Clark's United States Blog

      As said in Blink, there is a gender income gap between men and women in the United States (Discrimination). Women make 79% of what men earn, and the gap is even larger for women of color. Although the validity of this statistic has been highly debated, it does show that there is a gap. There is, however, already an Equal Pay Act, which was enacted in 1963, that makes it illegal to pay women or men less solely based on their gender. This further complicates the topic of whether the statistic is true or not, but if it is true, then the U.S Government needs to more strictly enforce the law, or add more legislation to combat the earnings gap.      Another cause of inequality in the United States is the inequality of opportunities, namely education. Those in poorer neighborhoods are less likely to have quality education because public schools in those areas often get less funding ( Source ). Since these people will get a worse education and are poor, ...

  Gini Index 2016 0.414 2007 0.41     As seen by the Lorenz Curve, there is a large amount of money concentrated in the top 20% of income earners in the United States. The Gini coefficient further shows this inequality. A Gini Coefficient of .414 isn't an astonishingly high number, it does show that income inequality is an issue. Although the Lorenz Curves are nearly identical for the year 2007 and 2016, the Gini Coefficients illustrate how that the United States is not heading in the right direction to achieve income equality. Though it is a near negligible move of only .004, it shows that the United States income inequality is getting worse, even if it's at a slow rate.

When it comes to the Aggregate Demand in the United States, it looks as if it has consistently grown/the curve has shifted outwards. Since 2010, Consumer spending has continued to grow and within that period has from around $10.5 trillion in 2010, to almost $13.5 trillion in late 2019. Government spending saw a decline for nearly the entirety of the first half of the decade. However, government spending has since returned to its 2010 mark of nearly $3.35 trillion. Balance of trade and business confidence have been volatile and have shown no real trend. We can't truly measure the effect of investing because it is not a measurement of a dollar value, rather it is a measure of confidence. While balance of trade is negative, it likely has little effect on the Aggregate Demand curve in the United States because its value is so low in proportion to government spending and consumer spending. Within the past ten years, it has bounced between approximately -$35 billion and -$60 billion. I...

The United States' Annual Real GDP Growth Rate hasn't dropped in the past 10 years, so I believe it is out of the question that we are in a recession or in a trough (all of this is ignoring the coronavirus because I did the stats from 2010-2019). Our GDP growth has consistently hovered around 2% and considering that there was a large recession in 2008-2009, it is safe to assume that we are in the recovery phase of the business cycle. Link to the sheet with the numbers and graphs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OxgaVXNBFEiw65UTf0OcDcjNT3igZpUKst6V3tKT1T0/edit?usp=sharing