Our fifth topic, The rich, the poor, and the gap in between was suggested by Tianyu, who would like you to read the following articles:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0817-02.htm,
http://freedomkeys.com/gap.htm, and
http://www.anchorrising.com/barnacles/002883.html.
Your job is the same as before with the due date falling on next Saturday, February 21.
Please, be sure to make your contribution in time.
Kinga
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12 comments:
The income gap in every country has become a big issue over these years. Not to say it wasn't a big issue before, but its importance has increased by a great significance. This topic hits close to my home, Indonesia. The gap between the rich and the poor is massive. The poor, the majority have problems making a decent living. Many do not know if they will be eating tomorrow due to financial constraints. The rich on the other hand gets so much richer and it comes to a point where they could probably buy private islands without a second thought. The distribution of wealth in Indonesia is horrid and most of the money circulates among the rich while the poor gets poorer. This problem is happening in many places. some more than others. Many people are trying to figure out ways to change this but it would be difficult redistributing wealth in an objective manner
By reading the idea behind this topic. I have come to see and believe that is quite similar to last week’s topic where money seems to be associated with power. Thus implying, the larger your paycheck, the more power you attain with it. The idea of social status of the rich and the poor and the gap between them is only psychological. It is the people themselves that have created this barrier between the different social classes, and social hierarchy. The idea of social status is similar to the idea of racism.
To me, both wealth and social status are person defined. Meaning, that a person himself can choose to define the social status he would like to live in. And regarding wealth, every person can set the bar that defines wealth and happiness for him or her self. Whether it is having one dollar, or being happy living alone, or married without children.
Regarding luxuries and who is allowed to enjoy them. I believe that they are some sort of natural resource like oil. Because things are tagged with high prices have earned that price. They have been made with the best quality in materials, and have had the sweat of persons work fall into it. So these luxuries have come to be an incentive for hard work and a reward for it. Everyone ends up earning what they deserve, no more and no less.
So to clarify the point I am trying to make. I mean to say that gaining money and spending it on luxuries does not set you high in ranking in a social hierarchal model. It is just a “treat” that you get for doing your job. It is a person’s behavior and their treatment to others and the respect they offer when dealing with other people sets a person high in social status. So the idea of having a gap between the rich and the poor is only imaginary. The true gap that separates people in the world is the gap between selfish incompetent people, and people with a purpose of changing the world. And that is the only barrier between two people.
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man", said Robert A. Heinlein. As it says, since the beginning of history, a gap between the rich and poor has never disappered but it appears more and more clearly. I think the main reason why the gap between the poor and rich is getting wider and wider as time goes by comes from the gap of people’s education level. Some people are born in regions where they cannot receive a proper education, and have to think how to survive today. We are living in a hi-tech world where knowledge is the power to survive, and way to make money. However, this important opportunity of learning is not given to everyone in this world. There are so many people out there, especially Africa, and countries that are in sequence of wars. The most terrible problem is that their ignorance usually does not end in their generation because they don’t know how much it is important. Therefore, to narrow the gap between the rich and pool I think it is most important to educate people who are not having proper educations
Income disparity, opportunity, willingness to work, and abilities contributed ti the gap in the society between the poor and the rich. Back in my country, Indonesia, this is a delicate issue. The gap between the people in Indonesia, especially the rich, poor, as well as the people of the main business island, Java, and the rest of Indonesia are significantly wide. The gap in prosperity and social level contributed to a great extent for the many umnrest and the major riot that happened back then in 1998. People can be easily provoked and manipulated with the very basic issue here, differences in money possession. The more money you have, the more content you are. As sadly most of the Indonesians. are poor with less money, and few only have the massive wealth, added by the differences in races and ethnic group,. the gap between the rich and the poor is making the society very fragile.
Basically, gap between rich and poor has been one of the major impacts in the developing country such as my country Indonesia. Because there are some people who invest their money and monopoly the whole economy in that country so usually prosper people will get more profit for their investment and poor people will become more sorrowful. This gap has been the major problem in my country. Usually because some wealthy people have a power in that nation, corruption, nepotism and collusion will occur. Nowadays money has become a major supremacy. People usually like to tempt rich people because those people have the power and can make them wealthy. It is so difficult to narrow this gap. People never be satisfied and always want to be richer. Every country usually has a solution to slender this gap with taxation but usually rich people cheated this taxation. That’s why this gap is hard to be diminished.
As Mohammad pointed out, this topic is definitely related to the topic Money Good or evil. Money certainly buys you wealth and power as the rich are getting richer widening their gap from the poor. As from what I have seen in my own country, the rich do not have enough space to store their money, if not in banks while the poor do not have a place to live unless by the garbage, under a shack. With this, our world is being torn apart into to even though most of us do not realize it. It would be a crime to let this continue if no one intervenes and set things straight. I believe the poor should be given a chance in order to pull themselves up. Sure, the govt. of some countries claim to provide unemployment fees and retirement funds. The unemployment fees is not confirmed to many. And as for the retirement fees, what would a person do with all that money, when his life is almost over ? Relating to that, I most definitely do not agree with the regressive tax system, that pull out even more money from the poor. The world is just not fair anymore.
Rich or poor, I bet all of us want to be rich. What is the meaning of the rich and poor? Most of us depends rich with people income. What’s the real standard for rich and poor? Millionaire? Billionaire? I believe each person have different kind of standard for rich and poor. Rich or poor, it depends on how you think.
The gap between rich and poor, the problem between rich and poor is that rich people uses their money to invest, this is why rich people get richer and richer, while poor gets poor. The other reason is that rich kid gets better education than poor’s. Who would you choose if you are CEO of the company, Ivy League student? Or High school graduate student? People who have money get better education which gives them more chances than poor. The gap between rich and poor will get bigger as time goes by.
The gap between the rich and the poor is a big problem in current society. It exists in every country, including China. China itself is not a high-wage country, but the gap in income is still extremely huge. My hometown is relatively rich, but most people can earn only about 10 to 20 dollars per day. Nevertheless, can you imagine that in the northwest of China, where is the poorest region, people earn less than 1 dollar per day. They never have a chance to buy clothes but make by themselves. They never have a big meal, but eat porriage and a little vegetable every day. They lack water so they wash themselves once several months. They don’t have money, so children start to work when they are less than 10 years old. Everything they are undergoing looks like hell to us. Since I work in the dinning court, I found that after each meal, a lot of food would be thrown away. How wasteful! I do hope Americans can learn how to save. All they can do can save a lot of poor people in the world!
Thank to the peace of the world and the improvement of social legal system, people with inherited property, power or smart brains will no longer be worried about the security of their money. The sum of money in the world doesn’t increase rapidly, which means if we want the poor people to be richer, the only way we can use is letting the rich be poorer. As we all know that a child born from a wealthy family, has more chances to be successful than one from a poor family. If thing goes on in this logic, several decades later, most of the fortune in the world will be controlled by a few people. According to the data from the first news, the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. We all have this experience that if we pump too much air in to a balloon, it will break. If only a few people can lead a happy life, while the others are suffering from hunger, a revolution will definitely occur to reassign the fortune in the world. I agree with the opinion that this phenomenon is unavoidable and doses give us some benefits. Although India has a lot of people suffering from hunger, because of the large amount of middle class, the society of India is still peaceful. However, in my point of view, things should be interfered after a large number of middle class appeared. We should face the true that people in the world have different ability. Some can make rocket; some can’t do simple math. I always believe the word in Spiderman: great power comes with great responsibility. Those people with great power which enable them to get millions of dollars should know that money is only a proof of their ability. As long as they prove their ability, money will useless if it is still deposited in their accounts. They should take the responsibility to help those people who are still fighting with starvation. The government in New Jersey did a wrong thing. They shouldn’t put the burden on the middle class. Instead, the richest people should stand out and delete some zeros of their accounts. It is very hard to release a law to prohibit people gain too much money. The only solution is the rich people should shoulder the burden and help the people in the world have a better life.
I found a quote from second article that really inspired me. "Wealth is good. ... wealth is not a world-wide round-robin of purse snatching, and ... the thing that makes you rich doesn't make me poor. ... Without Productivity, there wouldn't be any economics, or any economic thinking, good or bad, or any pizza, or anything else. We would sit around and stare at rocks, and maybe later have some for dinner. ... Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable. In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich.
I really agree with this quote. It says the thing that make you rich does not make me poor. Let's say Someone invented the machine that can produce pizzas four times faster. There are two options. The inventor can tell other producers how to make this machine or he can keep it for himself. If he keep it for himself, he can make more money than others. On the other hand, if we tell other people about how to build that machine, everybody can produce more pizzas and more people can get pizza cheaply. Humans' greed do not allow this to happen. I believe today's technology and productivity can produce enough food for all human being. However, there are so many people starving to death. Why? is this happening?
I believe it is from humans' greed.
There will always be a gap between the wealth and poor. So it's not right to hate the wealth.I think there should be wealthy poeple. With out those people with exptrem weath, the economy wouldn't grow. They are the one who spend money and that way the money will flow smoothly. like when water stop flowing and stay in one place, the water will rot, and will do nothing good. So when money also stop flowing and just stay in one place, the economy will not grow, and lead to finantial difficaulty.
When wealth people buy stock and support for some company, that way that company will grow, and hire more people which will help people who need to support their family. But not all can be hired, so for the people who really need help, people with big furtune even middle class should donate or help the poor to make the better world.
The gap between the rich and the poor is a very delicate fact that is been discussed for a lot of time. I have lived that discussion my whole life, since I come from a south american country and the gap is very wide there. Is a very useful campaign topic I can say, because every candidate i’ve seen in south america in my 19 years of life has emphasized it and used it to gain a lot of votes form the low income population, which is the biggest in south part of this continent. The problem is that the actual setting the most governments have, which is capitalism, turn the reality to what it is: a world where the poor and the rich have to coexist in order to bring balance into society. Anyone could say its not fair, but I think that’s what it is. There could be no world with only rich people, or a world with only poor people, because the setting would fail. This does not mean that rich people have the responsibility and the duty to support poor people while they get richer, and obviously this does not mean that poor people cant become rich people.It is a fact that getting richer is harder that getting poor again, but anything could happen. This gap is a reality and has to exist, even if it seems unfair.
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