Sociology 1301
Professor Timothy Albert 10:15- 11:10 A.M.

“America's Economic Dark Side” The distribution of America's wealth, for me, is a hard topic to give an opinion on. I do believe that if people work hard to get their money then they should not have to feel bad about being wealthy. But then we have the less fortunate people that may not have had the opportunity to go to college or the ascribed status to be handed a position with a family company. It is a scary thought to realize how much America's economy is dropping. It has brought an inequality to Americans everywhere. Even with minimum wage rising, it is still not helping because this is just bringing employers to give their employees less hours so they are not paying them much more. Also since their hours are cut, most of their health benefits get cut too. There has been other cases where some working American's are getting “cents” raises which can exclude them from being able to qualify for some welfare benefits. It ends up with them losing more in the end. America's economy just seems to be digging themselves deeper into debt. Economists have said that the recession ended in mid 2009 but the truth is that most American's are still going through it. Many American's do not have jobs being offered to them and are being forced to rely on welfare, which sometimes might not even be enough. These people are living in poverty and more and more people are being put into this category daily. Things are going from bad to worse for the middle class American's as well. The average American classifies themselves as “Middle Class” to the people around them but in reality most of them are lower than that. The real number of people in this class is decreasing because the upper class is going up and causing them to get pushed down the scale.
It is sad to see how poverty has risen all over America and how family/household incomes have been decreasing. Families, even ones with working couples, are struggling to even pay for the necessities of life, including food, yet