Module 2:
The Rich Just Keep Getting Richer

I. Immigration

A. Sources of Immigrants in the U.S.

B. Reasons for Migration within US

1. Local conditions ("push" factors):
2. Conditions in medium and large cities ("pull" factors)
• See this turn-of-century pamphlet inviting immigrants to Minnesota

C. Foreign Immigration

Look at this Timeline of Immigration

First-Wave Immigrants

• The English
• The Africans
• a slave ship
• The Germans
• The Irish
• The Chinese
• Check out Angel Island

Second-Wave Immigrants:  The Great Surge

• The Italians
• Watch this 1903 film footage recorded by Thomas Edison of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island
• Take this virtual tour of Coming to Ellis Island
• The Japanese
• The Jewish

Third-Wave Immigrants:  Who are they?
 
 
 
 

• What is "clientelistic hostility"?

  Extra Credit Opportunity!

• Rent the film Do the Right Thing, by Spike Lee (1989) and write a film reflection for up to 20 points extra credit.

D.    Could You Become an American?

See how many of these 100 Sample Questions asked of immigrants applying for citizenship you can answer.

Try this on-line self-test offered by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services.

II.    Income Inequality:  The Dual Nation

A.  Basic Elements of Social Stratification

Social stratification in the preindustrial city

Often based on religious beliefs

Seven ranks of society in the American city of the Colonial Era (pre-1776)

1. Elite
2. Upper Class
3. Artisans
4. Unskilled Laborers
5. Apprentices & Paid Servants
6. Indentured Servants
7. Slaves

B. Changing conditions affecting class conditions in the industrialized city

1. Feudalism
2. Mercantilism and development of merchant class (1500s), living in cities (bourgs) = bourgeoisie
3. Protoindustrial era
4. Economic changes
5. Industrial Revolution & technological changes in the means of production (1860-1900)
• rise of mass production, decline of cottage industry, more pronounced division of labor
• A Study in Contrasts....
• Photo of family in poverty, by Jacob Riis, around 1890
• Photo of John D. Rockefeller, owner of Standard Oil Co., around 1872
• To get a feeling for the emerging sense of injustice during the Industrial era, see Lincoln Steffens's The Shame of the Cities, Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives.  Especially interesting are Riis's own photographs and sketches.
6. End of slavery (1860s)
7. Migration, urbanization, and transience
8. Changing ideas about poverty
• From Elizabethan Poor Laws (1590s) and the concept of the "deserving poor" to the "welfare to work" (1995)

III.    Theories of Social Stratification

A. Karl Marx, 1818-1883

• Capitalists or Bourgeoisie
• means of production
• hegemony and ruling class ideology
• Proletariat
• Class consciousness
• Result?

B. Max Weber, 1864-1920

1. Western capitalism involves rational bureaucracy:  rational bourgeois capitalism
2. Bureaucratization ==> depersonalization of individual
3. Social stratification based on interaction between

• economic order (economic/income class)
• prestige order (status)
• based on life-style similarities (e.g., PRIZM clusters)
• participate in this on-line experiment for rating occupations
• political order (power)

IV. Socioeconomic Status

How the Bureau of Labor Classifies Occupations (Standard Occupational Classifications)

Poverty According to the U.S. Census

• Mean Income by Quintile, 1968-1998
• Poverty Thresholds for 1998
• Statistics Regarding Poverty by Selected Characteristics, 1989, 1997, 1998

See this chart on poverty, 1959-1998

See this chart of women's earnings as a percentage of men's, by education, 1998 

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V.    The Metropolitan Poor

A.    Who are they?

B.    Why are people poor?

C.    What antipoverty programs have been tried?  Why don't they work?

From Rural to Urban

From Frostbelt (or Rustbelt) to Sunbelt

From Urban to Suburban

From Suburban to Exurban...

...and back again

What trends are apparent from looking at these maps?

• Map of Percent Change in Number of Farms, 1987-1992
• Map of Black Populations
• Map of Hispanic Populations
• Map of Asian Populations
• Where Do Most People Live (1990)?

• Visual History of Work
• Industrial Revolution online
• Inequality.org
• Growing American Inequality:  Sources and Remedies, by Gary Burtles, Brookings Institution, Winter 1999
• US News & World Report, “The Rich Get Richer,” Feb. 21, 2000.
• US Census data on income
• US Census data on poverty
• Read about the Community Development Block Grant strategy adopted during the Nixon Administration
• Read about the Bush-Clinton strategy of Enterprise Zones and Enterprise Communities (EZECs) and the "Myth of Community Development"
• Read about the history of welfare-to-work programs and Clinton's "reinvention of welfare as we know it" at www.upa.pdx.edu/MB/welfareasweknowit.pdf(long pdf file)
• Read profiles of these 20 Community Development Corporations
• Calculate your "ecological footprint." The footprint measures human impact on nature. In order to live, people consume what nature offers. So, every one of us has an impact on our planet. This is not bad as long as we don't take more from the Earth than it has to offer. But are we taking more than we should? The Ecological Footprint measures what we consume of nature. It shows how much productive land and water we occupy to produce all the resources we consume and to take in all the waste we make.

 

 

How big is your footprint? The average American uses 25 acres to support his or her current lifestyle. This corresponds to the size of 25 football fields put together. In comparison, the average Canadian lives on a footprint 25 percent less, and the average Italian on 60 percent less.