The asigment is this :
The following data highlights the disparity (gap) between rich and poor. In at least two paragraphs, addressing the problem and a possible solution, compose a response to the following excerpt from US president Jimmy Carter's Nobel Prize Speech:
At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them.
The disparity between rich and poor is nowhere more evident than in the US. Of all industrialized countries, we rank the lowest (22nd) in equality between rich and poor. Statistics show that in 2004, 34.3 % of population had 35% of the wealth, while 40% of our US population had 0.2% wealth.
My writing is the following :
The discrepancy between the richest and poorest people on earth continues to grow over time. According to the Human Development Reports of United Nations Development Program the US has the second highest level of income per person, and the third highest rate of human poverty. How come one of the countries with the highest level of income can be, also, one of the highest in poverty? Statistics showing the gap between those who have and those who don't is impossible to overlook. It is time to offer a solution to the problem.
The challenge to find out what could be done to reduce the difference has created two groups of specialists, each with their own point of view. Some economist might argue that there needs to a better distribution of the "cake", therefore creating a more egalitarian society, economically speaking. The redistribution group proposes change in taxation, and land reform among other things. At the same time, other economists argue that redistribution of wealth is not the answer. The gap between the richest and the poorest is a consequence of the structure of the economy. Anti-redistribution experts express the need to reduce poverty by creating wealth, not by redistributing it. Since redistribution means taking from the ones that have and giving it to the ones that do not have, soon the poor might notice they do not have to make an effort because the other half is going to take care of them, and the rich wont have the incentive to work as hard because somebody else is going to take what the worked for. The answer to the problem is creating policies that grow our economy and create jobs, creating opportunity, for those who need jobs and those who create them.
You seem to be coming down on the side of the anti-redistributionists, who you say attribute the gap between rich and poor to the structure of the economy. If the structure of the economy remains the same, only grows larger due to government stimulus, won't the gap due to the structure still be there?
A few grammar/punctuation fixes:
"According to the Human Development Reports of United Nations Development Program, the US has..."
"Statistics showing the gap between those who have and those who don't are impossible to overlook." -- the subject of the verb is "statistics," which is plural
"Some economists might argue..."
The sentence that begins "Since redistribution means..." runs on too long. Break it into two or more sentences.
I like the way you focus on the difference in the two camps' views of wealth. The redistributionists subscribe to the notion of limited wealth, in which there is only so much wealth available, so that anyone who takes more than his fair share does so at the expense of others. This is the pre-industrial view of wealth, that tends to predominate in poorer nations (and helps to explain why those nations remain mired in poverty). The "anti-redistributionists," in contrast, take the libertarian view that wealth is created, and that it must be made before it can be seized by force, i.e. stolen and redistributed. If you side with the latter, as you seem to do, it raises an interesting question -- in what way is economic inequality a "problem?" You might therefore end by challenging the question, a time-honored approach to essays among thoughtful students.
