Gregory Mantsios wrote the article with the sole purpose of showing that class difference deeply rooted in America is very significant despite the media's and political entities who portray a false picture of a prosperous nation.
It cuts across all sectors from health care, education, opportunities, and lifestyles devolving around the poor and the rich. Gregory asserts that in the industrialized world, the US projects one of the largest gaps between the rich and poor in that a city like New York alone has over two million poor people. According to Gregory, studies have shown that poverty in the US is increasing daily with a rise of 50 percent from 1978 to 1986. Also, the distribution of income in the country is that 10 percent of the population holds 72 percent of the country's wealth, the rest being thinly distributed among the other 90 percent.
In matters of infant mortality rates
Gregory states that the US is ranked 19th in the world having over 10 infant deaths in every 1000 live births. More so, it is only concentrated in poverty-stricken areas like Alabama and Hale County, residence for blacks. Also, health conditions such as heart problems are 40 percent more in poverty-stricken areas as compared to well-off neighborhoods due to exposure to both occupational and environmental hazards. Similarly, more than a quarter of the adult population in the poor bracket have not graduated from high school and three quarters do not hold a college degree since they were forced to drop out to fend for themselves.
Opportunities in the country
are first given to the elite members than the poor especially in jobs and public positions. More so, Gregory illustrates that income for the middle class has significantly dropped over the past decades, while that of the rich has risen a good 33 percent in the same period. Gregory urges the government to take decisive actions to redistribute wealth equally in the country since traditional methods such as progressive tax have ceased hold. Additionally, various spheres of poverty like gender and racial dominations prevent people from growing through capitalism, sexism, and cumulative oppression which fundamentally robs most people in the poverty bracket any chance to come out from their low economic status.
