Chapter 11 ‘Logics of Class Analysis’ _ Justin Chou E.C.

The second half of chapter 11 of L&C ‘Logics of Class Analysis’ by Erik Wright discusses different methods of observing class inequality. Wright states that different causal mechanisms such as individual attributes, opportunity hoarding, and exploitation can affect social inequality. The author aims to present the reader with a synthesis of different ideas by illustrating an overarching understanding of social relationships.

The first of the three causal mechanisms (individual attributes and life conditions) is a method of describing an individual’s life experiences, and resources; one’s level on the social hierarchy is largely determined by the class he was born into. Certain aspects of one’s background may make it easier or more likely to attend college or get a job.

The second causal mechanism is opportunity hoarding. This causal mechanism can cause social and economic inequality by monopolizing ways to move up the economic ladder. If somebody own rights or a patent, it prevents another individual from using this technology or having access to it. Rising costs of education is another example. If college tuitions continue to rise, and public education becomes privatized then families on the lower end of the economic scale will not be able to send their children to college.

The final causal mechanism described by Wright is exploitation and domination of other classes. When one class subjugates another in a Marxian sense, then it is obvious how others may not move up the social and economic ladder. Inequality will be rampant in a community of exploiters and exploited. Those who own the means of production will continue to exploit those who do not own factories and machines. Those who are forced into labor own only their own human capital that is exploited and taken by the bourgeoisies.

Erik Olin Wright gives us the overarching picture of class inequality while also presenting us with a close look at individual determinants. Class conflict is multi-faceted and complex. Multiple actors and determinants shape who we are and where we stand in the larger scheme of social and economic class.

New article on the effects of income inequality

thought provoking news article talking about the dangers of the widening gap in U.S. income inequality.

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/06/rising-inequality-is-making-social-and-political-conflict-more-likely/

Chapter 15 ‘Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society’ _ Justin Chou E.C.

Ray Suarez’s article in chapter 15 of L&C discusses the extent to which the media panders to different classes. The article ‘Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society’ also explains how the media portrays different classes on screen. Many will say that the media is merely a lens through which we see events. Reporting on the news, however, is highly biased and contingent on your race and class position. Suarez notes how often black men are arrested on camera while it is rare to see a white man arrested. Cameras often report what society expects to see, a colored family weeping for a deceased family member due to gang violence. In contrast, it is rare to see a rich white family crying on camera for a lost family member. Another example of how class is portrayed in the news is from kidnappings. National media frenzies are most common when a young white girl goes missing, we never see national media calling for help to find a missing black girl.

The media uses the archetypes of different classes to make it easy for viewers. Those on the lower end of the economic scale are seen as ‘raw material’ for the media. Individuals with more economic capital are not portrayed as grieving or ecstatic, their privacy is respected. The media bends to the will of the rich and exploits the poor. As newscasters claim to be unbiased but the stories they chose to report only perpetuate the stereotypes of different classes.

Class and Politics

               Personally, I think this chapter has been my favorite one from L&C in the course.  I thought it was very informative, though I would have preferred the section on financing American elections to be a little longer.  I have always wanted to know how much money influences the outcome of elections and to what extent elected politicians establish policies that lean towards helping their donors.  It seems to me that such a relationship between donor and receiver would encourage corruption and as a result foster the growth of inequalities.  With the rich having all the say, the poor would be crowded out in the political process.  Politicians would put thanking their contributors first and helping society as a whole second.  In addition, since politicians have re-election campaigns to find sponsors for, it’s plausible to think that a large number of politicians would want to keep their original donors happy on the chance that they would need to approach them for money a second time around.  I would be interested to know if the people who sponsor a political candidate the first time around, typically also sponsor the candidate’s second run as well, as I believe this would help to shed more light on the relationship between candidate and sponsor. 

‘Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind’ _ Justin Chou E.C.

David Johnson’s ‘Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind’ discusses the extent to which economic inequality continues to diverge even among the top 1% of earners. The author states that the top 0.01% (thousandths) of earners benefits the most from tax cuts and loopholes. These top earners rake in over one million dollars but pay the same rate as those earning $70,000. The widening income distribution illustrates a disturbing trend where the ultra-rich leave even the rich behind.

Provisions to ensure the rich paid taxes, made my lawmakers in the past, have not been adjusted for inflation. These outdated rules mean that our tax system does not fit with today’s economy. Lawmakers have chosen to turn a blind eye to this outdates tax system. They believe that top earners will spend and reinvest their money. Those who make this argument forget that we now live in a global market economy. Investments may not come back to the United States; there is also no guarantee that they will spend it. Warren Buffett has been a longtime advocate of changing the tax codes. He one stated that he pays a lower percentage in taxes than his housecleaner. Buffett also argued that not taxing the rich could result in decreased mobility and hoarding of resources. This means that we could see a potential hegemony within America.

Some may argue that America’s economy is rising as a whole. Who cares if the rich are getting richer if everybody is doing better? Those who make this argument forget that equality is a fundamental tenant of happiness. Mobility and happiness are limited when the ultra-rich leave everybody behind.

Robert Reich on the Economy

Really relevant to our last set of readings. Robert Reich just did this wonderfully simple analysis of our current economy today, sponsored by moveon.org.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE

Reading for June 29th : The New York Times “Richest are Leaving Even The Rich Far Behind”

Ah okay, so this is the last reading for this class. Sort of a bittersweet end but nonetheless a fitting one. The New York Times article “Richest are Leaving Even The Rich Far Behind” was published in 2005 though arguably, the situation has progressively gotten worse. The article talks about how the Bush tax cuts benefited the rich as many of the top earners pay taxes equivalent of what middle class and upper middle class people make, although these top earners earn a minimum of 87 million dollars. No wonder our social services in the U.S. are increasingly being underfunded as the rich do not help to pay adequate taxes to fund such things as Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Does this contribute to the growing health disparities between the rich and the poor as well? Probably.

These individuals who are considered hyper rich continue to get richer, leaving the rich even far behind. The have gone far ahead of the rest of the population and the Bush cuts only further propelled this. Promises of tax cuts mostly benefitting the low to middle class Americans resulted in 53% of the cuts going to the top 10% of earners. Our situation now echoes that of 2005 as wealth continues to become concentrated in a very view number of people who arguably earn much more than the actual value that they create in society. This idea of a meritocracy makes us believe that they earn more because they somehow deserve it when in fact this class has shown us the barriers and inequalities that different individuals face, that challenges this very idea of an America that is based on ideas of meritocracy. Sure, hard work pays off but sometimes it doesn’t and in this case, the hyper-rich use their incomes to just accumulate more and more capital, a self feeding system that concentrates wealth and power in only a few.

EC - Suarez's "Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society"

Ray Suarez’s “Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society” provides a critical outlook on the way the media portrays and misrepresents certain aspects of class. He argues that not only does the media give a skewed view of our society as one where everyone can afford everything and where there is an extremely diminished reality of debt, he also makes the point that the media plays into the racial divides that have been a problem within our society for such a long time. Nighttime news programs play into our stereotyped images of a black and Latino culture and its relationship with poverty and crime.

What is interesting when reviewing this article is to reflect on the many institutional and structural factors that we’ve been learning about for the past month and how they apply to Suarez’s argument. He asserts that those with enough money have the power to control the images and messages that the media conveys. Well, here we can see a vicious cycle emerge. White wealth, advantage, and privilege has allowed a white-centric and normative lens to cover and filter media images, purporting negative images of already impoverished minorities (such as blacks and housing discrimination). These negative images may play an important role in the labor market when employers have job applicants lined up for hiring. With a cultured image of blacks v. whites in their mind, an employer may unfairly advantage whites in the labor market over blacks. Through this cycle, we see several institutional and structural factors that play into and intermingle with the power and effects of the media.

Logics of Class Analysis: Erik Wright - L&C Ch. 11

In Logics of Class Analysis, Erik Wright says that there are three types of mechanisms: individual attributes and life conditions, opportunity hoarding, and domination and exploitation. These three mechanisms shape inequality. They are interconnected by some sense in order to explain why there is inequality in society. They help society understand the context of economic advancement and opportunity as well as the social relations that exist.

Individual attributes and life conditions shape the characteristics of individuals. It is lived experiences and resources or capacities of various sorts (Pg. 337). For example, it is the insecurities of getting a job, or the pressure within work from your boss. It is about how people acquire status and jobs that shape unequal economic gains. It is the various social background conditions in an individual’s life that shape the class relevant attributes of the individual which in turn tells the level of the individual’s economic well being (Pg. 338). This is only one of the ways in which inequality can be studied.

The opportunity hoarding mechanism is more complex and offers a more interesting approach, in my opinion. Wright argues that opportunity hoarding can explain inequality by determining which factors are kept away from individuals in order to keep them from gaining power. Thus, as an example we have higher education, it is a barrier for people to get into college because of tuition increases and admission policies. This is an opportunity hoarding example because those who do not attain a higher education will never attain a high-paying job and will remain in poverty. “The inequality is crucially shaped by the effectiveness of the exclusionary mechanism” (Pg. 340). Social networks and cultural capital are social closures because only the rich have access to them.

Domination and exploitation are the last mechanism that Wright explains. This is seen as the Marxist approach to explaining inequality. This mechanism takes advantage of people by exerting control over them with policies and laws. It requires the cooperation between the exploiters and the exploited because if the exploited do not let themselves be exploited then the exploiters will not have a choice but to cede. The power to enforce becomes the main factor in this mechanism.

Thus, the three mechanisms that Wright explains are helpful in telling us how inequality is rooted in society. These mechanisms are interconnected. Thus, the only way to fight inequality is to challenge the idea of privilege and power. It is by challenging the people at the top that inequality is going to change. Power relations are the most important factor in determining who makes it and who doesn’t. The people who make cultural capital and social networks important in society are the ones who need to be challenged. These concepts are a social construct that can be changed, altered, or wiped away from society.

Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society: Ray Suarez - L&C Ch. 15

The media is controlled by the rich, the powerful, and the educated. As described by Ray Suarez in “Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society”, the media is powerful in shaping the way society sees its own self. However, when the media is controlled by the wealthy, these images are contorted. The media often portrays blacks and Latinos getting arrested at gunpoint, almost never white men. The cameras shoot footage of minority mothers weeping for their sons/daughters that were tragically killed in their neighborhood while never showing middle income or high income mothers doing the same. It is not because middle and high income families never lose a family member in a tragic manner but because the people who have money also have power to control what goes on in their lives. They have the power to control the cameras in going into their houses as explained by Suarez. The poor do not have this control and are often seen as “raw material” for a higher-status person to examine and make conclusions about. Thus, the media portrays low-income people as having a lower status than others. The news has the power to influence how society sees the world and it has the power of shaping how people interact with each other. It is important to note that if the media portrays low-income neighborhoods as dangerous and filthy, the rich and the middle class will never want to interact with the people who live in these places, thus, making inequality greater between classes.

He also says that we have an “ever-shrinking portion of the population owning a greater and greater share of the wealth” (pg. 363). This is true and will make everything even more unequal. Poor families, especially blacks and Latinos, do not have net worth to inherit to their children in order to give them a leg up in society. Thus, they will never be able to have control over their lives and control over the social resources that are available. The media is going to continue to be controlled by the rich because it is seen as if it was a “hazardous material that can only be handled by properly trained individuals” (pg. 363). Thus, the media portrays class because it is controlled by class.

Logics of Class Analysis

In the second half of chapter 11, Logics of Class Analysis, Erik Olin Wright argues that there are three different types of causal mechanisms. These three types of mechanisms can be differentiated by unequal life conditions and individual attributes, forms of social closure, and the ability to control the activities of others. (336) These are referred as class-based individual attributes and conditions, class-based opportunity hoarding, and class-based domination and exploitation.

Wright mentions that most of the studies presented in the volume deal with individual attributes and life conditions, but that this type of mechanism is non-relational. That is, this mechanism ignores social determinants, "the relevance of social determinants always works through the ways they shape the characteristics of individuals."(337) More modern research focuses more in the structurally caused patterns of inequality.

Opportunity hoarding is a form of social closure, such as credentialing and licensing. This mechanism excludes those who are already disadvantaged from resources only available to advantaged individuals. Through opportunity hoarding, inequality is maintained by those who prosper by excluding the disadvantaged from the ability to better their life conditions. A type of relational approach, Wright argues that opportunity hoarding is a central theme of class analysis.

The third type of causal mechanism presented by Wright is barely represented throughout the volume. Domination and exploitation is a key theme of Marxist class analysis and it bears the strongest interdependence relationship between those who own the means of production and those who sell their labor to them. Mechanism three implies that "there is an ongoing relationship between the activities of the advantaged and disadvantaged persons, not just a relationship between their conditions."(341) All three types of mechanisms are relevant in class analysis and are enforced or maintained by power.

Wright concludes his argument by presenting us with a "more comprehensive macro-micro model of class processes." (345) In this model, a consideration of both micro and macro level systems is observed. It is a more dynamic and complex model in which all mechanisms interact together to create present and future conditions. Analysis of this type is necessary in order to avoid the constant class antagonism that persists in our society. According to him, class conflict is counterproductive and I agree, but it is in the hands of those who are in power to change our current system.

NYT - Ch. 12: Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Behind

David Johnson in “Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind” states that the people in the top 0.01 percent of the income distribution are benefiting the most from the tax cuts that President George W. Bush put in place in 2001. These people are making much more money than any other income distribution and thus are widening the gap of income inequality. They usually find loopholes in order to pay significantly lower taxes than what they should be paying and they are not affected by the “alternative minimum tax” that was put in place to ensure that the rich pay taxes.

Politicians know that this is happening but no one has done anything to stop it. Some argue that this is good for the economy because it encourages investments and innovation. However, this is bad for society because it increases inequality dramatically. If the bottom 90% of people is earning less than the top 10%, something is obviously wrong in this society. It is outrageous to know that politicians make “invisible policies”, as mentioned by Fischer and Voss in Inequality by Design, to advantage the rich while leaving the poor behind. The rich should be paying more income tax and property tax than the poor are. In order to make the rich contribute to social programs, the government should come together in making social programs universal. Thus, the rich should be contributing to social programs in a greater amount than the poor because these social programs will help society as a whole, such as universal health care and child care.

Some people say that it should not be a problem that the rich are getting richer because the poor are also getting richer. Even though everybody’s income might be increasing, it is definitely increasing in disproportionate amounts. This is problematic because as a society, things are becoming more unequal and are harming the bottom 90%. I think that if this is not fixed, people will eventually stop believing in the American dream and will do something to get wealth back from the hands of the few.

Social Class: How does it Work Ch 11

Logics of Class Analysis (Mechanisms)

In this chapter of the Social Class: How does it Work, book I find an analysis of the different types of causal mechanisms central to determining life chances (336). Three mechanisms or clusters were defined in an effort to understand the ways in which unequal life conditions and individual attributes control for successful results in peoples lives. These opportunities can be developed through the constant exclusion of a group. These mechanisms are referred to as class- based individual attributes and condition, class based opportunity hoarding, and class- based domination and exploitation (pg 336).

Individual attributes and life conditions are described as a mechanism where all social determinants are ignored and the relevance of social determinants always works through the ways they shape the characteristics of individuals (pg 337). In the example of Opportunity Hoarding as a mechanism, Credentialing and licensing are particularly important mechanisms. This mechanism runs through a form of exclusion and closure. This mechanism is also a central theme in class analysis that focus on social networks as channel for the dissemination of information and other kinds of resources (pg 340). The last mechanism described was that of Domination and exploitation. This mechanism can be described as forms of structured inequality that simultaneously require the continual active cooperation between exploiters and exploited dominators and dominated, generating systematic antagonisms of their interests (pg341).