Social Class and Economic Inequality

Flashcards covering key concepts related to social class, economic inequality, and social stratification.

Classification

To put things in different types of categories.

Ways to Classify People

Location, job, income, race, ethnicity, stereotypes, religion, gender, and age.

Commonality of Social Categories

They're all social constructs, socially determined, and built.

Economic Class Categories

Upper class, upper middle, middle class, lower middle, working class, working poor.

Characteristics of the Upper Class

Flaunt their wealth, conspicuous consumption, well-educated, interested in the arts and theater.

Middle/Lower Class Lifestyle Example

Saving plastic bags, saving all of the plastic bags from when you go grocery shopping and, like, stuff like that, and you stick it all in one plastic bag and just sort of keep it in there because you never know when you're gonna need one of these things.

Requirements for Upward Economic Mobility

Social connections, higher education, more money, hard work.

Factors Influencing Upward Mobility

Building generational wealth, open social system.

Social Challenges of Moving to a New Social Class

Entire new sets of cultural affiliations and social practices, building new ties, old ties falling apart.

Difference Between New and Old Rich

New riches flaunt their wealth, developed their wealth recently through new industries. The old rich controlled major social industries and been in these positions of upper economic upper economic class.

Purpose of Economic Class Categorization

Economic class structures, what we are talking about is power, both in economic sense and in a cultural sense.

Class Consciousness

An awareness of the social and cultural positions that we have.

Benefit of High Class Consciousness for the Upper Class

Maintains their position and their power by understanding of who they are and where they are and how they work to maintain.

Justifications for Income Inequality

They don't work as hard, not everyone can make it, no self-sufficiency

Who should the blame be assigned when inequality occurs?

Blaming individual people for their problems.

economic classifications, explain

Not neutral, designed with power in mind, upper class can maintain and utilize power