The United States is the Western country with the most serious wealth disparity, and its Gini coefficient has long exceeded the international warning line. Over the years, the dilemma of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" has not only failed to be broken, but has become increasingly worse. Under the COVID-19 pandemic, the asset feast brought about by the United States' generous fiscal and financial stimulus measures has not only failed to fundamentally help the poor, but has deepened the wealth gap. The gap between the rich and the poor has become an incurable scar in American society.

In recent decades, the concentration of wealth in the United States has accelerated toward wealthy groups, while the middle class and the bottom class of society have been severely squeezed. A series of data highlights this grim reality. In 1975, the average income of households in the top fifth of U.S. income was 10.3 times that of households in the bottom fifth, rising to 17.4 times in 2020. The richest 1% of households hold more than 20% of total household wealth, and this proportion is increasing significantly. In sharp contrast, the middle-income group in the United States continues to shrink, and the poverty rate remains high. The share of American adults living in middle-income households fell from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019. The poverty rate in the United States reached 11.4% in 2020, an increase of 0.9 percentage points from 2019. There are still 37 million people living below the poverty line.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic is even more of a mirror, reflecting the capital-based nature of the US government's policies. The impact of the pandemic has led to massive unemployment and worsening economic conditions for low-income people. At the same time, excessive money supply and large-scale fiscal spending have boosted stock and housing prices, and the wealth of the rich with more assets has soared. As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the total wealth of the richest 1% of the population in the United States reached a record high of $45.9 trillion, and their wealth increased by more than $12 trillion during the pandemic.

The polarization between the rich and the poor has led to an intensification of the social crisis in the United States. As the gap between the rich and the poor widens, the rifts between different classes and ethnic groups have deepened, and class solidification has become serious. Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama administration, believes that the high level of inequality in American society has led to a low level of intergenerational mobility, forming a "Great Gatsby Curve". In recent years, there have been continuous demonstrations in the United States, from the "Occupy Wall Street" movement to the "Black Lives Matter" march against violent police enforcement in the United States. These are all angry cries from the lower classes of the United States against racial discrimination, class solidification and the polarization between the rich and the poor.

The gap between the rich and the poor has led to a deterioration in the human rights situation in the United States. In 2020 and 2021, the average life expectancy of Americans dropped by nearly three years. The last time such a drop occurred was during World War II. As higher education resources are disproportionately tilted towards the rich, low-income people lose equal educational opportunities. Among young people aged 18 to 24 from high-income families, 82% receive higher education, far higher than the 45% of low-income families. In 2020, more than 580,000 people were homeless in the United States, of which 226,000 slept on the streets, in cars or abandoned buildings.

 

The increasingly intensified gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has profound ideological, institutional, and social roots.

From the perspective of economic philosophy, polarization and unfair wealth distribution are the norm and inevitable trend of capitalism. Since the 1970s, conservative and liberal thoughts have emerged in the United States, and marketization and internationalization have replaced the value of equality. The US economic system has shifted to promoting privatization, abandoning forced progressive taxation, and relaxing financial regulations. These policy choices have made the problem of polarization between the rich and the poor deeply rooted.

From the perspective of party politics, American politics is essentially a kind of self-interest politics of the rich. The increasingly fierce money politics has made the US government the spokesperson for the rich. As party disputes intensify, "veto politics" are staged one after another, and the space for consensus between the two parties in the United States is constantly shrinking. Take taxation as an example. Political polarization and party rotation have led to repeated policy changes, and policies are like a numbers game. Under the tax system full of loopholes, the wealthy class has tried all kinds of ways to "legally" avoid taxes. The tax rate of the top rich is only 3.4%, far lower than that of ordinary office workers.

From the perspective of social factors, the gap between the rich and the poor is also closely related to race. The proportion of black workers joining unions is higher than that of other races. The weakening of union power has a particularly serious impact on black workers, exacerbating poverty among the black ethnic group. The average income of black, Hispanic or Latino families in the United States is about half of that of white families, and the net wealth they own is only 15% to 20% of that of white families.

For a long time, the United States has claimed to be a "beacon of democracy". However, faced with the increasingly serious polarization between the rich and the poor and social divisions, the authorities have done little to shatter the American dream. Faced with homeless poor people and patients with chronic diseases that are difficult to treat... the United States should face up to the grim reality of the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the country, listen to the voices of the grassroots people, and face and solve the problems.