A Study In Class -The Privleged And The Few

Study in Class-The Privileged and the Few Module #1

Thursday, August 18, 2011

8:12 PM

Anyone who has studied American culture knows that money equals

Power. The fact has remained since Revolutionary times that basically anyone and anything can be bought for the right price. As a modern day American I have witnessed the power that social class holds for me and celebrities as well as politicians and the everyday American who is struggling to make ends meet. As long as the power of the rich continues to stronghold the economy and the fate of the poor American people, the poverty stricken will continue to suffer as those few wealthy in America will continue to rule the Nation.

The problem of rich over poor isn't new. Like most events in history the problem continues to play out in today's twenty first century. What started in the Revolutionary times as a class system has become an economical nightmare for today's society. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries what would be called the future Americans came here not only to get rich but to escape their impoverished surroundings and their unfair forms of government .What they hoped for were to have a country that many modern day immigrants wish to have - a land of the free where economic wealth flows and opportunities are boundless. Like the many modern immigrants the early revolutionary immigrants found themselves in indentured servitude a cruel twist of fate where instead of finding the roads paved with gold their road was paved with a boat ride over to the New Country where" The voyage to America lasted eight, ten twelve weeks, and the servants were packed with the same fanatic concern for profits that marked the slave ships. “as stated in  Howard Zinn's A Peoples' History Of the United States .The immigrants of today come packed in the same kinds of boats .Although they do so voluntarily their conditions are similar .They travel in disease ,filth and abhorred conditions in hopes of  a profit .

The immigrants of today face some of the same treatment that early day immigrants did: discrimination, hatred and extreme intolerance. While there are jobs for them, many of them are menial which places them on the lower end of the social-economic class .They are able to get ahead, but at what expense. When we as an American society become tolerant of the poor, homeless and jobless and accept this as simply fate. When the rich don't allow the poor to make social advances by cutting jobs and educational opportunities for the poor, American society has a problem. Without the opportunity to advance in education and employment the poor stay poor while the rich profit from this, just like the masters profited from the cheap labor of the immigrant slaves.

Many Americans still believe in the American Dream .The faith that life will get better if we only work for it is still a belief today. According to an Article in The New york times written by Janny Scott and David Leon heart "Most [Americans] say their standard of living is better than their parents ' and imagine that their children will do better still .Even families of making less than 30,000 a year subscribe to the American Dream: more than half say they have achieved it or will do so." Such faith is brought on by the false notion that America today is America of the past where politicians kept their word and prosperity was high. We were a leading nation, not a nation in trillions of dollars in debt.

In a Skype interview by Paul Solomon in his series Making Sen$e  Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute’s goes on to say "inequality is not our main focus ,it's when the government doesn’t allow people to advance economically that  it becomes a problem." This statement is powerful indeed. It's not the rich being rich that's a problem, it’s the rich getting power by denying the poor education, medical and economical advancements that become the problem.

Without economic advancement the poor may be unable to access colleges, proper medical care and other essential needs which will either force the rich to lend a hand, which is unlikely with the turn of the economy. The other choices are that the poor get so angry at the government that they begin to form an up rise against it .Dare we say history will repeat itself? What happens in the future whether it is an uprising or a downsizing for the poor is bound to remain a powerful part of history, no matter what the outcome.