Soc 302

Sociologist:

• American Politics, Globalization, Capitalism, Human Animals Interaction, Conversations, Neighborhoods, Cities, Dating, Sexuality Social Movements, Political And Change Of Revolution 

Quantitative:

• Statistical models, content analysis, social network, analysis 

Qualitative: 

• Interviewing, Ethnography, Historical Archives 

 The Sociological Imagination 

• The Promise 

C. Wright Mills :

• An American Sociologist 

• Professor at UMD and Columbia University 

• Social and critic 

Main Ideas: 

• The sociological Imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society 

• It is a Quality of mind that's seems most dramatically to promise an understanding 

The stories of individual are influenced, embedded, crafted, patterned, shaped by the social and historical context in which they are located 

We cannot understand individual without understanding the social context in which the individual is embedded 

Contrast with narratives of Individualist explanations. 

How Does the Social Pattern Our Lives 

• When we use our sociologist 

What is A Social Structure

• A social structure  is a systematic, external social force that patterns human behavior. 

• Social Structures include ( but are not limited to) Social norms, social institutions, and positional inequality 

Social Norms: 

• Unwritten but powerful social rule about what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior during a particular social interaction. 

• Breaching Experiments 

• What is a Social Institution: 

  • An institution is a longstanding social practice or form 

  • (Family marriage work military schools education legal system economic markets)

  • Social Institutions have rules and roes that pattern individual behavior 

  • (Family caretaker breadwinner marriage: Feminine/ Masculine; engagements and weddings)

  
  

  Positional Inequality 

  
  

  • Positional inequality is a socially-constructed hierarchy 

  
  

  • This type of inequality producers unequal access to opportunity and valued goods between social groups based on differences in positions in the hierarchy 

  
  

  • Society As  A Giant Ladder 

  • Society As “Slots” / “Empty Places”

  • Examples: Class, Socioeconomic Status 

  
  

  In Sum 

  Using your Sociological Imagination means seeing how social forces shape the trajectories of individuals (including you!) and social groups]

  Broadly, When we use our sociological imagination we often think about how social structures ( Norms, institutions, and positional and inequality) affect what seems like individual decisions/ outcomes/ Circumstances 

  American Capitalism:

  
  

  Why do we start here: 

  • Capitalism markets are very important social institutions 

  • Capitalist markets tend to generate high level economic inequality; in other words, they shape / influence positional inequality in society. 

  
  

   What Is It:

  • Broadly capitalism is an economic system 

  •  Economic systems organize or structure the way goods and services are produced and distributed in a society 

  
  

  Capitalism is NOT universal 

  • Form of economics organization varies across the globe 

  • Subsistence economics:

  A type of economy where people produce their own food, clothing, and other necessities to survive.

  
  

  • State Bureaucratic Socialism:

  Distribution of stuff the economy is producing . Controlled by the state

• Varieties of capitalism 

Capitalism IS historically specific 

Before capitalism 

Capitalism as we understand it today is generally thought to have originated in Europe ( although other societies had elemented of it too) Specifically in England 

3 Essential Features 

1. “Production is organized for the market”

-(Note: Necessary but not sufficient condition) 

- What that means: Only goods and services that can be sold in the market (i.e that have exchange value) Will be produced because they can be produced               (Regardless of their use values)

-

2. “Means of production are privately owned and investment in privately controlled” 

-Raw material and land and where investments will be sent without social input or deliberation 

3. “People whose use those means of production are hired on a labor market to work in firms as employees”

   
   Problems Internal To Markets:

   The Problem of Capitalist markets

   
   

   • Information Failure 

   • Negative externalities 

   • Public Goods Problem 

   
   

   Where Do these Ideas Come From 

   • Public Economics or “STudy of the role of the government in the {Market / capitalist } economy”

   • Also economic and environmental sociology 

   
   

   • To understand the inherent sources of inefficiency in capitalist markets, it is first important to understand the incentive 

   Capitalist Firms and Profit Maximizers 

   Profits are the difference between the price at which things are sold and the costs paid by the firm to produce them

   
   

   To survive in a competitive market, firms are driven to produce their goods by lowering the costs of production 

   
   

   Therefore firms are incentivized to avoid practices that reduce profits, and pursue practices that maximize profits, even if those practices generate significant harm to other market actors (like consumers) 

4. THREE PROBLEMS OF CAPITALIST MARKETS 

   
   

   Information Failure 

   Negative Externalities 

   Public Goods Problem 

   
   

   Background: Capitalist Firms as Profit Maximizers

   
   

   • Firms in the market are profit maximizers 

   • Profits are the “ difference the price at which things are sold and the costs paid by the firm to produce them 

   • To survive in a competitive capitalist market, firms are driven to produce  

   
   
   
   

   Information Failure (Asymmetric ): Occur when the buyer in an economic transaction has unequal limited or no information about the product being sold 

   • Are inherent to the logic of capitalist markets because firms ( Self-Interested, Profit- maximizers) have an incentive to hide or limit certain information if it will jeopardize profits 

   
   

   Gas tanks

   MisLabels on Food 

   
   
   

   Negative Externalities: (Spillover Effects) 

   
   

   • Externalities are the “ side effects of an activity that affects others.” 

   • Are consequences of some activity, such as production Or Consumption, that impacts others 

   
   

   Positive / Negative Externalities 

   
   

   Positive externalities: 

   • Are side effects of production / consumption that positively affect others 

   Example: Vaccines 

   
   

   Negative Externalities:

   • Are the side effects of production / consumption that negatively affect others 

   
   
   
   
   

   Negative Externalities 

   
   

   • Importantly, the logic of the profit motive tells us that capitalist firms have an incentive to generate negative externalities during production. 

   
   

   • Firms displace the cost / harm of negative externalities onto others / society and keep down their costs of production 

   - Example: Pay for carbon capture or release carbon dioxide into the air? 

   
   

   • By displacing the total costs of production onto other actors (i.e consumers like you and mel), firms can maximize profits 

   
   

   Problems Internal To Markets 

   
   

   Public good: 

   • Is something that benefits people even if they did not voluntarily contribute to producing it 

   • If produced, a public good is 1 is difficult to exclude people from consuming and can be beneficial to many at the same time 

   • National defense 

   • Police force 

   • Clean air 

   •  Street light 

   
   

   • “The level of public goods provided through unconstrained free capitalist markets will be far below the socially optimal level” Why? 

   
   

   • It’s hard to make money off of it non excludable 

   
   

   Collective Action Problems 

   • The public goods problem is a specific case of collective action problem that has to do with the erosion of public goods

   • The collective action problem is a general problem of organizing groups due to the tendency for some members to free ride

   
   

   • Ex. Group assignment 

   
   

   Public Goods Problem in Capitalist Markets: 

   • In the case of public goods each individual consumer would prefer to free ride: In that case, firms cannot profit from providing a public good 

   • For this reason, capitalist markets will tend to systematically undersupply public goods since they are unprofitable for firms 

   Public Goods “Game”:  

   
   

   • We can see the logic of this problem by looking at a payoff Matrix

   • From Game Theory 

   
   

   • A payoff Matrix is a way of representing how people /consumers will make decisions about contributing to pay for a public good 

   
   

   • The numbers in a payoff Matrix represents the “payoff” each player will get higher numbers are better than lower numbers 

   
   

   Public Goods: The Public Goods: How It Works

   The public goods game is a special case of a class of games called the prisoner’s Dilemma 

   • In the case of public goods, each individual consumer would prefer to free ride; in that case, too few consumers pay for it to be provided 

   • For this reason capitalist markets will tend to sym

   
   

   Three Measures Of Economic Inequality 

   1. Income 

   2.  Wealth 

   3. Poverty 

   
   
   

   Central Facts About American Economic Inequality 

   
   

   • Income inequality in the United States has reached an historic high 

   
   

   • Income inequality in American is higher than in any other rich, democratic country

   
   

   • Although economic inequality has increased in other rich democracies, the rate of increase has been faster in America 

   
   

   • Wealth is even more unequally distributed than income in America 

   
   

   • Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, the United States has a higher relative poverty rate than any other comparable nation. 

   
   
   

   What is Income? 

   
   

   • Income is the receipt of money over some specified period 

   
   

   • Common sources of income includes salary or wages from a job or income earned on assets owned 

   
   

   Describing an Income Distribution: 

   • We can describe the characteristics of an income distribution in different ways 

   • The most common way to describe an income distribution is to refer to different positions or ranks within an ordered distribution 

   
   

   • Percentiles: Divide an ordered distribution into 100 equal chunks; They tell us the rank of an income within an ordered distribution 

   
   

   • Example: Income at the 26th percentiles versus income at the 75th percentile 

   • Choose 75 percentile. 

   • Example: Exam score at the 5th percentile (bottom 5%) Versus 95th percentile (top 5%) 

   
   

   • Quintiles: Divide the ordered distribution into 5 equally- sized chunks of 20% 

   
   

   Income Inequality In America 

   
   

   • Over time: has income inequality decreased, or stayed the same ?

   • In International Perspective: Income equality in America higher or lower relative to other similar advanced industrial democracies? 

   
   

   How do we measure income inequality 

   1.Income Quintiles: We can directly compare how much income earners at the top made, relative to income earners lower in the distribution 

   • Example: If the average income for the top quintiles was $100,00 and the bottom

   
   
   

   How do we measure income inequality

   2. Income shares: we can estimate the total national income accrues to different income groups; how much of the economic pie does each group get? Is a group’s share of the pie expanding or contracting? 

   • Example: In the 1960’s the top 1 percent of families received about 8% of total income; in 2012, the top1 percent of families earned almost 23% of total income 

   
   
   

   Income Inequality Over Time 

   • However, household income has grown steadily for the top quintile, the top 20% of households 

   • The bottom four income quintiles have experienced some - but much less rapid income growth 

   • At the same time, there has been a rapid and dramatic increase in the share of income received by the top 1% of earners 

   • Much of the increase in inequality in fact appears to be driven by increases in the incomes of the very richest Americans in the top 1 % 

   
   

   Income Inequality In America 

   • Overtime: Has the income inequality increased 

   
   

   How do we compare income inequality across countries 

   1. Gini Coefficient: A standardized measure of income inequality that ranges from 0 -1 : 0 indications that everyone has the same income ; 1 indicates one person has all the income and everyone else has nothing 

   
   

   • Example In 2012, the Gini for South Africa was about .065; The Gini for Greece was about .0325. Which country has a more unequal income distribution. Answer: South Africa because it was closer to 1 

                 

   How do we compare income inequality across countries 

   Income shares: We can estimate how much of the total national income accrues to different income groups; we can compare these shares across countries 

   
   

   American Income inequality inInternational Perspective 

   • The united states has the highest Gini coefficient of any rich democratic nation in the world  

   • If we compare the percent of income going to the top 1% in other comparable countries over time, we notice:

   • Increase has been most pronounced and rapid in the us 

   • Some comparable nations have not experiences that same increases in income inequality 

   • Variation across comparable nations suggest that : 

   • Causes of inequality may be specific to the united states context and imply social / political causes 

   Other countries may have implemented policies that effectively mitigate income disparities, highlighting the role of government intervention and social safety nets in addressing inequality.

   What causes the rise in income inequality 

   • Scholars are still researching this very important issue, but there is an emerging consensus around a number of likely factors 

   • Factors common across capitalist countries: 

   -Globalization: Increasing flows of goods, services, and labor across national borders 

   - Technological Change: Computers, automation 

   • Rising returns to higher education (“college premium”): In 2013, median earnings for young adults with a bachelor's degree were about $48,500 compared to $30,000 for HS grads (NCES 2015) 

   
   

   What caused the rise in income inequality, social policy and political institutions: the US is exceptional!

                

   • Compensation practices: Declining real value of the minimum wage and increases in compensation at the top 

   • Declines in union membership: Decreased leverage for workers to negotiate wage increases / job security 

   • Tax policy: The top marginal income tax rate has significantly declined over time 

   • Lack of social safety net ( Next topic) 

   
   

   Wealth  Inequality In America 

   -Wealth is distinct from income 

   -Net worth is a common measure of wealth and refers to accumulated assets minus debts 

   • Common forms of assets: real estate (housing), Savings, stocks, bonds, retirement accounts, etc.. 

   • Common forms of debt: Mortgages, student loans, credit card debt, etc.. 

   -We can have high income but low wealth; conversely, we could have low income but high wealth. How so?