Inequality in the United States - Case Study Example

Prologue For purposes of the final paper, there is need to create a prologue. The human race is adversely affected by similarfactors such as corruption, inequalities in terms of wealth distribution, accessibility to job opportunities and investment channels, adverse poverty affecting a segment of the society while a small quota lives lavishly with excessive wealth and freedom. There are mitigating factors to the issued mentioned above, and the United States is one of the countries that have done quite well to ensure they have an equal society that upholds democracy as their way of life. The final research paper shall analyze these matters in detail. PART I: The Introduction of Colombia State Colombia is a state in South America, and the only South American country with both the Caribbean and Pacific coastline. It is the 4th largest country in South America; It has a total area of 1.1 million square kilometers, including insular possessions and extensions to the waters. When compared, the area occupied by Colombia is slightly less than 3 times the size of Montana State. Colombia is bordered to the north by the famous Caribbean Sea, on the north eastern part by Venezuela, on the south eastern by Brazil, on the south west part by Peru and Ecuador, on the west by the Pacific Ocean, and on the North West by Panama State. The Colombian mainland is located mostly within the tropical areas, with its total boundary length estimated at six thousand kilometers. As a matter of fact, its coastlines extend to about 3,208 km, allowing the State to provide harboring at the coast, and benefit from its territorial waters unlike landlocked states (The Colombian State, 57) Issues creating hardships in Colombia State Colombia, like any other state in South America and the United States, is affected by certain factors which are inevitable and hard to handle. These issues range from corruption and drug trafficking, to inequality and poverty. The mentioned issues are discussed in the proceeding paragraphs. Corruption Corruption has been known to have bad effects on any country’s economic growth, social integration and political stability (Murillo 155). Colombia state is not an exception. High levels of corruption have weakened the citizen’s ability to relate well with government officials and agencies. Political apathy in Colombia has greatly deepened due to lack of trust in government. This has led to instable political institutions within the state. For this reason, structural reforms are needed, as citizens continue to suffer from corruption. Reforms that will reduce corruption in the state will definitely ensure that citizen-government relationship is solidified. Also, due to corruption, most of the drug lords and traffickers find leeway and easy time to undertake there illegal transactions without the government agencies rising alarm. Because of the rampant rate of drug trafficking, crime rates have also increased in Colombia in the past decade. Murder cases have increased and are gradually being accepted as a normal crime in the state of Colombia. Corruption in Colombia is therefore encouraged and found within the governmental structures and innocent citizens end up suffering a lot, due to their vulnerability to poor economy and high rates of crime initiated by drug lords (Heiberg 741) Poverty Poverty in general, involves a systematic violation of main influencers such as economic, social and cultural rights which affect almost all spheres within our lives, and which are in most cases inter-dependent on each other. In the state of Colombia, very few poor people work in the formal sector. Definitely because the opportunity to work in the formal sector is grabbed by the elite quota of Colombians, the poor are not in the best position to fully access proper health care, education support or any other pension accruements.  For this reason, Colombians who are poor continue to suffer and are further affected adversely by insecurity and the inadequacy of other social services to which they cannot have access. More importantly for the citizens, poor quality and access to education has affected many children from poor families who can hardly afford tuition fees and are unable to raise other expenses for a productive education session, making it even harder for them to develop financially and evolve from the cocoon they are in of poverty (Rotberg 544) Inequality related to Poverty Colombia is a middle income country and this means that a large proportion which is over 30% of the population live in poverty. The Country, according to reports conducted to inequality levels, is the 3rd most unequal state in Latin America and tenth in the world in overall analysis. Furthermore, poverty and inequality does not discriminate on women, children referred to as minors, Afro-Colombian persons and Indigenous groups in the state. Furthermore, the displaced persons living in the Colombia are also prone to poverty and vulnerability to inequality in terms of economic share and allocation of the country’s resources. The poverty gap is witnessed most between the rural parts and the urban areas. Almost 42% of the people living in the rural areas are poor compared to the lesser 26% in urban areas. This is same and true in the case of adverse poverty, where in the rural areas 19% live in extreme poverty compared to 6% who live in urban areas. There is a small overall poverty reduction in Colombia, which can hardly be felt by the entire nation. The number of people suffering in extreme poverty in the localized areas has decreased with a small margin of about 3% in 2013 alone. However, this can be related to the increase in the rate of urbanization, with a 1.6 percentage of the annual changing in Colombia’s urban areas. Regardless of the fact overall poverty levels have reduced, the extreme rural poverty increased and was 3.1 times higher than any urban poverty in 2013. Rural poverty is of particular concern given that poverty and exclusion in rural areas has traditionally been one of the root causes of socio-political violence in the country and continues to be an important conflict accelerator within the state. Colombia’s reduction in overall poverty has been achieved largely by good planning and calculated initiatives which have seen rapid poverty reduction in certain parts of Colombia. From 2005 to 2012 poverty in Colombia’s two largest cities fell by an average of 23.3%, compared to just 7.6% for the slightly smaller cities in the country within the same period over the same period. This is an indication which clearly shows that whilst more work needs to be done and more incentives implemented to reduce rural poverty, efforts also need to be put into reducing poverty at a greater rate in other Colombian cities which are considered to be of urban setting. Drug trafficking Unfortunately, government agencies such as the police, the military among others engage themselves in trafficking of drugs whether directly or indirectly in Colombia. The lucrative drug trade in the country provides large profits for paramilitary and guerrilla groups which have created base in the state and control most of the state’s boundaries, and is an important motor in the perpetuation of the common conflicts and violence episodes. Furthermore, illegal and unethical groups are now gaining a lot from the drug business through huge profits from providing sophisticated machinery and protection so that they can mine, and continue to carry on with any illegal activities without disturbance from the police or any other authorities. Drug trafficking in Colombia has affected and continues to influence the residents of the prone areas, as they are under threat and pressure to join militia and drug trafficking groups, and such citizens are usually threatened with murder when they fail to comply. PART II: Inequality in the United States Unlike many people perceive, the United States of America is an unequal society. Like never in the past, Inequality has hit the greatest levels in the U.S, and gaps in many forums such as wages, income, and wealth are wider in the U.S than they are in any other democratic and developed economy of the world. The dimensions of that inequality are both familiar and depressing. A very small share of national income is flowing to wages and earnings, and more importantly, inequality in the labor share is widening. As a result, wage growth has been stagnant for a whole generation. Middle-income workers are making no more now than they did in the late 20th Century and those in the lower wage bracket have lost ground over the many years. The current inequality of labor income in the United States is presumed to be higher than any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities have a large margin. The gap of growing income which is inclusive of non wage income such as returns on investment and capital gains is even sharper. Between the years of 1979 and 2007, all the real incomes of the richest few in the U.S almost tripled, while incomes for median household inched up about 25 percent—and that almost all due to an increase in labor force participation and hours worked . Inequality in wealth (the sum total of household savings and home equity, investments and also debts) is very starker. The richest people in the country claim about a third of the nation’s wealth which amounts to lots of wealth; while the rest claim over 60 percent. The shares of wealth have grown steadily in the past decades and more specifically, the last generation. The recession hit a big blow on the middle-class wealth which had been invested mostly in homes and equity. The gains of which have definitely landed on the plates of the richest Americans in the United States (Rubiano, 33) As is this inequality is not enough, demographic issues and geography have widened the gaps for many Americans in the United States. The gender gap mostly noticed in allocation of wages, job incomes and wealth has closed very slowly, and much of that progress is driven by the collapse of male wages rather than real gains by working women. Instead of women getting better pay and more job openings, the men have suffered reduced remunerations. The racial gap in job pays, general incomes, and wealth has closed little and has widened for those caught up in the startling spike during incarceration in the United States. While racial segregation in our cities has abated somewhat over the last generation and is no longer too big an issue, economic segregation—the likelihood that Americans live in enclaves of wealth or poverty—has hardened. Economic mobility by any single measure has remained weak. The recent merge of inequality has simply confirmed the assumption that the richest people as lucky to have been born in stable families. The issues which are imminent in the United States also appear similarly in Colombia, which also experiences high levels of inequality (Schott 43). PART III – Recommendations for Policy Adoption in Colombia Just like the United States is doing, Colombia needs to come up with steadfast initiatives to curb inequality and poverty (Novak 556). First of all, make work be worthwhile. The booming businesses such as retailing and restaurant and hotel management, childcare among others need to be conceptualized and encouraged through tax incentives etc, to encourage Colombian people to invest in them. But these jobs tend to pay very little. The minimum wage for any worker in Colombia needs to be raised to $15 an hour, to ensure inflation does not affect citizens and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. Colombians who get employed will not be affected by poverty any more (Carbo 198). Also, there is need to unionize low-wage laborers. The rise and fall of the American middle class correlates almost exactly with the rise and fall of private-sector unions, because unions during the falls and rise gave the middle class its bargaining power required to secure a fair share of the gains from economic growth. We need to reinvigorate unions, beginning with low-wage service occupations that are sheltered from global competition and from labor-replacing technologies. Lower-wage Americans deserve more bargaining power (Ramirez 105) Colombian Government should also direct more money into their education system (Stepan 89). This investment should extend from early education through world-class elementary and secondary schools, affordable public and private higher education, good technical education and lifelong learning. Education should not be thought of as a private investment; it is a public good that helps both individuals and the economy. Yet to many Colombians, general education is unaffordable and unattainable. Colombians have an equal opportunity to build themselves (Arango 98). High-quality education should be freely available to all as is in the United States, beginning at the prescribed age and ending when it is supposed to. Investing in Colombia’s infrastructure is another policy to ensure development and minimization of increased inequality and poverty. Excessively high home and rental prices, inadequate Internet access, insufficient power and water sources are some of the issues that break down Colombia’s development strategy. This ought to be mitigated by the correct infrastructure (Passage 89)  Works Cite Arango, P. Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace, Prosperity and the Colombian Dream. New York: Google Books. Print Carbo Eduardo Posada. Colombia: The Politics of Reforming the State. Colombia State: Colombia University Press. 1998. Print Heiberg Marianne., O’Leary Brendan and Tirman John. Terror, Insurgency and the State: Ending Protracted Conflicts. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2007. Print Murillo Mario A. Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest and Destabilization. Colombia: Seven Stories Press. 2011. Print Novak Jessica Marie. Competing or Cooperative Representations: State and Non-Governmental organizations in Colombia. New Jersey: Routledge Publishers. 2008. Print Passage David. The United States and Colombia: Untying the Gordian Knot. Colombia: Strategic Studies. 2010. Print Ramirez, Maria Clemencia. Between the Guerrillas and the State: The Cocalero Movement, Citizenship and Identity in the Colombian Amazon. New York: Duke University Press. 2011. Print Rotberg Robert I. State Failure and State Weakness in the Time of Terror. New Jersey: Brookings Institution Press. 2003. Print Rubiano Daniel Rincon. Environmental Law in Colombia. New York: Cengage Leaning Publications in the United States. 2011. Print Schott Jeffrey J. Trade relations Between Colombia and the United States of America. Volume 978. US: Peterson Institute. 2013. Print Stepan Alfred C. The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cengage Learning. 2015. Print The Colombian State. The United States of Colombia: The Journey from Ambiguity to Strategic Clarity. New York: Diane Publishing. 2013. Print Read More