SOC 315 - Exam 2

Marx - Alienation

- Exploitation of labor leads to alienation - the worker is alienated from the boss, the production process, and the product itself

Marx - ever-rising productivity

- For capitalism to continue, capitalism must revolutionize itself with ever-rising productivity - This ever-rising productivity becomes conflictual. - Not only between the bourgeoisie and proletariat but also within the bourgeoisie - Capitalists are in competition with one another (archaic arrangement of production) - This competition encourages technological innovation and a search for new markers. - Capitalism must expand out. That means other worlds must be explored. - Within this means of production, you must have wage labor. - There are no free markets

Lenski

- Found that inequality in society relates to two things: 1. The level of technology 2. The amount of surplus goods - In primitive societies there was little surplus, hence product was distributed more equally - As societies go on, technology increases and the increase in the use of technology brings more surplus If there's more surplus, there's less to go around - Inequality increases with the advancement of technology. - For Lenski, The level of technology has consequences for the stratification system

labour theory of value

- Labour power is the ultimate source of wealth - Adam Smith - "In a market economy in which the workers own their own means of production the price of goods is proportional to the amount of labor required. In a class of non-laboring capitalists, when they hire a propertyless class of workers, there is competition in the market that would establish an average rate of profit. Such that the capitalist would price goods at a level where they pay their workers a fair wage and then retain profit" - Marx steps in and says this: - Why would the people with money invest in production? - - If all commodity exchange is symbolized by equivalence - Every business owner doesn't want equivalence, they want to get as much money as they can get - The rule of the market is the realm of production - Workers can work more than they need to sustain their lives and the work necessary for you to sustain your life is called necessary labor - Workers must be fed, clothed, and reproduce In the realm of production the capitalist will only pay the necessary amount, any more is called surplus labor/surplus production/surplus-value - In the mind of the capitalist, they will enter production, only knowing to the degree that there is a necessary labor cost and only in that necessary labor cost can they make a profit

working class

- Less skilled than the previous class. Work is routinized and closely supervised. Clerical work, low-paid craftsmen. May have some college - 25% of the population - $40,000 in household income

Lessons from the parade

- Many Little People, Few Giants - Living Standards We saw that many families at the $35,000 level, especially younger families, could not afford to own a home, while families at the $120,000 level were quite comfortably housed, and families earning $2,000,000 might own two luxury residences. - Job(s) At the beginning of the parade, many families had no income, little people had one wage earner, mainstream families had two wage workers, at the very end of the parade households with just 1 income earner became popular again - Sources of Income Jobs are the main source of income for most households. However, during the parade, we noted shifts in the relative importance of different income sources. For many of the early marchers, government transfer payments, such as Social Security, and veterans benefits were crucial. In the broad middle of the parade, households depended on wage or salary income from jobs or, less commonly, on entrepreneurial income from small businesses and professional practices. In the final moments of the procession, we saw marchers who are largely supported by their wealth in the form of income-producing assets such as stocks, bonds, and rental property. - Occupation From the reviewing stand, we saw low-skilled blue- collar, clerical, and service workers gradually give way to more skilled workers and then to managers and professionals. But there was considerable overlapping of occupational categories. We saw managers relatively early in the parade, and a few blue-collar workers toward the end. One reason for this is that a two-income, blue-collar household can often out earn a manager or professional who does not have a working spouse. Another is that occupational pay scales overlap, even for very different occupations. For example, the top 25 percent of electricians earn more than the bottom 25 percent of aerospace engineers. - Women's Shifting Role At the beginning of the parade, we saw many older women and female heads of families. Among married-couple families some 20 minutes into the parade, wives without jobs were typical. But among the more prosperous households toward the end of the parade, working wives were the rule. Only in the final moments of the parade did women's employment rates decline. - Minorities Blacks and Hispanics were at a disadvantage in the parade. They were overrepresented among the early marchers, often by female heads of households. On the other hand, given their traditional position in American society, their strong representation in the middle of the parade was probably surprising to many observers. - Income and Class Structure The parade suggests that the relationship between the distribution of income and the class structure is clear at the extremes but somewhat blurred in the middle. The people at the very beginning of the parade, who have no employment income or work at very low-wage jobs, correspond to our underclass and working poor. The towering marchers we saw in the last 2 minutes of the parade represent the top of the upper-middle class (our working rich) and the capitalist class. But in the middle of the procession, we found a surprising mix of upper-middle class, middle-class, and working-class marchers.

Marx - Class as an economic category

- Marx argues that a class is an economic category. - In terms of capitalism, one class dominates all the others - This economic class brings with it political power and social power

Marx - economic class/group

- The economic class is the dominant class - the economic group brings people status

Braverman Thesis

- The general tendency to deskill work and intensify labor - As a result of technological advancements, the capitalist is always in search for lower labor costs - One cost that is paramount to the capitalist is labor power - This is a unique commodity. - The uniqueness of this commodity is the human beings ability to work longer and more than they need for their minimal subsistence - It is far better to hire many unskilled workers than a few skilled workers - Regardless of the capitalist, they want the deskill the job and put the control of the job in the hands of management - Instead of having a team of 20 people building 1 car, it is far better to have many more employees building many parts of the car - It's better and cheaper to have 5 employees do 2 steps than 1 person do 10 steps - I.e., this is factory labor and work - The employees are replaceable and do work more quickly - The only skills employees may possess are they do the job quicker than they did yesterday - All jobs will be looked at in terms of a deskilled trend - Some skills cannot be deskilled - Can deskill an MD by replacing them with PAs & computer-generated diagnosis - A bachelor's degree is the new associate's degree... now many people are expected to get a masters

Nominal exchange rates

- The nominal exchange rate is 1 currency for another currency - The nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) is an unadjusted weighted average rate at which one country's currency exchanges for a basket of multiple foreign currencies. The nominal exchange rate is the amount of domestic currency needed to purchase foreign currency. - The NEER only describes relative value; it cannot definitively show whether a currency is strong or gaining strength in real terms

How many classes do we have

- There is a social aspect to class, not just your job, or just your income - Marx and Weber suggest that classes come from economic systems -Income & occupation usually are linked - Warner (in the Gilbert book) talks about prestige - Gilbert doesn't make a distinction between old money and new money - Those at the very top of the class have assets that come from income generation - Don't have to work makes money from stocks and bonds - Those at the very bottom of the class come from government transfers - Get's money from gov't - Those in the middle get money from their labor power - Dr. Phillips thinks we can divide the capitalist class by old money and new money. Generations and generations of no one working. Not about how much money you have but how old the money role. See's prestige playing a role.

Criticisms of the braverman thesis

- Underestimation of up skilling - some jobs require a high degree of skill - This theory is rather limited to the craft occupations - It suffers from gender blindness - All workers are not powerless

Sources of income

- Wages and salaries provide the most income for most people. - But for the bottom 40 percent of households, a big chunk of income comes from government transfers such as Social Security, veterans benefits, and public assistance. - At successively higher levels, capitalist income (stock dividends, interest rents, and the like) and business profits provide increasing proportions of total income, until they exceed wage and salary income. - Table 4.2 - The income share claimed by the richest fifth of households is slightly more than that of the other 80 percent of households. The concentration of income at the very top is even greater than our pie distribution suggests. The top 1 percent of households alone absorbs 20 percent of all personal income, as we will show later in this chapter.

Taxes and Transfers - the gov't as robinhood

- We do have a federal personal income tax that is progressive in its effect—that is, people with higher incomes pay a greater proportion of their total income to the Internal Revenue Service than do those with lower incomes. The progressive tendency of the federal income tax is reinforced by the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a notable provision of the tax code designed to help the working poor, who may receive substantial payments from the IRS in excess of any taxes owed. Also progressive is the federal estate tax, levied on the assets of wealthy descendants. - However, other taxes operate in the opposite direction—that is, they impose a greater burden on the poor than the rich. ex: regressive taxes A sales tax applies the same tax rate to a pair of children's shoes whether the purchasing parent is a low-wage worker or a millionaire. Because the low-wage worker spends a much higher proportion of her family's income on consumer items than does the millionaire (who is likely to reserve some income for savings and investment), she loses a higher percentage of her income to the sales tax than the millionaire. The Social Security payroll tax, which accounts for most of the federal taxes paid by low-income people, is also quite regressive because it is not levied on earnings beyond an annually adjusted limit (about $127,200 in 2017). As a result, the proportion of pretax income paid in Social Security taxes would be about 6 percent on earnings of $60,000 but only 1.3 percent on earnings of $600,000 lower income workers can expect to get higher Social Security benefits relative to their earnings than higher income workers. However, the federal government has been using Social Security revenues for meeting its general expenses and not saving to meet the looming retirement needs of the baby-boom generation. - The net effect of all taxation is modestly progressive, as can be seen in Figure 4.4. The chart is based on effective tax rates, the proportion of income people actually pay in taxes, after various deductions, exemptions, and credits. - Aside from the redistributive effect of taxes, the government can play Robin Hood through transfer payments and non-cash benefits. Because transfer payments, such as Social Security and public assistance, are counted as part of cash income, they are, unlike taxes, already reflected in the income data we saw in the last section. But the value of noncash benefits, such as food stamps and Medicare (the federal health care program for the elderly), is not included in the income data. - The influence of transfer payments is generally progressive for the obvious reason that they often are specifically designed to help the poor and for the less obvious reason that a large share of transfer income goes to the elderly, who tend to be at the lower end of the pretransfer income distribution. The same can be said of noncash benefits. In general, transfer payments and noncash benefits raise the living standard of poorer households but do not dramatically alter the overall structure of economic inequality.

Dahrendorf Theory - disagreement to Marx

1. He disagrees that revolution will destroy class conflict Because it is inevitable 2. He rejects Marx's view of class conflict in industrial societies is based primarily and only on economic interests. He believes this because the upper class no longer owns the means of production. There is managerial control above and beyond the upper class. 3. Dahrendorf believed that the growth of the middle class has altered the nature of economic divisions There is a bourgeois and a proletariat but there is also a middle class

Paradox of plenty

A paradox that countries find themselves in when they find an abundance of natural resources - Specifically point-source non-renewables - Point source non-renewables in countries that have less economic growth and worse development outcomes because they find the new source of wealth

formal assocation

Like informal ties, participation in formal associations is patterned by social class. Formal associations are large groups or organizations with explicit purposes and rules of membership, including the YMCA, the neighborhood swim club, the Teamsters union, the Burning Tree Country Club, and the Boy Scouts. Most working- and lower-class Americans have little or no participation in formal associations The true joiners are members of the upper-middle and upper classes, who are especially likely to participate in civic and charity organizations. They are also the most active participants in organizations and, even when organizational membership cuts across classes, the most likely to serve in leadership positions. Even church are class typed

Class struggle from within

Now, these poor people are no longer represented by their government because the government is being paid off by the elites the elites receive great profits because of 1 and 2 The elites become more tied to the other country than their own people They do not want any movements to start to happen to keep the other country from backing up Then a class struggle could develop Protests, unionization Their own country tries to stomp down on this because they are being paid off

structural distortion of the economy

Occurs when the smaller countries move their economy over to sell a resource to a larger country The economic chain is broke The prospects of long-term growth is cut Economy is turned over just to exporting, which is damaging for the economy

What do rich people want?

On a series of other national issues with obvious class implications, there were large opinion gaps. The public was much more likely than the wealthy to favor raising the minimum wage above the poverty level, increasing the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) to help the working poor, and "[making] sure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so." By a large margin, the public favored spending more on health care, food stamps, and Social Security. The wealthy favored spending less on these items. There were some matters on which the wealthy and the general public concurred. Strong majorities of both agreed that income differences between the rich and poor were higher than they had been 20 years ago and that these differences were "too large." But only 17 percent of respondents compared with 52 percent of the public thought the government should "redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich." One reason to think that these differences in opinion are consequential is that the rich are much more politically engaged than most Americans. The researchers found that their respondents were far more likely to talk politics, to vote, and to attend political events, from rallies to private dinners. The majority had made campaign contributions and had contacts with members of Congress or executive branch officials.

Marxist critics of the power elite

On the other hand, Marxist critics of The Power Elite thought Mills had been altogether too successful in demonstrating cohesion, and the unifying force in the power structure was the dominant corporate sector. America was not ruled by a power elite but by a corporate-based capitalist class. The contemporary writers on elites we reviewed agreed with Mills on one thing: Power is concentrated in large organizations and the elites that control them. But their accounts of the system diverge, especially on the issues surrounding cohesion.

The National Capitalist Class: Participation in Gov't

Our own survey of the people who have held the top cabinet posts (state, defense, and treasury), from Kennedy's inaugural cabinet in 1961 through Donald Trump's in 2017, produced similar results: 63 percent of these cabinet officers were drawn from major corporations, financial institutions, or corporate law firms Trump presented himself as a populist in the 2016 campaign, who would break the elite's hold on Washington. But when he had to organize his own administration he looked to wealthy business people and generals. His choices for the top three cabinet positions were (1) for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil; (2) for Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, a banker and hedge fund manager; and (3) for Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, a recently retired four-star general. His administration was probably the wealthiest in the country's history. So does class matter? Yes, according to political scientist Nicholas Carnes (2013) who took a systematic look at the relationship between the class background of members of Congress and the legislation they support. He compared the records of those who served from 1999 to 2008 with their occupations before they were elected. He found that the minority of lawmakers who had held working-class jobs before coming to Congress were the most likely to take progressive positions on economic issues like the minimum wage, tax cuts, and the federal response to the 2008 recession. Members who were former businesspeople or farm owners were the most conservative on the same issues. "'A man doesn't change a whole lot just because he has been elected to the Senate. If he's been a small-town lawyer, or a banker, or a businessman, he is going to think and act like one when he gets to the Senate'"

The national capitalist class: social basis

Parallel to the economic basis of a national capitalist class in the corporate economy, there is an upper-class social world built on prestige and exclusive patterns of association. Among the institutions identified with this world are select prep schools, the Social Register, and the elite metropolitan social clubs. These three have been widely used by researchers as formal indicators of membership in a socially defined upper class. We have already described the appearance of the Social Register in early industrial America, when the new rich were being socially merged with the established upper classes. Although occasionally capricious in its inclusions and exclusions, a century after its creation, the Social Register remains, as Mills (1956) once described it, "the only list of registered families . . . the nearest thing to an official status center that this country, with no aristocratic past, no court society, no truly capital city, possesses Upper-class families use prep schools and elite social clubs to provide an informal setting where upper-class associations can be developed and maintained and, on occasion, important business or political matters can be discussed free from outside scrutiny As we saw in earlier chapters, social scientists have long emphasized the affinity between the worlds of wealth and prestige. Weber noted that the rich tend to draw together into upper-class "status communities," with common lifestyles, values, and patterns of association. Just such a social upper class developed around the wealthy "X family" in newly industrialized Middletown, as described by the Lynds The schools and clubs are merely the outer manifestations of this realm whose deeper meaning resides in shared experience, intimacy, and the bonds of friendship and kinship that produce a consciousness of common identity and common values. The social world that produced the Establishment has not disappeared. The traditional prep schools are thriving, young women are still presented at debutante balls, the exclusive social clubs still function in major cities, and the Social Register is still published. The people who grow up in this privileged world certainly have much better than average chances for successful careers. But there is no longer an Establishment, in the sense we have described. The Establishment faded away in part because recruitment to positions of power in business and government has become more open and meritocratic. In the past, graduates of exclusive prep schools could expect more or less automatic admission to Ivy League colleges, leading to top positions in business, finance, or law. But in the 1960s, the Ivies and other selective colleges broke this key link between social position and career success when they began to depend on the new SAT exam and give more emphasis to academic potential than family background in admissions. The change worked to the advantage of ambitious upper-middle-class students with good public school educations Economic change also contributed to the demise of the Establishment. There are fewer family-dominated companies, like the former Chase Manhattan Bank, long led by David Rockefeller, a quintessential Establishment figure.

Gilberts 6 classes

capitalist class, upper-middle class, middle-class, working class, working poor class, underclass

Dye - American "elitist" society

elite rule is inevitable in all societies, from the simplest to the most advanced. In particular, he stresses that a society such as the United States, which is dependent on large institutions, is ruled by those who hold the top institutional positions—the elite His elite consists of those who hold some 4,102 leadership positions in 12 critical sectors of American society. These top positions, taken collectively, control over half of the nation's industrial assets, over half of all U.S. banking assets and over three-quarters of all insurance assets. They control the television networks, the investment firms, the influential newspapers and the media conglomerates. They control over half of the assets of all private foundations and two-thirds of all private university endowments. They direct the nation's largest and best known law firms in New York and Washington, as well as the nation's major civic and cultural organizations. They make the largest political campaign contributions. They occupy key federal government positions in the executive, legislative and judicial branches Dye focuses on the phenomenon of "interlocking directorates"—the implicit ties created between organizations when executives or directors of one hold positions in another. Members of the elite share broadly similar backgrounds, with origins in the privileged classes (upper-middle and upper classes) and education in elite institutions. Thirty percent, he says, came from distinctly upper-class families, but the relevance of this figure is questionable, since it seems to date from the early 1970s (Dye 2016:194; Dye 1976:152-153). Dye places particular emphasis on the foundations, "think tanks," and policy-planning groups, which are discussed later in this chapter, as venues where the elite can explore problems and develop shared solutions. Although he describes internal factions within the elite, he seems to regard it as relatively cohesive. the business sectors seem to be first among equals in his broader elite. They are the most likely source of interlockers. They support political campaigns. They finance and sit on the boards of major civic and cultural institutions. Dye proposes an "oligarchic" model of the policy making process, in which corporations and wealthy individuals are the sources of the most important policy initiatives, which are refined in the foundations, universities, think tanks, and policy-planning organizations subject to their influence. Only after ideas have passed through this process are they turned into law.

declining social mobility

upward mobility has, in fact, declined and downward mobility has increased. Further scrutiny of the same data reveals that the sons of upper and lower white-collar workers are a little less likely to inherit their father's position. Their privileged background counts for less, though it still counts. This tendency indicates that the decline in structural mobility is being offset, albeit modestly, by an increase in circulation mobility.

capitalist class

- 1% of the population - top executives, best universities

underclass

- 15% of the population - public assistance, part-time work, unemployment - some hs or hs at the most - 15,000 a year

working poor class

- 15% of the population -low paid, service, retail - most have hs degree - 20,000 a year

Poor - income parade

- 1st five minutes - they survive on $15,000 a year - "Poor" by the federal government's official poverty standard - Report difficulty meeting their basic needs, fall behind on bills, unable to get medical care when needed, fear eviction, can't always feed themselves - Overrepresentation of women and female heads of the family - Part of their income comes from gov't programs (soc security, the earned income tax credit, disability, veterans payments, or public assistance) - Black and Hispanics are disproportionately in this group - Although, the majority is white non-hispanic

middle class

- 30% of the population - have significant skills and are loosely supervised - some have a BA degree - 80,000 in household income

How is income distributed?

- About one-third of all households can be described as low income (under $35,000), 42 percent fall into a broad middle-income range (from $35,000 to $100,000), and the remaining 26 percent have higher incomes (over $100,000). - One in four families survive on less than $35,000; about 43 percent are in the middle range; 33 percent have incomes over $100,000. For both family and non-family households, incomes over $200,000 are rare. - About one third of minority families have incomes below $35,000, one third fall between $35,000 and $75,000, and one third are above $75,000. The key to this distribution is the large income gap between families headed by females and those headed by married couples female-headed families are more prevalent among minority households—reflecting in part the economic strains to which they are subjected: 44 percent of black families, 25 percent of Hispanic families, and 16 percent of white families are female-headed. Nonetheless, most female-headed families are non-Hispanic white.

Women & the distribution of household income

- Because women traditionally have had lower earnings and shorter, less continuous work histories, they have weaker personal claims on retirement income. - Although the more generous Social Security benefits of recent years have sharply reduced poverty among the elderly, older women living alone continue to have high poverty rates. - Largely as a result of elevated divorce rates and the growing proportion of children born to single mothers, nearly 20 percent of all family households are now female headed—that is, not dual or male headed - Among families with children, 26 percent are female-headed - The women who head these households face multiple disadvantages. Child care responsibilities make it difficult to work full time. Most single, divorced, or separated women who are raising children receive only limited child support. Generally, the economic situation of men improves after a marital separation, whereas that of women typically deteriorates - (1) over 80 percent of custodial parents are women; (2) most custodial mothers did not receive child support that year; (3) among those who did, the average annual amount was only $3,700 or a little over $300 per month; (4) the great majority of custodial mothers worked—many full time, year round; (5) nonetheless, 30 percent of custodial mothers and their children were surviving on incomes below the official poverty line - Most married women still earn less than their partners do, though the gap has been closing. The increased earnings of wives have bolstered the strained incomes of many two-earner families toward the lower end of the income distribution, and thus tends to equalize household earnings. But their equalizing influence is offset by the "assortative mating" that increasingly matches well-educated, high-earning men and women with each other, producing bigger and bigger family incomes toward the high end of the distribution.

negative effects of resource curse

- Conflict There is a struggle/conflict over the natural resources Who is controlling the resource? The government's ability to control the country begins to unravel There is fighting and insurrection - Taxation In the United States, the government taxes its citizens When a country finds a point-source resource they do not need to tax people because they do not need the money because they get money from the oil Roads, highways, bridges, is only important for the oil The gov't is withdrawn from their citizens and focused on the resource Removed from their own people - Dutch disease You find the oil, and the people and the government rush to get the oil out of the ground. All other productions cease. Now, your country is producing nothing on its own other than oil. Now you must borrow money to import to get the oil out of the ground and to get the other products from other countries. The countries can raise their prices and there's nothing you can do because you are no longer making those things Get dutch disease because the other sectors of the country are crumbling Because nobody is working there because everyone thinks they are making the money from the oil - Excessive borrowing Because of Dutch disease, you get excessive borrowing You keep borrowing from other economic sectors and are in debt because you think you have the payment in the oil You can have all of the oil in the world, but what if you can't get it out Have to ask the Americans to get it out - Corruption Because the country is poor, the people who are making the money put their money in other countries banks Contracts are broken

uncritical conflict theory

- Conflict is pervasive and not restricted to economic relations We are not saying these theorists are uncritical of exploitation or inequality - They are not unsympathetic to those at the bottom of the stratification system - They argue that exploitation and inequality will always be here. It is inevitable and we cannot get rid of it. - It is only from this understanding that we can argue that inequality and exploitation can be undone - Uncritical conflict theorists argue that it will always exist but we can lessen it Weber was an uncritical conflict theorist - Very pessimistic - Argue that power can be defined in many ways but, what it means is to compel people to do what you want them to do even when it goes against their own interests - Power is more than economics - Military power, political power - Power is a generalized commodity that serves many interests and has many goals

Dahrendorf Theory - Imperatively Coordinated Associations

- Dahrendorf has to address what is the basis of class conflict if not economic interests - Dahrendorf looks to Weber's concept of imperatively coordinated associations - There are varying degrees of power and domination, not just economics - schools, businesses, orgs, religion are all associations - Rewards, status recognition, etc. all go in here - This concept discusses how those in power relate and overlap so they construct their ideas shape the social order. - One example of this is when you look at media and who runs it. The people in power relate to one another and the jobs of each overlap which determines what we see and how we perceive different things. They determine what is being aired, how different genders and races are depicted and what makes headlines, and what doesn't. They can alter things for the viewings of their audience and depict things as they want. It seems as though they appeal to the likings of some and allow us to see and hear what they want us to which thickens the stereotypes and views that we place on each group and forces us to see things through their eyes

Marx - Products

- Every society and culture transforms nature into products. - This transformation has historically not been smooth - Capitalism as an economic system supplies products. The economic system of capitalism does supply a lot of growth. - But, social classes have been developed as a result of the social relations of production. - The worker always loses

The production of Deviance - Marx

- Marx argues that a crucial unit of analysis is a mode of production - We start with Marx's analysis of the mode of production that is important in any society - We transform the social means of existence into capital (work -> capital) - As a result of this process, we have wage laborers - Deviance is rooted in our economic system and two features of our system produce deviance/crime - How our system is organized to produce things - The starting point of the analysis is understood as an economic organization or how our system is organized to produce things. - First is the mode of production - Contradictions of our system - The second is that it contains contradictions - There are contradictions that are inherent in capitalism - These contradictions are important because they explain the changing character of our economic system - In terms of these contradictions, we must discuss the superstructure and substructure - The infrastructure is a mechanism for coping with the contradictions of the capitalist society - An important feature of the superstructure is the regulation of problem populations

Weber

- Most important/dominant class = status group - The status group brings economic authority - Weber argued it's not just economic, it's status and power as well

example of resource curse

- Oil is found in a poor country - Workers go towards the oil to get it out of the ground - People were living there but the price of land is going up so the poor is pushed off of their land... making them poorer - The country moves to a mono-export -subsistence farming is impacted because they will make more money working in the oil fields -subsistence farming and production is stopped, forego the country has to import

Real Exchange Rate

- Seeks to measure the value of a countries goods against those of another country or a group of countries or the rest of the world - Is our $ getting stronger or weaker? Can I buy more goods now than I did yesterday? - Ex: you have a big mac from McDonald's If the real exchange rate is 1, then the burger will cost the same in the U.S. as it would in Germany If the NER is 1.36 for a big mac in the U.S. it would be 1 euro in Germany - There is perfect purchasing power parity - If it was perfect parity it would be a 1 to 1 relationship - In Germany, for every 1 euro, you give $1.36 - This is the perfect purchasing power parity - The purchasing power parity in Germany is the same 1 for 1 - The big mac in Germany goes to 1.20 euros but still sells for 1.36 in the U.S. - This means that the euro is overvalued relative to the dollar - The same product costs more - The nominal exchange rate is not 1 to 1 - There will be pressure in the marketplace to force the euro back down The pressure would be because if you are an investor you would buy big macs in the U.S., you would resell it in Germany - Arbitrageur An arbitrageur is a type of investor who attempts to profit from market inefficiencies. These inefficiencies can relate to any aspect of the markets, whether it is price, dividends, or regulation. The most common form of arbitrage is price. - Arbitrageurs exploit price inefficiencies by making simultaneous trades that offset each other to capture risk-free profits. An arbitrageur would, for example, seek out price discrepancies between stocks listed on more than one exchange by buying the undervalued shares on one exchange while short selling the same number of overvalued shares on another exchange, thus capturing risk-free profits as the prices on the two exchanges converge. - They buy currency and look for fluctuations in exchange rates and sell those for-profit... then the currency goes downwards. Therefore, there is always pressure to have a normal exchange rate

Barriers to economic development

- Several studies have shown that less developed countries that receive extensive aid and investment from the richer countries end up having less long term economic growth than countries that did not receive the aid - It is true that these economic poorer countries may have some economic growth within the first 5 years, but long term prospects for growth are hard by the aid from other countries

The distribution of wealth

- Wealth, in a sense, is nothing more than accumulated income (assuming, of course, that income is not spent, but saved). True, but this underestimates the significance of wealth as a distinct dimension of class inequality. Income allows us to meet our daily necessities. Wealth enhances what Max Weber called "life chances" in more basic ways. It provides safety net protection against a sudden drop in living standard in the event of job loss or other emergency people with very high incomes typically derive most of their income from wealth in the form of stock dividends, bond interest, commercial real estate rents, and other capitalist sources. - Table 4.4 - As the privileged finances of our top class suggest, wealth is highly concentrated—much more concentrated than income. - Another important conclusion that can be drawn from studies of wealth is that investment assets are much more concentrated than consumption-oriented assets such as automobiles and owner-occupied homes. ownership of corporate stock and mutual fund shares, investment real estate, and small- business equity is almost entirely concentrated in the hands of the top 10 percent of wealth holders.

Marx - work

- everything is about work, must do it to stay alive - work is the means by which you survive - the way work is organized throughout history has changed - work is the transformation of nature into products - since the beginning of time work has been organized differently - human beings must participate in work to feed and clothe themselves - all of these forms of work orientations there have always been forms of exploitation to a degree (very little in primitive communism)

Beyond the mainstream - income parade

- fifty to fifty-five minutes -$150,000 to $175,000 income - There is money for fashionable clothing, new cars, quality furniture, and perhaps some domestic help at home. - The Lankies typically hold professional and managerial jobs. Occasionally we see a high-earning blue-collar worker. But few households attain Lanky status with one good job. They are even more likely than the average-sized people to depend on the earnings of two working spouses. Female-headed families are rarely found here. Minority marchers have not vanished from the parade, but their ranks have thinned out since the middle of the parade.

On the margin of the mainstream - income parade

- first 20 minutes - 1 third of the "parade" - live on 35,000 a year... above the poverty line (about 24,000 for a family of four) but well below the average household income - Many female heads of household and retired people - The typical household has one wage earner working low-skilled, blue-collar, clerical, or service job - Families of three or four lead austere lives. Smaller households can enjoy greater comfort and security. Retirees may benefit from owning homes, free of both rent and mortgage obligations. - Some households have problems meeting basic housing, nutrition, and health needs on a consistent basis - Less likely to be homeowners - Own older used cars, little-to-no savings, few weeks of unemployment/an unexpected bill can threaten their standard of living

the rich - income parade

- the final minutes - In the final seconds of the parade, we will see, in quick succession, 100-foot Giants; 400-foot Leviathans; and, finally, the Big Toes, who flit by in the last fraction of a second. Who are the Big Toes? People like Wall Street titans They have annual incomes in the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars. In 2014, 17,000 households reported incomes over $10 million to the IRS; 400 people reported incomes above $127 million. Their big toes, proportional to their towering incomes, are the size of office buildings. - The Giants are typically members of the group we as "the working rich" whose incomes would drop sharply if they stopped working Highly successful professionals (more often lawyers and doctors or finance professionals), mid-ranking corporate executives, and owners of prosperous small enterprises -the Leviathans and the Big Toes, all with incomes over $3 million. Two earner families are rarer here. Many of these people hold important jobs; among them, for example, are the ranking officers of large corporations. However, the greater part of income at this point in the parade does not come from jobs. These marchers own substantial business enterprises, commercial real estate, and valuable portfolios of stocks and bonds. Such income-producing assets, rather than salaries, account for their colossal incomes and overpowering stature. Their incomes do not necessarily depend on reporting to work every morning. - ~2 homes, domestics, private schools, $100,00 for daily expenses

Age of growing inequality

- the widening gap in inequality occurred in post-industrial society - This economy makes winners out of those people with advanced education skills and losers out of those who lack this specific training - In part, this widening gap in training is a result of technological change and globalization - EX: technological changes in engineering, systems analysis, marketing are all occupations that are requiring greater and greater skills - Whereas clothing, shoemaking, etc, are going oversees - There has been attacking on labor unions and protect bargaining that protects low wage workers - Corporations are paying their workers are outsourcing and paying workers less - A vast increase in temp and part-time workers - Companies are frequently participating in union avoidance strategies - Managers are also losing their jobs along with low wage workers - As major banks were failing, so were American auto manufacturers - Gov't helped the companies, while families lost their houses and jobs.

In the mainstream - income parade

- thirty to forty minutes - The median income of $56,500. the mathematical average (mean) income of $79,000 minorities are still well represented in this part of the parade, but we do not often see female-headed households. - Many of these average-sized marchers have lower-level managerial or professional positions. Others are technicians or skilled blue-collar workers. But most of the households represented here depend on the earnings of two workers. This is especially true of the black and Hispanic families marching in this part of the parade. - More likely to own substantial homes and drive late-model cars. The basics of food, housing costs, and transportation absorb only 60 percent of their budgets, so there is room for other necessities and some luxuries, such as family vacations. Nonetheless, they often feel financially pressed and are not much more likely than the Little People to have money left over at the end of the year.

upper-middle class

- trained professionals, lots of education, 14% or population - about 200,000 a year in family income

Marx - class divisions

- when we play the game of capitalism we have two groups of workers - Bourgeois (owners of the means of production) - Proletariat (laborers) - Marx argues that capital society is organized around private ownership of industrial capital and production through hired labor - Someone owns the means by which you survive and somebody is hired to make these means - class divisions also distinguished with the level of technology for the means of production - Marx argued that the different relations of production are found within the different levels of technology or means of production. -The differing relations of production can be found in the means of production (level of production)

4 main points of resource curse

1. A decline in the competitiveness of other economic sectors in the country 2. Volatility (increase or decrease) of revenues from the natural resource sector due to the exposure to global commodity market swings 3. Government mismanagement of resources 4. Weak ineffectual unstable or corrupt institutions

Marx - how problem populations are created

1. Directly through the contradictions of capitalism (contradictions in the mode of production) Relative surplus population, a class that is redundant -> useful and a threat In its most limited sense, the production of a surplus population involves unemployed workers Capitalist production wants unemployed people On the other hand, the unemployed is a problem to the capitalist You have to keep them alive while they are unemployed... they don't want to do it. The economic system is creating a problem itself 2. Indirectly contradictions of class rule, official control Mass education works for some to the detriment of others and hence students dropout or become radicals which contributes to the very problem capital tries to prevent -> useful threat Education became compulsory Education is useful Teaches students to read and write and how to work for the capitalist The education is also threatening Educates people about the rottenness of capitalism 3. The contradictions of class rule has created 2 groupings Social junk Those ppl who cannot contribute or no longer contribute to the profit motive The mentally ill, the managed elderly, don't work and can't work In the mind of the capitalist, they are junk Managed by the healthcare system or social systems that deal with the benefits such as unemployment or tax benefits Social dynamite They are the problems Cost and potentially revolutionary The young and educated that call for a different form of an economic system Managed by the justice system

3 broad classes of wealth holders

1. The Nearly Propertyless Class: About 40 percent of households,with networths under $50,00 The majority have a negative net worth, and few are worth more than $10,000. Most have automobiles and many own their homes. But the nearly propertyless class is a debt-ridden class: What they owe is quite high relative to the value of their assets. Younger families and most African American and Hispanic households fall into this wealth class. This class was especially hard hit by the Great Recession of 2008-2009. 2. Nest-Egg Class About 50 percent of households, with networths ranging from $50,000 to $1 million. Savers Modest Debt They accumulate retirement savings in IRAs and 401k accounts. Some hold other financial assets, such as CDs and stocks. But this class's largest single asset is likely to be the home they live in. families in this class are, on average, older than those in the first class. 3. The Investor Class Just 10 percent of households, worth more than $1 million. The households in the investor class own most of the privately held investment assets and typically control portfolios of stocks, mutual funds, and bonds. Many members of this class have interests in small businesses, professional practices, and commercial real estate. Many own second homes. On the other hand, equity in homes contributes a modest proportion of their net worth. This class is relatively free of debt Although this class controls most of the total of gross assets owned by households, it is responsible for a small proportion of total liabilities.

Marx - how problem populations are managed

A and B produce problem populations that must be managed - One of the most important features served of the superstructure is the regulation of problem populations - Problem populations must be managed from the populations come from the superstructure - Problem populations result when they disturb or hinder or call into question the following: Steal Refuse to work Escape taking drugs Offer new alternatives These problem populations hinder profit-making and they could be revolutionary - These problem populations cannot overturn capitalism But, they must be managed

how much mobility?

A common way to measure intergenerational mobility is to compare the occupations of fathers and sons 1. There is a high level of occupational inheritance—sons following fathers into jobs at the same occupational level. 2. The higher the father's occupation level, the better the son's chances for occupational achievement. 3. Nonetheless, there is also considerable movement up and down occupational ladder from one generation to the next, as the summary statistics at the bottom of the table suggest. 4. By a considerable margin, sons are more likely to move up than down. Intergenerational mobility undermines the tendency of the class structure to crystallize into a hierarchy of distinct, stable, internally homogeneous classes.

Chptr 5 - Weber connection

Adolescents tend to form friendships and romantic ties with others who share their class background. Young adults typically marry class equals or near equals. Adult friendships, romantic relationships, marital styles, residential distribution, organizational activities, and even church membership are all patterned by social class. These observations bring us back to Max Weber's idea that prestige classes (or "status groups," as he called them) are social "communities," characterized by distinctive lifestyles and values

Elite and class theorists

Although they define the structure of power differently, Dye, Domhoff, and the authors of American Elites all accept Mills' premise that power in this country is concentrated in the elites at the head of large organizations in critical sectors of American society. All find that the members of their elites are from relatively privileged backgrounds, though they differ on the details. All deal, in one way or another, with the problem of elite cohesion. Dye finds a more or less unified elite of 4,000 leaders (a remarkably small number) of the dominant organizations in 12 key sectors. The authors of The American Elites describe multiple elites whose power is limited to their own sectors and whose divergent views limit collaboration. Domhoff finds one dominant elite, the leaders of an interconnected corporate community, linked to a social upper class and the network of policy organizations. Dye, less explicitly, reaches a similar conclusion.

separate lives

Americans are increasingly segregated by social class. rising economic inequality has been accompanied by rising social inequality Money, fear of the poor, and an inflated sense of their own superiority are motivating prosperous Americans to develop separate lives. "An especially precious type of equality—equality not of money but in the way we treat each other and live our lives—seems to be disappearing" "Who killed social equality?" asks Kaus. Oddly, he rejects the most obvious suspect, rising economic inequality, and insists that the guilty party is "the decline of the public sphere." most of his examples revolve around residential segregation by class. As the rich and relatively rich retreat to exclusive suburbs (sometimes even to "gated private communities"), they separate themselves from the less privileged. Here, public spaces—the mall, the supermarket, the drugstore, the coffee shop—are largely inhabited by other members of the privileged classes. Above all, children attend school with others of the same class, even if they do not enroll in private academies. And, not surprisingly, upper-middle-class parents, who may support budget-slashing politicians, do not hesitate to vote for local school taxes. They know their own kids will benefit.

Free market distortion

As time goes on we have larger countries becoming monopolies Little countries try to export the things they make They have trouble doing this because there are these large countries that subsidize corporations Just as a corporation can change prices to squash competition, it is the same thing as countries who are dominated by corporations The small companies and small countries don't have a chance with huge countries acting as monopolies The countries get so big that they dominate world markets and the small countries cannot compete with them Can be caused by 1 & 2 What monopoly countries want are open markets in the world but their own markets protected

criticisms of the labour theory of value

Baseball, the value goes up if a famous baseball player hits it It is not the labor of value

the changing distribution of wealth

By 2010, in the wake of the Great Recession, the average net worth of families in the bottom four fifths of the population was 3 percent less in real terms than it had been in 1983. Over the same period, the average net worth of families in the top fifth climbed 80 percent. At the top of the wealth pyramid, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans more than doubled in the 1980s and doubled again in the 1990s. By 2007, the neediest of the 400 was worth more than a billion dollars and their combined net worth was a figure comparable in magnitude to the entire federal budget. Although many of the 400 fortunes were squeezed by the stock-market decline that accompanied the recession, by 2012, their combined net worth had bounced back to about what it was in 2007. Incredibly, the 400 were, by then, collectively worth as much as 9 million average Americans The increasing concentration of wealth in the Age of Growing Inequality was accompanied by a leap in the number of wealthy people. In other words, at the same time that the distribution of wealth was becoming more and more unequal, the expansion in total wealth in the economy left room for the creation of new fortunes. In just 1 decade, from 1995 to 2004, the number of families worth over $25 million doubled. By 2016, there were 156,000 households in this category What accounts for these remarkable increases in the concentration of wealth and the number of wealthy families in recent decades? Globalization generated new wealth and new opportunities. Many new fortunes were rooted in information technology, the Internet, finance, and other high growth sectors of the economy Finally, many readers of this text will be aware of another trend that is contributing to growing inequality of wealth: student loan debt. In 2013, 38 percent of young families (head under age 40) had educational debt. From 2001 to 2013, the average amount owed by such families rose 70 percent to $29,800. Educational debt is rising as a proportion of all debt. Student loan debt is common among households in the lower 50 percent of households but rare among the wealthiest 10 percent

bourdieu - the varieties and forms of capital

Capital may be defined as value accumulated over time and capable of yielding future benefits. We are accustomed to thinking of capital as another name for financial wealth. But Bourdieu extends the concept. 3 forms of capital: Economic capital - the basic monetary form, institutionalized as property rights Cultural capital - knowledge in its broadest sense, institutionalized as educational credentials, but encompassing such matters as table manners and how to swing a tennis racket Social capital - mutual obligations embodied in social networks such as kinship, friendship, and group membership. Bourdieu emphasizes that the value of each of these forms of capital is enhanced by its capacity for transformation into one of the others. the sum of the various forms of capital they hold is the cumulative advantage of the privileged classes. It is a key to the reproduction of the class system by transmission from generation to generation. Class advantages/disadvantages that are inherited are not just economic, but also cultural and social

Indirect Mechanisms of Capitalist-Class Influence

Capitalist-class influence over government is not limited to the direct means we have been describing (recruitment to decision-making positions, campaign financing, lobbying, and domination of policy-planning institutions). The capitalist class can also affect government policy indirectly, through its control of the economy and the mass media. A defining characteristic of a capitalist society is the existence of a relatively small class that controls most productive wealth and therefore independently makes investment decisions that can decisively affect the welfare of other classes. Although governments in capitalist societies have limited control over what business leaders do, their political fortunes are closely linked to business decisions. The connection is often described in terms of a "business confidence." If business leaders lack confidence in a government or its policies, they will be reluctant to risk their capital in new investments. What sorts of government policies are likely to alienate business confidence? Basically, any that threaten profits, including those concerning taxation, environmental protection, worker compensation, workplace safety, and corporate financial affairs. The precise factors that lead to a loss of confidence are less important than the essential fact that this mechanism gives the capitalist class an indirect veto over government policy. Two implications of the business-confidence veto are particularly worth noting. One is that it can influence a government without actually curtailing investment. The mere risk of such action is enough to persuade decision makers to reconsider a proposed policy or the appointment of a cabinet officer whose opinions might sound threatening to business. The possible effect of government action on investor behavior is frequently raised as an issue in public policy debates. The other implication is that the veto mechanism does not require conscious, concerted action by members of the capitalist class to be effective. Individual investment decisions, based on objective assessment of potential risk and profitability, can collectively produce a downturn in business activity and subject a government to popular pressure Two implications of the business-confidence veto are particularly worth noting. One is that it can influence a government without actually curtailing investment. The mere risk of such action is enough to persuade decision makers to reconsider a proposed policy or the appointment of a cabinet officer whose opinions might sound threatening to business. The possible effect of government action on investor behavior is frequently raised as an issue in public policy debates. The other implication is that the veto mechanism does not require conscious, concerted action by members of the capitalist class to be effective. Individual investment decisions, based on objective assessment of potential risk and profitability, can collectively produce a downturn in business activity and subject a government to popular pressure These media do not speak with one voice, but the predominant ownership structure may limit the range of political perspectives represented. Capitalist-class influence over the media is not limited to the power of ownership. Because the media are operated for private profit and most of their income comes from corporate advertising, media managers cannot be indifferent to the sensitivities of advertisers. The networks are also subject to the influence of the affiliated stations that broadcast their programs to local audiences In other words, they help define the public agenda. Their ability to do so is increased by the concentration of media control. Without media attention, these concerns were largely invisible.

Jencks, conclusion

Christopher Jencks, building on Blau and Duncan's earlier work, concluded that background variables (including father's occupation, parents' education, income, and race) account for not quite half the variance in occupational attainment. (This figure includes family influence on the extent of a son's education.) If Jencks' estimate is correct, we can make a good guess at a boy's odds of occupational success on the day he is born—a good guess, but not a sure thing: There is another 50 percent to be determined by factors ranging from personal initiative and charm to pure luck. There is, for example, an enormous gap in the college participation rates of young adults from high- and low-income families, and lower status youth are nearly shut out of selective institutions.

The stratification of higher ed

Class not only influences the chance of continuing education after high school, it also influences the type of school selected. Students from lower status families are more likely to enroll at 2-year community colleges. These schools' curricula permit students to transfer later to 4-year colleges. But many community college students will drop out of school before they complete 2 years, while others concentrate on 2-year technical courses that lead to careers as computer programmers, dental assistants, automobile mechanics, and the like The academic criteria emphasized by the most selective schools clearly favor students from high-status homes over their less privileged peers. Nearly two thirds of students from the top SES quartile of families, but only 7 percent of students from the bottom 50 percent, score above the equivalent of 1,200 points on the SAT Though selective college admissions are tilted in favor of the sons and daughters of the upper-middle class, the great majority of them will not win admission to a top-tier institution. The social legitimacy of such institutions depends, after all, on their being selective. About 37 percent of students from families in the top SES quartile will attend a mid-selectivity school, and 43 percent will attend a low-selectivity school or community college. Only 20 percent will attend a highly selective institution. 6 For such families, this hard fact of life is a source of anxiety surrounding the pre-college education of their children. It has given rise to a college prep industry offering expensive SAT courses and advice from independent counselors, who commonly charge $15,000 or more for their services.

business lobbies

Currently, the principal business lobby organizations in Washington are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Also important are the National Association of Manufacturers, which speaks for smaller industrial corporations, and the increasingly influential National Federation of Independent Business, which represented small business in the fight over the estate tax. "Small business" is a broad term which refers to independent enterprises that may have hundreds of employees and do millions of dollars in business annually. When the Washington office wants to pressure senators or representatives on a vote, it can systematically mobilize letters, e-mails, phone calls, and personal visits from local business owners, a legislator's former law partner, or a fellow member of the local country club. In recent years, the Chamber has become a more formidable presence in Washington. It employs 500 lobbyists, researchers, lawyers, and communications experts dedicated to promoting pro-business government policy. It spent $35 million in 2012, supporting friendly Congressional candidates and $136 million on lobbying—far more than any other organization Its power is based on the formidable resources controlled by these corporations and the prestige of those who lead them. The Roundtable typically operates more quietly than the Chamber does. Its stock-in-trade is the personal visit from a CEO and the carefully crafted economic study or legal brief supporting its position. The leaders of the Roundtable have access to members of the House and Senate and even to the President—entree that no ordinary lobbyist could hope to duplicate. Since the late 1970s, the business alliance has more often than not won such confrontations. It has, for example, blocked legislation that would strengthen labor unions, slowed the rise of the minimum wage, and promoted lower taxes on high incomes and multimillion- dollar estates. But the business alliance doesn't always win. In the wake of the 2008-2009 recession, facing a liberal Democrat in the White House, it lost two, hard-fought legislative battles, one over expanding access to health care ("Obamacare") and the other over finance sector reform (the Dodd-Frank Act). When the business alliance fails to stop legislation it doesn't like, it often manages to water it down as it passes through two houses of Congress and undercut its implementation with legal appeals or by lobbying the agencies responsible for carrying it out. In 2017, President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, with strong business backing, were working to repeal or undermine Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Act.

social class and domestic violence

Domestic violence is a persistent theme in the researchers' interviews with the young women—white, black, and Hispanic—in their sample. domestic violence can be found in all social classes, but they emphasized the high rates and intergenerational character of family violence at lower-class levels. Young adults are the most prone to violence in relationships and especially so in difficult economic times. men were especially likely to become abusive in periods of unemployment.

American mobility in comparative perspective

For Americans, the topic of social mobility is inevitably intertwined with the promise of the American Dream. We like to believe that the United States is uniquely a place where anyone who is able and hard working can prosper. The American handicap in this international income mobility contest seems to derive from differences at the extremes of the class structure. Mobility prospects for boys born to families in the middle of the income distribution are similar to those for middle-income boys in other wealthy countries. But the formidable advantages of the sons of high-income families and disadvantages of sons of low-income families set the United States apart from other wealthy societies. These outcomes reflect class differences in child-rearing patterns we discussed in Chapter 5 and the large income gap between college-educated and high-school educated workers we noted in Chapter 3. This is not to say that the American Dream is dead. As we have seen in this chapter, the mobility machine has slowed, but upward mobility, measured by occupational advancement, is still common and more frequent than downward mobility.

Income dynamics

From one year to the next, a family's income may change abruptly because someone lost a job or a spouse rejoined the labor force. Over longer periods, earnings tend to expand with experience and successive promotions. For example, during an academic career, the salary of a college professor might double in real-dollar terms. Even the earnings of low-skilled workers tend to rise over time, though more slowly than those of professionals. Fewer families are moving up or down; an increasing proportion end the decade where they began. Closer examination of the data from all 3 decades shows that most movement, in either direction, was short range, from one quintile to an adjacent quintile. Only rarely do families rocket from the bottom quintile to the top or plunge from the top to the bottom in the course of a decade.

structural mobility

If technological and organizational changes occur in away that creates jobs at a faster rate in the middle and upper levels of the occupational structure than in the lower levels, then some lower ranking sons and daughters will have the chance to climb into the new positions without displacing others—not a "zero sum game" this time, but a "win-win" situation. (Of course, change could also reduce opportunities to move up and force some people down.)

American elites

In American Elites (1996), Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman are skeptical of claims for elite cohesion. They argue for a pluralist conception of national power based on differentiated elites. Note that the authors, unlike Mills or Dye, refer to elites in the plural. They see a division of national power among 12 "strategic elites" with distinct functional responsibilities. The leaders of business, the media, and the military are examples. This brand of pluralism does not deny that power is concentrated in the hands of a few, but denies that elites exercise much influence outside their own sectors. There is, in other words, no core elite like Mills' power elite or Dye's interlockers. By showing that strategic elites differ in their origins and viewpoints, the authors of American Elites expected to undermine the notion of a unified central elite. Most members of the strategic elites appear to be from upper-middle-class backgrounds, but there is enough diversity among them to doubt ​​that shared background could be a dependable basis of elite cohesion. The authors claim to have found a high-level ideological division among American strategic elites. But the evidence they present is not decisive. Asked to classify themselves as conservative, moderate, or liberal, respondents differed in predictable ways: Corporate executives and military officers generally took the conservative label; majorities of labor leaders, movie makers, journalists, bureaucrats, and religious leaders described themselves as liberals. In short, American Elites does not document a clear pattern of diverging opinion among the strategic elites.

The power elite or ruling class?

In a perceptive essay on The Power Elite, Paul Sweezy contends that there is an unresolved tension in the book between two views of the power elite. The first is based on social class: Mills provided evidence that "those who occupy the command posts do so as representatives or agents of a national ruling class which trains them, shapes their thought patterns, and selects them for their positions of high responsibility" The second view Sweezy finds in The Power Elite focuses on the bureaucratic elites at the top of three "major institutional orders"; here Mills treated the corporate, military, and political realms as distinctly separate domains with autonomous leadership, which come together to form the power elite. Sweezy is highly skeptical of the second view, particularly given the evidence that Mills presented for the first. The military, is firmly under civilian control, and the political elite is dependent on the class that rules the corporations; thus, the justification for thinking in terms of three discrete institutional elites collapses. Sweezy's criticism supports an alternative to both the Millsian and the pluralist views of national power: the identification of power with the class that controls income-producing wealth, which he calls the ruling class. This approach—the last of the three theoretical conceptions of power we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter—proposes that Mills' "corporate rich" have largely subordinated competing elites to their will. A ruling class theory of national power has one big advantage. It has a credible answer to the question of internal cohesion: The ruling class is united because its members have well-defined economic interests in opposition to other classes. Mills (1968) never dealt at length with this Marxist line of criticism, although in a breezy reply to critics on the left, he commented, "They want to believe that the corporation and the state are identical. . . . I don't believe it's quite that simple" Mills appears to underestimate the power of wealth because he wants to fit it into a broader conception of elite power.

agrictultural disruption

In agricultural disruption, the other country comes in to see a country is farming, and turn their agricultural growth to a single commodity (pineapples, bananas). Now the land that was once used to feed the poor and their people are pushed off and they start growing a single commodity. They are no longer relying on subsistence farming and have to import their food. It becomes investment intensive, and fewer and fewer people are now needed to grow a greater number of pineapples because of capital intensive agriculture Greater and greater number of people are now in poverty A capital intensive agriculture is productive to produce 1 crop, but, they need less and less people to produce the crop This leads to a heightened poverty rate. In the long term, it disadvantages most of the people

structural mobility

In the race to the top, it helps to start there. This is confirmed by mobility tables, based on recent data that reveal a strong association between the occupations of fathers and sons or daughters. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of intergenerational social mobility. Two thirds of sons, for example, have moved up or down from their fathers' occupational level, and upward mobility is still more common than downward mobility. But when we sharpen our focus and compare the experience of younger men in recent years with an earlier cohort at the same age, we see evidence of stagnating opportunities. The structural change that has fueled mobility in the past is waning. In international comparisons, the U.S. is, at best, average among affluent countries. Many workers feel that they do not have the same opportunities for advancement that their parents enjoyed, and younger people fear that they might never attain the living standard that they grew up with. Especially in periods of economic stagnation, such feelings can turn them against politicians they identify with the status quo.

Jencks on Equality

Jencks and his co researchers integrated new variables, such as son's IQ at age 11, into the analysis to build a grander version of Blau and Duncan's model. They compared the life experience of brothers to get a better sense of the total influence of social origins on life chances. Despite the heroic efforts of the research team to assimilate all relevant information, there was no escaping the randomness in the causal chain that extended from background factors to cognitive ability to education to occupation to earnings. Early factors in the chain didn't do a very good job of predicting later ones. Called this "luck" which annoyed critics By luck was referring to be saying that the course of our lives is just more arbitrary than we care to admit Some of the most interesting conclusions from these studies concern the role of education. the relationship between education and earnings is not smoothly linear but chunky. A year of college is worth more in additional income than a year of high school, and the incremental value of the final year of college leading to a degree is even bigger. The high school years bring a 40 percent increase in dollar earnings over the earning of elementary school graduates, and a college degree brings an increase of almost 50 percent over the earnings of high school graduates. Even when the results are controlled for family background and IQ, the high school diploma yields a 20 percent gain in lifetime income over elementary school completion, and the college degree generates an additional 35 percent over the high school diploma The researchers detected a gradual reduction in the impact of background variables as one gets older. The payoff of higher education (especially for those who stay long enough to get the degree) is almost as great for those from poorer families as for those from more privileged backgrounds. Of course, the latter are much more likely to start life with the resources, especially economic and cultural capital, that will get them into and through college. In the earlier years, then, education is both a reflector of family background and an equalizer that offsets family background, but in the later years, education has more independent influence. In short, we need not accept the colossal inequalities in American society, but we cannot fix them with education. If we want to reduce economic inequality, we must interfere with capitalist markets, so that CEOs earn less and ordinary blue- and white-collar workers earn more. Ironically, economic inequalities have only grown since the Jencks studies were published

The fortunes of sons and daughters

Jencks and three colleagues (Harding et al. 2005) examined the influence of family background on the household incomes of adult sons and daughters their focus on household income (rather than individual earnings) reminds us that income is a product of both the job market and the marriage market. People with advantaged childhoods are more likely to get advanced education and better jobs. They are also more likely to be married and more likely to have a spouse with above average earning potential. For the disadvantaged, obviously, these tendencies are reversed The family background factors they considered include familiar items, like parents' occupation and race, along with two novel ones, Southern origins and the number of siblings. For whatever reasons, growing up in the South and having more siblings negatively affect adult incomes. The other factors are parents' education, Hispanic origin, and intact family. The analysis tells us that the Age of Growing Inequality has not significantly altered the influence of family background on our life chances

Marriage styles

Joint marital relationships focus on companionship and deemphasize the sexual division of labor. segregated marital relationships, there is clear differentiation of concerns and responsibilities, which minimizes the husband's involvement with household matters and the wife's with the world of (the husband's) work. Husband and wife are likely to have distinct leisure pursuits and separate sets of friends. Intermediate marital relationships fall between these two poles. Joint relationships predominate in the upper- middle class (88 percent) and segregated relationships in the lower-lower class (72 percent), while the classes between them exhibit a neat gradient. Reported marital happiness increases with class level, especially for women and this phenomenon is tied to the character of the organization of marital roles. Immediate marital roles are more common with social mobility and cultural differences because couples are exposed to conflicting influences, which may be reflected in intermediate role relationships. Sex-role socialization is another source of class differences in marital role organization. working-class parents are more likely than middle-class parents to hold separate sets of expectations for boys and girls. college-age daughters of working-class fathers are more likely than their middle- class peers to subscribe to traditional sex-role values Boys who are taught to be "manly" in this way are less likely as adults to feel comfortable with joint role relationships in marriage.

Money and politics

Labor unions lobbied hard against the Federal Express provision but were overwhelmed by the company's well-financed efforts. With meager resources, supporters of the estate tax could barely respond to the repeal group with its virtually limitless funding. As we saw earlier in this chapter, resistance to total repeal came from the "merely rich," especially well-organized small business owners, who feared that the 2001 legislation risked the return of heavy estate taxes The Obama-era 2012 measure, was passed under the pressure of a budget crisis. It exempted couples with estates under $10 million—which is to say, all but the wealthiest 1 or 2 percent of the population The Policy and Taxation Group has not surrendered and continues to lobby for full repeal They have the support of President Trump—whose own family has an obvious interest in the issue—according to a tax plan released in the early days of his administration. Business groups were unable to block the efforts to increase the national minimum wage, when Congress returned to Democratic control in 2007. But they retained sufficient influence to extract compensatory tax relief for themselves and resist, for at least a decade, further increases. In mid-2017, the federal minimum wage remained at $7.25, its buying power much eroded by inflation. By delaying increases for long periods, representatives of the capitalist class have made the national minimum wage largely irrelevant most of the time.

Lareau and Child Rearing

Lareau (2003) was interested in class differences in socialization. But Lareau went one step beyond Kohn. In addition to interviewing parents, she and a team of research assistants spent hundreds of hours observing parents and their 9- or 10-year-old children—usually at home, but also during routine activities outside the home. Lareau describes two basic approaches to child rearing, which we can label cultivated growth and natural growth Cultivated growth: hover over their children, scheduling their activities, fostering their talents, reasoning with them, and intervening on their behalf. Upper-middle classes practiced cultivated growth Natural growth: want to provide a safe and stable environment within which they expect the child to develop naturally; they guide their children with clear directives but allow them considerable autonomy in their everyday activities. Working-class & poor families practice natural growth Daily activities: Upper-middle class children spend much of their time with adults or in activities organized by adults. On their own, they are not sue how to use the limited free time they have Working-class and poor children, Lareau finds, lead slower, less structured lives. Much of their time is their own, and unlike their upper-middle-class peers, they have no trouble entertaining themselves— generally in informal play with neighborhood children and cousins. Their parents main concern is providing for their childs safety Language: Upper-middle-class parents, she finds, engage in almost continual conversation with their children when they are together. They are intent on cultivating their child's facility with language. They teach children to express their own views and to believe that their opinions matter. They encourage them to ask questions of other adults and people in authority like teachers and doctors. In upper- middle-class families, language is the main mechanism of discipline. Parents reason with children. Even when issuing directives, they attach reasons to them. And children learn to negotiate with their parents for what they want. When negotiation is, from the children's viewpoint, unsuccessful, they often resort to whining, a tendency that the researchers did not observe with children at lower class levels. Conversation between parents and children in the working-class and poor homes was much less extensive. These parents and children were often silent in each other's company. Working-class and poor parents regard it as their responsibility to shelter, feed, and clothe their children; teach them right from wrong; and comfort them. In these matters, Lareau reports, "language plays an important, practical role" (2003:139). But the parents did not focus on developing their children's language skills. They did not draw out their opinions or expect to be challenged by them. They disciplined their children with short, clear directives—sometimes coupled with physical punishment—which children generally accepted without complaint. Institutions Upper-middle-class parents, Lareau finds, confidently engage institutions, and they teach their children to do the same. They are at ease with teachers, doctors, and others in authority, feeling free to ask questions and make demands, and they expect institutions to respond to their child's individual needs. Working-class and poor parents are, according to Lareau, intimidated by institutions and the professionals who represent them. Mothers who have no difficulty making loud demands on the cable company are subdued in the presence of their child's teacher or doctor. They may not understand the words professionals use and do not feel competent to challenge their expertise

Lareau summary

Lareau suggests that the cultivated growth pattern encourages a sense of entitlement in upper- middle-class children. Having been encouraged to participate in challenging organized activities, to speak freely with adults, to express their own opinions, to ask questions, to negotiate for what they want, and to expect institutions to respond to their needs, these children grow up with an enhanced sense of self-worth. They can be expected to deal confidently with institutions, which they see as sharing their own values. In contrast, the natural growth pattern leads toward what Lareau characterizes as a sense of constraint in working-class and poor children. They have not been encouraged to cultivate formal language skills, to express their own opinions, or to question, challenge, or negotiate with adults. They have less experience than more privileged children with institutions, which they have been taught to regard with distrust. the only class distinction that mattered was the one separating the child-rearing practices of the upper-middle class from those of the two lower classes. Bourdieu, whom Lareau cites as an inspiration for her work, would say that the upper-middle-class children she studied were developing valuable cultural capital, which will serve them well as they move through the education system and into professional and managerial careers beyond. Kohn might add that the very character of upper-middle-class occupations supports the cultivated growth pattern of child rearing, with its self-confident values. Both would agree that class differences in socialization support the reproduction of the class system.

corporate rich

Mills emphasized the growing scale of corporate, government, and military organization and the corresponding concentration of national power in the "corporate rich," top government officials, and the leaders of the military. Much of the criticism of Mills centered on the question of elite cohesion. Do the members of a putative elite act together in pursuit of common objectives and in opposition to other groups? Mills did point to mechanisms that tended to unify the members of his power elite, including similar social backgrounds, shared elite education, association through upper-class society, movement of personnel between elites, and the common experience of managing large organizations. But the pluralists were unconvinced. Where Mills saw one cohesive elite, the pluralists saw many competing veto groups. Our extended examination of the national capitalist class established the following: A small class controls most corporate stock, and although major corporations are typically run by their top executives, the interests of corporate stockholders and top managers are aligned. We therefore consider these executives part of the capitalist class. the national capitalist class has powerful means to shape national politics; these include placement of its members in top decision-making positions, campaign financing, lobbying, creation of policy-planning organizations, exercise of the business-confidence veto, and influence over the public agenda through the mass media. Looking back over the last 3 decades, we concluded that the power of the capitalist class has grown.

Mills: The national power elite

Mills' conception of the national power structure centered on the growing significance of three major interlocking institutions: the modern corporation, the executive branch of the federal government, and the military establishment. He saw each of these institutions enlarging and centralizing power at the national level. A few hundred major corporations were taking the place of thousands of smaller competing firms that had once typified the economy. The federal executive had gathered enormous powers and resources previously nonexistent or scattered among other units of government. The military, once small and decentralized, had developed into a colossal bureaucracy, commanding a war machine of unprecedented scale and destructive power. As the corporations, the federal government, and the military grew, they eclipsed and subordinated other institutions Those who sit at the "commanding heights" of the corporate, political, and military hierarchies make the critical national decisions. Who are they? In the corporations, an amalgam of very rich families with corporate-based fortunes and the ranking executives of the top national corporations (together, Mills calls them "the corporate rich"); in the federal government, the president, vice president, cabinet, heads of major agencies, and members of the White House staff; among the military, the generals and admirals. These three institutional elites together constitute Mills's power elite. Mills conceived the national structure of power as consisting of three tiers Top tier - power elite Bottom tier - Mass society Subject to large-scale national institutions beyond their control or comprehension and misinformed by media that are dominated by national elites, the members of mass society are passive participants in the political system. Middle tier - "middle levels of power" comprising a multitude of competing interest groups from labor unions to the gun lobby, whose typical arena of conflict is the Congress. The middle levels of power are the source of most political news, but they are not, according to Mills, the locus of the most important political decisions only reinforces the dominance of the power elite. The key decisions are, of course, reserved for the power elite.

Mills, his critics, and the problem of elite cohesion

Mills' pluralist critics accused him of assuming what needs to be proven. If his elite was as powerful as Mills claimed, it should be able to impose its policy preferences in national decision-making. But, pluralists noted, Mills had not tested the power of the elite by examining actual decisions. the problem of elite cohesion—that is, the extent to which the members of a hypothesized elite hang together in pursuit of common objectives and in opposition to other groups. Dahl (1967) accused of "confusing a ruling elite with a group that has a high potential for control" To be politically effective, potential for control must be coupled with "potential for unity." Mills' pluralist critics are clearly predisposed to the belief that unity among power contenders is difficult to achieve. , Riesman believed that the country had a ruling class in the past. Early in the history of the republic, the ruling class consisted of the landed gentry and mercantile interests that constituted the Federalist leadership and, later, of captains of industry. But by the 1950s, the ruling class had been supplanted by an amorphous constellation of "veto groups"—organized representatives of specialized interests that included "business groups, large and small, the movie-censoring groups, the farm groups and the labor and professional groups, the major ethnic and major regional groups" (p. 246). The veto groups are distinguished from the powerful of previous eras by their inability to impose their own will. How can any decision be made in such a political context? Is anyone in charge? Riesman's reply was that leadership may be needed to initiate something new or halt something in progress, but little leadership is needed to maintain the status quo. To the extent that anyone exercises power, it is over very specific and narrow issues. Bigger, broader national power is smothered by the action of veto groups. In Mills' view, Riesman was guilty of a mindless empiricism that equated all interest groups and all issues. Banks and organizations representing motorcycle riders are both concerned with national legislation. But to describe them as two veto groups misses the point. Some groups are more important than others because they have powerful resources at their command and because they deal with issues that are more vital to the nation. As we have seen, Mills was only interested in the big economic and national security questions and regarded as trivial most of the other issues that consume the attention of the middle levels of power. But elite cohesion presented a special problem for Mills. He had to demonstrate both that the three distinct elites are internally cohesive and that they are drawn together into a single power elite. Mills did present a series of mechanisms through which elite unity might be achieved. They fall into two categories: social- psychological and structural. The social-psychological mechanisms include similarities in origins, education, career, and lifestyles, which produce "a similar social type" and contribute to ease in informal association He noted that elite men tend to be drawn from upper-class or upper-middle-class, urban, white, Protestant families and that they are likely to be educated in the same Ivy League schools. He found a significant overlap between the world of the power elite and upper-class "society," with its intertwined families, select prep schools, distinctive class values, and conservative notions of style members of the three elites have similar career experiences, even if they do not move through the same institutions. The corporate rich, the "political directorate," and the chiefs of the Pentagon share the experience of managing large organizations. The character of modern bureaucratic life has tended to blur the distinction between leadership in a large corporation, a civilian department of government, and an army. Mills contended that these shared elements of background and career along with the privileges attached to elite position make members of the power elite conscious of the differences between themselves and the rest of the population. They are drawn together and develop a common perspective on the world. The structural mechanisms of cohesion examined by Mills concern the more or less formal connections between institutions One critical link is the interchange of personnel among the three institutions, especially the movement of representatives of the corporate world into and out of top political positions. Another tie between these two is the dependence of political candidates on financing from the corporate rich. The military is closely allied with the corporations, who are its suppliers, while the militaristic foreign policy pursued by the political directorate strengthens its ties to the generals and admirals. Mills points to a series of factors that tend to unify the individual members of the power elite and draw the three major institutional sectors together: common social background, shared lifestyle and values, similar job experience, interchange of personnel, campaign financing, and institutional interdependence. In this chapter, we examine contemporary evidence on most of these topics.

Where does campaign money come from?

Most campaign money comes from business sources, such as individual corporate executives and corporate PACs. As Table 8.2 indicates, business contributions far exceed labor contributions.16 Corporate money has generally favored the Republicans, but never neglected the Democrats

the marriage gap

People at mid-to-lower class levels are now more likely to cohabit, divorce, and have children out of wedlock than are their higher class peers.' a widening "marriage gap" is developing between the well-educated upper-middle class and the rest of the population. college-educated women are more likely to be married and, most notably, that college- educated mothers are at least 20 percent more likely to be married than mothers at lower levels of education.

Blau and Duncan: Analyzing Mobility Models

Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan introduced an innovative methodology for analyzing the complexities of career success and failure. Blau and Duncan depicted career development in formal "path diagrams"—more elaborate versions of our drawings —that became the basis for their statistical analysis of the survey data. Their goal was to sort out the influence of each variable, independent of the others. Path analysis, as this method is called, helped Blau and Duncan conceptualize two key aspects of the problem: chains of causation (father's occupation influences son's education, which in turn, influences son's career prospects) and multiple causal pathways (father's occupation influences son's education and later directly influences his job search) path analysis emphasizes the temporal element in social mobility. Blau and Duncan's analysis dealt sequentially with family background, education, son's first job, and job at the time of the survey, examining the influences operating at each stage. The diagram indicates that both family background and education, as expected, contribute to son's socioeconomic status. It shows direct and indirect (through education) connections between family background and son's SES. The pie graph parcels out responsibility for the result (son's SES) between the background variables and educational achievement in terms of variance explained. 1. Family background through education The main effect of family background (that is, the background variables taken together) is its influence on education, which, in turn, contributes to career success Rich kids get good education, poor kids do not 2. Family background independently Family background also has a smaller, independent effect on son's SES (7 percent). This refers, for example, to the father who uses his connections to help his child find a job or get him into the electricians union, but also to the negative effects of racial discrimination on blacks. 3. Education independently Education has a substantial independent effect (21percent). educational achievement does more than just reflect the privileges or disadvantages of family background. Some rich kids flunk out and lose the career-enhancing benefits of education. Some not- so-rich kids graduate from college and get a big career boost. The family influences on mobility (1 and 2) do not simply reflect the financial advantage of some households over others Paying for college Cultural and social capital Having parents who know about getting into college or having family connections to a social network that can provide job leads are potent career advantages. Parental education and occupation, as we saw in Chapter 5, are good predictors of cultural and social capital. But sometimes, the background variables we use don't quite capture essential aspects of a person's circumstances.

The Fate of Campaign Finance Reform

Political money was at the heart of the Watergate scandals that drove President Nixon from office and sent some of his top advisors to jail. In the wake of these events, a series of reform laws were enacted that imposed strict limits on individual campaign donations to federal candidates and parties; limited the amounts federal candidates could spend; regulated group donations, which had to be made through registered political action committees (PACs); provided for federal financing of presidential campaigns on a matching basis for candidates who accept limits on campaign expenditures; required public disclosure of campaign donations, including the identity of anyone contributing more than $200; and mandated detailed disclosure of campaign expenditures. The legislation prohibited corporations and labor unions from contributing money from their treasuries to political candidates. But they were allowed to use their resources to run PACs that solicit donations from union members, corporate executives, or stockholders. Perhaps the most significant benefit of the new campaign finance laws was transparency: The Watergate reforms allowed the public to see who was contributing to campaigns, how much they were giving, and how the money was being spent. Over time, the efficacy of the Watergate laws has been undermined by a combination of court decisions, artful interpretations by campaign lawyers, and weak enforcement (Garrett 2016). Soon after the laws were enacted, the Supreme Court ruled that the imposition of spending limits on federal candidates was unconstitutional and that candidates could make unlimited donations to their own campaigns More recently, in the 2010 Citizens United decision, the court lifted the century-old ban on contributions made directly from corporate or union treasuries; such contributions could not be constitutionally limited if they were for activities independent of a candidate's campaign organization. That same year, a federal appeals court ruled that contributions to so-called super-PACs, which make independent expenditures on behalf of candidates could not be limited, and in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled that no limit could be placed on the aggregate amount an individual could make to multiple federal candidates.

Dahrendorf Theory - Agreement to Marx

Ralph Dahrendorf is one of the most influential uncritical conflict theorists 1. He agrees that societies must be viewed from the perspective of conflict and differing interests 2. He also believes that Marx was correct to focus on both organized and unorganized group interests 3. He accepts Marx 2 class model The extremes of the 2 class model - there is always superordinate and subordinate classes

policy-planning groups

Similar to the policy groups, both in their functions and their links to the capitalist class, are the major charitable foundations and the policy research "think tanks." Foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, Lilly, and Kellogg (all named for the wealthy families that endowed them) fund research and pilot projects to test policy ideas. Many of the best-known think tanks are clustered in Washington, where they can feed their research findings and policy recommendations to sympathetic politicians, lobbyists, and journalists. Among them are the Brookings Institution, which has particularly influenced Democratic policy makers, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is influential among Republicans. One crucial function of the policy groups, foundations, and think tanks is to back the careers of public policy intellectuals, many of whom are channeled into government positions. Recent years have seen the rise of a group of more explicitly political, public policy organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Center for American Progress.

Children's conception of social class

Simmons and Rosenberg (1971) demonstrated that young children have a clear conception of occupational prestige differences. Tutor (1991) showed first, fourth, and sixth graders photographs of upper-, middle-, and lower-class people. She asked the children to group the adults and children depicted into families and match them with the corresponding pictures of cars and houses. The first graders did substantially better than chance at this task, the sixth graders produced near-perfect scores, and the fourth graders were not far behind. Leahy (1981, 1983) probed the developing conceptions of "poor people" and "rich people" held by children ages 7 to 17. He found that young children conceive of the rich and the poor in overt, physical terms, while older children think in terms of the psychological characteristics of individuals and their positions in society. In general, these studies show that even preschool children are aware of class differences. They suggest that as children grow older, their ideas about stratification become more consistent, abstract, and "accurate." By the time they reach 12 years of age, children are not very different from adults in their thinking about class.

residential segregation

Since the 1970s, according to analyses of U.S. census data, the proportion of families living in distinctively lower income or higher income neighborhoods has increased, as the proportion in middle-income neighborhoods has sunk. in 1970, about two thirds of families lived in middle-income neighborhoods. By the 2000s, the proportion living in such neighborhoods had sunk to a little over 40 percent, as the proportions in higher and lower income neighborhoods expanded. isolation by income level grew most rapidly in the 1980s and 2000s, and that the top 10 percent and bottom 10 percent of income-earning families were notably and increasingly isolated from others. The isolation of the top 10 percent was especially high. Does sorting people into neighborhoods by income matter? Yes, it does. Higher income neighborhoods are likely to have better schools, safer streets, stronger civic organizations, and superior amenities from parks to well-stocked supermarkets. Reardon and Bischoff refer to research demonstrating that living in higher or lower income neighborhoods affects people in ways that go beyond simply being richer or poorer. It matters who your neighbors are. They influence important life outcomes in areas such as health, education, and career prospects. Thus, increasing income segregation is likely to reinforce the growing inequality in American society.

social mobility

Social mobility may be defined as the extent to which people move up or down in the class system, especially from one generation to the next Is our place in the class system merited, or inherited? two perspectives, societal and individual

a new elite?

Sociologist Shamus Khan recently spent a year at an elite New England boarding school, teaching and gathering material for a book. One of the first things he noticed was that students of color and those who overtly identified with the old money elite had literally switched places. He was a student and lived in a segregated dorm. When Khan returned, the minority students were no longer self-segregated, but some members of the old elite were. As Khan makes clear, St. Paul's "is still a place for the already elite" But the tone of the place has changed, and it certainly looks more diverse than it did in the past. Khan's second point has to do with the ideological function of St. Paul's new vision of itself. It justifies the existence of a "New Elite," that claims to be based on merit rather than lineage. In the midst of growing inequality, it provides a seemingly "democratic" basis for the privilege of the privileged. Perhaps the New Elite is not all that new, and St. Paul's is doing what such schools have done in the past, integrating new wealth and old money

circulation mobility

Some privileged members of the second generation might slip down scale and thereby make room for others to climb up. In this instance, mobility is a "zero sum game" based on intergenerational turnover at or near the top.

patterns of association in early life

The class differences in patterns of socialization are reinforced by the tendency of children and adolescents to associate with others of like class background as they are growing up. Because neighborhoods tend to group people of similar economic means, the kids on the block are likely to be of the same social class. Local schools reproduce the class patterns of the neighborhoods they serve. Many upper-class and upper-middle-class families make sure that their children's classmates will be from similar households by buying homes in "better" school districts or sending their children to private schools. As Lareau's research shows, the upper-middle- class pattern of scheduled activities outside of school reinforces class segregation. Large public high schools in some communities bring together students of diverse backgrounds, but they do not necessarily mix freely. Often class differentiation within the school is institutionalized through curricula that separate students on the basis of their academic ability or postgraduation aspirations, which tend to be correlated with social class Students' own preferences contribute to the class patterning of association Like friendship, mate selection is influenced by social class.

The changing distribution of income

The distribution of income has followed a path similar to the distribution of wealth. During the Age of Shared Prosperity, family incomes at all levels were growing at a brisk pace and gradually becoming more equal. After the early 1970s, income growth tapered off, and the fortunes of American families began to diverge. The distribution of income has followed a path similar to the distribution of wealth. During the Age of Shared Prosperity, family incomes at all levels were growing at a brisk pace and gradually becoming more equal. After the early 1970s, income growth tapered off, and the fortunes of American families began to diverge. - FIGURE 4.7 FIGURE 4.7- (1) Income growth was broadly shared in the first period but steeply stratified in the second, and (2) growth was fastest at the bottom in the first period and fastest at the top in the second period. The lines that cut across the two panels represent the growth of the national economy relative to the population (Gross Domestic Product/Capita) in each 25-year period. The first family, in the poorest fifth, sees its income more than double (120 percent growth) in the first period but practically stagnate in the second. The next family, in the middle fifth, undergoes a similar but less dramatic shift from high growth to slow growth. The third family, in the privileged top 5 percent, finds moderate gains in the first period and a doubling of income in the second

social mobility of women

The one conclusion that we can confidently draw from this table is that women's occupational attainment, like men's, is powerfully influenced by class origins For example, 54 percent of the daughters of upper white-collar men hold a broad range of managerial and professional jobs, including doctors and lawyers but also teachers and nurses. 1 In contrast, daughters of lower manual workers are more likely to hold clerical, sales, technical, and service jobs, and a significant minority hold unskilled blue-collar jobs, most typically as factory workers. But there is also ample evidence of social mobility in the table. For example, a third of the daughters of lower manual men have managerial or professional occupations.

Changing tax rates

The trend toward greater income inequality since the 1970s was magnified by regressive changes in the federal tax system. In general, rates have come down for households at all levels, but the reductions have been most dramatic for the wealthiest. The top tax rate on personal income (the top bracket or marginal rate)10 plunged from 77 percent to as little as 28 percent. Corporate and inheritance taxes, whose main effects are felt by the wealthy, were also reduced. At the same time, payroll taxes, paid largely by lower- and middle-income workers, were jacked up. The one change that ran against the generally regressive tide was the Earned Income Tax Credit, described earlier, which was designed to help the working poor While federal taxes have tended downward for taxpayers at all income levels, state and local taxes have been rising. The general conclusion from the analysis is that the overall tax system remained progressive—people at the top pay more. But the biggest tax cuts have gone to the wealthy, so that over the 30-year period, the system became less progressive.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Think of it as a bank, only in this bank, the members are country not people Why? High interest rates Countries of the world want to join the IMF Many of these poor countries want to join it because once they are a member they can take out loans I'm a small country who wants to join the IMF... so they see if I meet the criteria Can become a member of the bank once they meet this criteria First they must pay a token fee which is a certain percentage of the gross domestic product Then, the IMF gives the greenlight to the rest of the world that the country wants to do business Countries begin to do business with the IMF because they know it is safe They take out loans If you don't pay off loan we cut them off of the international economy

Informal association among adults

Warner considered patterns of association so critical to understanding the class system that he sometimes appeared to define class in terms of association. A social class, he suggested, is a group of people who belong to the same social cliques, intermarry, dine in each other's homes, and belong to the same organizations. social clique as "an intimate nonkin group," with no more than 30 members most cliques brought together people of the same or adjacent classes patterns of association are shaped by social class—though association is also influenced by factors that cut across class lines, including gender, race, age, religion, and shared interests. people at higher class levels (1) have more friends and more active social lives; (2) are less likely to preserve friendships from their youth; (3) spend proportionately less time with relatives; (4) are more likely to entertain friends at home and, in particular, to host dinner parties; (5) are more inclined toward couple-oriented social activities; (6) are more likely to develop (nonromantic) cross-sex friendships; and (7) are more likely to mix career and social life. From Bourdieu's perspective, these generalizations, taken together, suggest that people at higher class levels accumulate greater social capital. daily life is structured in ways that limit the opportunities to develop social ties across class boundaries. Money and propinquity (physical/social proximity) Beyond money and propinquity are a series of more subtle factors—matters of prestige, style, interests, values, and comfort level, which Bourdieu would place under the broader heading of cultural capital.

The national capitalist class: economic basis

We defined the capitalist class as consisting of people who receive most of their income from invested wealth. Although such people exist at virtually all income levels, only at very high levels does dependence on income derived from wealth become the predominant pattern. A traditional division within the capitalist class is that between local and national capitalists. The national capitalists are those who own or manage major national corporations; Mills collectively dubbed them "the corporate rich." The locals are affluent but community- oriented businesspeople, such as local media owners, real estate investors, car dealers, and other large retailers. In recent decades, this distinction has become less meaningful. Heirs to large local fortunes have tended to convert them into diversified national wealth. The community banks, newspapers, and other enterprises owned by their families are often sold to national corporations. wealth—especially corporate wealth—is highly concentrated in the United States. The richest 10 percent of households own 90 percent of corporate stock and mutual fund shares. Within this stratum of wealth holders, the top 1 percent of all households hold about half of stock and fund shares, 63 percent of bond investments, and 63 percent of equity in private businesses By the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were a few hundred individuals worth more than a billion dollars, thousands of households with net worths in excess of $100 million, and more than 2 million with net worths over $10 million (Bernstein and Swan 2007:331-360; Frank 2007:8). Some of these fortunes were rooted in earlier periods, but most probably originated in the 1980s and especially the 1990s, extraordinary years of private wealth accumulation. Surprisingly few—only 10 percent of those with fortunes over $10 million—inherited their money, according to one survey Many people with net worths of a few million dollars are not members of the capitalist class. Rather, they can be counted among the working rich, —highly successful professionals, salespeople, executives, and small-business owners, whose incomes depend more on their jobs than their assets. But among those worth over $25 million, both working rich and inheritors are rare. Instead, many of these very rich are typically entrepreneurs, founders of large enterprises, who have built up their private fortunes by offering stock in their firms to the public or selling them to larger companies Why the decline in old-money listings? In part, because of the normal dynamics of family fortunes. The founder (a John D. Rockefeller or a Jeffrey Bezos) accumulates enormous wealth, often in a breakthrough period of national economic dynamism. The money is divided among the heirs, who may not be as talented and, having inherited great wealth, have no need to be as ambitious. Even if it is well managed, after two or three generations the family fortune is sufficiently dispersed that no individual has sufficient net worth to claim a place among the Forbes 400 But the abruptness of the drop-off in old-money listings in recent years suggests something more: A renewal of the capitalist class toward the end of the twentieth century, when the stability of the class, which lasted through the middle decades of the century, was upset by the sudden influx of new fortunes based on new sources of wealth. In 1950, shortly before the publication of The Power Elite, the 100 largest U.S. industrial corporations (among nearly 200,000) already controlled approximately 40 percent of all industrial assets; by the 1990s, their share had grown to 75 percent Mills observed that even the largest personal fortunes were small, relative to the assets concentrated in large corporations. Economic power, he contended, belonged to those who controlled the corporations. But who controls the corporations? Mills' answer, as we have seen, was "the corporate rich": top corporate executives and extremely wealthy families like the Fords with substantial stakes in major corporations. But as major corporations have grown larger, their stock has become more dispersed, and their relationship to even the largest stockholders has grown more distant. The biggest corporations have hundreds of thousands of stockholders; individual holdings of even 5 percent (enough to give the owner significant influence over management) are uncommon. Many wealthy families have sought to reduce the risks to their fortunes by spreading investments across different corporations and sectors of the economy. Today, owners are rarely seen at the helm of major corporations.

three perspectives on power (elite, class, & pluralist)

We may define power as the potential of individuals or groups to carry out their will even over the opposition of others. Here we focus on issues of national power, beginning with an examination of three competing theoretical perspectives: elite, class, and pluralist. Elite perspective: makes a sharp distinction between an organized minority (the elite) that rules and an unorganized majority that is ruled. Elite theories often focus on specific institutional bases of power. Class perspective: has its origins in Marxist theory, also focuses on a ruling minority, but class theory is more specific about the identity of the rulers and the structure that creates them: They are the owners of productive wealth, the capitalist class. Pluralist perspective: denies that power is concentrated in one group. It maintains that, in democratic societies, there are multiple bases of power representing the interests of competing groups, so that no minority can easily impose its will.

How wealth is measured

Wealth is measured in two ways: gross assets and net worth. Gross assets: the total value of the assets someone owns. Net worth: the value of assets owned minus the amount of debt owed. The average net worth of the middle fifth of households is only $68,100. The average of the bottom 40 percent of households is actually negative—that is, their debts exceed the value of whatever they own.

When your country's currency increases in value, what is the price you pay for in value?

Your countries value is increasing, imports are coming in, you can buy more imports Then, the price of exports are more expensive because your currency is increasing value When the price of oil goes down what happens to your currency? It's going to go down

Marx - how does change happen

conflict, change, struggle, & tension - change comes through struggle

Domhoff - who rules america? "class theory"

he begins by examining a specific economic elite, the directors of major corporations. (A corporation's board of directors, as he explains, is its legal governing body, typically composed of officers of the company and so-called outside directors.) Domhoff analyzed the interlocks among the directors of almost 2,000 large corporations and concluded that they link firms in a network he labels the corporate community. The average firm had 6.1 interlocks with others. Domhoff's analysis revealed an elite within the elite—15 percent to 20 percent of directors who sit on multiple corporate boards. These individuals tend to be associated with the largest corporations. They are also likely to be on the boards of nonprofit organizations, to participate in business leadership organizations, and to assume government positions. They are, concludes Domhoff, the "inner circle" of the corporate community. The next step in Domhoff's argument is his claim that the corporate community is "closely intertwined with the upper class" (2006:49). He is referring to the upper class in a social rather than economic sense. Here his evidence is stale. The third piece in Domhoff's theory is corporate participation, through funding and membership on relevant boards, in the same foundations and policy organizations that also interest Dye. Although the information he presents is dated, it is likely that these ties continue to be significant since such organizations need corporate financing and their work is of continuing interest to the corporate elite. Domhoff illustrates the relationship among the corporate community, the social upper class, and the policy-formation organizations with a diagram consisting of three, modestly overlapping circles. Within this universe of partially overlapping groups, he defines what he calls "the power elite" as those who sit on the boards of corporations, the boards of corporate-controlled policy organizations, or both. Members of the upper class are only part of this power elite if they also fall into one of these categories. The power elite, suggests Domhoff, "provides a leadership basis for the exercise of power on behalf of the owners of all large income-producing properties . . . those who have a stake in maintaining the current wealth and income distributions"

Blue-Collar Marriages and Middle-Class Models

marital norms filtering down from the upper-middle class were creating enormous strains in blue-collar marriages. Segregated marriages, wife makes dinner and takes care of kids, dad isn't very involved Not sure what the other wants Workingg-class women in these studies were very dissatisfied but also frightened and confused and occasionally given to wondering whether asking a man to be more than a conscientious provider is indeed asking too much. A second aspect of blue-collar marriage was under strain in the 1970s: sexual adjustment en were more open to change. The blue-collar workers Rubin interviewed wanted freer, more expressive, more mutually satisfying sexual relationships with their wives The most obvious change for working-class couples in the 1980s and 1990s was economic. Wives were much more likely to work and to do so full time. The idea that working men could and should support their families by themselves and that women's wages were merely supplementary had become untenable. Rubin found that the teenage daughters of the working-class women she had originally interviewed in the 1970s were in no rush to marry. Their mothers had typically wed right out of high school. The daughters told Rubin that they expected to marry "someday," but first they wanted to work, to live on their own, to travel, and experience the world.

Kohn: class & socialization

parents at higher-class levels were more likely to choose "curiosity" lower-class levels were more likely to select "obedience" Families were assigned to classes on the basis of the father's occupation researchers found that mothers' value preferences for children reflected their husbands' occupations also observed that the class patterning of parental values could be strengthened or diluted according to the occupations of employed mothers mothers with manual jobs were much more likely to conform to the working-class value pattern than were mothers with white-collar jobs The middle-class parents stress the values of self-control, curiosity, and consideration are cultivating capacities for self-direction and empathetic understanding of others in their children The working-class parents who focus on obedience, neatness, and good manners are instilling behavioral conformity The middle-class pattern particularly in the emphasis laid on happiness, curiosity, and consideration—is oriented toward the internal dynamics of the person, both the child and others The working-class pattern on the other hand, assumes fixed external standards of behavior the first (middle class): choice favors internal development second (working class): emphasizes conformity to external rules or authority. . Parents were asked about the specific sorts of misbehavior for which they would discipline their children... middle-class parents more likely to punish a child for the intent of her or his behavior working-class mothers more likely to discipline for the consequences of behavior

Who goes to college

the income gap between the high school and college educated is growing students from families in the top income quartile are more likely to attend and much more likely to complete a college degree. The most obvious reason for the big class differences in college attendance and completion is that college is expensive and getting more so. Another is the home advantage available to upper-middle-class students. Their parents have likely been to college and, as we saw in Chapter 5, know how to help them prepare for successful college careers.

cherlin: the disappearing work-class family

the working-class family is threatened with extinction. Cherlin first focuses on the traditional working-class family that Rubin and LeMasters described in the 1970s: a married couple and children, with the husband employed as a skilled or semi-skilled worker in manufacturing, construction, or some related sector, and the wife wholly or largely devoted to home and family. This kind of breadwinner-homemaker family was the predominant domestic form among working-class people during the postwar years we have called the Age of Shared Prosperity Cherlin attributes the decline of the working-class family to a combination of economic and cultural factors. The key economic element is the shrinking number of blue-collar jobs, especially in manufacturing, that would allow a high school graduate with limited skills to support a family Jobs in the service sector where many unskilled young men find employment today are typically low paid, subject to frequent layoffs, provide few benefits, and offer limited opportunities for advancement. men in such positions are unlikely to be married. The obvious cultural factor is the broad shift in attitudes surrounding gender roles, extra-marital childbirth, and cohabitation Most Americans no longer think, as they once did, that the breadwinner-homemaker model is ideal. They no longer believe that out-of-wedlock childbirth or cohabitation are shameful. Ironically, the one thing that has not changed is the high value young adults at all class levels place on marriage. For working-class men and women, especially, marriage is a capstone event, an ultimate life accomplishment. It requires, they believe, a strong emotional bond and a secure economic base. But they also want children and are unwilling to delay childbearing until marriage as they envision it is possible. Pregnancy is not a good reason to get married Cherlin points to an extensive literature showing that children living with this kind of domestic instability are prone to problem behaviors and cognitive deficiencies (p. 167). In contrast, children of the college-educated upper- middle class are usually growing up in a more stable domestic environment, which has changed little since 1980. Here again the Age of Growing Inequality favors the upper-middle class over those at lower-class levels.