Social Inequality

Web links Ch 6

Web Links – Choose 1

1. org. A nonpartisan organization that provides information on bills, pending legislation, legislators by state, and information on how members of Congress have voted on particular issues.  www.themiddleclass.org/ (Links to an external site.)

 

2. New York Times. “How Class Works.” Informative interactive site defining social class. Includes interesting variable: generation, occupation, mobility, education, country and more.  http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_03.html (Links to an external site.)

 

3. New York Times. “What Percent Are You?” Interactive map allowing the user to enter a household income level to see where they fall among a percentage of people with the same income in different regions of the S.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?ref=incomeinequality (Links to an external site.)

Videos Ch 6 – Choose 1

Which Income Class Are You? (Links to an external site.)

What is UPPER MIDDLE CLASS? What does UPPER MIDDLE CLASS mean? UPPER MIDDLE CLASS meaning (Links to an external site.)

Why so many Americans in the middle class have no savings (Links to an external site.)

How the upper middle class keeps everyone else (Links to an external site.)

Discussion #2 Questions

1. From the list of  Chapter Videos and Weblinks provided for this week, choose one web link and 1 video you have visited and discuss the following: 5-6 sentences for each question. Please site all work.

·  How is the information in the weblinks and the video best illustrated in the chapters' information?

·

· What pages from the textbook best aligns with the information? Please see the attached Ch. 6 reading to answer the second question of DQ

· As a social scientist, what 2 theories from chapter 2 can you use to explain what you have read/seen/heard in the videos and websites?  Explain why you chose the two theories? ? Please see the following CH 2 textbook reading to help answer the final DQ for list of theories.

Please see the attached Ch. 6 reading to answer the second question of DQ

CHAPTER 6

The Badly Besieged Middle Class

When the Pew Research Center assessed the size of the middle class nationally, the result was decisive and specific. Their report asserted,

The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee. From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 US metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally.

(2016)

Corroborating data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances focused on a segment of respondents, who generally had income and wealth that was approximately average. In 2013 this middle-class group representing 44 percent of families headed by an individual 40 years old or more had income and wealth that was 16 percent lower than in 1989 (Emmons and Noeth 2015). Such results, which produced a sharp increase in income instability and the distinct inability to repeat previous economic advances, tended to induce intense middle-class anxiety. Bradford DeLong, an economist, visualized a two-part middle-class disillusionment. He said, “People who thought they were upwardly mobile are finding themselves with no higher real incomes. And people who thought they were sociologically stable are finding themselves poorer” (Cohen 2015).

Throughout its history the American middle class has been intensely involved in seeking economic success. Middle-class people have persistently pursued social mobility, seeking to alleviate, even defy, the forces of social reproduction. To begin, the history of the middle class emphatically demonstrates that trend.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS pg 177

During the early 1800s, middle-income individuals were neither rich nor likely to become so. Besides farms they owned modest businesses—“handicrafters and tradesmen of small but independent means” (Mills 1956, 5). Then in the 1820s, the production of goods changed with the industrial era and the development of so-called “manufactories.” While working-class employees did the physical work, others, who became middle class, served as overseers or functioned in company offices (Roth 2011). References to the concept “middle class,” however, took well over a century to become widespread. Eventually as a presidential nominee in 1908 William Howard Taft referred to “middle class,” but no other nominee mentioned the term until 1984. Before 1960 the New York Times seldom mentioned either “middle class” or “working class” (Willis 2015).

The first half of the nineteenth century was a time of explosive commercial growth, and it showed in middle-class businessmen’s behavior. During this era Europeans complained of “the drawn faces and frantic busyness of … Americans … and the universal preoccupation with what Charles Dickens mocked as the ‘almighty dollar’ ” (Rodgers 1978, 5). Invariably Europeans commented on Americans’ disinterest in leisure and pre-occupation with work. Francis Grund, a Viennese immigrant, who had spent 10 years living in Boston, indicated that “it is as if all America were but one gigantic workshop, over the entrance of which there is the blazing inscription, ‘No admission here except on business’ ” (Rodgers 1978, 6).

During this era middle-class men found themselves released from an earlier personal standard featuring rootedness in the community. Now the focus was on “self,” and ministers, businessmen, lawyers, and other prominent spokesmen emphasized that to be successful in this open, expanding economy they should relentlessly seek self-improvement, recognizing that hard work was more important than talent in attaining wealth and prominence (Rotundo 1983, 25).

Employed outside the home and preoccupied with their own development, middle-class men were less involved with the family than their eighteenth-century counterparts, who were usually home-centered patriarchal figures in control of most domestic activities, even childrearing (Illick 2002, 57–58). As the industrial age arrived, middle-class women became the dominant figures in domestic life (Brady 1991, 85–86; Rotundo 1983, 30).

Industry’s Impact on the Middle Class pg 178

The development of American industry profoundly affected middle-class work and family life. C. Wright Mills estimated that in the early 1800s just as mercantile capitalism was underway, 80 percent of workers were self-employed businessmen. By 1870 when industrial capitalism was well established, the figure had dropped to 33 percent (Mills 1956, 63). At the dawn of the twentieth century, the growth of American business promoted the expansion of various middle-class jobs—for clerks, salespeople, managers, and even professionals (Moskowitz 2001, 173).

Growing up in a self-employment tradition, however, men were reluctant to join companies and work for others. The managerial challenge was to convince recent college graduates entering the business world that employment in a commercial bureaucracy was not selling out a cultural ideal emphasizing economic independence. Whether in Atlanta, Chicago, or Los Angeles, company recruiters told their best prospects that modern business represented a successful trade-off among desires for security, autonomy, and financial success (Davis 2001, 203–04). Recruiters asserted that working for a successful corporation, ambitious young men had a chance to be gainfully employed for life, obtaining promotion after promotion and riding ever upward with the company’s advancement.

The company ladder was an important factor in workers’ recruitment. All employees, according to the prevailing claim, had a chance to move up the rungs from lowly to high positions. Most business leaders believed that effective promotion systems were good for their companies, and they discussed them extensively in executive circles. Managers made most promotions from within the company, agreeing, as a 1919 study indicated, that businesses “which do not adopt the policy of making promotions from the inside cannot hope to maintain a force of ambitious capable workers” (Davis 2001, 207). As a 1950s sociological analysis concluded, such a system encouraged middle-class job holders’ unwavering loyalty to their employers, committing themselves to become “organization men.” The prevailing belief was that an employee should stick with one company—that individuals looking for improved opportunities elsewhere were not serving their current businesses well (Whyte 1956).

Compared to office employees, small-business owners faced more challenges. To stay independent and to protect their enterprises, they recognized that the best strategy was to form associations and agreements that regulated prices, wages, and production and that their common interests encouraged them to enforce those rules with fines, boycotts, and sometimes even violence. Many occupational groups formed associations. At the turn of the twentieth century in Chicago, for instance, the small-business people with active associations included plumbers, carpenters, cooks, drapers, jewelers, liquor dealers, masons, tailors, retail druggists, and undertakers (Cohen 2001, 195–96). While some of these businesses were successful, many were not. Owners often found themselves either going bankrupt or forced to do wage work to keep their enterprises afloat (Applegate 2001, 110; Beckery 2001, 288).

Over time the middle-class economic world changed considerably, focused on preparing its members for their part in the expanding industrial setting. While middlenineteenth-century parents focused primarily on their children’s health, religious, and moral well-being, the twentieth century featured a shift to such developmental issues as personality growth, the grasp of gender-related issues, and peer interaction (Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society 2018). Experts in both England and the United States stressed the importance of the stay-at-home middle-class mother, who was widely judged more virtuous than her mate. Publishers issued a host of advice books, helping formerly rural families make the transition to city life. In line with the growing trend, the advice books emphasized that the mother, not the father, had the more prominent family role (Brady 1991, 88–89; Illick 2002, 58–59).

The mother was the person best positioned to assume the formidable responsibility of developing her children, who “were now being described as born into the world with minds as blank slates” (Illick 2002, 58). The mother, in short, was supposed to provide the foundational writing on that slate, determining whether or not her children would be successful in life.

Parents, particularly mothers, supplied guidance. Gently but forcefully, middleclass women would teach their children to follow their commands, learning self-control in the process. Children were required to develop a conscience so that their own guilt would monitor them. Since boys spent more time outside the home, the prevailing belief was that they particularly needed the support of a conscience. In fact, middle-class mothers were consistently concerned about preparing boys for the challenges of the industrial work world. It was normally expected that from the age of six on, boys would become active, tough, and emotionally restrained, engaging in strenuous physical activity, especially the sports of football and baseball. The expectations for most daughters were that like their mothers they would marry, have a family, and run the household. So girls had the chance to learn from their mothers about their future life—everything from domestic skills to the emotional connections between women. Often daughters expressed regret about parting from their mothers at marriage and requested their presence when they gave birth (Brady 1991, 101; Illick 2002, 62–65).

A key requirement for the middle-class family was the home—intended to be a well-protected, comfortable place to live. Early in the twentieth century, middle-class residences were often small, so-called “tiny houses,” small-scale, inexpensive constructions displayed in catalogs from such companies as Sears and Aladdin that gave families just entering the middle class an opportunity for home ownership ( Jackson 2016). In the Middle West, municipal leaders, usually local merchants, formed vigilante committees to clean up their municipalities, establishing law-abiding towns and cities, where a prosperous middle class led an active, secure social life (Wills 2000, 599–600). A different strategy developed in large eastern cities. To escape the filth, sickness, noise, and crime of urban life, many middle-class families moved to the suburbs. This relocation was expensive, with home buyers required to make an initial payment of at least half the purchasing price. Few young people could afford such an amount, and as a result the suburbs of the time displayed a distinctly middle-aged character (Blumin 1989, 275–80).

Through the first three-fourths of the twentieth century, the middle class was generally prosperous, except during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the decades following that economic crisis, the government introduced a number of social programs, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, the GI Bill (providing college payments to returning war veterans), and federal housing loans that offered significant support to middle-class families (Mooney 2008, 1). In particular, the Roosevelt administration created the Federal Housing Administration, which produced mortgages featuring 30-year loans with both low down payments and monthly fees. “ ‘Quite simply, it often became cheaper to buy than to rent,’ [historian Kenneth] Jackson wrote. ‘Together with … the GI Bill, Roosevelt had launched the beginnings of the middle class’ ” (Troutt 2013, 48).

These government supports were much more available for selected people, particularly whites as opposed to blacks. In 1935, with backing from the federal government, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation examined real estate in 239 cities, developing “residential security maps,” which indicated the level of confidence investors should have in the quality of their investments. The evaluators were particularly concerned about African Americans, invariably giving black neighborhoods the lowest ratings. This initiative helped establish the use of redlining, which is the discriminatory practice of refusing to provide mortgage loans or property insurance or only providing them at accelerated rates for reasons not clearly associated with any conventional assessment of risk. The term originated because lenders and insurers actually circled in red the areas they declared off-limits for their services (Doob 2005, 95; Massey and Denton 1993, 51–52). In the 1930s, for instance, the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation circled Bedford-Stuyvesant (in Brooklyn) on a map, colored the area red, and awarded it a “D” rating, the worst possible. In recent years economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago have learned that the effects of redlining initiated in the 1930s have persisted as displayed by levels of racial segregation, home values, and credit scores, factors likely to keep many black home owners out of the middle class (Badger 2017). Chapter 9 provides further information about the impact of discriminatory treatment of blacks in the realm of housing.

In the course of the prosperous twentieth century, many middle-class jobs expanded. Between 1910 and 2000, the number of accountants and auditors increased 13 times, college presidents, professors, and instructors multiplied 12 times, and engineers grew nine times. Computer specialists, who only appeared in substantial numbers in the late 1950s, mushroomed 95 times between 1960 and 2000 (Wyatt and Hecker 2006, 42). A projection indicated that from 2016 to 2026 the number of computer specialists would continue to increase at an above-average 11 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018a). Figure 6.1 displays the current clear-cut relationship between amount of education and earnings for fairly young full-time, often middle-class workers.

FIGURE 6.1Median Annual Earnings by Full-time Workers Aged 25–34 by Educational Level

The data in this graph emphasize that the more education individuals receive, the higher their income is likely to be.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics (2018).

Until now I have examined the middle class as a single entity, but it can be subdivided.

THE TWO MIDDLE CLASSES

Both middle classes appear to share a common set of aspirations, which include home ownership, a car for each adult, a college education for children, health protection, retirement security, and family vacations (U.S. Department of Commerce 2010). Nonetheless the upper-middle class and the middle class are fairly different in their characteristics, with the economic dimension serving as a reasonable starting point. According to a Pew Research Center national survey, a much smaller portion of Americans consider that they possess the advantages of being upper-middle class as opposed to being middle class—specifically, 13 percent to 44 percent (Pew Research Center 2014).

Income and Jobs pg. 182

While income is a major factor determining whether jobs qualify as middle-class, the nature of the work is also relevant. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and other authoritative sources generally consider all white-collar positions middle-class, whether involving professional or semi-professional, administrative, or sales functions.

White-collar job holders are well-educated or fairly well-educated individuals who perform nonmanual duties in an office setting. They include highly trained professionals such as medical doctors and lawyers as well as such employees as secretaries and clerks. On the other hand, blue-collar positions are found in the working class. Blue-collar job holders have obtained a high-school diploma or less schooling and do manual work, normally receiving an hourly wage. Some white-collar employees such as many secretaries or clerks receive salaries under the middle-class minimum while individuals in the skilled trades such as the majority of plumbers and welders enjoy a solid middle-class income. Roughly speaking, middle-class income, designated here as between two-thirds and double the national median, varies considerably, ranging from about $48,000 to $144,000 for a family of four (Pew Research Center 2016).

The most affluent members of the upper-middle class make considerably more. These wealthy individuals, who are lawyers, doctors, or high-level executives, belong to a subcategory which sociologist Dennis Gilbert has called “the working rich,” and they can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They might be specialty physicians such as radiologists or oncologists, partners in elite law firms, or even professors at prominent universities, who can make large sums writing or consulting. They fall into the upper-middle and not the upper class because their incomes derive from professional fees or executive salaries and not from money-producing assets (Gilbert 2011, 244, 246; Perrucci and Wysong 2008, 26–27).

Occupationally the members of this class work as professionals, high-level managers, and medium-sized business owners (Gilbert 2011, 244, 246). Benefits of their jobs often include autonomy, prestige, and pursuit of a variety of tasks, many or all of which are interesting and even intellectually stimulating.

The upper-middle-class work life, however, can be demanding. For physicians their professional development begins in medical school, where the volume of information that must be quickly learned often seems overwhelming. “It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose,” one student said. “It’s impossible to learn everything put before you” (Coombs 1998, 11–12). While in the beginning many students feel overwhelmed, the survivors eventually realize that they must compromise about how much they learn in order to avoid breaking down from stress or exhaustion (Coombs 1998, 13). To be accepted as doctors, aspirants must demonstrate a working knowledge of the massive field of medicine. Throughout their training, especially during the (third) clinical year, students try to avoid public mistakes and blunders—clinicians’ criticism can be quick and embarrassing—and appear to be dignified, competent doctors (Conrad 1988).

A study of 30 medical practices varied in size and specialty across six states found that the greater physicians’ capacity to produce high-quality care, the more satisfaction they felt. Although physicians in the study tended to be fairly pleased with their practices, they expressed concerns, particularly about the large number of rules they had to follow. A surgeon explained:

I think that the amount of work, the amount of complicated red tape, et cetera, for the level of reimbursement, … and it really is changing the face of what a physician is.… And it’s not just from the government, it’s from malpractice; at every single turn, you feel [an] attack or constraint or manipulation or mandate.… There are times when you wonder: Do people really care about physicians? Do they have anything good to feel or say or do with them?

(FRIEDBERG, VAN BUSUM, CHEN, AUNON, PHAM, CALOYERAS, MATTKE, PITCHFORTH, QUIGLEY, BROOK, CROSSON, AND TUTTY 2013, 98)

Like physicians lawyers have distinct standards for what qualifies as professional expertise. Research on lawyers indicates that two principal factors determine how prestigious they consider a colleague’s work; first, the nature of the activities: whether it is simple and accessible such as the preparation of standard-form wills or highly specialized and intellectually stimulating like a complicated patent application or a high-profile criminal trial; and, second, the clients: for instance, whether they represent a large, prominent organization or nonaffluent individuals or families (Sandefur 2001).

Disenchantment with law practice is widespread, with about half the practitioners expressing dissatisfaction. One reason is that many individuals choose to join the profession because they can become wealthy. The reality, however, is that the big earners belong to large firms with over 100 attorneys and that these employees tend to work 60 to 80 hours a week, expressing the least satisfaction in the profession. Furthermore while the widespread belief exists that like TV representations legal practice is glamorous, the daily activity tends to be somewhat boring and tedious (Kane 2018).

Big business has also recognized the necessity for expertise among high-level managers. In recent years as finance, taxation, and governmental regulation have become increasingly important challenges facing large corporations, management prospects have increasingly sought advanced degrees in economics, accounting, or the law (Dye 2002, 26). Specialty training literally pays off. Fourteen of the 20 highest salaries are found in medical specialties, with chief executives, computer and information systems managers, and architectural and engineering managers toward the bottom of that list (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018a).

While upper-middle-class work has always been demanding and exacting, the job setting has steadily deteriorated for many people in recent decades. Respondents in a study of 250 managers in eight large industrial plants spoke emotionally about the transformation that had taken place in their companies, where in the era of downsizing a “community of purpose” has replaced the previous “community of loyalty.” One manager explained, “Loyalty comes with trust and believing, and this has been cast out across the whole company as being not the way to run things” (Heckscher 1995, 8).

For managers change is often an ongoing reality. Unlike their earlier counterparts, the twenty-first-century variety, sometimes with international involvements, are likely to find themselves forced to appreciate very different cultural contexts from the one in which they matured—to engage in “code switching” where the individuals in question adjust their behavior to approximate the cultural norms in a given nation. This sounds easy, but it can be stressful for managers. One important step they often need to make involves compromise, perhaps reaching the conclusion that the best course of action is a middle ground between managers’ cultural orientation and the standards in the local society (Molinsky, Davenport, Iver, and Davidson 2012).

Financially the upper-middle-class setting can also be challenging. Coming out of college, these individuals often begin working with a substantial, five-figure student loan debt. On the job, employees can be vulnerable to layoffs, salary freezes, long hours, and limited employer loyalty. Financial constraint means that now, unlike several decades ago, these people are increasingly likely to find it impossible to support the combined costs of children, a house, medical coverage, and saving for retirement that young upper-middle-class individuals previously managed quite easily. In fact, many young professionals cannot visualize retiring, believing they cannot possibly save enough to cover both living and medical expenses for old age (Mooney 2008, 16–17). Overall the public continues to back the programs that address these needs. For instance, social security receives widespread support, with 85 percent of those interviewed in a national sample about the program’s worthiness indicating that it is more important than ever as a means of guaranteeing that retired citizens have a stable income (National Academy of Social Insurance 2014).

Middle-class individuals, who are in lower-paying positions than their uppermiddle-class counterparts, tend to face more difficult prospects. They represent about 30 percent of the population and average about $70,000 a year; their jobs include low-level managers, semiprofessionals like the police, nurses, and teachers, small-business owners, foremen, clerks and secretaries, and nonretail salespeople like insurance or real-estate agents (Gilbert 2011, 244, 246–47). Table 6.1 indicates that some, generally less prestigious and lower paying middle-class jobs are particularly vulnerable to elimination.

Table 6.114 Middle-Class Jobs That Are Projected to Become Increasingly Scarce1

Bill and account collectors, down 5.6 percent Mechanical drafters, down 6.8 percent

Surveying and mapping technicians, down 7.6 percent Tellers, down 7 percent

Chemical equipment operators, down 8.3 percent Procurement clerks, down 8.3 percent

Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks, down 8.4 percent Travel agents, down 11.7 percent

Word processors and typists, down 15.7 percent

Office machine operators (except computers), down 16.6 percent

Non-postal service mail clerks and mail machine operators, down 18.8 percent Computer operators, down 19 percent

Switchboard operators including answering services, down 32.9 percent

Postal service mail sorters, processors, and process machine operators, down 33.7 percent

Note

1.The jobs in question are those projected to become increasingly scarce between 2014 and 2024.

While the expectation is that the economy will grow about 7 percent between 2014 and 2024, outsourcing and new technology will cause the middle-class jobs in this list to decline appreciably.

Source: Stebbins and Sauter (2016).

As a rule the middle-class jobs are less prestigious than upper-middle-class positions, and as a result the incumbents are less authoritative, sometimes encountering difficult relations with superiors or members of the public or facing troublesome conditions at work. It is hardly surprising that these middle-class employees tend to have extensive complaints about their jobs.

Police officers are a case in point. A well-researched overview of American police work found more than 30 stress factors on the job, including incompetent or overly demanding supervision, an absence or shortage of career development opportunities, distorted and unfavorable press accounts, extensive criticism from both minority and majority citizens, and the biological and psychological stresses of frequent shift changes (Miller and Braswell 2002, 125–29; Rodgers 2006, 242–45). A study of 87 patrol officers in an urban midwestern department concluded that respondents who wanted a formal mentoring program suffered more stress on the job and that the presence of stress meant less job satisfaction (Hassell, Archbold, and Stichman 2011).

In modern times stress has continued to be a frequent reality in police work. A national sample of almost 8,000 police officers indicated that the majority believe that the well-publicized fatal encounters between black citizens and policemen have made their work riskier and increased tensions between African Americans and the police. Overall, however, they are more inclined to downplay blacks’ killings in encounters with the police; among police officers 67 percent indicated that shootings of blacks were isolated incidents and just 31 percent opted for signs of a broader problem while, in what was nearly a full-fledged reversal, the public’s position on the two issues were 39 percent and 60 percent, respectively. Among the police officers, sharp differences in racial groups’ perceptions appeared. While just 29 percent of black officers indicated that enough changes had been made to assure equal rights for African Americans, 92 percent of white officers, the vast majority, believed sufficient changes were in place (Morin, Parker, Stepler, and Mercer 2017).

A survey of 95,499 nurses indicated that their level of job satisfaction largely depended on where they worked: Those employed in hospitals and nursing homes providing bedside care for patients badly needing assistance were the most frequent members of their profession dissatisfied with their positions and/or suffering emotional exhaustion. Among nurses working in nonclinical settings where they were not providing intensive patient care, job satisfaction was much higher and burnout more remote (McHugh, Kutney-Lee, Cimiotti, Sloane, and Aiken. 2011). Several factors can make nurses’ work difficult. In a survey of nearly 9,000 registered nurses, 85 percent indicated that they were happy with their choice of profession, but only 63 percent were satisfied with their current jobs, with several factors likely to detract. Low salaries, a burdensome workload, conflicts with management, too many hours, and insufficient staffing were prominent criticisms the respondents directed against their employers (Wood 2015).

Among teachers there has been a sharp decline in job satisfaction. According to a Metlife “Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership” conducted with 1,000 public-school teachers in grades K through 12 each year, only 39 percent of teachers in 2012 described themselves as very satisfied with their jobs—a 23-point decline from four years earlier (Resmovits 2013). Major reasons included working in schools where budgets, support for professional development, and time for colleague collaboration were all severely cut. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said, “This news is disappointing but sadly there are no surprises here. Teacher job satisfaction will continue to free fall as long as budgets are slashed” (Richmond 2013).

In recent years public-school teachers in such traditionally conservative states as West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona have engaged in protests and strikes about their low pay and depleted budgets. The actions proved fruitful, gaining public support, and a number of state legislature approved tax increases and funding boosts for education (Pearce 2018). Across the states where the actions have occurred, red shirts and blouses along with the rallying cry “Red for Ed” have signified support for the teachers’ demands (Russakoff 2018, 56).

In the course of protests, many teachers have become better informed about public schooling. In Arizona Tiffany Bunstein, an active member of the teacher’s union, told her friend Kelly Berg that she too had once been uninformed. “ ‘Then when you start paying attention and you see what’s been happening,’ [Bunstein] said, ‘it’s like clearing your glasses. Damn this is what’s been going on all along?’ ” With Bunstein’s support Berg began to investigate, learning some alarming facts—that Arizona ranked 49th in state spending and 44th in teachers’ salaries, with the second largest average class size in the country. Engaging in protest was new and intimidating to Berg, but she found this information deeply disturbing and although her heart was pounding she drove to the capitol, planning to join a protest against the legislature’s continuing failure to address the financial crisis in education. Arriving on the scene, Berg saw hundreds of other teachers dressed in red, and to her surprise she suddenly felt very comfortable (Russakoff 2018, 56).

While teacher’s pay has received considerable attention during these protests, the deterioration of schools is also critical. Kristina Johnson, a middle-school teacher, described the kinds of dire conditions in her locale that have mobilized the participants.

We have nearly 2,000 emergency untrained teachers in Oklahoma. I have 18-year-old textbooks, wasps living in my ceiling, … broken desks, leaky ceilings … My students deserve quality educational experience. I’d gladly give back my “raise” if only our government would reinstate our core funding.

(SEDGWICK 2018, A14)

In middle-class work generally, people are likely to be concerned about their income. The jobs in the two middle classes vary substantively, but individuals in both of them have tended to lose ground over time. Ominously the middle-class share of income declined from 62 percent in 1970 to 43 percent in 2014 (Pew Research Center 2015a).

Like social class other factors such as their gender can powerfully affect people’s lives. Feminist researchers have been particularly attuned to the fact that being a woman is a complex, often distinctly disadvantaged reality. A concept which receives extensive attention in Chapter 10 is intersectionality, the recognition that a woman’s oppressions, limitations, and opportunities result from the combined impact of two or more influential statuses—in particular, her gender, race, class, age, parent role, and sexual preference (Barvosa 2008, 76–77; Grzanka, Santos, and Moradi 2017; Lengermann and Niebrugge 2008, 353; Moradi and Grzanka 2017). The concept of intersectionality suggests that modern society tends to promote both male advantage and also somewhat different outlooks on the work world from men.

PHOTO 6.1 Like their colleagues in several other states, Arizona teachers have vehemently protested low wages and insufficient funds for public schools. Throughout this movement teachers have marched to the rallying cry “Red for Ed.”

Source: Getty Images ID 951591000.

For instance, consider medical doctors. Research has indicated that while physicians are well-paid overall, men earn more than women—that according to a study of 36,000 licensed doctors, male physicians earn about 20 percent more than their female counterparts in the same specialty and that overall the women on average earn about $91,000 less a year than the men (Satyanarayana 2017; Vasel 2017). Male doctors’ economic advantage is a clear instance where intersectional conditions favor them in the job world. In particular, there is women’s diminished earning power because of maternal leave and part-time work, especially when children are young. Gender expectations come into play here, with the widespread belief that women, even if they are medical doctors, have the major role in child care. Furthermore women doctors are more inclined to emphasize patient care and running their services efficiently than associating with peers, joining committees, and attending professional meetings—activities that cannot only advance careers but accelerate earnings (Rimmer 2014).

Table 6.2 offers an international comparison on countries’ portion of the citizenry obtaining middle-class income. Besides income and jobs, families and schooling in the two classes appear to be distinctly different.

Table 6.2Middle-Class1 Membership in Western European Countries Compared to the United States

	1991	2010
Denmark	80%	80%
Finland	82	75
France	72	74
Germany	78	72
Italy	69	67
Luxembourg	79	75
Netherlands	76	79
Norway	81	80
Spain	69	64
United Kingdom	61	67
United States	62	59

Note

1.In this table the citizens of a country qualify as middle-class if they possess disposable income (income after taxes) that is two thirds to double the national median disposable income.

In both 1991 and 2010 the United States had a lower percentage of income-based middle-class membership than the 10 western European nations listed here.

Source: Pew Research Center (2017).

Families and Education pg.188

When researchers mention middle-class studies on families, they usually are referring to upper-middle-class respondents. For instance, one review of investigations involving young children in the 1990s indicated that the majority of the many studies on the attachment between parents, particularly mothers and their children, has involved uppermiddle-class families (Demo and Cox 2000, 879). Why other middle-class subjects receive little attention was not explained. It might be that, whether conscious or not, researchers tend to merge what has been designated here as the middle class with the working class. For instance, in one study the researcher described his working-class respondents as filling a number of “blue-collar/lower-white-collar occupations” (Gorman 2000, 699). That appears to be a clear blending of the two classes, with the middle-class component essentially absorbed. In another study the researchers indicated that their middle-class families contained at least one member who was a manager or possessed some highly credentialed skill (Horvat, Weininger, and Lareau 2003, 326). Once again the lower segment of the middle class appeared to be shut out. While data involving families and schooling in the two middle classes seem skewed toward the upper-middle class, the research is informative.

In general, children growing up in middle-class families have advantages in capital over their working-class peers: higher-quality human capital as the upcoming discussion on education indicates; more effective social capital involving family and community connections; better cultural capital because parents’ education and middle-class experience lead to more effective guidance; and superior financial resources to spend on education, housing, and various other items. In many instances communities’ assets vary distinctly depending on the income groups in residence. A Pew Research survey found that about half (52 percent) of respondents with income below $30,000 a year indicated it was difficult to find high-quality afterschool programs in their locale compared to a much more modest 29 percent for parents with income of $75,000 or more (Pew Research Center 2015b).

Schooling can be advantageous. Upper-middle-class individuals are usually college educated and often have advanced degrees. In fact, as we noted earlier, some fields put a premium on specialty training—for instance, medicine where radiologists and oncologists earn twice as much as less specialized family physicians (Wysong, Perrucci, and Wright 2014, 28) and business where future managers recognize that advanced degrees in finance, taxation, and government regulation will help promote their advancement through the ranks (Dye 2002, 26). As a rule upper-middle-class individuals’ extensive education tends to promote considerable occupational prestige, high-level work quality, and extensive job security (Reeves 2015).

College graduation is a prerequisite of the upper-middle class. A study of American children born between 1966 and 1970 found that when the respondents were divided into four income categories, those in the most affluent quarter, a rough approximation of upper-middle-class families, represented about 50 percent of all college graduates (Haveman and Smeeding 2006). These individuals have a distinct earning advantage. For instance, in 1979 college graduates’ income was 31 percent higher than the income of people who had not completed college. By 1993 that difference had become 53 percent (Weir 2002, 192). Then in 2015 according to the Economic Policy Institute, college graduates earned 56 percent more than nongraduates, the greatest gap on record going back to 1973 (Vox Global 2017). Clearly college graduation along with postgraduate education contribute significantly to earnings.

However, simply graduating from college does not assure that individuals obtain good-paying jobs. A national survey of college graduates indicated that the key to gaining such positions has been functional literacy—the capacity to use basic skills in reading, math, and the interpretation of documents in work situations. College graduates who scored higher on a functional literacy test were more likely to have jobs where a college degree was the standard; those scoring lower on the test ended up with positions requiring only a high-school diploma (Pryor and Schaffer 1997).

Middle-class members are usually high-school graduates, sometimes attend college, and in some instances graduate from college (Gilbert 2011, 246–47). Getting the degree can be difficult to accomplish. A national survey found that about 75 percent of students enrolled in community colleges expected to transfer to a four-year institution. Within five years only 17 percent who had entered in the middle-1990s actually made the switch. With college expensive and representing a financial sacrifice, many hard-pressed adults find it difficult or impossible to commit to higher education. In 1995 Andy Blevins dropped out of college after his freshman year and worked in a supermarket, eventually becoming a produce buyer. It was interesting work, paid well, and provided health benefits and a 401k retirement plan. Such positions usually go to someone with a four-year college degree. In spite of possessing the job, however, Blevins regretted dropping out of college. He felt like he was “on thin ice.” Everything could slip away if he lost his position. What kind of job could he expect to get—a guy without a college degree (Leonhardt 2005, A14)?

On the other hand, certain individuals might find it advantageous to leave college. While most middle-class individuals are well advised to complete their degree, some can question the decision. A bright, enterprising young individual with original business aspirations said, “I feel like, in some ways, it depends on where you want to go. If you want to be front end user interface designer at a startup, I’m not sure it makes much sense to pay” (thousands of dollars for an undergraduate degree). The speaker added that in a more sensibly organized world individuals would have the chance to take a year off between high school and college, pursuing an apprenticeship that would reveal the utility of plans they had in mind and perhaps save wasted years and expense embarking on a personally unproductive path (McGrath 2014).

Besides the advantages already described, upper-middle-class individuals are favored in another area.

The Ecology of Class pg. 190

The issue involves what I am calling the ecology of class—the largely unrecognized or acknowledged impact that social-class members’ residential or occupational location has on their quality of life. Because of higher income as well as political influence, uppermiddle-class individuals live and work in areas that often have high-quality schools, lower crime, and effective municipal services (such as garbage pick-up, road repair, library services, and health care). The ecology of class is readily apparent in the American public-education system, where district property tax plays a major role in school funding, creating financial inequalities between poor and affluent school districts not found in most other postindustrial nations, which distribute school funding at the federal level. In the 1960s James Bryant Conant, the former president of Harvard, described the American system as one fostering “inequality of opportunity” and advocated that in the name of equal opportunity the states and to a lesser extent the federal government should assume the responsibility for public-school funding (Conant 1967). Like many in his wake, Conant recognized that the American method of public-school funding has been a distinctly efficient mechanism for promoting social reproduction. Middle-class, especially upper-middle-class families, literally pay the price for highquality housing so that their children can benefit from fine schooling.

In some situations the impact of the ecology of class can be instantly life-altering. The quality of a hospital’s services generally reflects the area in which it is located. Thus when upper-middle-class architect Jean Miele had a heart attack after lunch while working in midtown Manhattan, the emergency medical technician in the ambulance gave him the choice of two nearby hospitals, both of which were licensed to perform the latest emergency cardiac care. He chose Tisch Hospital, and within two hours an experienced cardiologist had performed angioplasty, reopening a closed artery and implanting a stent to keep it that way. Two days later he returned home; thanks to quick, competent treatment, damage to his heart was minimal.

For Will Wilson, a transportation coordinator for an electricity company living in a lower-middle-class area, treatment was less effective. Wilson’s heart attack occurred four days before Miele’s while he was in his apartment. Wilson also had a choice of two nearby hospitals, but in his less affluent, lower-middle-class area, neither was licensed to perform angioplasty. He picked Brooklyn Hospital, where a doctor gave him a drug to break up the clot blocking the artery. It was unsuccessful. The next morning Wilson was sent to a hospital in Manhattan where angioplasty was performed. The doctor admitted that Wilson would have been better off if angioplasty had been done sooner. After five days Wilson returned home.

A year later Jean Miele was effectively recovered. He was exercising regularly, had lost weight, and critical measurements for recovering heart-attack patients—blood pressure and cholesterol—were low. In contrast, Will Wilson’s heart attack was a setback. His heart function remained impaired, and his blood pressure and cholesterol were a little high. While not as serious as Miele about exercising, Wilson was primarily disadvantaged in recovery because of less effective medical treatment—in particular, the delay in receiving angioplasty (Scott 2005).

Overall middle-income Americans effectively meet their health-care needs. A nationally representative sample of 2,508 adults 18 or older indicated that only 18 percent of middle-income people found it challenging to pay for medical bills for themselves or family members—not many more than upper-income individuals’ 11 percent but a much lower percentage than lower-income citizens’ 45 percent (Parker 2012).

While differences between the two middle classes can be significant, most socialscientific literature does not distinguish between the two. Therefore throughout the rest of the chapter, I seldom raise the distinction between the two classes, often simply referring generally to the middle class.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS LIFE

“Middle class” is often a designation used loosely. A writer indicated that it “is a term used by politicians or the media for anyone not rich or poor, a slippery public euphemism” (Leondar-Wright 2014, 223). In spite of some vagueness associated with the term, however, the assessment of middle-class people’s sources of capital frequently indicates distinct approaches and priorities. Middle-class members’ conscientious use of available capital sources is apparent in analyzing three topics affecting preparation for the adult world—childhood, schooling, and networking.

Childhood pg.192

A century ago middle-class individuals had distinctly different opinions about family life. Should middle-class women be permitted to go to college, to work, and to vote, or should they continue to fulfill the traditional, stay-at-home role? Debates on this and many other family-related issues appeared in public speeches and writings (Brady 1991, 103).

Modern Americans continue to have different conceptions about the family. For instance, they engage in varied styles of childrearing. Sociological studies conducted through the 1980s and 1990s concluded that authoritative parenting characterized by a combination of parental warmth, support, and control (some rules establishing limits) is generally more beneficial for children, creating a greater sense of trust, security, and self-confidence than either a permissive style, setting few if any rules and restrictions, or an authoritarian approach, requiring unquestioning obedience to parental directives (Demo and Cox 2000, 880).

“Helicopter parents,” who hover over their children during the college years, are recent illustrations of authoritative parenting. They keep in close touch by email and cell phones, helping them make decisions and sometimes chiding them about such issues as studying or grades. A team of writers noted, “To faculty and staff, such parents are often viewed as a buzzing annoyance. Yet a surprising number of first-year college students are now reporting that they’re quite OK with their parents’ academic doting” (Gordon and Kim 2008, B1). However, controversy increases when parents want to be involved in their children’s process of applying to graduate school, sometimes arguing that they are the ones paying the bills and that with accelerated costs their input can help assure that the money is well spent. While many critics will say that at this late date their decidedly adult children are being robbed of self-sufficiency, some graduate programs see the situation differently. At the University of Texas law school in Austin, so many prospective students’ parents show up that the school has quadrupled the number of days for applicants to visit, and an administrator in another graduate program suggested “that parents be looked on not as overzealous but as trusted partners and ‘benefactors,’ and that wooing parents can be the pipeline to more applicants” (Marano 2014).

Research on middle-class children’s socialization shows that their parents provide a number of valuable sources of capital that age peers from working-class and poor backgrounds generally do not obtain. In a study of children belonging to these three classes, sociologist Annette Lareau (2002; 2003; 2007) described the transmission of capital resources. What follows is a combination of Lareau’s observations and updated references:

•Human capital: With a sense of developing their children’s skills and discipline, middle-class parents frequently signed up boys and girls for various adult-run activities, sometimes as many as three or four per week or even more. These activities included athletic teams, music lessons, dance classes, and art training. When needed, parents also helped with homework. Middle-class parents excel in promoting their children’s involvement in and understanding of such issues as the effective completion of homework, the competent use of such educational sources as books, newspapers, and computers, and the ability to convey to their offspring the potential contributions of schooling (Bæck 2017).

•Social capital: Middle-class parents either directly intervened on their children’s behalf, or they could locate friends, colleagues, other parents, or hired professionals to help solve physical, psychological, or legal problems their children faced. A study of kindergarten parents in a Philadelphia public school indicated that middle- and upper-middle-class individuals were more likely to participate in parent organizations than lower-income counterparts, obtaining as a result connections to network resources that could assist their children in a variety of social and academic ways (Cappelletti 2017).

•Cultural capital: Middle-class parents spent a lot of time helping their children learn to express themselves effectively. Many also painstakingly explained the decisions and orders they issued involving their children, encouraging them to appreciate that living well requires a careful study of the complicated, sometimes threatening modern world.

As a result of the investments in capital their parents provide, middle-class children are likely to feel a sense of entitlement—an outlook the parents are likely to encourage. For instance, when nine-year-old Alex and his mother were on the way to the doctor, she suggested that he should be thinking of questions to ask the doctor. During the examination the doctor told Alex’s mother that on height he was in the 95th percentile. Alex interrupted, asking the doctor to explain the meaning of percentile. She answered that he was tall compared with other ten-year-olds. Alex, in turn, explained that he was not yet ten. The doctor replied that the procedure involved rounding off the patient’s age to the closest year. Alex understood (Lareau 2002, 767). It is apparent that Alex readily engaged in a conversation with his doctor, even challenging her and offering an opinion; children who felt less entitled might have been reluctant to do so.

Other research complements Lareau’s findings, indicating specific emphases that occur in middle-class socialization. A 1990s study of parental values based on a representative sample of Americans 18 and over indicated that the more education parents had, the more likely they were to value autonomy, the capacity to make informed, uncontrolled decisions, and to want such conditions for their children. In particular, women in positions that were privileged and exhibited autonomy—for instance, managers, professionals, and supervisors—were especially likely to value autonomy and transmit this value to their children (Xiao 2000).

Research has also revealed that middle-class mothers’ job content can affect the socialization they provide their children. A study of 500, primarily upper-middle-class families with middle-school and high-school students indicated that women employed in the sciences and mathematics offered daughters and sons equitable supports and challenges while others, equally well educated in such fields as business and the law, tended to favor their sons. Since mothers tend to be more involved with their children than fathers, the difference in approach shown by these two occupational categories seems likely to produce significant differences in the children’s development (Maier 2005).

On a number of issues middle-class parents have not achieved positive outcomes for their children, but they still show initiative, seeking to enlist powerful forces, such as government agencies, to overcome negative conditions and effect desired outcomes. At times, however, such intervention can be too late. When Courtney Griffin used heroin, she lied and stole from her parents to support a $400-a-day habit. Eventually Courtney overdosed and died. “When I was a kid, junkies were the worst,” her father recalled. Now he no longer uses the word “junkie,” joining an influential host of predominantly middle-class families who mobilize their social capital to convince the government to stop considering drug abuse a crime but to recognize it as a disease. “Because the demographic of people affected are more white, more middle class, these are parents who are empowered,” said Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, better known as the nation’s drug czar during the Obama presidency. “They know how to call a legislator, they know how to get angry with their insurance company, they know how to advocate. They have been so instrumental in changing the conversation” (Seelye 2015).

One of the important impacts of middle-class childrearing is its preparation of children to be successful in school. One researcher indicated that a major difference between middle- and working-class individuals looking back on their youth was that the middle-class members recalled knowing they were going to go to college while the working-class respondents, even if they hoped to go to college, seldom made such an assumption (Gorman 2000, 714).

Schooling pg. 194

Robert E. Slavin, an expert on public school funding, wrote, “To my knowledge, the United States is the only nation to fund elementary and secondary education based on local wealth” (1994, 98). By “local wealth” Slavin meant that, as previously noted, the primary source of American public school funding has been local property tax. Throughout a state homes and businesses are assessed at a standard rate, and inevitably significant disparity in district tax payments results because the value of the assessed property in different locales varies considerably. The result is that the wealthier districts, which make larger tax payments, have more money to spend on schooling. Educator Jonathan Kozol asserted that the American system of public school funding creates “savage inequalities” (1991). Within many developed nations, disadvantaged children receive extra funding. In the Netherlands, for example, schools with large numbers of students whose parents are either foreigners with limited schooling or gypsies and caravan dwellers obtain additional subsidy, acting on the reasonable assumption that children with less-educated parents are likely to perform less well in school (Arts and Nabha 2018). In Canada, which once had a public-education funding system that was about as unequal as the American one, several provinces have independently developed schemes that are distinctly more equitable (Herman 2013).

As young couples, middle-class people often maintain a passive relationship with their residential area, but in-depth interviews done in Boston indicated that when their children reach school age, the approach has been likely to change, emphasizing the importance of quality education. Bridget, for instance, was a parent who became active in the workings of the system. She said,

And I’m like, “Oh no! This has got to change!” So first grade we got really involved and helped them figure out how they could raise money to hire an afterschool teacher. And then the next year the afterschool teacher became a full-time teacher through the funding of the parents.

(BILLINGHAM AND KIMELBERG 2013, 96)

Another challenge involves social-capital management to advance their children’s educational interests. Middle-class parents are likely to use two tactics:

•Some of them take initiative, seeking out other parents or teachers in high-quality schools for information and advice—for instance, guidance on what teacher would be most effective with one’s child. A study found that middle-class parents frequently pursued such issues while working-class and poor parents seldom did (Horvat, Weininger, and Lareau 2003, 337–38; ReviseSociology 2015). Some parents request support from the teachers, lobbying to have their children in gifted or special-needs programs or writing notes attempting to excuse their children from certain homework requirements. In addition, some of these parents try to coach their children to deal with school challenges. For instance, Danny Rissolo, a first grader, was bullied by a classmate. Ms. Rissolo explained,

The kid he was sitting next to was a bully, and was making fun of him. Danny wanted me to fix it for him, but I said to him, “You know what Danny, I’ll do that for you, but I want you to do something first. I want you to go to Ms. Girard, and say something like ‘Ms. Girard, can I talk to you for a minute?’ ” I said, “Ask her what she thinks you should do.” At first [Danny] was like: “You want me to do all that?” And I said: “You can do it! You’re a smart guy. You’re very articulate. You can do this. And if it’s still a problem, I’ll call her also, but you need to do this first.”

(CALARCO 2014)

•A second tactic middle-class mothers and fathers often use is to enlist the help of professionals when they feel their children need such services. For instance, when one mother learned that her son’s teacher felt he had a learning disability, the mother, with a master’s in clinical psychology, brought in her own psychologist, who contested the teacher’s evaluation, concluding the boy had above-average intelligence and abilities. School officials were forced to reevaluate the child’s situation (Horvat, Weininger, and Lareau 2003, 335). Middle-class parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling underlines their recognition of its importance. Frequently they are able and willing to invest in private schools, concluding that the knowledge, skills, and heightened self-image their children receive make the expense worthwhile. The conclusion is debatable. Some middle-class observers, including many parents and students feel that private schools are not only inordinately expensive but that they create a confusing sense of entitlement. Jessica Assaf, who attended a $29,800-a-year private school, suggested that students tend to feel, “I deserve to be here, and now everything’s just going to be handed to me.” It wasn’t. Assaf failed to get into her chosen college. Several years later she was convinced it was the best thing that could have happened. She attended a less elite college in New York City and thrived there because, according to Assaf, unlike her elite private school “nothing happens for you … You have to earn every opportunity” (Taylor 2013). On the other hand, informed observers indicate that private schools have certain advantages—for instance, more favorable student-to-counselor ratios and, above all, the personnel and facilities to help develop critical thinking, in short analysis that is clear, rational, and evidence-based (Taylor 2013).

Public schools, too, can have well-organized objectives regarding students’ optimal development. A study of two California school districts—one was suburban upper-middle class and the other urban working class and poor—indicated sharp differences in educational philosophy and approach, with important implications for teachers’ socialization and ultimately children’s education. The suburban district’s officials recruited widely for teachers, visiting various universities, particularly a research university with a master’s in teaching program. The intention was to find the best candidates sharing the program’s philosophy. That philosophy emphasized professional autonomy for teachers and optimal development of students’ skills and knowledge. A principal in the district explained, “Teachers that we hire are very creative and capable. We need to give teachers opportunities to use their creativity to really think about their teaching and kids” (Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman 2004, 579). This district’s leadership, in short, had a clear plan to produce a high-quality schooling experience for students and the resources to implement it. One might wonder whether students whose teachers used such an open-ended approach would test well. They did, with 80 percent of the schools in the suburban district averaging at least a passing score on state-adopted achievement tests while only 8 percent of the schools in the urban district, where a much more structured approach to teaching prevailed, met that standard (Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman 2004, 583). Besides the decent test scores, it is likely that the teaching style in the upper-middle-class district was quite compatible with those students’ socialization.

Middle-class students often have another advantage over their peers in lower classes. Based on a study of an urban public elementary school, sociologist Jessica Calarco, who was cited earlier, found that the teachers, generally middle-class in origin and outlook, favored middle-class students. Calarco explained:

I found that teachers privileged middle-class students by setting middle-class expectations, such as by expecting students to voice their needs and proactively seek help … and by granting middle-class students’ requests, even when they wanted to say no.

(SCIENCE DAILY 2016)

As their children progress through the grades, middle-class parents become increasingly concerned about college acceptance, preferably the college of their choice. They recognize the importance of a college degree as either preparation for the job world or as the educational foundation for postgraduate training. We have already encountered information showing the economic impact of a college degree. Another reality in middle-class parents’ lives is its expense. Over time college costs have steadily risen. Adjusting for inflation, investigators found that in the decade preceding the 2017–18 school year, tuition and fees for in-state students at four-year state schools increased 3.2 percent per year and in private colleges it was 2.4 percent per year. In 2017–18 the overall cost of tuition and fees along with room and board was $20,770 at a public four-year in-state facility, $36,420 at a public out-of-state four-year school, and $46,950 at a private institution. The total costs for all three types of colleges had increased over 3 percent from the preceding year (College Board 2018, 3, 9).

Besides facing the issue of expense, families dealing with the challenge of college acceptance find themselves in a highly competitive setting. To get their children into the most prominent colleges and universities, privileged upper-class and upper-middle-class parents have often been painstaking in their preparation—in particular, enrolling their children in the most successful elementary and secondary schools, developing athletic, musical, or artistic skills that will impress admissions committees, using expensive tutoring services to prepare them for the Standard Aptitude Tests, and taking them on lengthy college tours to find reputable schools that provide “the right fit.”

Overall these actions produce the desired outcomes, and the gap on prominent campuses between the high- and low-income student groups continues to grow. While many top colleges do make some effort to recruit individuals whose income is below the national median, school leaders promoting greater economic diversity need to take bolder steps to level the playing field—to make their programs financially and psychologically more accessible to different income groups. These officials might find it particularly productive to use approaches that have proved successful to assist less affluent candidates on other campuses, and, in addition, they might be less solicitous of wealthy students, eliminating legacies and other privileges the schools have provided in the hope of receiving sizable donations (Karabel 2005, 537–46; Levy and Tyre 2018).

It is not just low-income families that can lose out. A family was overjoyed when they learned that their high-school senior was accepted at Johns Hopkins. At that time, however, they found out that the cost of attendance was $54,470 yearly, with the complicated system based on income and other assets determining that the young woman would receive merely $6,000 in financial aid. According to this reckoning, this middleclass family was too affluent to receive more, but the assessment system did not consider various critical family expenses, leaving the necessity to pay about $48,000, just shy of the median American income (Farrington 2014).

Many middle-class families face a similar challenge with college costs. A study of the nation’s 200 most selective private and public colleges found that between 2000 and 2016 rising costs produced a declining middle-class attendance (Delisle and Cooper 2018). One of the authors of the study said, “In terms of middle-class students, it looks like that is the one group we can pretty clearly say from our data is shrinking at these schools” (Schmidt 2018).

Like human capital, social capital also plays an important role in middle-class individuals’ successful development.

Networking: It’s Who You Know pg. 198

Middle-class people often have access to potentially helpful family members, friends, and community individuals and groups as well as various professionals or experts that members of the less affluent and less prominent classes either cannot connect to or cannot afford. Middle-class people are joiners—open to information and influence from various members of their social class.

The city of Cleveland provided a case in point. Prince Heights or Upper Prince was a neighborhood that stood out from its urban surroundings as the one locale “for miles where the yards are manicured, the houses well kept, and the neighbors know each other” (Maag 2008, A18). The driving force for local improvement was Daniel Lewis, a supervisor for the Cleveland Transit Authority. Every time a house went up for sale, Lewis encouraged a family member to buy it. Lewis’s daughter explained that her father taught his children that “middle-class isn’t about economics … It’s a mindset. You work hard. You take care of your house and your neighborhood and the people around you” (Maag 2008, A18). Middle-class status, Lewis seemed to suggest, was less about financial capital than about other capital types.

Prince Heights has been a healthy, vibrant neighborhood in a locale where drug trafficking and violent crime have always been a nearby presence. In June 2008 Daniel Lewis was killed in his yard, the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting. After Lewis’s death some neighbors wanted to place teddy bears at the crime scene, but his wife refused, suggesting instead that it would be more faithful to her husband’s memory to mobilize the social network he had promoted and develop a powerful community group to protect their neighborhood.

In contrast, sometimes middle-class, more specifically upper-middle-class individuals have mobilized their social capital to restrict access to highly valued urban residential areas. Around 1970 such cities as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco began pursuing exclusionary zoning. An economist summed up the changes when he wrote:

Starting in the 1960s, a property rights revolution occurred in the U.S. Backed by environmentalist rhetoric in the suburbs and preservationist priorities in the cities, American localities increasingly restricted the rights of property owners to build. We changed from a country in which landowners had relatively unfettered freedom to add density to a country in which veto rights over new projects are shared by a dizzying array of abutters and stakeholders. Consequently, we now build far less in the most successful, best educated parts of the country, and housing prices in these areas are far higher than construction costs or prices elsewhere.

(GLAESER 2017)

In the cities that pursued these measures, the “array of abutters and stakeholders” was a sophisticated, well connected, prominent set of people who, as one knowledgeable observer concluded, engaged in “opportunity hoarding,” where upper-middle-class urban residents mobilized to restrict valued access for less affluent people to such prized items as superior schooling and desirable jobs (Reeves 2017).

The use of social capital in upper-middle-class locales is very different from that in urban communities like Prince Heights with their family, friendship, and neighborhood connections. In fact, can one even claim that the hi tech business world uses social capital? Certainly employees use various forms of telecommunications to exchange details about everyday job activities (Bishop and Levine 1999; Hyde 2003, 158–59). Debate exists about whether the social networks established in such instances feature the use of social capital or not. Some analysts conclude that social capital is not involved because of participants’ fixation on work-related issues and no involvement of family, friends, and community (Cohen and Fields 2000; Hyde 2003). However, one should keep in mind that the standard for qualification on this issue is not a sharp one—that some groups representing social capital previously cited in this chapter have been work associates or hired professionals, decidedly not intimates for the people in question.

Since the 1990s email and the Internet have promoted social networks that are not restricted by physical space; that allow many people, hundreds and even thousands or millions, to be contacted at once; and that with attachments and websites permit the transmission of text, documents, photos, and videos. In addition, within these computergenerated systems, bidirectional communication exists, allowing individuals receiving information to provide feedback (Dellarocas 2003; Wellman 2001, 2031). While in 2000 about half of Americans used the Internet, the figure skyrocketed in the next two decades to about 90 percent, with younger people distinctly more likely to use it than their elders (Pew Research Center 2018).

While computer-generated networks are growing, research produces mixed results on the topic of whether these systems build social capital. A study of 169 Pittsburgh-area families who used computers with Internet connections over two years found that high levels of Internet use corresponded with declines in communication with both family members and friends (Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukophadhyay, and Scherlis 1998). Another, much larger investigation featuring a representative sample of over 4,000 families indicated that a quarter of respondents using the Internet five hours a week or more felt that it reduced the time spent with friends and family (Nie and Erbring 2000). In recent years Americans appear to have mixed feelings about computers and the Internet. A nationwide survey with over 1,000 adults 18 or older indicated that while 28 percent felt that the impact has been mostly positive; 62 percent, the distinct majority, opted for mixed, namely a combination of positive and negative results; and a modest 10 percent chose mostly negative (Allstate/NationalJournal 2015).

A significant factor in the Digital Age is social-networking sites, which are Internet organizations that are seeking to build online communities of people sharing interests and activities. A host of these sites has developed, with Facebook and YouTube the most widely used. On its website Facebook’s publicity statement indicated that anyone can join the site, using a school or work email address to register and then presenting a detailed profile of whatever one wants to convey about his or her past, present, and future. Facebook contains many networks whose members belong to schools, companies, or physical regions like towns. The site started in early 2004, and within about four-and-a-half years it had 100 million users around the world (Facebook 2008).

Several hundred fairly popular social networking sites exist, and a constant stream of new sites have been appearing, seeking to appeal to users with specific needs (Nations 2018). Estimates for the leaders’ number of monthly visits are:

•Facebook, 1.5 billion

•YouTube, 1.499 billion

•Twitter, 400 million

•Instagram, 250 million

•Reddit, 125 million (eBiz/Mba 2017).

Many social networking sites have extensive use by members of different social classes. While middle-class individuals participate widely, they show disproportionate interest in selected sites. Twitter tends to have more educated users, with 29 percent of those possessing college degrees using Twitter compared to 20 percent of those with high-school certificates or less.

With LinkedIn, however, the educational discrepancy is much more pronounced. It turns out that 50 percent of individuals with a college degree use this networking site compared to a mere 9 percent for people with a high-school diploma or less (Greenwood, Perrin, and Duggan 2016). A significant percentage of LinkedIn exchanges concern middle-class people seeking jobs. An article in Forbes magazine provided extensive detail indicating how middle-class candidates could find LinkedIn valuable in supplying practical information that would help to obtain a high-quality middle-class position.

The writer, for instance, emphasized the importance of leading off with an appealing headshot accompanied by a strong, impressive headline. Once the profile has been written, then individuals in question need to contact anyone from their past who could help secure the kind of position they have in mind. As in writing the profile, the process of contacting people should be painstaking, considering not only prospective employers but also individuals, who, though not hiring, might be able to provide information about job openings. As the job candidacy progresses, the Forbes writer indicated that individual candidates for a particular job would do well to “snoop,” using LinkedIn to locate former employees of the company who could provide useful information about it or seeking out friends or acquaintances with similar information. All in all, the article described the detailed assistance LinkedIn could provide for locating and perhaps securing valuable middle-class jobs (Shin 2014).

As the upcoming section indicates, once losing their jobs, middle-class prospects often face a difficult, demanding job candidacy.

THE LEAN, MEAN MIDDLE-CLASS WORK MACHINE

The business world is the heart of the American middle-class economy. What traits do middle-class individuals entering this setting need in order to be successful? Robert Jackall’s well-known sociological study of management in two companies—one with 11,000 staff members manufacturing a variety of chemicals and the other with 20,000 employees producing textiles—provided a set of prominent qualities (2010, 18–19). Jackall’s study along with several updated sources examine these factors, which include:

•Education: In Jackall’s study the more prestigious firm recruited managers from such celebrated business schools as Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton (2010, 44). A more recent assessment of master’s in business administration (MBA) programs using the evaluations of deans and directors of MBAs continued to give all three schools prominence, listing the top five in the following order: Harvard, Chicago, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), Stanford, and MIT (U.S. News and World Report 2018).

For individuals who want to become a business leader, an MBA is the most popular choice, but acceptance into and completion of programs is difficult. In 2016, for instance, there were 801,504 applicants, with a total enrollment that year of 1,012,650 students, but only 156,250 managed to graduate from their programs (Statistic Brain Research Institute 2016).

In 2018 MBA applicants indicated that consulting, finance, and technology were the three industrial areas that displayed the greatest appeal. Over half of the applicants expected that leadership was the quality that job recruiters would find most valuable, closely followed by problem solving and a firm grasp of how to conduct business (Cottrell 2018).

It is questionable, however, that educational institutions are providing these skills. A survey of 623 business leaders indicated that only a third of the respondents agreed with a statement declaring that “[h]igher education institutions in this country are graduating students with the skills and competencies that MY business needs” (Sidhu and Calderon 2014).

One of the principal concerns, even the principal one, involves the development of leadership. Among business leaders there is widespread support for two ideas about leadership that are only cited here: that the capacity to succeed in this regard involves not only knowledge and skill but, equally important, a clear understanding of oneself in the role; and that becoming a leader is a social activity, requiring that the individual in question becomes adept at relating to and understanding other people (Academy of Management 2016). Several other assets are necessary to succeed as a business leader.

•Hard work: Jackall indicated that individuals who want to succeed in management not only need to work hard but must be perceived as hard workers, constantly on the move and improving their output. An executive vice-president at the textile firm spoke about the unrelenting effort necessary. Certain individuals, he asserted, stood out. “You can spot it the first six months. They have suggestions at meetings. They come into a business and the business picks up. They don’t go on coffee breaks …” ( Jackall 2010, 48).

For recently hired management, working hard involves not only exerting effort on the job but also relentlessly making such job-enhancing commitments as “meeting deadlines, sticking to your work, keeping your personal opinions under wraps, and doing your best to represent your department and organization” (Larssen 2018).

•Self-control: While working hard in what is often a pressure-packed atmosphere is essential, the individual seeking to climb the corporate ladder must demonstrate self-control. When interviewed managers stressed the importance of hiding feelings and intentions behind a relaxed, smiling, affable exterior. Corporate life, they seemed to imply, was a game that demanded a perfect poker face ( Jackall 2010, 51).

A study of 72 executives at both private and public companies with revenues ranging from $50 million to $5 billion found that while leadership searches tend to pay little attention to self-awareness, it was the factor most strongly associated with overall success on the job (Lipman 2013a; 2013b). The investigators wrote,

This is not altogether surprising as executives who are aware of their weaknesses are often better able to hire subordinates who perform well in categories in which the leader lacks acumen. These leaders are also more able to entertain the idea that someone on their team may have an idea that is even better than their own.

(LIPMAN 2013A)

•Hitting the numbers: To be successful in business, a person must contribute to the profit commitments that upper-level management has established for his or her work unit. However, making money in itself is insufficient to ensure an individual’s advancement in management ( Jackall 2010, 66).

•Acting as a team player: Ambitious corporate managers soon realize that they must master a role where they learn to get along with others, fit in, recognize trouble and if possible stay away from it, and always appear unthreatening and pleasant, hiding ambition. The object is to make both one’s superiors and peers feel comfortable ( Jackall 2010, 53–54).

The American Management Association indicated that in many modern businesses, managers find themselves facing the pressures of “[d]ownsizing, rightsizing, reorganizing … The only way to cope with this need to do more with less is by … [offering leadership that operates] cooperatively in an environment of respect drawing on all the resources available to get the job done” (American Management Association 2016).

•Obtaining a patron: Prominent corporate officials provide protégés a chance to advance—giving them opportunities to showcase their talents or introducing them to other high-level executives who might also help their progress. The patron– protégé relationship is a reciprocal one, with junior members making certain that their superiors receive all critical information to produce effective decisions and providing unswerving loyalty to them in exchange for the benefits previously mentioned. Over time as patrons invest heavily in junior managers, they become committed to making certain that those individuals do not fail since failure would diminish senior executives’ reputation for picking winners ( Jackall 2010, 65–66). As several of these observations suggest, choosing protégés is not a selfless decision. Not surprisingly a study providing data from 282 mentors indicated that they were more likely to choose protégés based on their perception of perceived ability than of junior executives’ perceived need for support (Allen, Poteet, and Russell 2000).

Female executives have recognized that women’s most promising prospects for patrons are likely to be members of their own sex. “A lot of women recognize that they got a break from women on the way up,” said Patricia O’Brien, dean of the Simmons Graduate School of Management. “They want to return the favor” (Aoki 2001, F1). Regardless of protégés’ gender, CEOs are potentially the most helpful patrons. Upper-management personnel who use flattery, opinion conformity, and favor-rendering with their CEOs are more likely to receive board appointments at either firms where their bosses already serve or to obtain such positions at boards to which their CEOs are connected through interlocking directorates (Westphal and Stern 2006).

Even highly successful business leaders have patrons or mentors. Initially Bill Gates resisted the idea of meeting Warren Buffett. Gates’s mother was giving a dinner party, and he felt that Buffett was simply “this guy who picks stocks.” However, as Gates wrote in LinkedIn, he soon realized that Buffett has done much more than just pick stocks, also painstakingly analyzing companies to determine how they gain advantage over their competitors. Gates incorporated that idea in developing Microsoft, appreciating that Buffett “thought about business in a much more profound way than I’d given him credit for” (Blackman 2015).

Clearly management positions are crucial for a modern society’s economic growth, and even in a sluggish economy the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an increase—an 8 percent expansion from 2016 to 2026, driven both by the formation of new organizations and the enlargement of existing ones. In May 2017 the median annual wage for management jobs was $102,590, the highest of all major occupational categories (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018b).

Since the Great Recession, however, middle-class citizens overall have often not done well economically.

Middle-Class Workforce Changes Involving Downsizing, Outsourcing, and Temp Work pg 203

In 2015, for the first time in over 40 years, the number of Americans qualifying for the middle class was fewer, 120.8 million, than the 121.3 million total for the social classes above and below them. The Pew Research Center, which did the study, considered respondents middle class when their income ranged from two-thirds to double the overall median household income (Pew Research Center 2015a). Not surprisingly during the Great Recession, the distinct majority of jobs lost were middle-class positions, with largely low-wage replacements (Plumer 2014).

This was not the first time, however, that middle-class workers suffered widespread job loss. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to investigative reporter Barbara Ehrenreich, corporate executives’ attitude toward middle-class employees changed. “Blue-collar workers were always thought to be disposable,” she asserted, “but now they started looking at white-collar workers as just expenses to eliminate” (Doster 2006). These executives were engaging in downsizing—the deliberate reduction of permanent employees in an effort to provide an organization more efficient operation and/or cut costs. The introduction of new technology, extensive corporate restructuring, and outsourcing of jobs to foreign locations all promote downsizing. Both large and small corporations pursue the practice, with enormous firms like IBM, AT&T, and GM reducing their heavily middle-class workforce by 10 to 20 percent (Perrucci and Wysong 2008, 3).

During the years preceding and following the Great Recession, the number of layoffs was massive, with between 800,000 and 1.5 million workers downsized between 2000 and 2008 and between 2010 and 2013. In 2009 when the recession was peaking 2.1 million Americans lost their jobs. A Harvard research team concluded that the resulting cost savings tended to be “overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and lower innovation, which hurt profits in the long run” (Sucher and Gupta 2018). The researchers indicated that all too often such actions involve “bad layoffs,” namely “layoffs that aren’t fair or perceived as fair by employees and that have lasting negative knock-on effects” (Sucher and Gupta 2018). In contrast, companies can produce downsizing which their laid-off employees consider successful when they assist them to find reasonably good jobs. Faced with a major commercial downturn, Boeing had to downsize 55,000 workers over a five-year period. Management cooperated with organized labor, several levels of government, and community colleges to produce a reemployment program that helped their former employees develop alternative job skills and attain new positions (Mueller, Van Deusen, and Hornsby 2018).

Another issue coming into play following layoffs is the workers’ response. Middleclass employees are often noted for their detailed meticulous work preparation, and this issue can become highly relevant as they prepare to seek another job. For instance, one expert on job procurement indicated that after being laid off, individuals are likely to feel anger and bitterness, emotions that need to be expressed. He added:

Tell it as many times as you need in order to resolve any “emotional baggage” and get it out of your system before you get in front of a recruiter. They will sense your bitterness, and it won’t reflect well on you.

(KNIGHT 2015)

Then when talking to recruiters, develop a layoff commentary that is short and positive, avoiding any reference to oneself as a victim. The specialist previously cited suggested something like “My former company went through an extensive restructuring. I’ve been given an opportunity to rethink my career, and what I am looking for now is XYZ.” Such a statement should rapidly shift recruiters’ perception of the candidate from the past to the present and the future (Knight 2015).

Downsizing has received extensive attention and media coverage as individuals lost their jobs and often struggled both to find another job and to maintain their previous lifestyle. Initially concern about outsourcing was muted. Outsourcing is companies’ subcontracting of services to other companies instead of continuing to provide those services themselves. Outsourcing can occur with firms in the immediate area or elsewhere in the United States, but a substantial amount of it involves companies in foreign countries. Outsourcing started slowly. In the early 1990s, Indian animators began to produce Saturday morning cartoons. Soon afterwards Indians’ “hidden hands” were starting to do Amazon.com book orders (Sheshabalaya 2005, 3).

There are distinct advantages and disadvantages for companies to engage in outsourcing. To begin, employers don’t need to bring new individuals into the firm, thus saving money on training, benefits, salary, and various other costs (Patel 2017). A research team that examined outsourcing internationally concluded, “The first and fundamental objective was and will be the cost reductions in many organizations” (Iqbal and Dad 2013, 99). In addition, management can find that when hiring locally, they are likely to discover that the talent pool is distinctly limited while outsourcing can provide a much greater range of choice.

On the other hand, problems can emerge. One is the prospect of lack of control. When outsourcing, companies often end up hiring contractors who act as intermediaries with the workers. The lack of direct interaction as well as the physical separation from these job holders can undermine control. A related point involves work quality. In outsourcing settings, where the American company is far removed from its international workers the quality of performance can be questionable. Finally, as the discussion on downsizing indicated, an organization’s workforce can be affected—not just the individuals laid off but also those who remain, readily feeling vulnerable to the threatening ax.

PHOTO 6.2 The pain this young woman feels has been experienced by millions of middleclass workers who like her have been downsized in recent years.

Source: Stefano Lunardi/Shutterstock.

Looking beyond the companies engaged in outsourcing, it is apparent that the process affects the economy overall. The United States outsources about 300,000 jobs each year (Patel 2017), a distinct contributor to unemployment. In 2013 in the four industries involving call centers, technology, human resources, and manufacturing, American companies employed about 14 million foreign workers, nearly double the 7.5 million unemployed domestically (Amadeo 2018).

While outsourcing is a common practice, a less prominent trend involving domestic positions entails importing individuals from other countries as hi tech workers. Foreigners with specialty occupations can become eligible for H-1B visas, which individuals can possess for a maximum of six years. In 2017 nearly 70 percent of the jobs were computer related, and other leading occupational areas involved architecture, engineering, and surveying; administration; education; and medicine and health. Over 75 percent of the total H-1B holders came from India, with China at 9.4 percent the next in line. Over 88 percent of the individuals obtaining this visa were between 25 and 39 years old, and the median salary of H-1B workers was $85,000 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2018).

The modern American economy provides good opportunities for the selected foreign workers able to find jobs, but for many citizens the employment options have deteriorated. Temporary (temp) work involves a job where an individual remains in a position for a limited amount of time. Many temp jobs provide part-time employment as over time the percentage of part-timers has expanded. In 1968 when the Labor Department first collected statistics on part-time employment, just 13.5 percent of the workforce engaged in it—a figure that peaked at 20.1 in 2010 and then fell slightly to 17.7 percent in 2018. As a rule these workers would prefer full-time employment but must work less because of employers reducing their hours or the inability to locate full-time positions (Mislinski 2018). The 2010 peak figure occurred soon after the completion of the Great Recession; both high part-time employment and temp work expanded during that economic downturn.

It’s not just hard times that expand temp work. In recent years some middle-class jobs involving professional and clerical input have become automated, releasing or downsizing the positions for millions of white-collar employees working for the post office or a wide variety of custom services (Rotman 2013).

As a rule middle-class temp workers are likely to be better off than their workingclass counterparts. A five-year study of a large organization that provided part-time work found that 44 percent of temp-to-hire assignments ended in an actual hire while among industrial workers, only 22 percent were permanently hired by the client (Houseman and Heinrich 2016).

Individuals holding longer-lasting temporary positions are sometimes called “permatemps”—a curiously and perhaps frustratingly contradictory phrase. Erin Hatton, a sociologist who has studied and written about permatemps, indicated that employers are unlikely to receive loyalty or high productivity. She added:

But on the flip side, today you might, because there are growing numbers of temporary workers—long-term temporary workers— … who desperately hope to become permanent workers. And so they give it all they’ve got.… They’re extra creative. They’re extra productive in the hopes of being converted to permanent status.

(NPR 2013)

Meanwhile, whether lengthy or brief, temp work has become commonplace. “It seems to be the new norm in the working world,” said Kelly Sibla, 54. This computer systems engineer had been looking for a full-time job for four years, but she said she has had to take whatever she can find (McGarvey 2014).

Overall the picture for temp workers is not promising. Investigative reporters Barbara Ehrenreich and Ta Mara Draut indicated that an increasing proportion of middle-class workers experience “ ‘real’ jobs giv[ing] way to benefit-free contract work. Far from being on an elite perch in the ‘knowledge economy,’ the middle class hovers just inches above the working poor” (Ehrenreich and Draut 2006). The upcoming discussion addresses the issue of middle-class job instability.

The Middle-Class Struggle with Reemployment pg 207

As the data in Table 6.3 indicate, middle-class individuals who suffer job loss tend to obtain new positions. Among sales and office personnel, however, nearly 40 percent are not reemployed, and overall for reemployed middle-class workers, their salary is often smaller (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018c; Hira and Hira 2005, 129–30).

Table 6.3Data Involving Displaced Middle-Class Workers and Their Reemployment

Management, professional, and related occupations 1.1 million lost their positions; 71.7 percent reemployed

Sales and office personnel 796,000 suffered job loss; 61.5 percent reemployed

While the majority of middle-class workers losing jobs find replacements, the new positions often pay less well than the previous ones.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (2018c, Table 5. “Long-tenured Displaced Workers by Occupation of Lost Job and Employment Status in January 2018”).

The dismissal can be a shock. Jim Rude, a computer programmer, who was a few hours short of having a master’s in computer science, was suddenly told that he and 325 other colleagues would be dismissed in two months. During this final time period, Rude and his fellow programmers had to train their replacements. Rude said, “And we were told, ‘If you don’t train these people, you will be terminated on the spot and you won’t get your severance package’ ” (Bartlett and Steele 1996, 28). When his job ended, Rude went unemployed for two months and then found a job at about half his previous salary.

For many people, especially if they are in their 50s or more, finding reemployment is a formidable proposition. To experience how difficult the middle-class job market was, Barbara Ehrenreich, who was in her 50s, spent seven months job searching, primarily for a sales job, and she wrote a book about her experiences. Ehrenreich hired a specialist to provide an image makeover, paid for assistance to refine and later upgrade her résumé, networked in four cities, and received exactly two offers for sales positions. They were not, however, in Ehrenreich’s estimation real jobs, just paying commissions and offering no salary, benefits, or a workplace. Surely, Ehrenreich assumed, there were real jobs that offered salary and benefits along with commission, but the catch was that such an arrangement required the employer to risk an investment in the prospective employee (Ehrenreich 2005, 189).

During her investigation Ehrenreich found many people who went from solidly middle-class jobs to minimum-wage employment—a former broadcast journalist looking for an entry-level position at Best Buy, Circuit City, or Home Depot; a computer specialist working at moving furniture; a former teacher employed at a number of minimum-wage jobs such as sorting UPS mail and laying tile and hardwood floors. One former marketing executive, who had spent several years at menial jobs, explained that in her present position “I’ve done everything from scrub toilets to clean out apartments in this complex for eight dollars an hour.” The physically demanding nature of the work made her more respectful of her largely Hispanic coworkers and caused her to lose 20 pounds (Ehrenreich 2005, 206).

Not surprisingly a random sample composed of about 18,000 individuals aged 18 or older from all 50 states indicated that the longer they were jobless, the more likely they reported a diminished psychological state—that, in fact, one in five among those who had gone a year without work reported that they received treatment for depression which was about double the rate for people who had been five weeks or less without a job (Crabtree 2014).

Overall, though, middle-class individuals who lose their jobs are likely to locate another, finding that their social-class location can serve them well. A study has indicated that while lower-class people without jobs tend to be considered unmotivated and lazy, middle-class members who are unemployed generally manage to avoid being stigmatized (Dougherty, Rick, and Moore 2017). It seems likely that this relatively positive orientation contributes significantly to the substantial reemployment levels middle-class people achieve.

A team of researchers acknowledged that while losing one’s job and seeking another could be tension-producing and painful, individuals could exercise considerable influence on how the process unfolded. They conducted a 20-week study with 177 participants who ranged in age from 25 to 50 and possessed bachelor’s degrees. At the end of the research, 128 individuals, namely 72 percent, had found new jobs. The investigators concluded that a distinctive trait, which they called “approach orientation” involving great enthusiasm for growth and learning as well as control over the situations in which job seekers became involved, could readily promote progress in the search for new positions (Wanberg, Zhu, Kanfer, and Zhang 2012).

For the researchers one successful participant epitomized the most effective approach to getting another job when he discussed his hard-headed, practical orientation, starting with a move that illustrated the mastery that was part of approach orientation.

Just keeping motivated. You know, that’s a tough one when day in and day out, doors are slamming in your face because, you know, you’re not the only person applying for a particular job or you’re not the only person reaching out to somebody. And, I think, trying to keep a smile on your face and staying motivated that it will happen when it’s meant to happen. That’s the ticket. I think that’s the toughest thing when you’ve been out of work for a long period of time.

(ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT 2016)

Besides developing diminished self-images, displaced workers often encounter negative response from former colleagues. Richard Sennett, who studied middle-class men who had lost corporate jobs, found that they had become strangely “invisible,” barred from occupational networks to which they once had access. Sennett wrote, “The silence which surrounds their marginality marks America’s greatest social taboo, failure, our unmentionable subject” (Sennett 2006, 102).

We have seen that in recent years the percentage of middle-class members has dropped below half the societal total while downsizing, unemployment, and part-time work have all accelerated. It seems productive to examine middle-class people’s precarious financial condition in more detail.

THE MIDDLE CLASS’S SLIPPERY SLOPE FOR MAKING ENDS MEET pg 209

After World War II the economy was strong, with expanding consumption subsidized by ever-rising middle-class and working-class salaries. Around 1980, however, wages stopped rising, but consumption continued robust. As a result debt, including middleclass debt, started to rise until 2008 when the Great Recession shut down easy credit, leading to widespread loss of both jobs and homes.

Nowadays widespread borrowing has returned. The reference is not to suggest that going into debt is inherently bad—it can be productive for items that are long-lasting such as homes or cars—but it is highly questionable to engage in it to pay for immediate consumption products (Nutting 2014).

Several figures convey a sense of middle-class Americans’ precarious financial situation. Overall American consumers have a debt of about $13.15 trillion, with about two-thirds of the total involving consumer mortgages (Durden 2018). Middle-class yearly income is slightly over $72,000 while the average debt is more—about 122 percent of yearly income. Meanwhile middle-class families have saved a distinctly modest $20,000 for retirement (Williams 2016b). A pair of economists noted that while the upper-income segment of the population has been enjoying an expanded portion of both wealth and income, middle-class households have been suffering a decline in income along with rising interest rates—a painful combination they label “a double squeeze” (Scott and Pressman 2011).

Many Americans are inclined to believe that the widespread middle-class economic woes represent personal extravagances. It’s a persistent, even comforting myth, they say, because it “explains(s) away some very bad news” (Tyagi and Warren 2016). If we lead well-organized lives, spending modestly and carefully, then there will be no problem. The reality, however, is that while some families spend recklessly, no epidemic in overspending has developed—“certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit card debt” (Tyagi and Warren 2016). Clearly the double squeeze plays a significant role here.

Investigation reveals, in fact, that the major source of middle-class debt is not frivolous consumer items people don’t really need such as overpriced gadgets or designer clothes. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, it turns out the focus involves two issues—housing and higher education. Housing is middle-class families’ greatest expenditure and a troubling one since housing values dropped with the advent of the Great Recession, reaching their lowest worth in 2012. The so-called “housing bubble” often accompanied by accumulating debt and declining wage growth have left many middle-class families with reduced financial prospects (Depietro 2017; Williams 2016a).

Higher education is also a highly troubling expense for many middle-class individuals. While the value of higher education in increasing career income has declined in recent years, the cost has been steadily accelerating. In 2017 the nation’s student debt reached $1.3 trillion, the 18th consecutive year it had increased and the type of debt that had most accelerated in the previous eight years (Depietro 2017). The cost of higher education has affected all racial and ethnic groups, but research done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has indicated that the cost of college has particularly restricted blacks’ upward mobility, with the mobility gaps between blacks and whites declining when members of both groups have completed college (Davis and Mazumder 2018).

According to a team of researchers, higher education and housing represent “good debt” that is likely to produce a positive financial return over time in contrast to “bad debt” involving such consumer items as clothing, trips, and entertainment which might be pleasing but make no contribution to one’s financial well-being. The team studied 27 white, middle-class consumers and found that on the issue of creating debt they divided into three categories. The first segment used credit for such items as home mortgages, school loans, and automobiles, quickly repaying any bad debt, maintaining good credit ratings, and often feeling proud of their discipline. David, a respondent, stated, “I may not eat, but all my bills are paid” (Peñaloza and Barnhart 2013, S118). As a rule they tended to be older and more affluent than the other respondents. The second category used both good and bad credit but created more bad debt as they sometimes found themselves caught up in buying a variety of nonessential consumer items. Among these people those who rolled over bad debt tended to be less well off than others who readily paid off most debt. Finally the third set of consumers limited their use of credit, either because they had endured such experiences as bankruptcy or because companies denied them. Overall those less capable of controlling their debt tended to be fairly young and relatively limited in income. In some cases they drifted quite mindlessly into a troubled financial situation. Barry (age 26) described casually learning about credit/debt.

I started getting credit cards, in college, you know, and would use them and say, oh, I will be fine, I’ll make the minimum payments. Yeah, I never really followed through on that and I ended up getting pretty screwed. Yeah, falling into a pretty bad situation that I’ve just now got myself out of six years later. So, yeah. I learned the hard way.

(PEÑALOZA AND BARNHART 2013, S115)

After reviewing the chapter’s contents, I consider what’s ahead.

Conclusion

The preindustrial middle class contained farmers and small-business men, who usually had modest success along with a distinctly independent life. Industry brought a massive economic expansion and for middle-class men a changed lifestyle emphasizing a commitment to hard work, self-improvement, and a sharply reduced family involvement. Independence waned, with middle-class workers joining companies and seeking to climb the company ladder. During industrialization the family changed, with the mother assuming the responsibility for preparing children to enter the new, fast-changing world. The twentieth century was generally a prosperous time for the middle class.

Starting in the 1930s, the government introduced various supportive social programs. In addition, a number of middle-class occupations expanded sharply during the century.

The two middle classes differ in their income and jobs, education, and the impact of the ecology of class. The chapter also examines the development of middle-class people generally, examining childhood, schooling, and networking. Historically Americans born into the middle class have been the beneficiaries of social reproduction, and Table 6.4 analyzes middle-class people’s access to different types of capital.

Table 6.4A Summary of the Types of Capital Available to Middle-Class People

1.Financial capital: Salaries for families of four ranging from $48,000 to $144,000, with the “working rich” earning considerably more. Growing threats to financial stability include job uncertainty, fixed income, high interest rates, and elevated housing and college costs. 2.Human capital: Parents’ frequent emphasis on residing within a high-quality school district, often necessitating the purchase of an expensive home with a substantial mortgage; the cost of college steadily rising since 2000 3.Social capital: Widespread recognition that joining groups can help accomplish goals; recent socialnetworking sites helping to build online communities of people sharing interests and activities; middleclass parents’ development of social capital to promote children’s effective school performance 4.Cultural capital: General tendency for middle-class parents to emphasize a conscientious development of children’s ability to express themselves well and make sensible, carefully calculated decisions

A major topic involves the middle-class work setting, including an assessment of the traits necessary to be successful in American business. Times, however, have been changing, and such workforce issues as downsizing, outsourcing, temp work, and the challenge of seeking reemployment have become prominent realities.

The final topic involves the growing economic problems many middle-class individuals and families face. How will these disruptive economic conditions and the accompanying stress affect middle-class families’ childrearing patterns? In the modern middle-class setting, recent research has suggested that families have provided their children various types of quality capital.

What about young people entering the job world? The Gallup Poll examined Millennials’ employment, designating them the approximately 73 million Americans who were born between 1980 and 1996. As a rule they seek good jobs, ones that provide 30 or more hours a week and good paychecks. A substantial 87 percent indicated that career growth and development are important to them. In addition, they are interested in a sense of well-being on the job—“a purposeful life, active community and social ties, and financial stability.” Are Millennials finding these qualities on the job? Of all age groups, they have the highest unemployment and underemployment rates, and, in addition, only 29 percent indicate they feel engaged at work (Adkins 2016).

Though often feeling removed from their jobs as well as other institutional structures, Millennials are solidly connected to the world at large. Ninety-one percent own smart phones, and 71 percent indicate that the Internet is their primary source for news and information. High percentages of Millennials want the world to change, including old-time, formalized relations between managers and their workers. Millennials want their managers to care about them as both employees and people, and as a result the majority of those who feel they can talk to their managers about non-work issues say that a year down the road they will still be at the same job (Adkins 2016).

It is not an era that inspires optimism about middle-class job prospects. Which occupations are likely to do well and which are not? Looking ahead optimistically, can one visualize a global scenario that would include an economically revitalized American middle class?

Please see the following CH 2 textbook reading to help answer the final DQ for list of theories.

CHAPTER 2

In Marx’s Wake: Theories of Social Stratification and Social Inequality

While campaigning for the presidency, Senator Bernie Sanders told reporters in Iowa that many people “get very nervous” when they hear the word “socialist.” Sanders explained that to him socialism “means creating a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthiest people in the country” (Gaudiano 2015). It was Karl Marx’s expectation that revolution within nations’ capitalist systems would produce socialist outcomes. While not supporting a forcible overthrow, Sanders did applaud the Marxist emphasis on a significant economic redistribution, with the wealthy paying a significant increase in taxes (Russell 2016).

A Gallup Poll conducted with 1,544 randomly picked Americans indicated that Sanders’s candidacy had not changed public support for socialism—35 percent in 2016 and a nearly identical 36 percent six years earlier. Certain categories of people were more supportive. A mere 13 percent of Republicans/Republican leaners compared to a robust 58 percent of Democrats/Democratic leaners supported it.

Notably the survey showed that the youngest category of voters—those 18 to 29—were the distinctly strongest supporters of socialism, with 55 percent endorsing it compared to 37 percent among individuals 30–49 and 24 percent for respondents 65+ (Newport 2016).

Marx’s theory, which was a decisive endorsement of socialism and, in particular, a detailed critique of capitalism is one of the theories examined in the opening part. This chapter has four main sections. The structural-functional theory presented initially contrasts sharply with the conflict perspectives in the following two sections, where Marxist theory plays a prominent role. Then the fourth section, featuring three theories, examines the issue of the power elite, which concerns the influential set of individuals who, according to these theories, establish and implement the primary policies for running the country.

While the material in this chapter primarily presents the work of sociologists who are experts in formulating theories about social activity, they are hardly the only individuals developing theories. Many people of varied backgrounds produce or subscribe to theories about a host of issues—about childrearing, global warming, world peace, and many more. A sociological theory, which is the focus here, is a combination of observations and insights providing a systematic explanation of social life. In American sociology the upcoming theory became popular soon after World War II and continues to be cited and discussed extensively if critically as the preeminent illustration of a structural-functional theory of social stratification (Hauhart 2003).

THE DAVIS-MOORE THEORY OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore (1945) produced a well-known version of structural-functional theory, which is a perspective suggesting that groups in interaction tend to adjust to one another in a fairly stable, conflict-free way. The Davis-Moore theory claimed that social stratification is inevitable and necessary. They contended that because some positions require special ability or training, individuals qualified to do these jobs are in short supply. For medical doctors the arduous, taxing years of training, which are costly and restrict them in earning money, are a sacrifice they would not endure without the likelihood that they would eventually be well paid. Indeed, Davis and Moore claimed, because of the importance of what they do and the scarcity of individuals with their qualifications, medical doctors and others in functionally critical occupations must be well compensated, demonstrating the inevitable necessity for social stratification in modern societies. For an individual in an elevated profession like medicine, the benefits of high placement in the social-stratification system include a lot of money, but there needs to be more. Davis and Moore’s characterization of such jobs was that “the position must be high in the social scale—must command great prestige, high salary, ample leisure, and the like” (Davis and Moore 1945, 244).

In the structural-functional tradition, Davis and Moore described a smoothly running, efficient social-stratification system in which people in elevated positions receive sufficient rewards “to draw talent and motivate training” (Davis and Moore 1945, 247).

As a colleague in the same sociology department at Princeton, Melvin Tumin rejected the Davis and Moore theory, dismissing the idea that individuals in well-paid positions are compensated for talent and training. In rebuttal Tumin raised several points:

•Well-paid people are not necessarily more valuable than less affluent individuals. For instance, for the survival of a factory the unskilled workers are as essential as the engineers. Without both categories of employees doing their jobs effectively, the factory will collapse.

•Instead of job payment linked to an elusive functional contribution, the key requirement for receiving high income is bargaining power (Tumin 1953, 388). As a modern example not provided by Tumin, prominent professional athletes and entertainers do not necessarily make a major contribution to the well-being of society, but their popularity buttressed by agents and managers who negotiate for them leads to lucrative contracts. Or, to return to Davis and Moore’s example of medical doctors, evidence supporting Tumin’s focus on bargaining power indicates that the American Medical Association (the AMA) has used its considerable influence to pare down the number of doctors. Starting in 1904 the Council on Medical Education of the AMA pressured state medical boards to shut down many medical schools and to curtail the number of students at those remaining. Between 1900 and 2002, the US population increased nearly 300 percent, but the number of medical schools, most of which lost students, declined by 26 percent. The key here was the AMA’s influential role in restricting the numbers of individuals trained as doctors, thereby helping to keep their fees high (Steinreich 2004). To some extent, however, that pattern has changed. In 2002 leaders of the Association of American Medical Colleges, an organization which oversees the process of medical school application and cooperates with the AMA, recognized the scarcity of doctors and urged medical schools to expand their enrollment, producing a 25 percent increase of over 4,000 medical students a year by 2016 (Association of American Medical Colleges 2016). As Tumin might have mentioned, the AMA’s bargaining power remained intact, and as a result the lessened scarcity of doctors did not lead to a decline in income as structural-functional theory might have predicted.

•Finally Tumin believed that Davis and Moore overstated the sacrifice doctors and others preparing for high-status jobs experience. He pointed out that the parents, not the students themselves, generally pay for schooling. Tumin indicated that “this cost tends to be paid out of income which the parents were able to earn generally by virtue of their [his italics] privileged positions in the hierarchy of stratification” (Tumin 1953, 390). To Tumin’s thinking most medical students are not sacrificing economically but are the distinct beneficiaries of social reproduction. Far from sacrificing, Tumin emphasized, well-educated students receive psychic benefits from their schooling or training. These include a life of greater freedom and flexibility than most full-time workers. In addition, there is “the much higher prestige enjoyed by the college student and the professional-school student as compared with persons in shops and offices” (Tumin 1953, 390). Modern commentaries on the structural-functional theory of social stratification are much more compatible with Tumin’s than Davis and Moore’s approach (Hauhart 2003; Panayotakis 2014).

Tumin described a social-stratification system not based on individuals’ talent and arduous training but on the influence occupational groups and their powerful support organizations can exert favoring high salaries. Such a conclusion is consistent with an intellectual tradition opposing the structural-functional approach. Conflict theory is a perspective contending that the struggle for wealth, power, and prestige in society should be the central concern of sociology. This approach is useful for analyzing topics involving social inequality, where focus is on the process by which the members of different social classes and other stratified groups receive greatly varied access to income, wealth, power, and prestige. The fundamental figure in conflict theory has been Karl Marx.

MARXIST THEORY OF CAPITALISM AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Karl Marx was a philosopher, political, economic, and sociological theorist, and revolutionary, who lived and worked in a tumultuous era during which unrest and rebellion were common. Marx frequently addressed the stormy realities of his time—for instance, describing the major economic events in late 1840s France that produced an “eruption of the general discontent” (Marx 1959, 286). Facing many competitive socialist thinkers, Marx sometimes attacked and ridiculed their doctrines (Tucker 1978, xxxiii). He was an unrelenting critic of capitalism but also its victim. From the middle 1840s to the middle 1850s, Marx and his family lived in poverty, with only three of his seven children surviving to adulthood (Singer 2000, 5).

Marxist theory contributes significantly to the study of social stratification and social inequality, a contribution grounded in economic analysis.

The Economic Structure of Marxist Theory

Marx believed that the mode of production has a dominant influence on the development of a society’s structures and activities as well as its citizens’ outlooks. The mode of production is a society’s organized system for developing goods and services such as feudalism, capitalism, or socialism. In a well-known passage, Marx indicated that the mode of production “conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their … [mode of production] that determines their consciousness” (Marx and Engels 1968, 182).

Marxist theory focuses on capitalism, a system in which economic production features private ownership in pursuit of profit. Widely considered the foremost critic of capitalism, Marx nonetheless acknowledged its contribution in promoting international economic advancement. Marx and his long-time collaborator Frederick Engels indicated that industrial capitalism “during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together” (Marx and Engels 2005, 46). Marx lauded the material accomplishments of capitalism but opposed its system of private ownership and the exploitation of workers that accompanied it.

In analyzing capitalism and other modes of production, Marxist theory has concentrated on a core pair of concepts. The substructure involves the material conditions of production such as gathering and hunting, agriculture, or industrial development. The type of substructure determines the superstructure, which concerns the noneconomic parts or institutions of society—for instance, the political system, the family, education, and the social-class structure. An industrial society, where most healthy adults are fully employed 40 hours a week or more in diverse occupations, possesses a complicated superstructure. To govern such a society, a well-developed political system is necessary; in addition, to prepare people to perform adequately in this complex work world, extensive schooling and training are essential; furthermore families must function adequately to nurture children through their formative years, providing them the cultural capital to interact effectively in the complex, business-driven world (Marx 1920).

An element of the superstructure that greatly interested Marx was the capitalist class system. As with all parts of the superstructure, Marx contended that the capitalist mode of production determined its structure and activities.

Marx’s Capitalist Class System

Marx focused on two classes, which differ in their relationship to the means of production—the factories, farms, and businesses, where goods and services are developed and dispersed. The bourgeoisie is the class with ownership of the various means of production. Wide-ranging power and control over business activity and all sectors of the superstructure follow from that ownership. The proletariat involves the workers who do not own the means of production. They must labor for wages because they have no other source of income (Marx and Engels 1959, 4).

Engels indicated that in the late nineteenth century most Americans denied that a class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat could develop in the United States. However, workers were experiencing exploitative conditions that were similar to those their European counterparts encountered, and so they unionized and engaged in widespread strikes, encouraging a shared consciousness “of the fact that they formed a new and distinct class of American society: a class of—practically speaking—more or less hereditary wage workers, proletarians” (Engels 1959, 490).

Capitalism, Marx contended, is a brutal system, driven by the bourgeoisie’s unrelenting push for ever-expanding profits. The value of a product is largely based on the monetary worth of a worker’s labor. However, according to Marx, workers only receive a small, subsistence portion of the value of their labor. The surplus value, which is the difference between a product’s economic worth and the worker’s payment, provides the bourgeoisie with ever-expanding profit and the proletariat with a steadily declining standard of living. Marx strongly condemned the capitalist system when he wrote, “The bourgeoisie … has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudalities that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’ ” (Marx and Engels 2005, 43).

To keep control of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, according to Marx, has used several powerful tools available. As noted in the opening chapter, one is ideology, which involves the complex of values and beliefs that support a society’s social-stratification systems and their distribution of wealth, income, and power. Because of the bourgeoisie’s ideological control, false consciousness prevails—the proletariat’s inability to perceive that the established economic and political forces inevitably maintain their domination and exploitation (Gagné and McGauchey 2002; Rosen 1996). Marx did not use the latter term, but he wrote about the context in which such a process might unfold. A team of modern scholars have criticized the idea of the concept, using four national surveys by the Pew Research Center to conclude that in opposition to the Marxist view when respondents live in settings where they fall victim to economic inequality, their perception of the economic system becomes more critical, less willing to accept any optimistic descriptions of a meritocracy in which people’s dedication to their jobs is inevitably rewarded. On the other hand, research subjects living in affluent areas tend to have a positive feeling about the economy and to applaud the meritocracy (Newman, Johnston, and Lown 2015). Clearly, the modern critics have suggested, Marx underestimated the proletariat’s ability to grasp the workings of the economy over time.

Whether or not that is the case, politicians have tried to exploit false consciousness. A distinctly modern example would be the “trickle-down” economics of the Reagan administration, which claimed, with considerable major media support, that various tax breaks involving capital gains, corporate profits, and wealthy people’s income would eventually benefit the overall population by encouraging companies to invest more heavily in the economy and creating more jobs for members of various classes, higher wages, and a general upturn in the economy (Etebari 2003). Such a projected outcome is consistent with the dominant American ideology, which has contended that the more restricted is government’s input in business—in this instance a limitation on taxation—the more capitalism thrives. While trickle-down economics has not materialized, discussion and debate about it continues (Amadeo 2017a; Davidson 2016).

All in all, Marx concluded, the bourgeoisie’s use of ideology to influence the proletariat’s thinking has proved effective. He observed, “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production” (Marx 1978b, 172). Chapters 4 and 5 illustrate this claim, analyzing wealthy and powerful groups’ influence over everyone else.

A second source of domination the bourgeoisie can tap is the government, which, Marx believed, simply exists to serve ruling class interests. Since its officials represent the bourgeoisie, the proletariat with its opposing interests loses out. According to Marx, the government “is nothing but a machine for oppression of one class by another” (Marx 1978a, 628).

In addition to the bourgeoisie and proletariat, Marx described two other classes, providing useful information for theorists seeking to update and refine Marx’s analysis. One is the petite bourgeoisie, a small-business class, whose members never accumulate enough profit to expand their holdings and to challenge the bourgeoisie’s economic supremacy; in fact, as capitalism has advanced, large corporations have tended to take over and eliminate these operations. The other class is the lumpenproletariat—the portion of the working class comprising society’s dregs, such as swindlers, petty criminals, racketeers, gangsters, and prostitutes, who have been cast out of the production process with the rise of industrialization. Members of these two classes are minor characters in Marx’s story, which focuses on the two principals—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (Marxists Internet Archive 2008). Philosopher Lewis S. Feuer suggested that like other prophets Marx was a dualist, seeing history as a “conflict between good and evil, the children of light and the children of darkness” (Feuer 1959, xviii).

Marx on Revolution and Its Aftermath

Capitalism, Marx declared, is a system where the interests of the two principal classes directly oppose each other. Because of their relentless domination by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat eventually understands and rejects false consciousness, realizing their only hope for improving their situation is to organize resistance among their fellow workers. Joined by some marginal members of the bourgeoisie, the organized proletariat becomes large and powerful enough to overthrow its tormenters, fervently believing that revolution has become the sole option. Marx and Engels wrote, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (1959, 41).

After the revolution, socialism replaces capitalism. According to Marx, socialism is an economic system in which the proletariat controls the means of production and the distribution of profits. With the advent of socialism, a radical change has occurred, featuring the elimination of the exploitative bourgeoisie and its ownership of the means of production.

What have critics emphasized about Marxist theory?

Commentary

Marx’s theoretical work demonstrates both weaknesses and strengths.

WEAKNESSES

•Max Weber, whose theory is examined shortly, was an early critic of Marxism. According to Weber’s biographers, he felt Marx’s work featured “an untenable monocausal theory” (Weber 1946, 46–47). Like many others Weber emphasized that Marx focused on one factor—the economic mode of production—as the determinant of developments in the social world and failed to acknowledge that other factors like political power, values, or the mass media can function as independent variables. Other modern theorists have also acknowledged the general relevance of this point, but in fairness to Marx’s analysis his writings do show that he recognized that other factors like political power, values, or the mass media can function as independent variables (Ritzer 2010, 65).

•Marxist theory does not acknowledge the widespread separation of business ownership and control. Marx believed that control followed from ownership. In fact, during his lifetime the bourgeoisie usually both owned and ran their companies, but as corporations have grown larger and more complex, specialized managers have become increasingly necessary to oversee the business activity (Wright 1978, 67–68).

•Marx and Engels’s theory significantly underestimated the role played by the middle class (petite bourgeoisie), feeling that it would disappear in the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In truth, the middle class (at any rate a somewhat broader version of it than Marx’s petite bourgeoisie), has often played an important part in modern capitalism, sometimes serving as a buffer or intermediary between the potentially clashing capitalists and workers (Freeman 2009, 9–10; Milios and Economakis 2011; Muravchik 2002, 36; Ritzer 2010, 63).

•Marx proved incorrect about who led the revolutions that reorganized nations. It was not the proletariat but well-educated middle-class individuals who created government bureaucracies that often served their personal interests and failed to promote socialist goals (Harrington 1972, 74).

•Living in an early capitalist era, Marx could not have envisioned the diversity of modern capitalism’s development in various nations—that, for instance, while international capitalism tended to stagnate in the 1970s, China’s capitalist growth was prominent, with foreign investment welcomed and permission for entrepreneurs to start small businesses leading to unprecedented economic expansion by the end of the decade. From 1978 to 2004, China’s gross domestic product rose from $150 billion (in US dollars) to $1.6 trillion. Between 1989 and 2017, China’s economy steadily expanded, averaging 9.66 percent growth per year (Martin 2012; People’s Daily Online 2005; Trading Economics 2018).

•With his fixation on the overthrow of capitalist nations, Marx was wrong about where the major revolutions occurred—not in the capitalist economies but in feudal systems like Russia, China, and Cuba (Muravchik 2002, 37). These countries had highly repressive regimes which kept most of the proletariat desperately poor, deprived of basic human rights, and receptive to revolution once capable leadership arose. Countering its weaknesses, Marxist theory is recognized for its important contributions.

STRENGTHS

•Proponents of Marx’s theory contend that its analysis of capitalism captures a sense of the system’s basic qualities. Referring to The Communist Manifesto, perhaps Marx and Engels’s most celebrated work, a scholar noted that the system they depicted seems fully modern, emphasizing “a relentless drive to expand and … [to develop] society’s productive capacities to levels undreamed of in early centuries” (Gasper 2005, 96). Furthermore efforts to oppose capitalists’ domination such as the series of World Trade Organization protests in Seattle can provide useful information for developing a Marxist theory of social movements (Nilsen 2009). Besides conveying the general spirit of capitalism, Marx also described complicated, subtle qualities of this economic system that continue to reveal themselves in the contemporary world. For instance, he was concerned with the subject of new technology replacing labor power and driving down the value of commodities, and also was troubled about the formation of a reserve army of labor, namely the bourgeoisie’s purposeful maintenance of a distinct level of unemployment as a bargaining chip for keeping wages low (Farris 2012, 189; Milward 2000, 186–87). In modern times the nation has always had a reserve army of unemployed people, which has fluctuated in size, registering 3.8 percent of the workforce 16 and over in 1948, then rising to 9.6 percent in 1983, dropping to 4 percent in 2000, and climbing slightly to 4.4 percent, representing 7.1 million individuals in 2017 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017). In addition, Marx emphasized the fundamental link between capitalism and social class. Sociologist Anthony Giddens observed that the theory stressed that the exploitative relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat produces a class struggle, “which constitutes the essential core of capitalism as a social and economic system” (1973, 85).

•Marxist theory has made an important contribution to the development of class analysis itself. Marx examined such significant issues as the emergence of class-based economic interests and the developing consciousness of class groups (Berberoglu 2005, 10; Ollman 1968, 580). Sociologist Charles H. Anderson indicated that Marx’s division of the citizenry within capitalism remains broadly accurate— with very few qualifying as capitalists and the rest classified as working class, or at least noncapitalist. Anderson wrote, “In terms of objective interest, that interest can only be defined as profit for the capitalist class and as material and social well-being for the working class. The two objective interests are today totally and unqualifiedly incompatible” (1974, 124).

•With his attention to ideology and false consciousness, Marx encouraged later scholars to examine how leaders’ public statements are prone to bias and distortion in situations where the stakes involve wealth, power, and control. Michael Harrington concluded that Marxist analysis has an unusually clear-eyed, concrete perception of these topics, relentlessly using a fact-based approach to ferret out class bias and privilege and reveal the associated ideology justifying the elite’s advantages (1976, 192).

•Finally many critics have endorsed Marx’s overall condemnation of capitalism. Noriel Roubini, who predicted the onset of the Great Recession, said that “Karl Marx got it right, that capitalism can destroy itself … We thought markets work. They’re not working” (Woods 2013). Table 2.1 provides highlights of the Marxist theory.

Table 2.1Central Concepts and Ideas in the Marxist Theory of Capitalism and Social Stratification

1.Core concept: Mode of production, with the substructure determining the superstructure

2.Mode of production determining the class structure: In capitalism, two main classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat differing in their relationship to the means of production; bourgeoisie receiving ever-expanding profit; proletariat obtaining wages which decline in value over time

3.Social forces supporting bourgeoisie’s control: A powerful ideology bolstered by false consciousness; an oppressive government

4.Proletariat’s exploitation promotes the development of conflict with the bourgeoisie, leading to eventual revolution. Emergence of socialism, with the proletariat in control

5.Commentary: A number of criticisms overshadowed by several broad points emphasizing Marx’s lasting contributions

Sources: Marx (1920; 1959; 1978a, 1978b), Marx and Engels (1959; 1968; 2005).

The significant impact of Marxist thinking is apparent in contemporary theory and research on social inequality and social stratification, including within Max Weber’s contribution, which was highly critical of Marx’s work.

THE MARXIST IMPACT ILLUSTRATED: TWO SOCIAL-STRATIFICATION THEORIES

No theorist examines social stratification and ignores Karl Marx’s work, but as the following two perspectives indicate, the support for that most prominent of theories can significantly differ.

Weber’s Theory of Class, Status, and Party

Max Weber’s living situation was physically more comfortable than Marx’s. During his working years, decades of peace and widespread prosperity made it possible for distinguished professors like him to live in affluence. In other ways, however, he struggled. Throughout his life Weber suffered bouts of severe depression interspersed with periods of intense intellectual work. During the active times, he painstakingly assessed complicated contemporary issues, strongly and proudly supporting the drive to create a nation state and yet also fighting for individual freedom; expressing pride in having been a German officer but describing the Kaiser, the army’s commander-in-chief, as a shameful individual; and growing up as a self-consciously masculine member of the upper-middle class dedicated to duels and heavy drinking but supporting the first female labor official in Germany and addressing members of the women’s emancipation movement early in the twentieth century. Weber sympathized deeply with poor working people, but a Marxist revolution struck him as a “bloody carnival,” which could not possibly produce effective structural change (Gerth and Mills 1946, 11, 24–26, 41). Marx’s ideas were frequently a source of Weber’s attention.

Since Weber criticized Marxist thought for its alleged monocausal emphasis on the economic, it is hardly surprising that his study of social stratification was decidedly not monocausal, assessing three central dimensions in conflict theory—class, status, and power. In analyzing class, Weber like Marx examined economic issues, but he described a societal structure that is more diversified in its stratification systems and much less concerned about capitalist exploitation. Table 2.2 compares Marx’s and Weber’s theories.

Table 2.2Comparative Features of Marx’s and Weber’s Theories

	Marx	Weber
The theorist’s context	A tumultuous era in which unrest and rebellion were frequent	A settled, physically comfortable time period but a tormented inner life
Source(s) of social stratification	Focus on the mode of production determining social stratification and all other elements in the superstructure	Examination of class, status, and power
Analysis of capitalism	Emphasis on the bourgeoisie’s economic and political supremacy and their exploitation of the proletariat	A description of various classes in contemporary capitalism with little attention to the system’s exploitation
Prospect of revolution	An inevitability resulting from the proletariat’s growing discontent mobilizing a movement to overthrow the bourgeoisie	No general discussion of it but charismatic missions possessing revolutionary overtones

Sources: Marx (1959; 1978a; 1978b), Marx and Engels (1959; 1968; 2005), Weber (1946; 1999).

CLASS According to Weber, a social class is a set of individuals with similar chances for gaining income and wealth in the business world (Weber 1946, 181). Weber indicated that the force creating class is “unambiguously economic interest, and indeed, only those interests involved in the interests of the market” (1999, 85).

While Weber agreed with Marx that owners of companies and workers represent two social classes, he stressed that individuals within these two classes could be highly differentiated in income, wealth, and life chances (1946, 182–83). For instance, the owner of a small warehouse or office building might barely make a profit while the proprietor of a discount merchandising chain might be a multi-millionaire or a billionaire. Similar diversity exists among workers. A member of a company’s custodial staff and one of its managers are both unpropertied, but the latter might earn 50 times as much as the former.

Weber indicated that individuals’ social-class position, particularly their income and wealth, influences the second factor in his examination of social stratification.

STATUS Weber described status as an estimation of a person’s honor or prestige (1946, 146–47). Unlike social classes, status groups, loosely speaking, are communities whose members share a broadly similar lifestyle. Income and wealth are not the only factors determining status, but they play a significant role. Somewhat quaintly but provocatively, Weber concluded that in modern democracies “it may be that only the families coming under approximately the same tax class dance with one another” (1946, 187).

The principal distinction between social class and status, Weber suggested, is that class ranking is based on people’s production and acquisition of goods while membership in status groups derives from the consumption of goods, which promotes distinctive lifestyles (1946, 193).

To be accepted in a certain status group, an individual often must follow strict behavioral standards or meet certain precise qualifications. For instance, to be recognized as a gentleman, a man needs to dress and behave appropriately; or to be accepted into what Weber called the circle of “esteemed” families, one’s heritage must include several generations of wealth and a widely supported conviction among this elite status group that the family in question shares the appropriate background, values, and behavior. Those accepted into the select set of esteemed families have distinct advantages (Weber 1946, 188)—in modern times marriage to other members of the esteemed set, valuable social contacts that can advance financial or political interests, and access to high-level positions in various corporations.

Status groups can enhance their recognition or reputation when buying certain goods and services. Conspicuous consumption is the purchase of expensive, even exorbitant goods or services that display an individual’s or family’s opulence. Thorstein Veblen, the economist who coined the term, indicated that costly gifts and elaborate dinner parties serve as examples (Lerner 1948, 117). Over the past century, however, improved technology and globalization have made an array of once very expensive consumer products widely available, compelling the rich who are still interested in engaging in conspicuous consumption to focus on high-priced goods that are difficult or impossible to imitate such as limited-edition $20,000 Birkin bags (handmade in leather and named after the actress/singer Jane Birkin) or rare wines (Kopf 2017).

Some connection exists between class and status groups. Members of higher classes with greater wealth and income are likely to have lifestyles differing from those with less financial capital. Weber suggested that occupational groups produce status groups (1946, 193). Dentists and construction workers are likely to have on-the-job clothing, food preferences, recreational choices, and housing types and location that are distinctly different.

Both status groups and social classes link to Weber’s third dimension of social stratification.

PARTY Individuals “live in a house of power,” Weber indicated (1946, 194). Indeed, he suggested, parties are about power, with their members seeking specific outcomes in a deliberate, planned manner by imposing their will on others. Parties can represent the interests of either class or status groups, but often they support a combination of both. In modern societies parties refer not only to political parties but also unions, consumer groups, business organizations, foundations, civic groups, and many more.

Weber visualized parties exercising three types of authority—power derived from a person’s location within an organization or structure. The first, bureaucratic authority, is widely dispersed in modern societies:

1.Bureaucratic system of authority: It is a structure that systematically administers the tasks controlling an organization’s operation. The bureaucratic system of authority developed in such ancient societies as China, Japan, and India, and today it exists in all modern public and private organizations. Some of the basic characteristics of this system are that:

•Laws or administrative rules control the bureaucratic structure.

•A hierarchy exists, with those in higher positions supervising those at the lower rungs.

•The bureaucracy requires written records, which are carefully recorded and preserved (Weber 1946, 196–98; Weber 1999, 100–01).

Weber was impressed with bureaucratic systems, indicating that in the capitalist market economy they permitted activities to be “discharged precisely, unambiguously, continuously, and with as much speed as possible” (1946, 215). Modern sociologists, however, have often emphasized a negative side, indicating that the bureaucrats themselves can become inflexible supporters of the rules, with both their clients and the organization itself adversely affected (Hirst, Van Knippenberg, Chen, and Sacremento 2011; Merton 1968, 177–78). Many comedians have developed routines that mock bureaucrats’ rigidity or callousness—for instance the emergency-room official who requires the profusely bleeding patient to fill out lengthy medical forms in triplicate.

2.Traditional system of authority: This system is usually patriarchal, with the dominant individual, whether a husband, father, master, chieftain, lord, or king, maintaining legitimacy based on established belief. It is a situation in which the rules are sacred, with violation leading to anger and perhaps violent reaction (Weber 1946, 296–97). The traditional patriarchal practice involved the eldest son succeeding his father as king, chief, or simply owner of the family plot of land. With obvious exaggeration but also more than a sliver of truth, many have observed that America was settled by second and third (etc.) sons and their families.

3.Charismatic system of authority: At the core of this system, there is an individual who pursues a mission driven by a powerful sense of divine purpose and draws followers who are committed to that mission. It might be a quest for political independence, a push for one group’s racial supremacy, or a fervent effort to establish a new religion. Neither leaders nor followers engage in a charismatic mission for economic gain. Unlike the other two systems, the charismatic variety contains little or no structure or established rules. Charismatic authority is volatile, only lasting as long as followers maintain personal allegiance to the leader and his or her mission (Weber 1946, 248–50). This reality appears to make successful charismatic leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King vulnerable to assassination. Kill the leader and the mission dies too.

In the past several decades, charisma has become a common term, seemingly referring to charm or perhaps sex appeal. What has disappeared from this modern usage is Weber’s sense that the charismatic individual appeals to people not because of a nice smile or winning personality but because he or she is leading what followers consider a crucially important mission to which they are committed.

PHOTO 2.1 While all three of these men have been considered charismatic, only Martin Luther King, Jr., meets Weber’s standard. He emerged as a prominent civil-rights leader from outside the established political system while the Kennedys, in contrast, were elected officials.

Source: IgorGolvinov/Shutterstock.

Overall, however, modern usage of Weber’s concepts has remained true to the original meanings. Sociologists have found his emphasis on three dimensions of social stratification—class, status, and party (power)—helpful, encouraging a broader look at the topic than Marx’s economically focused analysis (Chan and Goldthorpe 2007; Clarke 2016; Sopoci 2014; Trujillo 2007).

Some sociologists, especially those attuned to social inequality, have suggested that Weber’s analysis was too uncritical of capitalism. His examination of social class focused on the varied life chances that classes possess in a market economy and did not address the often conflicting relations between classes. In particular, Weber gave little attention to one of Marx’s central ideas—capitalists’ exploitation of the working class (Wright 2002, 850–51; Wright 2015). In contrast, the upcoming scheme clearly displays a more distinct affinity to Marxist thinking.

Piketty’s Theory on Wealth and Inequality in Capitalism

Thomas Piketty, a French economist, has supplied important updates on the Marxist theory of the capitalist system, providing insightful conclusions about contemporary capitalism. Near the beginning of his 680-page volume, Piketty acknowledged the contributions Marx made to his own work. Unlike Adam Smith and other renowned economists of his era, he did not see the economy as self-regulating, capable of achieving equilibrium on its own. Quite the opposite, according to Piketty. Marx emphasized what might be called a “principle of infinite accumulation,” meaning that within capitalism there exists “the inexorable tendency for capital to accumulate and become concentrated in ever fewer hands, with no natural limit to the process” (Piketty 2014, 10). Eventually, Marx predicted, the capitalist system would die, either because the rate of return on capitalist investment would diminish or because workers would unite in revolt.

Piketty noted that Marx was wrong about this prediction as well as some others. In the last third of the nineteenth century, wages in most Western countries increased, giving workers much more purchasing power and sharply reducing discontents and prospects of revolution. Marx had failed to consider the impact that technological advances and increased productivity could provide. In addition, while Communist overthrows did occur in Russia and China, a proletarian leadership creating a true socialist state did not develop. Suggesting that in his day Marx had information available to make better predictions, Piketty wrote, “[E]conomic theory needs to be rooted in history that is as thorough as possible, and in this respect Marx did not exploit all the possibilities available to him” (2014, 10). Piketty has learned from Marx’s omissions, basing his conclusions on extensive historical and contemporary data.

He relied on two principal sources. The first is income data, which requires a meticulous study of tax records and, according to Piketty, is the only dependable means to assess income inequality over time. After research on US income inequality, he did a similar investigation in France. The next step involved collaboration with a number of colleagues, gathering data from various other countries, including an update of the American data, and using the same research methods and concepts in all of the studies.

Second, besides data about income, the research team collected information about wealth, which is people’s economic assets, such as their cars, homes, stocks, bonds, and real estate, which can be converted into cash. For Piketty the study of wealth has proved revealing. He noted that just as income-tax returns allow investigators to study changes in income inequality over time, estate taxes permit them to detect changes in wealth inequality. Data on wealth is less available than on income, but the information that Piketty and his team have been able to compile has proved very useful, allowing the investigators to assess the importance of wealth and inheritance in the development of both fortunes and the changing distribution of economic inequality (Piketty 2014, 16–19).

Using his ample data, Piketty reached two principal conclusions. The first of them indicated that the distribution of wealth is a result of political as well as economic forces. Between 1910 and 1950, the reduction of economic inequality that occurred in most developed countries transpired because of war and the efforts of nations’ political leaders to reduce the shock that it produced. In contrast, the massive increase in economic inequality since 1980 has been in part the result of changing economic policies involving taxation and finance, such as deregulation in banking (Amadeo 2017b; Piketty 2014, 20). Chapter 4 provides extensive information showing how politicized these financial activities have become.

PHOTO 2.2 Thomas Picketty noted that China has been a prime example of a developing nation that has adopted many of developed countries’ industrial and postindustrial innovations, reducing economic inequality in the process.

Source: Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock 179900288.

Piketty’s second principal conclusion is that societies contain forces that alternately reduce and increase economic inequality. The principal means that operate to reduce inequality are the spread of knowledge and significant investment in training and skills. In recent years developing nations, with China in the forefront, have readily adopted developed nations’ industrial and postindustrial techniques, featuring skilled workforces that have provided high-quality products, increased national revenues, and increased equality.

Reviewing income dispersion over the past century, Piketty and his team saw evidence of a U-shaped curve in economic inequality—that in the 1910s and 1920s, the richest 10 percent obtained as much as 40–50 percent of national income before dropping off to 30–35 percent by the end of the 1940s and then stabilizing at that level until about 1970. From that date forward, economic inequality rose, once again by 2000 reaching the 45–50 percent level for the most affluent 10 percent and locking in at that level.

Overall top managers have been the principal beneficiaries. Observers might surmise that their robust compensation resulted from exceptional skills and productivity, but little or no evidence supports such a conclusion. Instead it appears that they become affluent because they often possess the authority to set their own level of payment, without any reference to their job performance and without a specified limit. It is distinctly possible that top managers’ incentive to seek greater compensation has increased as the maximum federal tax has decreased, providing them a significantly greater portion of any raises than they would have gained in the past, say during the 1950s. Top managers’ opportunity to demand higher salaries is particularly pronounced in English-speaking nations, with the United States leading followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Other wealthy countries like Japan, Germany, and France are less committed to that pattern. Still, in developed nations generally, top managers have become wealthy, and that reality means that in recent decades they have been prominent beneficiaries of economic inequality.

In many developed nations, including the United States, widespread job attrition and economic stagnation have contributed significantly to increased economic inequality. Replacement of some workers by machines, which often prove to be less costly than laid-off employees, has often accelerated capital growth, with top management receiving the greatest gains. Since the Great Recession, corporate profits have skyrocketed, primarily benefiting the top 1 percent while wages, including wages for well-educated workers, have stagnated. In a country where such developments have occurred, economic inequality is likely to expand and to remain ascendant into the indefinite future. In addition, recent financial records suggest that, as was the case a century ago, inherited family wealth persistently plays a prominent role in promoting economic inequality (Matthews 2017; Piketty 2014, 20–27, 315).

Piketty’s theory has received extensive public interest and praise, but the majority of economists have paid it surprisingly little attention, probably because of its focus on the topic of economic inequality. Economist Marshall Steinbaum suggested that “[i]t is increasingly possible to have a comfortable and rewarding life as a professional economist and never even consider the broad issue of inequality or the controversial explanations for and consequences of it that Piketty offers” (2017).

While among his peers in economics reservations exist about Piketty’s work, many experts on economic inequality, including Paul Krugman, the prominent economist cited in Chapter 1 commenting on CEOs’ salaries, suggested that Piketty has written a superb book, with original, provocative insights about the prospects of economic inequality over time (Farrokhnia 2017; Krugman 2014).

Piketty’s conclusions about social and economic inequality continue to be hard-hitting. In late 2018 he and over 50 economists, historians, and former politicians from a half-dozen European countries produced a plan which featured substantial levies (taxes) that multinationals and wealthy individuals would need to pay to alleviate such pressing crises as poverty, pollution, and migration in the European Union (Rankin 2018). Clearly Piketty’s analysis and recommendations are going to remain controversial, hard-hitting, and consistent with the central points presented in his book.

Table 2.3 indicates the Marxist influence on Weber’s and Piketty’s theories.

Table 2.3Marxist Theory as a Point of Departure for Other Theories of Social Stratification

Theorist	Central Task of the Theory
Max Weber	To develop a theory of social stratification that unlike Marx’s is not unidimensional. Thus his analysis of three dimensions: class, status, and party (power)
Thomas Piketty	Influenced by Marx’s ideas about wealth accumulation, Piketty examined wealth and income data of residents in prominent developed nations to determine the conditions affecting economic inequality over time

Sources: Piketty (2014), Weber (1946; 1999).

Besides the theories just discussed, another set of Marxism-influenced theories focuses on the role that a select group of leaders play in running society.

THE POWER-ELITE THEORIES

A power elite is a number of high-status people, particularly in prominent corporate and political positions, who largely control the process of determining a society’s major economic and political policies. Before American social scientists were analyzing power elites, a structural-functional theory, which avoided examining the power-elite issue, was the dominant theory addressing policy development. Pluralism is a theory concluding that a dispersion of authority and control exists within government. As a result of this alleged condition, advocates of pluralism have claimed that:

•Authority generally will be used for decent purposes because its various sites of power will counterbalance each other, keeping coercive use at a minimum.

•Minorities will possess the authority to veto policies opposing their interests, and as recognized partners in the power game, they will cooperate with other groups over time.

•Political resolution will require constant negotiation among the various centers of power. This process will give the different participants a chance to learn how to produce successful outcomes benefiting all contending parties (Dahl 1967; 1982; 2005).

In contrast, the power-elite theorists perceive a huge imbalance of power. C. Wright Mills, for instance, concluded that for corporate leaders “no powers effectively and consistently countervail against them” (Mills 1956, 125).

Mills’s Power-Elite Perspective

Like the social-stratification theorists previously discussed, Mills both incorporated and revised Marxist ideas. While he shared Marx’s recognition of a dominant wealthy and powerful class, Mills believed that the source for that power lay not only in the economic realm but also in the political and military arenas (Domhoff 2006, 547).

Writing in the 1950s, Mills asserted that little knowledge of the power elite existed—that many citizens, including some of the elite, believed that there was no such group; and that others believed, though often vaguely, that “a compact and powerful elite” existed. Such individuals knew that Congress had permitted a handful of political leaders to make critical decisions about peace and war; and that two atomic bombs had been dropped in Japan in the name of the United States, but neither they nor anyone they knew had been consulted (Mills 1956, 4–5). Mills’s The Power Elite sought to inform people about these largely unknown but enormously influential people.

According to Mills, the power elite belongs to a privileged class, whose members recognize their mutual exalted position in society; in Chapters 4 and 5, which discuss their activities at length, they are sometimes designated “the superclass.” As a rule “[t]hey accept one another, understand one another, marry one another, tend to work and to think, if not together at least alike” (Mills 1956, 11). It is a well-regulated existence where education plays a critical role. Youthful upper-class members attend prominent preparatory schools, which not only open doors to such elite universities as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton but also to the universities’ highly exclusive clubs. These memberships in turn pave the way to the prominent social clubs located in all major cities and serving as sites for important business contacts and the completion of deals (Mills 1956, 61–67).

The upper-class men who obtain these special privileges have the background and contacts to enter the three branches of the power elite. These are:

•The political leadership: Mills contended that since the end of World War II corporate leaders had become more prominent in the political process, with a decline in central decision-making for professional politicians.

•The military circle: In Mills’s time a heightened concern about warfare existed, making top military leaders and such issues as defense funding and personnel recruitment very important. Most prominent corporate leaders and politicians were strong proponents of military spending.

•The corporate elite: According to Mills, in the 1950s when the military emphasis was pronounced, it was corporate leaders working with prominent military officers who dominated the development of policies. These two groups tended to be mutually supportive (Mills 1956, 274–76).

Mills contended that the power elite has an “inner core” composed of individuals able to move from one institutional area of power to another—a general who becomes a political consultant or a politician who becomes a corporate executive. These people have more knowledge and a greater breadth of interests than their colleagues. Prominent bankers and financiers, who Mills considered “almost professional go-betweens of economic, political, and military affairs,” are also members of the elite’s inner core (Mills 1956, 288–89).

The Power Elite has distinct limitations. Current scholars would be likely to want empirical evidence supporting Mills’s central conclusions, but he offered very little, only some scant information on corporate development focusing on the richest Americans living between the Civil War and 1950 (Mills 1956, 103–17). In addition, Mills provided little detail about the contemporary elite’s activities. For instance, he never mentioned either the Council on Foreign Relations or the Committee on Economic Development, two elite-dominated policy-making organizations that were already prominent influences in his time. In addition, through no fault of his own, Mills described an era when it was still possible to analyze the power elite by focusing only on the United States. The subsequent expansion of globalization has made his theory appear anachronistic (Little 2009; Rothkopf 2009, 117).

On the other hand, Mills was a pioneer, propelling his power-elite theory into a pluralism-dominated academic world, where his novel ideas, according to G. William Domhoff, “caused a firestorm in academic and political circles, leading to innumerable reviews in scholarly journals and the popular press, most of them negative.” Over time, however, The Power Elite has become a classic, recognized as “the first full-scale study of the structure and distribution of power in the United States,” using the complete set of theoretical and research tools then available (Domhoff 2006, 547). In an open letter to the posthumous Mills, sociologist Michael Burawoy asserted that the work “has enduring truth—the interlocking of corporate, military and political elites making life and death decisions that affect us all” (2008, 365).

In the twenty-first century, the enduring relevance of the theory has been apparent as a host of writers have considered the Trump administration a singularly distinct illustration of the power-elite theory. For instance, an historian indicated that as a candidate for the presidency, Trump gave the impression that he planned to dismantle the power elite, but once elected he seemed determined to preserve a modified version of it.

He still has a low regard for the political apparat: the two main parties; Congress; members of the bureaucracy. But senior military officers and successful corporate executives are the kind of people he admires, trusts and leaves to run things while he tends to his Twitter account and flings insults at adversaries, real or imagined.

(BACEVICH 2017)

Domhoff’s theory and also Dye’s, which follows, have built upon Mills’s conclusions, providing more detail about such issues as the make-up of the ruling group and the process by which policies are established and implemented. Their more contemporary works supply recent information about this powerful group’s goals and activities. A modern reference suggests that Domhoff has been the most prominent theorist extending Mills’s concept of the power elite into the modern era (Khan 2012).

Domhoff’s Theory of the Upper-Class-Centered Corporate Community

Sociologist G. William Domhoff borrowed two important ideas from Mills—that the power elite has members primarily born into the upper class and that the cohesion created by their shared background and lifestyle helps promote that leadership group’s successful activity. Domhoff described the power elite as largely upper-class people who have leadership roles in business and government, with a major economic commitment to retaining the prevailing rules and laws that sustain the current income and wealth distribution (Domhoff 2010, 115). The power elite, in short, is a prominent instigator of social reproduction.

Domhoff indicated that not all upper-class individuals belong to the power elite. Some are “playboys and socialites,” with little involvement in politics. In addition, a few members of this powerful group have middle-class and occasionally working-class origins and gradually worked their way to the top (Domhoff 2005a).

Like Mills, Domhoff indicated that the corporate class has a privileged secondary school and college and university background; New Englanders who graduated from private schools were more likely than upper-class students from other areas to have attended Ivy League universities while their private-school counterparts from outside New England have been more likely to have graduated from prominent state universities (Domhoff 2010, 58–59).

At the structural core of the power elite lies a corporate community composed of profit-seeking organizations embedded in a common network featuring what Domhoff referred to as interlocking directorates. An interlocking directorate is a formal connection between two major corporations which develops when an officer from one company serves on the board of directors of another. For 2004 the average number of interlocking directorates among 1,996 leading corporations was just 6.1. The largest, wealthiest corporations, however, had 20 or more, including General Electric with 24 and Citigroup with 25 (Domhoff 2010, 34). In 2013 Citigroup, the largest commercial bank in 2005, had interlocks with 25 major corporations through the connections established by 13 of their powerful board members (Andrews 2016; Domhoff 2013).

Interlocking directorates can prove useful in distinct ways. For instance, corporate leaders find that an effective, safe tactic for promoting various company interests is to join the board of a major media corporation. Thus in 2004 the Washington Post Company elected Melinda Gates, a former Microsoft executive and the wife of founder Bill Gates, to its board of directors. Donald Graham, the co-chairman of the Post said, “She’s a well-qualified director, somebody with a good strong technology background and helps to run a very large organization.” What Graham omitted was that the Post leadership’s long-time influence with Washington politicians could prove particularly helpful in Microsoft’s continuing battle against the enforcement of antitrust legislation (Ahrens 2004, E02).

Besides interlocking directorates helping the companies involved, the executives themselves are distinctly advantaged, particularly “the inner circle” of company leaders who are simultaneously located on boards of two or more large companies. Some of the privileges individuals with interlocking directorships possess include:

•Access to diverse information providing a broader grasp of the business community as well as an aura of stature and legitimacy not available to less connected colleagues.

•Membership in a cohesive, powerful group, where inner-circle leaders know each other well and relate to each other extensively.

•A distinct tendency for these individuals to share an upper-class background, which has provided social, cultural, human, and financial capital paving the way to the inner circle and can continue to prove useful.

•Finally inner-circle leaders’ involvement in major policy-making groups such as the Committee for Economic Development and the Business Roundtable, which upcoming chapters indicate play a major role in policy development (Useem 1984, 61–71).

All in all, Domhoff noted that several studies done over time have concluded that the 15–20 percent of corporate directors who sit on two or more boards and form the inner circle unite the big-business world in a largely like-minded corporate community (Domhoff 2010, 36–37). He conceded, however, that the function of interlocking directorates can be overstated. While these connections can be useful for establishing their members’ prominence and serve as a means of passing useful information from one corporation to another, the spread of influence is limited. Domhoff suggested that people’s own social networks function similarly. “Obviously, you know your friends, and often know some of their other friends, … But you certainly don’t know the friends of these ‘friends of friends’ ” (Domhoff 2005b).

Domhoff stressed the importance of building social capital for those seeking to join the power elite. The process starts in exclusive prep schools, then moves on to elite colleges and universities, and finally involves upper-class clubs. At each juncture the prospective power-elite members have privileged opportunities to develop friendships and useful contacts with a host of other similarly placed individuals.

The most prominent of these elite organizations is the Bohemian Club, where two weeks a year well-connected economic and political leaders gather for a host of relaxing activities as well as informal opportunities to discuss important policy issues (Domhoff 1974; Domhoff 2005b, 56–60). At one time 45 percent of the nonresident members of the Bohemian Club belonged to the Social Register or to other upper-class directories (Domhoff 1974, 30). Little change in the club’s membership and agenda has developed over time. In 2017 the Bohemian Club had about 2,700 all-male, heavily white and largely Republican, affluent, well-connected members, who could afford a $25,000 entrance fee along with hefty annual dues (Barringer 2017).

Domhoff obtained statistical information, suggesting a distinct connection between membership in elite social clubs like the Bohemian Club and participation in important policy-making organizations. He found that 673 of the largest 797 corporations had at least one high-level executive simultaneously represented in one of 15 exclusive social clubs and in policy-making organizations—clubs like the Bohemian Club and Links and policy-making organizations like the Business Roundtable and Committee for Economic Development (Domhoff 1975, 179). Because of their executives’ multiple organizational connections, top corporations have simultaneous access to privileged information and influence.

Looking back on 54 years of studying power in America, Domhoff concluded that his version of a largely upper-class power elite held up well over time and that overall it was more accurate than any other theory on the topic. He emphasized that two broad conditions have made the corporate rich a dominant upper-class group in the US—namely, “organizational imperatives” involving major corporations with extensive resources and connections exerting wide-ranging control in the political process and “class imperatives” prioritizing the upper-class corporate leadership’s commitment to making profits and controlling labor markets. He concluded that the class-based dominance occurs because of “the unending efforts to shape the society and its government by an institutionally based leadership group (the power elite), which works its will through the special-interest, policyplanning, opinion-shaping, and candidate-selection networks” (Domhoff 2018, 48).

In assessing Domhoff’s theory, political scientist Thomas Dye felt that his claim that the upper class dominated the power elite was an exaggeration. Dye pointed out that Domhoff used three factors to calculate class of origin—listing in the Social Register (of the upper class); attendance at a prestigious preparatory school; or membership in a prominent social club. Dye indicated that both the first and the third criteria could be attained after moving up from a middle-class background and thus hardly served to prove that the individuals in question were born into the upper class. To qualify as upper class in origin in Dye’s estimation, an individual needed to have attended a prestigious preparatory school and to have had a parent in a top position in a major corporation, bank, newspaper, the military, or some other prominent organization. Using these criteria, Dye found that the portion of the power elite originating from the middle class is about 70 percent and the segment from the upper class only 30 percent—very different from Domhoff’s claim that upper-class individuals numerically dominate the power elite (Dye 2014, 193–94). While Dye’s point is interesting, it seems likely that class of origin is not very important—that most likely whether or not members of the power elite were born into the upper class has had little if any bearing on their commitment to the group’s goals.

While these two theorists differ in their figures for power-elite members’ class of origin, they have another, seemingly more important difference. For Dye power-elite participation is less about class membership than about one’s organizational affiliation.

Dye’s Theory of the Institutional Elite

Thomas Dye is very specific about who belongs to the power elite. He wrote,

Our institutional elite will be individuals who occupy the top positions in the institutional structure of society. These individuals possess the formal authority to formulate, direct, and manage programs, policies, and activities of the major corporate, governmental, legal, educational, civic, and cultural institutions in the nation. Our definition of a national elite, then, is consistent with the notion that great power resides in large institutions.

(DYE 2014, 8)

Dye specified that about 4,100 top institutional positions exist—about 65 in government and 2,000 each in the corporate and the public-interest sectors. The public-interest area includes mass-media figures, political-campaign contributors, lawyers and lobbyists, educational leaders, and foundation executives.

The members of the power elite control more than half the country’s industrial properties, over half the nation’s banking assets, and over three-fourths of all insurance resources. In addition, they are in charge of over half of private foundations’ holdings and two-thirds of private university endowments. They head the biggest, most influential law firms and civil organizations in the country and also make the largest political contributions. Finally their members are prominent in key political positions in all three branches of the federal government (Dye 2014, 10–11).

Dye indicated that top institutional leaders are not typical of the American public. “They are recruited from the well-educated, older, affluent, urban, white, and upper-class or upper-middle class male populations of the nation. We had expected our top institutional elites to conform to the pattern, and we were not at all disappointed” (Dye 2014, 180).

Some of Dye’s findings about the institutional elite’s specific traits:

•Gender: Women have begun to crack the glass ceiling, with the list of women who are CEOs expanding; generally they have been more successful in the media than in corporations or in banking, with about 20 percent of the institutional elite composed of women.

•African Americans: Blacks have been minimally represented in top business positions and thus few belonging to the institutional elite; a growing number of African American elite emerging during the Bush and Obama political administrations.

•Education: About half of the institutional elite members received a college degree from one of 12 prominent universities, six of which belong to the Ivy League. Nearly all top leaders are college educated, with over half having advanced degrees.

•Social clubs: Most holders of top positions in the power elite possess memberships in one or more social clubs, including about a third belonging to a small number of especially prestigious clubs in major cities like New York and Washington. Dye’s conclusion was that these memberships are a result of individuals’ elite status and not an independent source of power for the institutionalized elite (Dye 2014, 181–88; Dye 2002, 147–49).

The core of the elite—what Domhoff called the inner circle—are Dye’s “interlockers.” Because of their presence on at least two boards of directors for major companies, this small percentage of the institutional elite has a greater range of communication and a wider scope of influence than their peers on just one board. Dye concluded that interlockers’ exposure to extensive information prompts them to represent broad interests, encouraging them to act on behalf of a wide range of elite structures. In particular, interlockers are well placed to link the corporate world with political organizations, foundations, think tanks, policy-making groups, universities, and cultural and civic structures. Evidence suggests that over time the proportion of interlockers has been steadily dropping—from 20 percent of the institutional elite in 1970 to 15 percent in the 1980s and to 10 percent in recent years (Dye 2014, 177–78). The decline in numbers suggests that over time the relatively few who are interlockers gain increasing power and influence.

Because their numbers in the institutional elite are so small, blacks and women are unlikely to be interlockers as the following two bits of evidence suggest. Fortune 500 CEOs are a significant source for interlockers, and in 2016 only five (1 percent) of them were black and in 2017 just 32 (6.4 percent) were female (Fortune Editors 2017; Parks 2016).

Like Domhoff, Dye analyzed the intricate multi-organizational process where power-elite members control the development of major economic and political policies. Table 2.4 compares the three power-elite theories. In Chapter 4 this group’s activities are examined at length, but meanwhile the focus shifts to some fundamental points about the theories already examined.

Conclusion

What are the central ideas in this chapter?

•Karl Marx contended that selected economic factors serve as the determinants of social-class position. However, as it turns out, the majority of researchers studying social class have used a largely Weberian framework, featuring occupational categories and usually including income/wealth and education. So in order to incorporate these valuable studies throughout the book, I have needed to use a definition of social class similar to theirs in this text.

•Upcoming chapters discuss the influence and control the power elite exerts. While previous material suggests some disagreement between Domhoff and Dye, they agree on a set of basic points: that there exists a highly educated, superclassbacked, corporate-centered group, possessed of an inner circle of especially well-connected members, and mobilized to promote economic and political policies that serve their interests. This is a fundamentally important proposition applying throughout the book.

•Conflict theories in this chapter focus on American elites’ efforts to control wealth and power. For instance, the Marxist theory suggests that because of its ownership of the means of production, the bourgeoisie controls the economy, keeping most wealth and power in its members’ hands. The power-elite theories provide a broadly shared perspective, indicating how the dominant group uses such means as interlocking directorates, social clubs, and memberships in various elite organizations to mobilize themselves as they pursue policies that perpetuate their great wealth and power. Piketty’s theory indicates that influential corporate leaders have been able to use their political clout to promote new laws involving taxation and finance that further enrich them. On the other hand, the structural-functional theories examined in this chapter—the Davis-Moore and pluralism perspectives—are nearly oblivious to issues of power and conflict.

•Finally certain contemporary realities addressed in both opening chapters— soaring corporate profits and top executives’ salaries contrasted with stagnant or declining income prospects for the majority of citizens—suggest that Marx’s emphasis on sharply opposed interests between the capitalist leadership and other classes remains a robust reality today. The following chapters amplify this conclusion.