Getting Richer, and the Poor, Poorer" does not. Also, I agree that the bias in this reading is very subliminal, but I also agree with the fact that if they were to give stronger proof and evidence then we would be able to depict the different bias’s better. I too, felt a bit confused when I was doing this reading so maybe it’s not what they are saying but more so of how they are saying it. I think the wording of this whole reading could’ve been better. When I say they don’t really give good evidence or explanation I mean that they could’ve done better giving reasons that actually tie into the research. I kind of felt out of touch with this reading and wasn’t able to understand it as clear as I was able to comprehend the other one where the various bias where very clear. Something that I found interesting in “The Upside of Income” was the fact that women had higher outcomes than men did in degree granting institutions. This shows that woman are in fact more than qualified to be successful!
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