Rebecca Chou ID: 1605841 Prof. R C. Gilmore
Wealth, Income and power assignment
Wealth and Income have grown to become quite a vast issue throughout the past several
decades, not just in America but throughout all the global economies in the world. “Who Rules
America” by G. William Domhoff elaborates the whole concept of wealth and income distribution,
along with the associations of power.
Income and wealth have 2 distinct meanings, but they are closely related to each other.
“Income is what people earn from work, but also dividends, interests, and any rents or royalties
that are paid to them on properties they own.” (Domhoff, W.) Whereas wealth is “the value of ev-
erything a person or a family owns, minus any debts; marketable assets.” (Domhoff, W.). The pa-
per discusses about how income distribution and wealth distribution can be used as power indica-
tors, “Power has to do with the ability to realise wishes, or reach goals, which amounts to the same
thing” (Russel, 1938; Wrong,1995). Wealth and power works side by side. I’d like to think of it as
‘not all wealth comes with power but all power comes with wealth’.
Reading the paper tells us as readers, which factions of American society will most likely
agree and which ones will definitely disagree with the comments and statements that have been
made in the paper. Factions simply mean “group of persons forming a cohesive, usually con-
tentious minority within a larger group.” (Hunt, G. 2011). In a broad picture, there are 2 definite fac-
tions, these can be generally characterized as the ‘Top 1%” and the “Bottom 80-90%”. To elabo-
rate, the Top 1%, is commonly described as the percentage of the population (in this case 1%)
who owns the highest mean of household income, mean of household net worth and mean of
household financial wealth. This directly means that they own the greatest amount wealth and hold
the largest share of the economy’s incomes. Contrariwise, the bottom 80-90% holds just the inade-
quate portion of wealth and income.
The 2 classifications of factions are broadened with a smaller, more specific groups of
people who have the same purpose, which is either to defend what they have or fight for a better
Rebecca Chou ID: 1605841 Prof. R C. Gilmore
future. Factions that fall into the group of the higher echelon groups of people can include CEOs,
artists and few special interest groups (such as U.S. Chamber of commerce). On the other hand,
the groups placed in the bottom clearly includes average workers, economists and any other spe-
cial interest groups such as the American Action for Affirmative Action (AAAA).
Generally, people will agree to the paper and say that there’s a massive gap between the
America’s income distribution, although only to a certain extent of fairness and equality of the
economy as a whole. People will often argue that these people deserve the amount of income and
wealth they have received. Take CEOs as an example, mentioned in the paper, they “create
wealth”, which further means that they deserve to gain the wealth and income that they have
worked for and achieved. It is only fair for these people who have worked harder and created a
new concept that is socially and generally accepted by the community to earn such amounts of in-
come and wealth. Moreover, “Are poor Americans better or worse off because Bill Gates ($79 bil-
lion net worth), Oprah Winfrey ($3 billion net worth), Michael Jordan ($1 billion net worth) and Mark
