A person is considered wealthy when their income is substantially larger than that of the average person in their community. Society encourages everyone to strive for power and wealth and as Cohen says, "money in all its manifestations has always been the prime source of power". Yet given the situation, not everyone attains it. A person status in society's social ladder is determined by their wealth. In other woods, wealth determines the social class of a person. There are three social classes: the upper middles and lower class. The upper class consists of these whose income exceeds the average person's income. It consists of those whose social and political importance can g

Society. (Oct 7, 1999): oneline. Internet.

Investment differences in stocks and bonds also contribute to the wealth-gap problem. There is an obvious difference in how much money is taxed and as a result kept. The amount of money left after taking care of all the necessities, is considerably different in proportion. Hence, the amount left invested in stocks and/or bonds varies between the rich and the poor. According to Hausman,'less than half of the population owns any form of stocks", and "the richest 10 percent of Americans who own 88 percent of stocks and 90 percent of bonds, are the ones significantly benefiting from the bull market". This means that of all the wealthiest Americans, being a small portion of our population, 10 percent, being a minute portion of our population own 88 percent of all the stocks and 90 percent of all bonds. The rest of the population that invite does not gain nearly as much; of those that do invest, very few are middle class. However, there is a great contrast in amount of investment from rich person, and the middle class person. This middle class person will make some money on that investment, but when compared to the investment made by the richer person, it is small to none. Ironically, it makes the middle class person, who is slightly wealthier form their investment, poor. When compared to other investors who were wealthier to begin with and the gap between profits is taken into consideration they remain poorer. The existing wealth-gap makes it virtually impossible for the common person to ever attain such measure of wealth.

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Approximate Word count = 1404
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)