Chapter 7 Questions

• What are capitalist economies?







• What are socialist economies?





• What are/were some problems associated with socialism?







• What is the central problem of capitalist economies?







• What are some of the advantages of socialist economies? Of capitalist economies?









• What are the four economic problems facing the United States?









• What has partially off-set the decrease in purchasing power of the middle class?





• What is biological poverty?







• What is relative poverty? What is international relative poverty? Examples?







• What is official poverty and why, currently, is this figure unrealistically low?

• What were the percentages and numbers of poor people in 1962 when the official poverty line was first determined? How did Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty change this since. What have been the poverty statistics since the 1970's?









• According to your author, what are the three "outstanding" facts about poverty in the United States?









• Why do Americans tend to deny social inequality even when its reality is evident?





• What is structural inequality? What are some expressions of this phenomenon?









• How has income inequality changed since 1940? What have been the changes for the lowest and highest earning twenty percent of our population?







• How much do the wealthiest ten percent of American's own?







• What is the problem with highly concentrated wealth?









• Why did poverty become more of a social problem in the 1960's and less of a problem in the 1980's?









• What are some of the consequences of poverty?

• What is usually meant by the distinction between the "deserving" and the "undeserving poor"? Which is the typical current way of viewing the poor?









• What is the basic functionalist argument about social inequality?







• What are some functions of poverty?















• What is the basic conflict theory view of social inequality?







• What is the difference between false consciousness and class consciousness?









• On what basis can Marx's position on social class be criticized?











• Who is most likely to be poor? What is the feminization of poverty?









• What program has reduced poverty among the elderly and what does this fact suggest about the inevitability of poverty, in general?

• How is it possible to work full time and still be poor?



• What is the culture of poverty and to what extent do the poor exhibit these characteristics?











• What is the difference between residual poverty and mass poverty and what are the three reasons offered as to why the poorest nations (i.e., those exhibiting mass poverty) remain so poor.









• What is the distinction between social insurance programs, welfare and workfare?













• What are education accounts and why would they pay for themselves?

Questions on the video, Minimum Wages

• What's been Milwaukee's recent experience with job creation? What are the problems associated with these jobs?

2. Where have the manufacturing jobs gone? What are someof the specific kinds of jobs in the service sector that have replace them?

3. Why was Steve happy that he hadn't started a family? What relevance, if any, does this have for high rates of illegitimacy in this country?

5. How did Tony's successful retraining course help?

6. Keeping Tony and Terry in mind, what kinds of strains on marriage does de-industrialization bring?

7. What percent of the population receive food aid

8. As indicated above, why are unemployment rates potentially misleading? since 1980, what has been the change in median income in the Milwaukee area?

9. What's the argument that deindustrialization is necessary for reasons of economic competition? What's a counter to the argument made by one Milwaukee employer that what's needed is simply more productivity?

10. What were the strengths of the Black family that helped them manage the long term underemployment of both spouses?

11. What about the idea that if you simply work hard enough you can make it in this land of opportunity?

12. What's happened to the health benefits of American workers?

13. In that portion of the tape that describe the program of re-training minority workers for the Steeltech plant, what can be said about the effectiveness of this training program?

Questions on the video, The Global Assembly Line

• Why have companies relocated so many jobs overseas? Who benefits? Who loses?

Why are corporations allowed to move capital and facilities abroad? (This question cannot be answered from viewing the video; this issue will be discussed in class)

• What are Export Processing Zones? What controls are eliminated in these zones?

• What is the Miquiladora zone?

• Why is the Global Assembly Line a woman's issue? Why do these plants hire mostly young women?

• What is the attraction of these jobs to the workers?

• What are some of the work-related problems?

• For purposes of discussion, are these women workers exploited? What about the characterization made on the video that they are semi slaves?