Is it Really a Question of Inequality?

Does the gap between the rich and the poor affecting our society either in a positive or negative way? On September 28, 2014 Paul Krugman posted an article called Our Invisible Rich.  Krugman joined the New York Times in 1999 as a columnist, and continues as a professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He writes this article with the opinion that today it’s not the poor who are invisible, but the rich.  He intends for this article to reach out among American voters, claiming that our ignorance is the reason for the uncertainty of what our society is really like and why this affects our realization of inequality.

           

Krugman starts off his article saying, “I don’t think the poor are invisible today; instead, these days it’s the rich who are invisible.”  After this statement Krugman answers the question of our TV Programming, saying that it’s just celebrity culture, and doesn’t mean the public can properly understand the gap between the rich and the poor.  To back up these statement Krugmen describes a survey that was taken, with the results that the median respondent believed executives of major companies make about thirty times as much as the workers.  Instead they actually earn about three hundred times as much.  Krugmen suggests that the reasons for people being unaware of these developments are because the rich are simply removed from ordinary people’s lives.  Krugman states, “We don’t see what they have.”  Krugman believes the exceptions are celebrities, who live their lives publicly.

In the conclusion of this article, Krugman asks a logical question, whether the invisibility of the rich actually matter.  Krugman’s answer is that that politically, it does matter. The reason voters don’t care about inequality is because they don’t understand the extremity of it.  There is overwhelming support for higher minimum wages and so on.  Krugman also states “Today’s political balance rests on a foundation of ignorance.”

I personally disagree with Krugman in the article.  I don’t believe our society could be better off if the public was more aware of the extremity of the wealthy.  I understand that we often clump the rich into one category, and that there is actually a subcategory with an extraordinary income, which makes celebrities look poor.  On the other hand, we are not completely blind of this subcategory. American voters have tons of access through the media and are constantly bombarded with social networking sites.  By the survey Krugman mentioned, its true that the majority of Americans are unaware of how wealthy the super-rich really are.   It’s true, we are ignorant; but would our society really change if we knew these things?

By researching more about this topic I found that many people have very strong opinions about the gap between the rich and the poor, or even just the middle class. I don’t think that voters don’t care about inequality.  There is overwhelming support for higher minimum wages and higher taxes to be laid upon the rich.  This support will most likely increase if society is more aware of the sub category of the rich.  If this does happen, then these large business cooperation’s may start laying off more people, which will only end in less jobs for us Americans. In my opinion, anyone can be successful by hard work and discipline.  It’s not necessarily a question of inequality. In order for this to happen though, people have to try. What happened to the American dream that enables the patrons a chance to prosper?  Blaming our difficulties on the rich cannot be tolerated.  Babying Americans will only cause the government to grow.  This will result in our own personal rights to be taken away, and eventually we will not have the freedom to prosper.