Social Stratification Sociology

“A man can be rich, but only a nation can be wealthy. And if anyone suffers from poverty, our whole country bears the shame.” (Mosley para. Intro) In the article “Show Me the Money” by Walter Mosley, he talks about the three economic classes, who makes up these classes, and what defines them. The upper class, middle or working class, and the poor or poverty class. Where does all the money the rich get come from? It comes from the blood, sweat, and tears of the working middle class.

American history is built on affairs regarding freedom and equality, but negative issues thought to be conquered in the past have also become present day problems. When confronting controversial social, economic, and political topics in America today, the line between fact and opinion blurs. People across the country develop their own views on national issues, based only on personal experience and what the media tells them. Whether it be intention or ignorance, Americans are not supplied with enough information to accurately confront the major, national problems that lie just inside this country’s borders. Americans are unaware of slavery and socioeconomic issues that exist around them, which in turn presents a concern when trying to combat

Living wage reflects what income required for a household to meet their basic needs, once government transfers have been added to the family's income and deductions have been subtracted.

Wealth gaps in America is something that people do not know much about causing them to not realize how severe it is getting. In America, the top 10% of people (the very rich) are holding 50-80% of the wealth. This statistic is very scary and hard to grasp. Another scary fact is that the top 1% of the population holds around 35% of the United States net worth. People may ask what do these facts mean? They mean that the wealth gaps in America are getting further apart. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The wealth gaps in the social classes in the United States are getting worse because the haves and have nots are widening, the American dream is getting harder to do, the rich are taking more of the pie and, income inequality is on a record high.

I believe social classes have defined our society in many ways. In America, they separate people into three different classes: the upper class, middle class, and the lower or working class. Based on wealth and various occupations, social classes determine the population’s status in society. Social classes today define individuals and influence their actions. Although people born in a certain class may choose to stay there, they also have the choice of leaving. I think heritage, circumstances, and choices all define a person’s social class.

Money is the king of everything and everyone. It controls everyone on this planet. Money is power and can change the minds of everyone. No one is safe from its influence. It has the power to make things and to remove those things from existence. This is shown in The Great Gatsby. It shows how much of an influence money has. I turned a nobody into a somebody. It changes the social status of people. It can also diminish social status. The social mobility of people in the 1920s was controlled by money.

In America after World War Two, citizens were split between classes based on their economic stability. Americans today still look at these classes and define these people as better off or worse off than the next person. Why do people judge others for having less money than them? Why do employers send lower class citizen away when they need the money the most? These are some question that citizens in the lower or middle class have when they are looking at their position in America’s economic system. Research shows that lower class citizens face more hardships to better their lives than those who are more stable.

People are destined to be ranked into a social class. Social class is something, which one is born into, and this class cannot be changed. These classes begin with the low, middle, and high classes. Each class has different tiers, such as upper middle class or lower middle class.

Social class groups individual persons into class hierarchy which is determined by person’s income, education, wealth, social connection, and job profession. Social class classifies people into spectrum of class such as lower class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, and upper class. Depending on which class an individual falls in affects earnings, education, respect, success, status, family life, health, job occupation, and social connection. An individual that lies in higher part of class spectrum gets more opportunities and has better lives than an individual that lies in lower part of class spectrum that does not get opportunities and struggles in lives. The amount of money

Social classes are quite the weird topic to discuss in society. It’s basically saying who is “superior” to who when it comes to talking about wealth, position, or pretty much anything in life. Homeless people are looked down upon for being poor, not dressing properly, and being unkempt, these kind of people are in the lower class. The class above that is the working class, which consists of people with a minimized amounts of education and jobs that don’t provide the good paychecks or the jobs are very dangerous, which means that the bad outweighs the good in this case. Then there’s the middle class, which consists of jobs that pay decent to good money, but not enough money to make them the cream of the crop since the upper class compromises of the rich, which only ranges from 1 to 3% of the U.S population.

According to the textbook of Introduction to sociology, a social class is defined as a social ranking according to the economic position in which achieved characteristics can influence social mobility. Sociologist Daniel Rossides describes five social class: the upper class, the upper-middle class, the lower middle class, the working class and the lower class. Social class is decided by achieved and ascribed characteristics, and we can change our class by achieved work. Social class has powerful impacts on a person’s life. Ascribed characteristics (like race, age, family composition, gender) decides the one’s class. For example, generally, high class family’s children have high social class. Family under female householders are poorer than male householders. Education, job opportunities, health, family life, political participation are influenced by social class. The people from lower class family face hard time staying in primary education, when people from high class family easily get the

Social stratification is described as “inequalities among individuals and groups within human societies. (Giddens, Duneier, Applebaum, Carr, p. 194)” In this reading, social stratification is displayed by the means of living from the aspects of individuals subsiding in Jefferson County, Alabama. Jefferson

This class inequality is the reality that there are unequal opportunities and rewards granted to different social positions and statuses within a group or a society. Generally, there are four different levels of social class; the Capitalist Class, the Middle Class, the Working Class, and the Underclass. Social class inequality exists due to multiple key contributors including power, occupational prestige, schooling, ancestry, and race and ethnicity. Concerning one’s personal economic circumstance, income is the earnings from work or investments that they make annually, while wealth is their overall total value of money and other assets minus debts. David Croteau and William Hoynes, the authors of the Experience Sociology textbook, brief upon their opinion of the relationship between social class inequality and how parent’s social class status eventually influences and ascends down to their children’s potential social

When taking a look into the society I call myself a part of; it can be placed into three perspectives. The three theoretical perspectives we may live in are; Structural Functionalism, Conflict Theory, and Symbolic Interactionism. The world may be a place where we all live congenial among each other with open arms and helping hands guiding us with structural functionalism. Rather, then live in harmony with everyone we may be in a world filled with greed and power

Social classes are a form of social stratification that refers to the existence of structured inequalities between individuals and groups in society. A social class is a group of people of comparable status, power and wealth which are usually classified as upper class, middle class, and lower class. For each class, there are some specific opportunities available that influence their social life. We can understand about the particularity of the chances through unequal distribution of these opportunities between individuals in social classes. In here belonging to a social class seems to be an obstacle for some individuals to obtain equal opportunity, unlike upper class people. Therefore, in a stratified society, the individual’s opportunities are always determined by his or her social class. In this essay, I will be arguing that even though mobility exists in the social class system, the opportunity to change status is relatively open for everyone but the distribution of opportunities among the members of a social class is not relatively equal to all. I will demonstrate this point by showing how participation of an individual in a specific social class will decide the opportunities in terms of attaining education and achieving a well-paid job.