The website http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html gives you a clear indication of who owns the wealth; and probably more importantly who doesn’t. It gives us horrific graphs and a chart displaying openly that as a nation, America’s wealth distribution is severely uneven. It clearly states that in 2001, the bottom 80% of the nation owns just 15.5% of the wealth. This is shown rather graphically in ‘Nickel and Dimed’ as the novel focuses on the people at the “bottom of the food chain”; people who because of where they have been brought up, educated or even what families they have been born into have been discriminated against.
The website as a whole is also very interesting to look at as it shows us who has the power in modern America. Professer G. William Domhoff explores the funding giving to the inner cities of America and shows what is going on to try and bring these people out of poverty. I found it very interesting to look at the perspective of someone who does have a lot of power in their field discuss what is wrong with America.
This is a website which supplements a book so it may be interesting to acquire the book and delve deeper into the power struggle of the United States of America.
(Although this isn’t relevant or to do with Nickel and Dimed but I have found a picture which shows that if American states were countries of the world, where would the wealthiest places be?)
4 comments:
The Website which you have found is very informative and has a lot of statisics in it about the wealth of America. I found it very interesting when looking through the charts it shows that even today black house hold have less money than whites and the other chart shows that their is a higher percentage of people in the USA are poor, all because of like Rachel said they have been brought up in a poor area, or have a lack in education.
The book relates well with this web page as it is giving the reader a more in depth sight into the book background and why the book was written in the first place.
Also that map at the end was very good, as it shows where the wealth is around the world.
I agree with Rachel and Sarah that this is a very analytical site, with a lot of facts and figures to support the publisher's judgements.
I found the section on inheritance very interesting as we had earlier discussed the War of Independence, and its leaders having little acceptance of hereditary wealth or power, and no likeing of a class based system, which had dominated European countries for thousands of years. However, it is clear in this article as well as Nickel and Dimed that the concept of a class system is extremely relevant in American culture.
Although the publisher has made some appropriate and valid points on the state of the American power structure, I must point out that in light of the recent global credit crisis originating from America, some of these figures have shifted. This is likely to affect the ‘lower classes’ more generally than the wealthier minorities.
Overall I do think this article is very useful for our analysis of Nickel and Dimed, and in identifying the key contradictions in the American Ideology.
Rachels site is a very informative find and she has managed to include a large proportion of the most relative material into a blog that is only allowed to be kept short. Americas wealth distribution is borderline to that of a third world country. "worlds biggest superpower" indeed, worlds most economically seculated country, maybe, wealth and poverty distribution in a first world country, america has to be right at the bottom of the list and also the worst in the world for saying look how good we are when really they're shitting on the little guy from a great hight. China is deffinately diverse but they dont parade around and complain about other countries half as badly as america does, or half as publicly. The control of the press by the rich sees less of their problems being shown and more of other peoples. The disaster in New Orleans finally showed the rest rest of the world what it was like. Many of us have had the wool pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth. Nickel and Dimed shows this side of america to us and this website coincides with it nicely. Land of the free.... Land of the new age aristocrats.
I found the website clear and easy to gain infomation at both primary and secondry level. The pie charts enabled me to see at a glance where the wealth lies with in America. The sitistic that struck me the most was that 40% of America's wealth lies with only 1% of the people, as the page goes down it gives the sense that this will only increase towards the rich.
The table with the worlds wealth compared to its people intrested me as I learnt that only Switziland had a higher concentrated wealth within the richer in that country.
The map was intresting as it was good to compare the states to the wealth distrabution of the world. This sort of artifact is perhaps less educational, however very intresting. Thank you
Alice
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