The essays “The Upside of
Inequality” and “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer” both addressed the issue of
income inequality from a different stand point than previous readings. These
essays focused more on the actual aspects of the economy. However, each of
these essays do also have a different tone when it comes to their approach. “The
Upside of Inequality”, which was my favorite out of the two, seemed a lot more
useful and believable. The main idea behind this essay was that the reason for
the widening income gap is because of the increasing demand for a higher
education. Jobs are requiring undergraduate and even graduate degrees, so
naturally these are the people who are making the most money. There was a lot of
data and statistics used in their justification. For example, take this quote “In
1980, an American with a college degree earned about 30 percent more than an
American who stopped education at high school. But, in recent years, a person
with a college education earned roughly 70 percent more”. Statistics like this
make the facts and their approach meaningful. Another approach that I noticed
about this particular essay was that towards the end of the article, it gave an
alternate solution, which essentially gave it purpose. The second essay “Why the
Rich Are Getting Richer” was also similar. It provided a lot of statistics and
data as well. It relied more however, on certain situations and previous states
of the economy to support the idea that it is simply capitalism and competition
that is contributing to the income gap. Due to the fact that these actual
situations were more prevalent than “The Upside of Inequality”, a visual
picture is painted of how the economy has changed. For example, the author
referencing throughout this essay about “mid-century America”.
The usefulness of these two articles help the reader understand what exactly is being said. They both use different examples from two different perspectives. The article Why the Rich are getting Richer and the poor, poorer kind of sets up an argument of Income Inequality. They both kind of contradict one another in some of the examples used in both of the articles. The rich will only get richer and the poor will mostly stay poor because of many reasons. The main reason in both of the articles is the amount of income one is raking in at the end of each year. If you are rich your most likely going to keep being successful in your profession rather than being poor and becoming rich. Both of the articles use statistics to prove their point of their argument.
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ReplyDeleteThe essays "The Upside of Inequality" and "Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer" both discuss income inequality and the effects it has on the economy. "The Upside of Inequality" has a more useful aspect to it providing multiple statistics and facts. My favorite part of the essay was when it discussed people returning to college or going to college after high school graduation. It was quite interesting to know that about half of the proportion of men and women aged 20 to 25 who attended college jumped over the past forty years. The increase in persons going on to higher education has been increasing in all racial and ethnic groups, not just whites. I also found it interesting that women outnumbered men in degree-granting institutions of higher education by 33 percent. I enjoyed learning that more women are seeking higher paying fields such as business, law, and medicine. With 66 percent more women going to graduate school within 10 years while only 25 percent more men attended graduate school. It is interesting to see that people do not continue their education after high school. If more people were to finish high school and go on to college they would get their degrees and get higher paying jobs which then decrease the wage gap.
ReplyDeleteThe Essay’s “Why the rich are getting richer” and “The Upside to Inequality” both have their uses for different reasons. “The Upside to Inequality” focus on using statistics and economic evidence to portray what the future of the economy has been heading to and that it is indeed going in a good direction. This essay is better at explaining how these trends are not overall negatives but at the same time acknowledging the short term problems to be expected. “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer” uses past data and statistics to paint how these trends are killing off in a sense two working groups at different rates. The essay is useful in articulating who exactly is getting damaged and providing evidence to back up these claims, however the essay doesn’t correlate well how this evidence relates to its idea that inequality is a negative or even what actions could be taken to prevent or reverse the trend. Ultimately that weakens its argument but does provide good evidence and statistics for reference. I believe that the trend we’re seeing is unavoidable and that both essays use evidence to support that belief, but I think “The Upside to Inequality” has the right view point and solution. Stronger support of education post high school be it technical schools or attending four year universities is the only way to combat the loss of jobs at the unskilled level.
ReplyDeleteThe essays discussing income inequality, "The Upside of Income Inequality" and "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer," analyze the outcomes of the capitalist economy. The essay "Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer" portrays more authority than the other essay as it fills it's lengthy pages comparing statistics of wages of different social groups, countries, and jobs throughout the years and even for the years to come after it was published. For example, the author gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that an estimated "2.8 million manufacturing workers who lost their jobs during the early 1980s, fully one third were rehired in service jobs paying at least 20 percent less." This shows credibility from his part a well known and trusted source to directly represent his argument. While on the article "The Upside of Income Inequality" lost my trust after the author made a mistake referencing the graph in figure one. The author stated that figure one shows "the link between earnings and education by displaying the wage premium received by college-educated workers compared with high school graduates." Figure one actually shows the differences between wages in workers who have gone to graduate school compared to those that were college graduates. This mistake led me to find more authority in Robert Reich's essay.
ReplyDeleteIn the two readings, The upside of Income Inequality and Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer, both talk about positives and negatives that are in society with income inequality. The usefullness in The Upside of Income Inequality was that people were striving to get a better education and getting better jobs with higher paying jobs. This is because the income inequality served as a motivational push for people to go for higher degrees and then making people perform better at their job, since they will know more information on their job and will know how to do their job the best way possible. Then as for Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer the usefullness in that reading is that the usefullness is very low because it is hard for people to move up the income ladder so this leads to the poor part of society struggling and hard for them to make a living, but as for the richer they will keep getting more and more rich and will continue to prosper and stay successful. This does not allow people to have equal opportunity to prosper and become successful therefore making the usefullness in trying to strive or success very low.
ReplyDeleteIn both readings, “The Upside of Income Inequality” by Gary Becker & Kevin Murphy and “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poor” by Robert Reich the authors are talking about the income inequalities we face and how they affect a government. Becker and Murphy’s article is about money for education and how it’s affecting each person and he separates us. They made this useful by giving direct stats of what they researched which makes them more reliable. Also, not only the income inequality in America but in other countries as well. Although Reich is also being controversial he is blunter and he also talks about the inequality but how it has affected us as to how it is affecting us. He uses his data to almost predict the future, if we continue to go on like this. He shows he useful by the little data he has, and experience he’s seen. These articles are similar and different and they use their information to make their text useful. Their ideas are the indifferent and they both have their own point of view, or bias.
ReplyDeleteThe essay “The Upside of Inequality” and “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer, and the Poor, Poorer” both discuss wealth equality and how this positively or negatively affects us. Although both essays contain good information and proven points for their position, I think that “The Upside of Inequality” was less thorough and convincing as the other. However, all bias aside, I think that “The Upside of Inequality” was perhaps the more useful essay in the sense that it brought up statistics about income inequality that I had never seen or even thought about. Even though “Why the Rich..” was more thorough and convincing, I think that “The Upside of Inequality” was more useful because it brought up ideas that are controversial and have little attention payed to them. “The Upside” talked about how the increased emphasis on having a degree to work has actually caused more people to go to college and has increased high school graduation rates because of this educational focus. The article also delves in to how even though there has been an increase in the economic gap between the top 10% and the bottom 10%, the bottom 10% have still improved financially because of a more active economic system. If I had no knowledge of current economics I would have probably considered “Why the Rich…” to be the more useful reading. However, due to pre-existing knowledge about income inequality I found that the “Upside of Inequality” was more useful to me personally because it allowed me to see the other side of things.
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