When approaching the topic of the economy with some of my peers, I began with this question, “Do you think that the society that we live in today is economically fair?” The responses that I received were overwhelming; unanimously, I was told, “No.” A handful of the students that I asked brought up the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor. One student said that “People who are born into money are set for life, while those born into poverty may never escape because they do not have the means to do so.” In the United States, there has always been a divide between the upper and lower classes, but never to the extent it has reached in today’s society.

Another student stated, “Our society is not economically fair because it is much easier to maintain wealth than it is to gain it.” In today’s world, without a certain level of education, previous experience in a specific work setting, or connections it is very difficult to climb the economic ladder. Some people can’t afford to pay college tuition, or they don’t know people in the industry they are interested in, and it can cause detrimental damage to their economic well-being. People who are born into less fortunate circumstances have a much more difficult time earning higher-paying jobs than those who grow up in more affluent homes. One student said, “It is crazy to me how there are people who spend the majority of their time working a minimally paying job in order to just put food on the table for their families, while there are others who don’t even have to lift a finger to earn their money.”

The division that exists in the lives of the upper class and the lower class citizens has become more drastic in recent decades. “There are some people who are wealthy because they inherited their parents’ or their grandparents’ hard-earned fortune, while others spend their entire lives working to earn money, but they cannot achieve the wealth they desire because of their background,” was another student’s response. Many of the students that I interviewed had very similar views about the fairness of today’s society.