Friday, January 27, 2012

Blog #2 What India and America have in common: Inequality


The Article focuses on inequality in the world’s two largest democracies, India and the United States.  In both counties there is a growing gap between the poor and the supper rich, at the same time some social inequalities have started to decline.  In India certain historically disadvantaged groups are now politically assertive, and in America discrimination against minority groups is declining.  The articles tells about how the rich are rich because they have access to better schools, health care, nutrition and social support than the poor.  While there are adverse neighborhood effects for poor children in inner cities in the U.S and in Indian villages can have similar or worse effects on the poor.   The answer to improving this inequality is to improve education, create more jobs, and increase productivity, however the U.S, and India neglect education for the poor and infrastructure.  The answer is because the Rich do not use these public services.  In India a few hitherto subordinate social groups have begun to enter the political and economic elite but instead of changing conditions for the poor they adopt values of the rich.
The world is always going to have changing inequalities.  The inequalities from the rich and the poor have only become more unequal because of the nature of how the Inequality gap began to open.  The more money someone has the more power they have.  Threw the capitalist systems people have been able to become extremely wealthy and powerful.  Their children are born into an ascribed status of super-rich and have many resources to achieve a higher status.  While for the poor it is the exact opposite the are born into a poor ascribed status lacking the resources to achieve higher status. The Rich can use their money to influence politicians to pass laws and loosen restrictions that benefit themselves even if it is in conflict of helping the poor.  Improving public education where most of the poor are is not at the top of the list for the rich because their children aren’t in public schools.  If the poor can’t get better educations the inequality gap will keep widening. 

No comments: