Peer reviewed source 1 : hearing before the joint economic committee congress of the united states

Measuring Economic Inequality in the United States : Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Sixteenth Congress, First Session, October 16, 2019. U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2020.

This source talks about income inequality and its effect on the United States and the need to fix it. It contains testimony from prominent economists, scholars and authors. The source talks about how income inequality is such a broad issue that it is difficult to define concretely in many situations and is constantly changing. The statistics used to measure inequality are also constantly changing and some speakers talk about the need to establish metrics and studies for following inequality. They also talk about how many people in the high income bracket are business owners or people that have high paying jobs such as doctors, lawyers and consultants. These people are more common and control more wealth than the top 1% such as CEOs and high tech billionaires, that are the focus of most of the commentary on income inequality. 

This source is an in depth look at income inequality in the united states and has a lot of great information from reputable people who have spent and continue to spend a large amount of time studying the economy. This source is a hearing before the joint economic committee of congress, who will ultimately be instrumental in creating legislation to reduce income inequality. It seems that the purpose of this hearing was largely to bring this issue into the spotlight and focus of congress and to show that a solution was needed and they want to find one. I am not sure I would recommend this source to most people as it is a long read with lots of filler dialogue in stark contrast to my other sources. However reading this will definitely bring the reader’s understanding of the issue and the complexity of the issue to a much higher level.

“Inequality has been a hinge of American politics. And indeed, something of a hinge in all democracies for as long as democracies have existed, and with some good reason. Concentration of economic power can be as dangerous as the concentration of political power. Unfortunately the debate about inequality …. Can easily be swept up into a partisan exercise of talking past each other” (Lee 3)