Mind the Gap!

In an article from the Huffington Post, I learned that the division between the poor and the rich is greater than ever before. Obama even went as far as to call the problem of income inequality "a bigger threat to the United States economy than the federal budget deficit."

In a Ted Talk that I watched recently, Michael Sandel, an American political philosopher and professor at Harvard University, discusses the role of money in American society, and he explains the implications of this division between rich and poor. According to Sandel, America has gone from “having a market economy to being a market society”. This means that market thinking and values “begin to dominate every aspect of life.” For example, at amusement parks, costumers can purchase fast passes which allow them to avoid waiting in lines if they are willing to pay more. It used to be that no matter how much money you had, everyone had to wait in line. Now, people can be separated based on their incomes.

Another example would be the airplane class system. People with means who are seated in first class are actually separated from the rest of the passengers; the flight attendants will usually put up a curtain between the first and second-class passengers to act as a sort of barrier. Essentially, the market society leads to affluent people living completely different lives and being completely separated from the rest of the population.

But this division between rich and poor, upper class and lower class means much more than just different seats on an airplane or having to wait in lines. It means the rich control America. The wealthy have access to a good education, they have access to the highly respected schools. They are the ones who have the most political influence. They control the laws. They are the powerful ones. American society rewards wealth with not only respect and admiration, but with power. With the physical separations between the rich and the poor, it’s harder for those with means to identify with and have compassion for those who are less fortunate.

I wondered it America had always been divided in this manner. I was surprised to learn that even in the beginnings of the United States, there was a separation between the rich and the poor; only the rich could buy a ticket for the voyage across the Atlantic. It makes sense now that I think about it, but I never imagined that the U.S. was formed on the basis of this division.