Class and Global Inequality Chapter 9

   Class is about both personal experience and the broad structures of social inequality. It is a group of people who share a roughly similar economic position and lifestyle.Karl Marx analysis of class on the idea that if people are to survive, they must meet their basic material needs for food, clothing, and shelter.Weber empasized the interaction of three dimensions of inequality; class, social status, and political power. He looked at class in terms of life chances, which is the likelihood a person has of obtaining valued economic and cultural resources. For Weber a class is a group of people who share a common market situation- they have a similar capacity to earn money. Capitalist, Middle Class, Working Class, and Under Class, are the major U.S social classes. Class can have an impact on health, educaton, work, politics, and lifestyles. Income levels are usually measured by household rather than individual, because counting the income from multiple wage earners who live in a single home more accurately reflects people's standard of living.
Class systems permit some class mobility which is the ability to move from one social class to another. There are two types of mobility; structural mobility and individual. There are also two types of poverty which are absolute poverty and relative poverty. As stated in the video "People Like Us",America is divided by class. Even though class is every where it is hard to see. Some people are in denial about their class because of the stigma that comes with it. U.S. is one of the wealthiest countired with lots of inequalities. The wealthy dominates the poor each and every single day and they arent taxed as much as those people in the middle class. To me, the country would never be balanced if it stays this way.