Do people know what’s happening in America? — [Wealth & Poverty]
My first thought after reading the articles about wealth and poverty of people was “Why does our news always cover about rich people when there’s a dramatic imbalance between rich and poor?”
I used to read economic news both in Korea and the U.S. because I’m always interested in how our world goes. From what I’ve seen, 90% of the news is interviewing specific people where they are really rich, successful, and respectable.
The news about them and what those people said made me think as our world today is full of ways to succeed and I can be like them if I try hard. However, after reading the articles, it caused confusion in my thoughts. There was a tremendous gap between the top 1% of American who’s richest and 90% of Americans that it is almost impossible to catch up.
Our current economic system benefits rich people by taking money from poor people. There are indeed various ways for succeeding but it’s mostly for rich people who have a closer starter line than us.
After realizing it I asked myself “What is the first thing we have to do to reduce those tremendous gap between them?” Also, I asked some people about it so I could get a more precise answer. Everyone’s answer was a little different, but their points were the same: We need to know what’s the problem first.
The quote “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” reminded me the importance of knowing what the problem is and helped me to make a first step towards it. The biggest reason why our society and economic system looks like it’s only for the richest people is because many people don’t know how our society is going and some of them don’t even have an interest in it.
In order to awaken those 90% of Americans, I insist news will take a major role. Most people today at least get information from news, magazines, and social media. It really does have a power to provide people accurate information about the imbalance between them and I believe people have a right to know about it.
However, as I said above, current economic news mostly covers the richest people, companies, or countries. If so, what’s the reason that they like to cover those stuff while there’s a big problem in our economics? What would be our next step if people realized what exactly is going on in our life and the imbalance between the top 1% of Americans and 90% of those?
