Soc 101 free response answers

A politician recently said: “The American Dream is real. In the U.S., every child is born with the same opportunities for economic success.” How would Robert Reich (in the film Inequality for All) critique this statement? In support of your answer: a) Describe the social structural realities discussed in the film. OR b) Describe the “model of society” Reich offers. Is it more in line with Marx’s model or Weber’s model? Explain each model and defend your opinion with examples from the film.



· Robert Reich would disagree with this statement for he believes the economic and social consequences that arise from the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. The richer are getting richer and the poorer and getting poorer.

· The model of society Reich offers is one that makes retail, restaurant, hospital, hotel, childcare, and eldercare jobs that pay very little pay more. No one that works full time should be in poverty. He also wants to unionize low wage workers because they need more bargaining power to secure a fair share of gain from economic growth. He wants to also invest more in education because high quality education should be freely available to all and not to only those that can afford/attain it.

· This aligns with Weber theory than Marx theory.

· In marx theory, social structure is all about position in the economic structure, and social class is the relationships to means of production. Means of production is the system by which goods are produced and distributed. This produces 2 level of social classes: the powerful capitalist class that owns/controls means of production and the poor working class that does labor for others. The capitalist class has power to control resources and work the system to benefit them. Elite children mix at elite schools. This goes against Reich’s ideas because in this model, the rich get richer, and the poor class is powerful and have little chance of changing their class. Also here education is very divided, unlike Reich’s ideas that make education a public resource for all.

In the weber theory, he introduces multidimensional ranking because social stratification has 3 dimensions of Class, Status, and Power which produces an economic group, a status group, and a party group. A composite ranking based on various dimensions of social inequality is called socio-economic status.


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