American Politics, Income Inequality, Policy Representation
There is incontrovertible evidence that the American income inequality has increased, while the social mobility has reduced. It is widely known that states with higher income inequality have lower social mobility, in cases of income-based definition of mobility. This implies that increasing social mobility is somehow hard without tackling inequality. In addition, if tackling inequality involves measures aimed at compressing income distribution, it may have a long-run effect on the economic growth. There are policies aimed at improving the social mobility, often on the most disadvantaged individuals, particularly the least skilled. Evidences on skilled-base technological changes suggest high costs are involved in investing on people with low levels of skills, which will make achievement of gains very difficult. However, for some individuals it means an increase in wage (Flavin 29).
There are increasing evidences that the labor market in the U.S. is hollowing out. However, this does not seem rather different in cases where one does not consider jobs by the level of income, but by the level of skills. This feature suggests that helping those at the bottom to move up will be hard and costly than it will with helping those somewhat above the bottom. As can be seen from the recent rise in the supply of university graduates and expert workers, the wage premium of the graduates have decreased; however, the economic theory suggest that further increase of the supply of highly skilled workers in the absence of the dramatic demand for skills will reduce the rising pressure of income at the top.
[...] For instance, defensive realists assumed that states possess little interest in military conquest and argued for the cost of expansion overshadowing the benefits. This theory maintains that wars occur because domestic groups foster perceptions of threats that are more exaggerated, as well as excess faith in the usefulness of military force. Bibliography Flavin, Patrick. "Income Inequality evidence and Policy Representation in the United States." American Politics Research (2012): 29-59. Print. Jackson, Robert and Georg Sørensen. Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003: 65-69. Print. [...]
[...] Despite these, world leaders often come out to defend this ideology, and the inequality created. The realist theory put more emphasis on the enduring propensity for conflicts between states; liberalism theories call for ways of mitigating these tendencies of conflicts while Marxist theory suggests ways of transforming the entire system of the state's relations. Realism theories dominated the theoretical traditions throughout the Cold War era (Jackson 65). The classical realists like Hans believed that the state, just like human beings, had a desire to dominate over the others, which resulted to wars. [...]
[...] However, the expansion of the neorealist theories ignored the human nature and put more focus on the international system. Here, the international system consisted of a number of greater powers seeking their survival. Since the system was anarchic, states had to survive on their own. The theory suggests that weaker states would seek to balance with powerful rivals. Where defense was easier than offense, there were more security and cooperation among the states was seen. Where defense had an advantage, the states easily identified between offensive and defensive weapons, and acquire the means of defending themselves. [...]
[...] Marxist theory argued for capitalism as the major cause of international conflicts. For instance, capitalist states fight each other as a struggle for profits, and they battle socialist states as they see in them possibilities of their destruction. Marxist theory offered a complete different approach in explaining international conflict, as well as a blueprint for transforming the fundamental existing international order. From the above theories, I agree with the realist theory more than the others. This is so because; the contribution of realist theory is in the attention to the problem of relative and absolute gains. [...]
[...] There are policies aimed at improving the social mobility, often on the most disadvantaged individuals, particularly the least skilled. Evidences on skilled-base technological changes suggest high costs are involved in investing on people with low levels of skills, which will make achievement of gains very difficult. However, for some individuals it means an increase in wage (Flavin 29). There are increasing evidences that the labor market in the U.S. is hollowing out. However, this does not seem rather different in cases where one does not consider jobs by the level of income, but by the level of skills. [...]
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