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Social class and its impacts
Social class and its impacts
Social class and its impacts
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It is arguable that there is some noticeable differences between these different social classes, and some not so noticeable. II. What does a low income society consists of: -Families considered to be in the low income class are those whose income lays below or right above the poverty line, and more than likely will have different perceptions, values, and standards than families from a higher income class. -Most low income family leaders think they are entitled to things like cars or expensive purses just because they have “worked hard for it.” Furthermore low income families don’t believe in budgets. They mostly do what feels good, almost like children, they do what they want when they want to without thinking ahead and asking themselves “what …show more content…
Low income class families prejudice the way that families in higher income manage their money, and everything they have to say about money sounds completely outrageous to a low income family. For example; low income families are less likely to donate money for a charity or even tithe, to a family like this the chances of them saving a single dollar for the future seems absurd. -standards: Low income class do not like to save or give away money or objects for that matter. They could be some materialistic type of people. Unlike (some of the) families in higher income classes. So what are the leaders of these low income families doing with their money? The answer is simple; coming from a low income family I have seen my parents make some of the dumbest mistakes with money. For example, my brother had just financed a brand new ford focus, black, with leather interior, and super equipped with GPS and every other gadget you could think of. Needless to say, he had paid for less than half of the cost of the car when it got
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
Not having food, clothes, a roof over your head, money, or a job. It means living a lower quality of life than the average person. Poverty can be someone’s choice of lifestyle. They may spend all their money on fancy materialistic items rather than on basic human needs. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s article, “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, states how there are two types of poor people. One that tries to be acceptable, and one tries to be presentable. “...‘Acceptable’ is about gaining access to a limited set of rewards granted upon group membership (Cottom 4).” Cottom believes that people living in poverty should strive to appear acceptable rather than presentable. Being acceptable is the logical way of going about being in poverty. It’s actually trying to make yourself be better rather than just trying to be the bare minimum that society wants. People living in poverty are usually perceived as not knowing how to manage money because most people living in poverty spend their money on expensive cars and accessories. They purchase these expensive items in order to seem like they are not
The truth is that poor people do not have a weak work ethic or lower motivations than that of wealthier people. 60% of children from low income families have at least one parent working full time and year round. Another 83% have at least one parent
Even though people are created equally, there is a very difficult to change the class you were born into. Not only because of a lack of easy upward mobility, but also because people can become content almost anywhere. If someone is born into poverty there is very little likelihood of them wanting to leave their safety-net, or even seeing an opportunity for a way out of their impoverished life. Complacency and a lack of motivation are things that are more prominent in recent generations, and so these issues also affect the poor. Although many in poverty are hard working people, they can barely get by because of the lack of good full-time work. People have to work two to three jobs just to make enough to live on. The fact of the matter is that whose who need to work can find a job, but will it be a job that can sustain them? In all likelihood, no. Businesses cannot afford to pay their employees enough to live
Economic inequality is ingrained in our society. Because of this fact, many would argue that “that’s just how it is,” but in reality this is not how a community is suppose to function. As Michael Sandel writes in his book Justice, “As inequality deepens, rich and poor live increasingly separate lives.” Sandel makes an excellent point. As economic divisions, such as the ones present in the United States, worsen, the classes diverge on every level. Wealthy people attend different schools, purchase luxury cars, and live in gated communities. Meanwhile, the poor live in squalor, use public transportation, and attend failing schools. Aside from the lack of a quality education making it harder to escape poverty, the poor are from birth at a disadvantage to those on the other side of the economic scale. The United States is not a land of guaranteed equality of result, that is...
Firstly research shows that ⅙ newborns are born into poor families. Another reason is poor children struggle with education. Kids that are born into undereducated parents are not likely to succeed at school without help that targets their family problem. Children that spend more than half of their lives in poverty are almost always likely to enter their 20’s without completing high school in contrast to, a child that has never been poor. Poor people with families also struggle with providing necessities. And lastly workers at the bottom of the economic scale barely get by during hard times scraping every last dollar they have from paycheck to
Gans wrote an essay on the uses of poverty (Gans, 1971). He came to the conclusion that our society needs the poor to function. Gans gave thirteen different reasons as to why we need the poor, and what their functions are. The first is that we need poverty to make sure that the “dirty work” gets done. By dirty work, he means jobs that are dangerous, underpaid, menial, temporary, undignified, and physically dirty. Both the Neumann family and the Stanley family had to take up jobs that fit in with Gans’ first point. They took up jobs that barely gave them any money and they were physically dirty, such as basement waterproofing by Claude Stanley. The second function is that the poor subsidize economic activities to benefit the affluent by working at low wages. It apparently makes life for their employers easier because they have to pay them less. The two families in the documentary were paid very low wages. They knew exactly how it felt. The third function is that the poor create jobs for the rest of society to serve or protect those in poverty. Welfare, food stamps, and homeless shelters are examples of services that help to protect the poor. Without the poor, those jobs would not be necessary. Both families could have used help from those services to get them through their rough patch of poverty. The fourth function is that the poor prolong the economic usefulness of items like day old bread and old fruit and vegetable. They buy the stuff that others do not want to buy. Secondhand clothes and deteriorating building are also included. The Stanley family went to thrift shops to buy their clothes. They couldn’t afford to buy the clothes from regular stores. The fifth function is that the poor are a deviant subculture that help uphold the legitimacy of societal norms. Gans says that the rest of the society can use the poor to be punished for being lazy, promiscuous, and dishonest. They are most likely to be caught for it. Some
People from lower classes try to achieve success but tend to struggle depending upon their foundation. The problem that people don’t want see is that we all want to become successful, and have the capability to do so but are just restricted by the lack of income.
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
Defining who qualifies as poor is the first problem. Researchers alike have all created their own definitions of the poor. Ken Auletta, a journalist defines the poor as a group of individuals who share common attributes such as high school dropouts, delinquents, and the homeless (Ricketts, & Sawhill, 1988). Psychologist Kenneth Clark and political scientist Richard Nathan describe the poor as those who share the same status and are involved in a number of characteristics that are against dominant culture and behavior. Finally, sociologist William J. Wilson views the poor as people who lack training and skills, experience prolonged periods of joblessness, engage in criminal activity, and have a dependency on welfare. As a result, most of America has the conception that the poor can be characterized by the status and behaviors that deviate from dominant culture such as joblessness, delinq...
According to the Children Defense Fund 1 in 13 children will live in extreme poverty in the United States and a family of four is extremely poor if their income is below 10,000 or half of the official poverty line. (http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-data-repository/census/census-2007-child-poverty-data.pdf,). Despite being wealthy the U.S. . has the highest rate of child poverty among all the other countries. Poor children are more likely to go hungry and are less likely to be read to during their early years. They are less likely to have health insurance and needed care. Poor children are more likely to start school behind their affluent peers and are less likely to graduate high school. They are more likely to grow up as poor adults and become involved in the criminal justice system. A family of four's annual income must be lower than 23,000 to reach child poverty. (http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/state-of-americas-children/documents/2014-SOAC_child-poverty.pdf(). Children in single parent homes were four times more likely to be poor than children in two adult families. Almost 70 percent of all children live with two parents.(http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-data.) The south has the highest child poverty rate with 1 in 4 children compared to 1 in 5 children in the rest of the country. Growing up in child poverty can be a major effect on a healthy development for a child. Poverty and stress about finances can have an effect on children's cognitive development and their ability to learn. It can contribute to behavioral problems, social and emotional problems, and poor health. Living in poverty affects how a chil...
The number of people who are classified as the working class poor has increased. It has also been proven that work by itself will not keep a family out of poverty. As for government assistance for families in poverty, it has been decreasing. The government argued that families were not using all the services, which were available to them.
The middle class and the working class may not be the American Dream but they are the standard of living in America. So what describes the poor class? The poor class, unlike the other classes, has an actual definition. “In 2013, the poverty line for a family of four was $23,550.” (Conley 2015: 261) The average poverty family struggles to survive day-to-day living paycheck-to-paycheck and wondering how they’re going to make it. Furthermore, the way that America is structured makes it so that most Americans can’t easily achieve a higher socioeconomic
Although the poor citizens participate in the money game, their mind set is to not lose money, instead of making it. This is a negative mind set, that will only attract more of what they do not want. The two groups have two completely different mindsets. The poorer citizens today are terrified to try and succeed out of fear of failure, so they avoid it. The wealthier citizens today had the idea of investing into things, and NOT lose money, only focusing on winning. All while wealthy individuals can visualize what it is they need to do, and take those steps in order to reach their goal, and be successful in this game of life. They will think, and act from the view of playing the game to win. As for the poorer class individuals, they will never invest, and make that jump out of fear of failure, which will in return always hold them back until they change their mind
Social issues are problems in the society today that are described as wrong, widespread and changeable. A category of conditions that people believe need to be changed. Poverty is a serious social issue in the society today. According to Peilin (2012), poverty brings hardships to families and individuals as well as political thereby negatively affecting the social stability and social development and posing a severe threat to human security (p. 243). This paper focuses on poverty as a social issue in today’s society. First, it gives a succinct introduction of the social issue, and then describes how it fits into the field of sociology. It also evaluates the sociological theories and terminology that relate to the social issue. The section that follows evaluates what is known and unknown about the particular social issue. This is followed by a discussion regarding the value of sociological research into the issue determining the available or possible practical implications of the sociological inquiry. The information presented here is strongly supported by the concepts and theories derived from reliable sources.