The issue of income inequality is becoming increasing prevalent within today’s society, currently the world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people, and nowhere on earth is this situation more problematic than America.
Within my project I investigate American society and the socio-economic practices it has adopted over the last 200 years. I used the books The Theory of The Leisure Class, The Affluent Society, and What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, as together they create a timeline of how this western society’s economic and social practices have evolved. This allowed me to unpack some of the key practices which have directly impacted the American wealth gap. Such as: Conspicuous Consumption, Mass-Production, Aggressive Advertising and Commodification
Furthermore, the practices highlighted within my chosen texts allowed me to use the theories of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and John Rawls to investigate the exploitative aspects inherent to them. I used , Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital and other collected works, along with Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man as well as Rawls’ Justice as Fairness: A Restatement and A Theory of Justice to find out how these thinkers would find these practices exploitative.
Ultimately, I attempt to display how exploitation is a common a characteristic to all socio-economic practices which have impacted the American wealth gap over the last 200 years.