¶ … Holly Sklar writes, "the gulf between the rich and the rest of America will continue to widen, weakening our economy and our democracy. The American Dream will be history instead of poverty."
With the advent of more billions into the ranks of the Fortune 400, so it is; instead of witnessing the booming middle class that marked the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, America is undergoing a transformation that more clearly limns the demarcation between classes than ever before.
With economic segregation an ever more encroaching reality, the distinctions between race, age, and gender come increased under review as Americans are forced to examine the origins of social class, its solidification in early childhood, and its place in the national life.
In academic circles, social class describes the relationships between individual agents and groups as they struggle through social hierarchies. Weber famously defined the social stratification as a three-component theory frequently adopted my sociocultural scientists. Weber viewed class as the composite of three distinct elements, the economic relationship of an individual to the market, his or her status in regards to non-economic capital like educational attainment, and political affiliation. By strict construct, he assumes these factors are unrelated, but inevitably, they play an important and intrinsic role in defining each other; for example, the educational levels of the elite extend beyond the free education provided by the government; without the financial ability to afford it, it is out of one's reach.
The glass ceiling that pervades American life defines not only one's education, but all of the aspects of one's place in, relation to, and understanding of social class. In the capitalist marketplace, these correlations are more exaggerated and play a more defining role in everyday life. Louis Breindeis argues that this dynamic undermines the egalitarian precepts of a democracy. "You can have wealth in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both."
Collins and Yeskel purport that the recent atrocities in the Gulf Coast bring the issue of social class and its national construction and relevance to the forefront of concern. As the horror of Katrina and ensuing flood wiped the poor out of New Orleans, the financial distinctions between those who could afford to escape and those who had little choice but to stay became clear to almost all Americans right away.
The thousands of poor who lost their homes, jobs, schools, and American Dreams of independence were only a portion of those nationwide who are among the booming working poor, whose separation from the billionaire CEOs at the top is becoming more exaggerated by the day.
The development of the economic inequality picture is the result of monetary policies, budget decisions, wage-setting practices, corporate and governmental benefit opportunities, and business regulations. All of these economic factors combine to make a national atmosphere in which the cash flow to the most needy is truncated, the housing market increases its costs, education affordability decreases, and low-wages face little buffer in the face of friendly government relations with big business. As the money to the top rises, the middle, lower, and working classes get squeezed out.
While America fosters a position that supports all its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable, millions of children are born into poverty each year. Growing up, they do not get to ride brand new bikes for their birthday; many do not even have the luxury reserved by the upper classes to attend a safe elementary school. Like Pharoah and Lafayette Rivers, children born into the heartbreaking poverty that exists on American soil grow up seeing two worlds: the one where neighborhoods are not subsidized by governments, where criminals do not dominate their inner-city homes with murders, where cartoons are not interrupted by gunshots; and, by contrast, those that are.
"There are no children here," their mother explains, "they've seen too much to be children."
The Rivers boys grew up in the Chicago ghetto, in a family of six with a largely absent father. Their nearly-single mother struggles to provide some semblance of a normal home life for her children, but the criminality and pathology that pervades her inner-city neighborhood deprives the children of the innocence those not financially disadvantaged witness. While critiques of the welfare-system purport that children like these have every opportunity to make use of the American education system to attain their dreams, the very fundamentals of their life are put into a different light that would prevent the...
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