TO THE EDITOR:
Here are the facts: Currently the bottom 40 percent of Americans own 0.3 percent of the wealth, while the top 20 percent owns about 84 percent of the wealth.
Looking even higher, the top 1 percent gets around 20 percent of the nation’s income — twice what it did two decades ago.
So, what does this mean? Inequality is bad for all stratospheres of society and is not sustainable for a healthy society.
For example, the American economy grew faster in the decades after World War II with the bottom of society accounting for the majority of the growth than in the 1980s when the growth from the bottom and the middle dropped off.
Inequality has historically come before the collapse of civilizations, but America has withstood a similar problem, rebounding from the gilded age.
The problem is this won’t happen on its own. Inequality by nature is self-propagating. Marriages often stay within economic classes, children tend to be educated to the level of their parents, and capitalism naturally facilitates making money from money. Equally frustrating, there is no easy cure for inequality.
However, a country with its eye on the problem is much more likely to find a solution than one without.
As college students, we represent the future upper-class in America, where influence is also top heavy.
