Andrew Ly
The One Percent There are many views on how the one percent affects the country and if there can be alternatives to how the U.S and function. Milton Friedman thinks that how all the classes are set up now is fine. He admits that there is a lot of money focused on the one percent and that “It is not perfect and there will be people that get hurt, but that’s with any system.” When you look back at the amount of money people were getting in the 1960’s compared to now, there was never a time when “Ordinary people have had the same level of income and living that they now do.” He is more focused on the upper and middle class and does not focus on the huge amount of money that the rich are making and the possibility of a poor person getting an education and being able to get to the point of becoming an ordinary person. Although, he believes that the lower class is very sensitive unlike the middle class. If the government were to impose higher taxes, the people who would be hurt the most would be the poor people. The poor will be unable to pay the taxes, the middle class will be hurt financially, and he believed that many people will find a way to get around taxes. Adnan Khashoggi argued that we are born into what we are and we can’t change that. If you were born into a poor family, you would just have to accept you may not have a job and if you were lucky, you could possibly get a part time job. People of the middle class have a chance to go in either direction. They can end up being successful and rich or poor depending on how they choose to live their life.
A different point of view discusses how the gap between the rich and poor is unfair and that it would be better if there wasn’t so much money focused on the one percent. This point of view focuses less on how much money the one percent is earning and more on how to make it so that the middle and lower classes can make more money. This can cause people of the upper class to become upset because they don’t want to pay more to help others. They got there however they did and they shouldn’t have to support others by paying more taxes. Bill Gates Sr. believes that
“People who have been enabled to accumulate very large wealth have an indebtedness to society for making that possible.” Since the rich have a lot of money compared to the other classes, it would seem reasonable to pay more taxes to help a large portion of the country. Since this country is based on capitalism and on the idea that people can be anything they want to be, some would say it is possible for a poor person to get out of poverty and into the middle or upper class. However, they will have to have talent that many people enjoy seeing and it is quite hard to move up in the world just like that. This idea of people being what they want to be is more focused on the middle class. The middle class already are set up for life, given an education and a stable life. Their

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