The United States of America today is a great society.
People from around the world have come to the USA in search of opportunity. To many people on the outside, the United States is the place to be if you want to make a reasonable living. The truth is the US is just a nicer place to live than most countries in the world, especially for the poor. If somebody is poor, the welfare program here can assist in paying for housing, food, and medical expenses. Most countries, if not all of them, don’t have nearly as good of a welfare system as the US.
Despite all of the benefits, there are also problems in the United States, just like everywhere else. Two of the major problems in America today are the separation of the wealthiest and everyone else and corruption in government. Perhaps the largest problem in America today is the separation of the wealthiest people in the US and everybody else. As of 2010, the wealthiest 1% of people in the US controlled over 35% of the wealth.
That means 99% of the population controls only 65% of the wealth.Maybe even worse, the bottom 80% controls only about 11% of the wealth. This shows just how large the gap is between the wealthiest people and the middle/lower class. Just for a comparison, the average middle class family makes about $50,000/year. In 2012, Bill Gates made, on average, $512/second.
This amounts to over $44 million each day, and over $16 billion each year. He does donate over 90% of his money to charity, but even after that, he still gets over $1 billion each year.This shows just how large the gap has gotten over the last several years. Another one of the major problems in American society today is the corruption in government. Up until recently, corruption in government hasn’t been a serious problem for a long time. However, there have been some events recently that have been leaving people questioning their trust in government.
The most recent form of corruption deals with the IRS. There was evidence that suggested that the IRS had targeted conservative organizations and groups.An IRS official has come out and stated that the White House had nothing to do with it, however, some people don’t believe that. Another relatively recent example was with the Benghazi attacks. On September 11, 2012, four United States citizens were killed in the riots that occurred in Benghazi.
The Government hasn’t released hardly any information regarding the attacks, leaving the American people with many unanswered questions. There is actually evidence that there were requests for additional support in Benghazi months before the attacks, but they were denied.Many people question why this was the case. These two events have definitely increased the distrust in government.
No country is perfect. However, sometimes Americans can forget how blessed they really are to be citizens of the United States. The people get a say in who their leaders are, the Government is very generous towards the lower class citizens, and citizens have more freedom than many people could dream of. Despite the problems, the Unites States is and always will be the land of the free.
