US Income and Wealth Inequality

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  • Topic Questions: Has US income and/or wealth inequality become a source of injustice? What theories of justice help us understand claims and counter-claims in this controversy?
  • Spring 2017 update: This topic didn't develop extensively last year, but there are some good resources here.
  • Here's a review of a book by Joseph Stiglitz, "The Price of Inequality," [1]
  • Nick Hanauer TED talk on Inequality. [2]
  • Short Harvard Business Review article on inequality and economic growth HBR_how_much_inequality_is_necessary_for_growth.pdf
  • This is an interesting website that has many statistics on poverty in the US. The site could act as a solid source of information for statistics in order to create the case of the poverty in the United States. [3] - Sophie Oswald
  • This article includes several charts that show wealth inequality in the United States. It also describes the difference between wealth and income. Income is money coming into a family while wealth is a family's assets, such as savings, real estate, etc. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/03/27/nine-charts-about-wealth-inequality-in-america/?gclid=CjwKEAjw55K4BRC53L6x9pyDzl4SJAD_21V1fxPRi7lNrgmbrEI6ZnnO1v5aoc2lqRnTkFVfJ8c2dxoCQFXw_wcB -St. Luke
  • This is an article that looks as wealth inequality from an economic standpoint and assesses it's affect on economic growth. It also presents an ethical argument using rational egoism that states that wealth inequality might actually be a good thing, both economically and morally, in certain contexts. [4] - Alexa Salvador
  • This is a really interesting video that give statistics on wealth disparities in America that I found in a Business Insider article. [5] - Bailey Galbreath
  • This article talks about the benefits of economic inequality as it gives incentives for people with creative ideas to take a gamble. It shows how inequality in economics is a driving force in the market. [6] -Austin Gabriel
  • This article discusses the inequality in wealth between blacks and whites in America, more specifically how this gap has actually grown post-Civil Rights Movement and even more appalling since the 1980s. The article also talks about how methods can be implemented in order to help close this racial gap. Although this is a very specific portion of US wealth inequality we would be remiss to ignore it. https://newrepublic.com/article/118425/closing-racial-wealth-gap - Jack Pearce
  • Here's another article it's pretty brief and probably not a whole lot of new info for anyone but the last chart which shows how federal policies do not focus on building wealth for low income families is concerning because it is not fixing a problem but instead simply throwing money at it. (also does a nice job of emphasizing income versus wealth) https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/03/27/nine-charts-about-wealth-inequality-in-america/?gclid=CjwKEAjw55K4BRC53L6x9pyDzl4SJAD_21V1fxPRi7lNrgmbrEI6ZnnO1v5aoc2lqRnTkFVfJ8c2dxoCQFXw_wcB - Jack Pearce