Question 1: European Global Inequality

Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Number: Date: Question 1: EUROPEAN GLOBAL INEQUALITY In the world right now, particularly in the European nations, wealth is concentrated among its wealthy and the richest citizens whereas the middle class continues to disappear slowly by slowly. In this context, global inequality is the concentration of the normally scarce resources in specific nations, significantly impacting the opportunities of people in poorer, less developed and less powerful countries. This activity has been witnessed in the European nations being continued from the European empires since the 15th Century in the history of colonialism and imperialism. This research seeks to identify the ways in which the nations has perpetuated the notion of global inequality from the era of colonialism to date. Firstly, there were pronounced trends in income inequality between nations in Europe before 1914 and especially 1815 where there were changes in inequality in the regions within and between Europe. This was the time when the real concept of global inequality was introduced as opposed to the existing form of conventional inequality. Notermans states that Europe started to have high accounts of income different from other nations that they extended their territories in to, the nations were subjected in to low incomes (468). This type of income inequality caused a significant increase in the cost of the prices of stable foods and a difference in the type of food consumed by the rich and the poor between 1500 and 1815. Poor countries, governed and taken over by the Europeans consumed low quality and low priced food compared to rich nations which spent high amounts of money on food due to high incomes. Secondly, the continent used the terminology of Cold War to extend its global inequality describing it in terms of countries' economic development. This was during the periods between 1945 and 1980 where the whole world was divided between communist and capitalist economic systems. The system further divided the nations according to their respective geopolitical aims and is still familiar and used by several government systems in the world today. In detail, the system classified nations in to first world, second world and third world countries laying basis on their respective overall economic development and standards and cost of living (Notermans 469). This method of creating and perpetuating global inequality classified certain countries as the United States, Japan and Canada as capitalistic democracies and termed as first world countries which are economically developed and with high standards of living. Secondly, the underdeveloped and the poorest nations such as Africa, Latin America and Asia were classified in to the third world category. The Soviet Union bloc countries were divided in to the second world division. Reserve army of labour is a concept popularized by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. The concept refers to the unemployed and underemployed individuals in a capitalist society and its relation to the concept of surplus population (Basu 180). The Neoclassical theory of immigration with both macro and micro framework models state that migration is facilitated by differences in returns to the labour f...