In the his article “How Rising Inequality has Widened the Justice Gap”, Robert H. Frank discusses how the legal system is stacked against families and people of lower incomes. This article is relevant to the issues of poverty and economic inequality because it discusses the effects of poverty in regards to the legal system.
This article begins with a statistic that seventy percent of low-income households have been involved in some sort of legal case, and most of these households lacked effective representation. Many families simply cannot afford these resources. This is why congress created the Legal Services Corporation in 1974,” a nonprofit whose mission is to support civil legal aid for low-income citizens”. However, this program was never adequately funded. The author explains that simply raising the taxes would help fund this program, while keeping wealthy taxpayers in the top 10 percent.
This article is significant because this issue is detrimental to many everyday people. Those affected by this economic inequality could lose their children, their homes, and their livelihood. People who are not struggling could support those who are affected by supporting a tax increase for those who can afford it.
Frank, Robert H. “How Rising Inequality has Widened the Justice Gap.” The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/rising-inequality-widened-justice-gap.html