Inequality in Free Developed Country Alice Paul states “I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.
“Income inequality disobeys the fundamental wish that people have which is to have equality. The society shows even a worse trend than the past. With this big gap, income inequality gives us a weakening democracy and an unhappiness society.
Meanwhile, it creates a motivation for people. Income Inequality undermines democracy. Researcher Armine Yalnizyan uses tax file data figured out that the richest 1 percent of people earn more than other 99 percents people in Canada.
Nowadays, rich people not only earn more but also have a big influence on policy. McQuaig (2010) shows us the wealthy can use their clout and money to help campaigners to campaign and blackmail the government to change the law to satisfy themselves such as lowering the taxes. While poor people are fighting for their right difficultly, rich people can easily use their power to make government capitulate. Furthermore, company shall help they party they like even though Canada has a restriction on how much money can spend on campaigning. The principle of “one dollar, one vote” makes poor people hard get what they want but face a policy that only benefit the rich. As time goes by, “Middle class shrinks and more people fall to subsistence living levels” (David Miller 2013). It seems that poor people have no time to care about democracy because they already know that there is nothing they can do.
That bad phenomenon shall ensue. The democracy will only exit among the rich in the future. While all the 99 percents people are trying to survive in the undemocratic society, the top 1 percent are enjoying the happiness that brings by “democracy” which only for their own.
Furthermore, income inequality brings society as a whole unhappiness. Income inequality creates a growing number of poverty which leads to an unhealthy life. The reports show (Townsend, Davidson, & Whitehead, 1992) that there are more chances for the lowest employment people suffering from illness and diseases.
Food is essential for health. However, poor people have poor nutritional habits and unhealthy life style (Raphael 2002) compare to the rich people. That seems to be pretty obvious. With the booming price of basically everything such as houses, poor people live with worse condition of house, eat poorer condition of food, and even get lower chances to succeed. Secondly, unequal income produces indifference among people.
“The first law for survival, shout fire instead of help when you are in danger.” (Seven) Lots of relationships among people now are based on money and position in society. That appears to be too weak contrast to those relationships that depend on personalities on each other. People barely care something that is not good for their own interests. Even for the group of people at the top, marrying somebody just look at each other’s background or lying for making money. Unhappiness can be found easily among rich and poor. Increasing income inequality makes people value money much more important than it should be. Nevertheless, income inequality is a motivation for people to avoid to become the bottom of the society.
People are working harder nowadays especially for the group of people that at middle class in order to “maintain their standard of living”. (Mcquaig 2010) However, they are working harder and earn no more than one tenth of those people who are at the top of the society. On the contrast, the majority of working class people are still trying. Why don’t they just quit trying and leave everything behind? The reason is that they know under this income-unequal society, their lives shall be even worse if they don’t try. In addition, that’s also the reason why the university completion boosted from 18% to 27% during 1998 to 2010. (The Conference Board of Canada) “Toronto-Almost half of Canadian parents expect to foot the bill for a major chunk of their kids’ post-secondary schooling, a new study says.
“(Davidson 2014) Why don’t they just let their children work after high school? They want their children to have a better life. Therefore, even if they know the difficulty for graduated students to find a job, they still take every possible change seriously. For those people who are already at the top, they are definitely not willing to fall back to the bottom. Due to the cruel income inequality, all the people know that they can’t be the bottom since they know the life can be even worse. All in all, income inequality has many kinds of drawbacks for whether people or society.
It does provide us with a certain motivation. It’s almost impossible for individual to change the whole society. Just keep trying you best because that will be better than just giving up.1..http://ywcacanada.ca/data/research_docs/00000292.pdf2..http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/hot-topics/caninequality.aspx#ftn33..http://theagenda.tvo.org/blog/agenda-blogs/guest-post-economic-and-democratic-harms-income-inequality4 http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/education/university-completion.aspx5.http://www.torontosun.com/2014/08/26/almost-half-of-canadian-parents-pay-kids-university-tuition-study6 http://www.povertyandhumanrights.org/docs/incomeHealth.pdf7..
