Park Avenue Wealth Power And The American Dream Analysis
517 Words3 Pages
Wealth, Power, and the American dream
The video, “Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream” (video.pbs.org/video/2296684923/), raises critical issues that relate to social justice. According to the filmmaker, inequality in the American society is highly evident. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen over time. At the same time, the government’s focus continues to lean towards the rich at the expense of the poor. For example, the filmmaker presents Park Avenue as a street that hosts the extremely rich on the North and the extremely poor on the South. The only dividing factor is the Harlem River. As much as there is a need for reasonable distribution of resources and wealth, the rich seems to have an upper hand as far as the film is concerned.…show more content… Specifically, the filmmaker argues that just 400 people control more resources, wealth, and financial success than 150 million people do across the United States. In other words, the top 1% of the American population controls the majority 99% as far as resources and wealth are concerned. As a result, the rich continues to get richer as the poor get poorer. Even as equality becomes critical to social justice, both poverty and systemic exploitation of majority of the people translate to inequality, economic and political injustice. To demonstrate the point even further, the filmmaker maintains that disparities in wages and salaries are unprecedented when the rich and the poor are compared. Additionally, it is evident that the rich pay up to 50% less taxes compared to the poor. This goes a long way in explaining why most Americans continue to face difficult times even as the economy shows progressive growth and development over