Social Class Post 2

NY TIMES ARTICLE
In this New York Times article, the topic of social classes in America is discussed. According to the article, the lines that commonly divided various social classes in the past are blurring. That isn't to say that they are totally gone however, there are still many divides, just in this day in age, the barriers are less obvious.  It is harder to tell someone's social class now just by looking at their race, age, religion, clothes, or political stance. In the past, all of these factors could help determine what social class someone belonged to. Now, these factors mean practically nothing. Although social class is now harder to determine, it still plays a huge part in the lives of Americans today. For example, class differences in health, education, and quality of life seem to be widening. Also, social class mobility seems to be slowing down and not as common as it used to be. According to the article, Americans are arguably more likely than they were 30 years ago to end up in the class into which they were born. Although this being said, the "elite" class is growing. More and more people are becoming self made billionaires, and less of the elite class consists of people who inherited wealth. The bottom line is, is that social class in American is still very real, influential aspect of who we are as a country and our culture, but the divisions and mobility of those classes have drastically changed.

When I read this article, I was surprised at a few things. I didn't really realize just how much social class plays a part in our daily lives. Just the area we live in and the school we go to can determine our social class rankings. In this day in age, it seems that we try not to separate people into classes, but in reality that is exactly what most people do. From the kinds of people we associate with, to the kinds of people employers hire, a lot of it is based on social class. However, if it is so hard to tell nowadays, how DO people make those judgements? If we can't determine social class by religion or appearance or opinions, what do we base it off of? And how accurate can those judgements really be? Why is call mobility slowing down? In these days, I would think that it would be a lot more mobile. I think it might have something to do with the current economy. Once people come across some bad economic luck, its hard to get out of now, because more and more people are in that same situation, struggling to pull themselves out of it. Because of this, those people are just stuck there and cant move up. There are probably a lot more factors that influence all the different aspects of social class.



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