Another Sociology Post, this one about Social Stratification.
Social stratification is a very real part of our common societal life in the USA (notice how I didn't say "America", most other Americans (those in Central and South America) think that we in the USA are quite presumptive to call ourselves "Americans" as if we are the only country allowed to use that term).
There are varying ideologies used to "justify" why there are different levelsof stratification (classes, if you will) in our society. The most pervasive (and mostly incorrect) ideology is that somehow the poor are responsible for their lot in life. There can be some truth to almost anything written about anything (take steroetypes as an example), but where this becomes perverse is when it completely places the blame on a victim for something that they have had little if any control over.
Just yesterday I read an article linked from tompaine.com (the common sense source for news) that made a strong case for labels and how the republican party has been so successful in creating labels and telling stories. It makes the point that the democrats have not been "driving their car" or they have been "asleep at the wheel" because they have alllowed the republicans to try and place society into their neat perverse categories. It asks them why can't they (the democrats)label the things going on at the higher levels of poltical and corporate reality as for what they really are: taxing wage instead of wealth (the poor will pay a very large share of their income based on a national sales tax than the rich); the rape of the environment for short term (if any) economic gain (ANWR); massive corporate welfare by the promotion of offshore tax shelters and the shielding of CEOs from litigation related to their malfeasance; and finally, the gross negligence when it comes to social policy especcially in the way that they are bankrupting public education with unfunded mandates, putting the very real possibility of poverty back into being elderly, and doing nothing to stem the disproportionate share of income to health care cost that have risen several times the increase in living expenses each year. (soapbox off).
The same ideologues tend to portray the poor as deserving of where the find themselves. This is especially evident in the passage three weeks ago of new law that dramtically reduces the average person's ability to use bankruptcy to avoid immediate poverty and the loss of the home (esp. due to exorbitant medical bills) all the while giving the rich the continued ability to establish and maintain "asset trusts" to sheild their assets during bankruptcy.
The typical ideology of citizens of the USA does not accurately portray the reality that majority of the poor find themselves in. The society in the USA has created the conditions that enabled poverty to exist and to be widespread. My prediction (anyone who is redaing this, mark my words) is that this year (or very soon) the USA will come into a real economic crisis based on the unchecked growth of medical costs as well as the fast rise of the cost of energy (just today the spineless senators voted to allow oil drilling on ANWR (which at best could give us 6 months of oil- 10 years from now - no benefit for at least 10 years)even when proper conservation and promotion of fuel efficency can save that much and more oil every year). At the end of last year (2004) the president wrote into law that medicare cannot negotiate drug prices - something that every single health care plan in the world can do - essentially making us the taxpayers (and seniors)pay retail for drugs instead of negotiated volume discounts. These are just a few of the reasons that many of the poor find themselves in their state of poverty. (P.S. by no means am I a liberal, just one with a social conscience)
What approach would be best to describe what I wrote above? In the examples I gave above I think it would be the conflict analysis; essentially reaffirming what Marx and some of Weber wrote about the capitalists owning things and being moneyed while the people trade their labor for wages. Also, society allows stratification because the people are easier to manage that way. Orwell's "1984" (or was it Huxley's "Brave New World") takes the idea of stratification to the extreme by breeding people for their place in society and forcing endogamy.
If one were to take a discerning look at what is actually occuring in our society today, they will see that our society is becoming inceasingly engineered to be two classes - the rich and everybody else. In fact, the middle class is a creation of governments to benfit cosumption, standards of living, and society as a whole. Without the intervention of government, there would be no middle class, The extinction of the middle class will be the eventual result of the the economic processes being put in place now and in the past few years. We already know that for all of the lower class, and much of the middle class, their hold on their econimc position is tenuous at best, with something that used to be more benign such as a job loss or medical bill, now being able to plunge someone from the middle class into poverty. So much for the "Social Compact".
Social stratification is a very real part of our common societal life in the USA (notice how I didn't say "America", most other Americans (those in Central and South America) think that we in the USA are quite presumptive to call ourselves "Americans" as if we are the only country allowed to use that term).
There are varying ideologies used to "justify" why there are different levelsof stratification (classes, if you will) in our society. The most pervasive (and mostly incorrect) ideology is that somehow the poor are responsible for their lot in life. There can be some truth to almost anything written about anything (take steroetypes as an example), but where this becomes perverse is when it completely places the blame on a victim for something that they have had little if any control over.
Just yesterday I read an article linked from tompaine.com (the common sense source for news) that made a strong case for labels and how the republican party has been so successful in creating labels and telling stories. It makes the point that the democrats have not been "driving their car" or they have been "asleep at the wheel" because they have alllowed the republicans to try and place society into their neat perverse categories. It asks them why can't they (the democrats)label the things going on at the higher levels of poltical and corporate reality as for what they really are: taxing wage instead of wealth (the poor will pay a very large share of their income based on a national sales tax than the rich); the rape of the environment for short term (if any) economic gain (ANWR); massive corporate welfare by the promotion of offshore tax shelters and the shielding of CEOs from litigation related to their malfeasance; and finally, the gross negligence when it comes to social policy especcially in the way that they are bankrupting public education with unfunded mandates, putting the very real possibility of poverty back into being elderly, and doing nothing to stem the disproportionate share of income to health care cost that have risen several times the increase in living expenses each year. (soapbox off).
The same ideologues tend to portray the poor as deserving of where the find themselves. This is especially evident in the passage three weeks ago of new law that dramtically reduces the average person's ability to use bankruptcy to avoid immediate poverty and the loss of the home (esp. due to exorbitant medical bills) all the while giving the rich the continued ability to establish and maintain "asset trusts" to sheild their assets during bankruptcy.
The typical ideology of citizens of the USA does not accurately portray the reality that majority of the poor find themselves in. The society in the USA has created the conditions that enabled poverty to exist and to be widespread. My prediction (anyone who is redaing this, mark my words) is that this year (or very soon) the USA will come into a real economic crisis based on the unchecked growth of medical costs as well as the fast rise of the cost of energy (just today the spineless senators voted to allow oil drilling on ANWR (which at best could give us 6 months of oil- 10 years from now - no benefit for at least 10 years)even when proper conservation and promotion of fuel efficency can save that much and more oil every year). At the end of last year (2004) the president wrote into law that medicare cannot negotiate drug prices - something that every single health care plan in the world can do - essentially making us the taxpayers (and seniors)pay retail for drugs instead of negotiated volume discounts. These are just a few of the reasons that many of the poor find themselves in their state of poverty. (P.S. by no means am I a liberal, just one with a social conscience)
What approach would be best to describe what I wrote above? In the examples I gave above I think it would be the conflict analysis; essentially reaffirming what Marx and some of Weber wrote about the capitalists owning things and being moneyed while the people trade their labor for wages. Also, society allows stratification because the people are easier to manage that way. Orwell's "1984" (or was it Huxley's "Brave New World") takes the idea of stratification to the extreme by breeding people for their place in society and forcing endogamy.
If one were to take a discerning look at what is actually occuring in our society today, they will see that our society is becoming inceasingly engineered to be two classes - the rich and everybody else. In fact, the middle class is a creation of governments to benfit cosumption, standards of living, and society as a whole. Without the intervention of government, there would be no middle class, The extinction of the middle class will be the eventual result of the the economic processes being put in place now and in the past few years. We already know that for all of the lower class, and much of the middle class, their hold on their econimc position is tenuous at best, with something that used to be more benign such as a job loss or medical bill, now being able to plunge someone from the middle class into poverty. So much for the "Social Compact".
posted by Mark at 4:32 PM
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