Question

Read The American Class System: Pages 54-77, 96-98, 105-107, and read over the Power Elite lecture (https://berkeley.courseload.com/#/content-42456/address/75)

1) Explain the growing social inequality in the United States. Focus on 2 reasons why this gap exists and why this inequality is predicted to grow. Support your claims with examples from the readings.

2) Read over the Mill’s Power Elite and Domhoff’s Governing Class. Show in 3 ways how the power elite leverages power over the government and society, use aspects of the readings in your response.

3) Watch the following TED TALK:http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html In your own words explain what happens in a society when there is too much inequality between the wealthy and poor (such as our society.) Drawing from the Ted Talk, how can we fix poverty?

Answer 1

Social inequality states the relational processes in the society that effect the harming the social status, socialclass, & the social circle.Areas of social inequality add access to voting rights, freedom of speech & assembly, the extent of property rights &access to education, health care, quality housing, traveling, transportation, vacationing & also seen in the quality of family & neighbourhood life , occupation job satisfaction & other social goods and services.

In case these economic divisions harden, then it can lead to social inequality&the reasons for social inequality can vary,Social inequality can emerge through a society's understanding of appropriate gender roles, &can also be established through discriminatory legislation.

Social inequalities exist between ethnic or religious groups, classes and countries making the concept of social inequality a global phenomenon.Social inequality is different from economic inequality,

Social inequality states to disparities in the distribution of economic assets & income as well as between the overall quality & luxury of each person's existence within a society Economic inequality is caused by unequal accumulation of wealth, social inequality exists because the lack of wealth in certain areas ,as people from obtaining the same housing, health care, as the wealthy, in societies where access to these social goods depends on wealth.

Social inequality is also linked to racial inequality, gender inequality, & wealth inequality.

The gap exists because of  Economic inequality , wealth inequality, or the wealth gap. The issue of economic inequality is relevant to notions of equity, equality of outcome, & equality of opportunity. THEREFORE INEQUALITY IS PREDICTED TO GROW MORE.

ANS 2)According to Mills, the eponymous "power elite" are those that occupy the dominant positions, in the dominant institutions of a dominant country, , "the underlying populations of the world." The institutions which they head, Mills posits, are a triumvirate of groups that have succeeded weaker predecessors: (1) "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy, (2) a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure," and (3) the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain."

ANS 3)  Widening income inequality is the defining challenge of our time. In advanced economies, the gap between the rich and poor is at its highest level in decades. Education is the key: a lack of investment in education by the poor is the main factorbehind inequality hurting growth.