While doing some extra research during Spring break I came across an article from 2011 that was titled “15 Facts about U.S. Income Inequality That Everyone Should Know” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/us-inequality-infographic_n_845042.html?utm_hp_ref=homelessness#s261400&title=Wealth_Inequality). The article went through a series of charts that detailed the growing and pressing issue of income inequality in America and gave some important facts and figures that many people in America probably didn’t know at the time. It is interesting to read this article from the Spring of 2011, because that is around the time of the very beginnings of the “Occupy” movement. This article may have sprung from the knowledge that people were beginning to gain about the issues of income inequality and class stratification within American society or even have been an influencing factor in the growth of the movement. Reading through the article I was reminded of many of the things we’ve learned in class and been given lectures on, and even though this article is outdated by a few years now, it is interesting to see that not much has really changed.

The Occupy Movement was such a big deal in the fall of 2011 and protests all over the country were broadcast on national television, and it seemed like all of America was poised to see a real change happen. Unfortunately, the movement died out without any real changes being made to the issues they were addressing. Today, people still talk about the income disparity in America, but there have been no efforts made like the Occupy Movement to do much of anything about these issues. It seems like there is a constant narrative about how these things are bad and we should do something about it, but no one has any solutions on how to fix these issues. In 1917 (the last time the income inequality in America was this high) it took a full on Economic Depression to get the country back to a more even stratification, but this latest recession seems like it hasn’t had any effect on the differences in income and wealth.

This class has taught me so much about the issues that our country and our world are facing these days, but I’m still looking for ways to combat the issues that we are learning so much about. It seems to me that there should be a change made in the income inequality in our society so that there could be more good will between classes and a greater way of living for many in our country. My question here is: what can we do about this issue? Is it simply a matter of taxing the rich and getting them to put their disproportionate amount of money to good use? Or is it a structural problem that needs to be addressed as well? Perhaps we need to overhaul everything and start again, or should we just wait for the natural ebb and flow of economic societies to balance everything out? Is there an “easy fix”? Is there any real fix at all? I’m not sure if there is at this point, but I know that there need to be changes made in order to make life better for a large number of people in our country.