Ashlee Bonham



Ashlee Bonham

English 2010 MW 7-8:20

December 4, 2012

Evaluation Final

The division of wealth in America is vast and peculiar to many. It is dividing the economy, separating social classes, and there are questions about who controls the majority of America’s wealth. Who has the money, who controls it and where do the values and priorities lie?

In 2011, professional golfer Tiger Woods made a reported 75 million dollars. According to Forbes Magazine, this year’s 50 highest-paid athletes earned $1.4 billion combined, or $28 million on average. (Forbes 1) In comparison, a private in the United States Army makes a mere $17,892. (Go Army 1) In the American people’s eyes, who is worth more?

The top earning 20% of Americans currently hold about 84% of America’s wealth. In contrast, the lower 20% hold only 0.3%. The 400 richest people in America in 2011 were not millionaires, they were billionaires. Bill Gates, 56 of Microsoft, topped the list with a net worth of $66 B. Heads of Wal-Mart Alice Walton, 63, and S. Robson Walton, 68, both made the top ten with a reported $26.3 and $26.1 B. Continuing down the list there is the Mars family, of Mars Candy, Sheldon Adelson, a casino billionaire out of Las Vegas, and Google founders Brin and Page. CEO’s of Estee Lauder and Ralph Lauren both made the top 100 along with Facebook, Disney, Forever 21 and Carnival Cruises. It is said that as much as 20% of America’s wealth is held by the top earning 1%. (Forbes 2)

This compilation of people have earned their money different ways, but it is clear that the majority made their money by enticing and selling glamour and social acceptance to the general public. For example, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg utilized the inventions of Bill Gates to create a world wide social network available to the masses. The casino owners, as well as Disney and Carnival Cruises make their money by providing entertainment and differing forms of pleasure. Estee Lauder and Ralph Lauren are known for their expensive apparel and perfumes. These are the people who control an alarmingly large amount of money in our economy. They are enabled by their consumers, the American people, who consistently give to these, or similar, corporations.

The beauty of the American dream is that it offers opportunity to everybody. If you want to build an empire selling high fashion hand bags for a large profit, it is possible you can succeed. However, in an ever suffering economy the chances of success are slim. The 2011 average working Utahn brought home $50,635. In an article found in the Deseret News, Lois M. Collins reported that “316,217 Utahns lived in poverty in 2009. Five years ago, just over 246,000 were classified as poor. (To qualify as poor under federal guidelines a family of four would have to bring in less than $23,000 a year).” (Deseret 1)

The everyday hard working Americans make up the backbone of our great nation, but they aren’t the ones in control. What kind of society pays an athlete $75 million a year but a family doctor only $199,850? (Forbes 1) (Salary 1) I recently asked a question online asking if people thought it was fair that a professional ball player made significantly more than a doctor. The results were interesting and unexpected. One thought that teachers should make the most, no questions asked. Another thought that athletes deserved their income based on their life’s devotion and talent in a sport that few others possess. One mentioned it wasn’t about what we value, but what we need. He said, “I paid 13,000 dollars towards the healthcare industry last year, and every ear that goes up, conversely I spent 75 dollars on a sports team… so did millions of Americans. It’s not that we don’t’ value our healthcare, I spent a huge sum of money on it… doctors can’t sell thousands of seats, merchandise, and commercials for their services.”

With substantial division of wealth comes the controversial division of the classes. The average Americans make up the lower and middle classes. In hard economies those divisions shift. Our current middle class is dwindling and separating the upper and lower classes even more. Edward N. Wolff of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College wrote a piece in March of 2010 called Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze – An Update to 2007. He said that:

The top 1 percent saw their average wealth (in 2007 dollars) rise by

over 9 million dollars or by 103 percent. The remaining part of the top quintile experienced increases from 81 to 142 percent and the fourth quintile by 71 percent. While the middle quintile gained 50 percent, the poorest 40 percent lost 63 percent! By 2007, their average wealth had fallen to $2,200… Nowhere is the middle-class squeeze more vividly demonstrated than in their rising debt. As noted above, the ratio of debt-to-net-worth of the middle three wealth quintiles rose from 37 percent in 1983 to 46 percent in 2001 and then jumped to 61 percent in 2007. Correspondingly, their debt-to-income rose from 67 percent in 1983 to 100 percent in 2001 and then zoomed up to 157 percent in 2007! (Wolff 20)

Many people in the lower class now weren’t there five years ago. Just as the upper class have new members due to success in a struggling economy. More and more professions are dwindling or shifting in our ever changing modern world. For example, the newspaper companies have been forced online and are struggling to attract people to purchase paper news when it is readily available on the internet. People in their 40’s and 50’s are being forced back in to school to keep up with the younger generations pushing them out. The wealth continues to separate and push our nation’s classes farther and farther apart.

In a land where people who control the money aren’t the backbone of society, how best can we function in unity? Is it possible? Politically speaking, every American has the right to vote for their own representation. But, politicians are, at times, corruptible and influenced by money. This scenario is seen far too often and can have damaging effects. America’s social and economical progress depends on our ability to work together and be united. This can be challenging in a suffering and seemingly selfish, at times, America.

John Bates Clark was an educated man who graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts and author of many articles on Political Science and Philosophy. In 1899, Clark wrote The Distribution of Wealth saying in one part “increases in the population while holding everything else constant, is impoverishing. Final productivity will decrease because final productivity will not include the help from the capital that the earlier worker realized.” (Clark 1) Even in the late 1800s and on to the early 1900s people recognized the financial separation and continuing problems in America. The difference in this scenario is that the large production companies of our earlier America were employing fellow Americans. Nowadays companies like Ralph Lauren have factories in China and other countries making their products. Selling products to people in our country without employing them does not create the circle of financial success needed to help America’s economy survive. The top industrial earners in America are making money off their own country without necessarily funneling it back in. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Works Cited

Badenhausen, Kurt (2011, May 31). The World’s Highest-Paid Athletes. Forbes

Magazine Online (Forbes 1)

Clark, John Bates (1899) The Distribution of Wealth. Davidson.edu

(Clark 1)

Collins, Lois M. (2010, September 29) Poverty Rate in Utah on the Rise. The Deseret

News.

The Forbes 400 (2012) The Richest People in America 2011. Forbes Magazine Online.

(Forbes 2)

The Profile Data Base (2012) 2011-2012 Physician Salary Survey. Online.

(Salary 1)

United States Army (2012) Army Base Pay and Benefits. Online.



Wolff, Edward N. March 2010. Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States:

Rising Debt and the Middle-Class-Squeeze- An Update to 2007. Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Online Working Paper No. 589

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