Cultural Capital And Happiness : Why The Rich Are Happier Than The Poor By A Long Shot?

Compared to California’s education demographics, San Leandro has a higher percentage of high school graduate, but a lower percentage of higher educational attainment compared to the entire nation (bachelor’s degree or higher). Using Thompson and Hickey’s model for social class in the United States (2005), my family would be considered working class. This is defined as “clerical, pink and blue collar workers with often low job security; common household incomes range from $16,000 to $30,000 [and] high school education” (Thompson et al., 2005). My mother currently works as a part-time waitress and is going to community college to receive an associate’s degree in accounting. My father has been working as a full-time cook at a Chinese restaurant in Oakland Chinatown for about 25 years. His highest level of educational attainment is high school. These racial and social class demographics are important in understanding my social location.

Identifying economic class goes beyond determining how much money a person makes; it is also defined by where a person lives. The lowest people on the economic scale are assumed to live in central cities; the middle-low income people live in the inner-ring suburbs, and the wealthiest live in the exclusive outer-ring suburbs. The authors point out that as one moves outward from the central city to the inner-ring to outer-ring suburbs incomes rise

The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader of a real problem, media misrepresentation, and to try to have the reader change the way the think, feel, and perceive the poor. She gives examples of encounters she has had that are a result of the damaging depiction and conveys to the reader why those thoughts are wrong by using her own personal experiences. She mentions that before entering college she never thought about social class. However, the comments from both other students and her professors about poverty were alarming to her. Other people viewed the poor as, “shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy” indigents. Hook opposes that stereotypical image of the poor, referring back to being taught in a “culture of poverty,” the values to be intelligent, honest, and hard-working. She uses these personal experiences to her advantage by showing she has had an inside look at poverty.

In the article, "Stupid Rich Bastards", the author, Laurel Johnson Black, gives an insight on her life and upbringing in a "poor" family, the effects it had on her, her life goals, and dreams. Black’s article was published in the book This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class in 1995. Throughout the article, Black gives an explanation of the conditions in which she and her family lived in, which include her parents having to take on various jobs such as her father being a plumber, junk man, car salesman and her mother—a cook, school crossing-guard and a McDonald 's counter worker as well. With all these jobs, Black also mentioned that the income was still inadequate. Being that her family 's way of living was not the best, her parents decided that one of their children has to make it or go to college, and Black was the one who was going to be the one to do that. She did this with hopes that she would earn more money, be able to make a better life for her and her family, maneuver along with the "stupid rich bastards", talk like them, learn their ways but not be like them, and explain to her family about the lives of the same "stupid rich bastards", people who had or made more money and had better lives or felt better than others. Along with her telling her story, the main purpose of Black’s story is to bring to our attention that she is trying to “keep the language of the working class in academia” (Black 25).

In the article by Charles Murray called “The New American Divide,” the author quickly educates the reader about the American culture of the 1960s so that he can present the “problem of cultural inequality” (Murray, “The New American Divide”). Murray then compares the upper-middle class and working class on aspects such as marriage, religion, crime, workforce numbers, and single parenthood by using statistical evidence from two cities in the northeast. The evidence shows how the cities have changed from the 1960s to 2010, therefore displaying the why behind the emergence of a gap in culture between two classes. However, the author then states that the formation of the gap is not necessarily the most important aspect of the cultural dissociation,

In the Rusty Belt of America there a minority group of people whose income level has surpassed the poverty line. Inside the state of Ohio lies the poorest white American which describes themselves as hillbillies as they reside in the eastern Kentucky. In his personal analysis of culture in crisis of hillbillies, J.D. Vance tries to explain, in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, what goes on in the lives of people as the economy goes south in a culture that is culturally deceptive, family deceptive, and in a community, whose doctrine of loyalty is heavily guarded. Like every poor Scot-Irish hillbilly in his community, Vance came from being poor, like the rest of his kind, to be a successful Law graduate from Yale Law school. As result of this transition and being the only child in his family to graduate from a highly respected intuition in the country, Vance thought out to analyze the ostensible reason of why many people are poor in his community.

Park Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of New York City, home to the ultra rich, the top tier of the American upper class, the 1% (Park Avenue). Those who reside in Park Avenue not only have vast amounts of wealth, but an immense amount of influence that has turned the tables in their favor. But, if you go a couple of miles North of Park Avenue and cross the Harlem river, you arrive at the other side of Park Avenue or otherwise known as the Bronx, one of the poorest districts in all of New York (Park Avenue). Here you see the real hardships average Americans must voyage through in order to put food on the table and provide shelter for their families. 40% of the 700,000 residents who

The development of the suburbs has been appointed to be the result of the “white flight” from the inner cities. In the 1950’s black Americans moved northward to cities to find industrial jobs that were within walking distance. Discrimination in cities worsened, crime rates increased and educational facilities’ credentials weakened or gained bad reputations. The upper-class families left the cities and mass migrated to the suburbs to escape the increasing crime rates and worsening conditions. This movement was later termed the “white flight”. Every American wanted to begin building the “ideal family”: two parents, two children and maybe a pet or two. This newly invented middle-class prospered as

Many Americans mistakenly consider themselves as middle class, most likely because this socioeconomic group is the easiest category to be placed into. The lower class has a very negative perception. It’s heavily associated with a low standard of living, although the numbers show that they are better off than most people living in other countries. The upper class has a hold on the media, and seeing images of celebrities owning large mansions, buying fancy sports cars, and going on luxurious vacations convinces many that they are not, and could never be in the upper class. So they settle for the in-between. The two poems, “We Old Dudes” by Joan Murray and “In the Suburbs” by Louis Simpson, encompass the pinnacle of the average upper middle

The United States was full of prosperity in the 1950s. The standard of living was higher that it had been in years, and many people were living in luxury. Although there were many who were enjoying the lives they lived, there were also many Americans who were trapped living well below the standard of living. Michael Harrington shed light on this situation when he published The Other America in 1962. In his expose’, Harrington exposed how 40 to 50 million American citizens were living in poverty, and that to most Americans these people were invisible. He expressed how the lifestyle of people living in poverty was so different from those who were not that it created a “culture” of poverty. Harrington believed

Income inequality has a direct relationship with middle class Americans’ destructive and poor lifestyle. In the poor areas of South Chicago, the black communities suffer “higher crime rates, poor performance in school, and family management,” said Robert Sampson, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. Similarly, Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson found “patterns of racial exclusion” and “concentrated poverty” among the middle-class Americans in South Chicago “are much more likely to be exposed to crime and other manifestations of social dislocation and social problems…” Poor minority groups are not only affected by destructive and poor lifestyle due to income inequality but also, poor whites are affected. Poor

This journal is very similar to the previous one. Some of the information is printed verbatim in comparison to the other journal. He talks about the divide in the class system that was not as heavily present in the 1960’s as it is in the present day. Murray begins by talking about how even though there was always a wreath gap between the richest and the poorest people there always seemed to be a cultural equality. Americans always prided themselves on a superior way of life calling it ‘the American way of life’, but Murray believes that is no longer true. He hi lights what what include the American way of life, “a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.” The points he attributes to the American way of life are the same ones he talked about in the first journal. In the 1960’s these were virtues that all Americans agreed on. Over the past few decades these assumptions have changed which Murray attributes to an emerging upper class with better education that they were able to attain at elite schools. At the same time this upper class was emerging a new lower class was forming that was characterized by people withdrawing from the core cultural values that Americans previously held as central values. Murray then goes into using the same two fictional neighborhoods from the first journal using the same criteria to assign people to one neighborhood or the other. He examines the same values: marriage, industriousness, crime, and religiosity. In each of the categories he provides the same data as the first journal. He shows the changing landscape of America from two different groups of people. The result from both neighborhoods is that most people did away with the

Taking a tour of any historical or famous American’s home provides a sobering window to the past in several ways. While some give off a sense of luxury of a bygone period of their past, it doesn’t take long to realize these dwellings lacked the basic amenities – hot water, plumbing, and electricity. To ponder the vast and incredible improvements that America has achieved over the last century would easily amaze these historic figures. Today it is possible for the poor in America to live at a standard that previous generations of similar means simply could not afford. The level of comfort poor Americans experience in today’s society far exceeds that of prior generations, creating a class that have no clear incentive to improve their

Race, income, and education have shifted the demographics of my community, Huntington Park, in the past years from 1990 to 2010. In the 1990’s there was no particular social class dominating my city; the median income was $62,500. In 2010 however, my city was made up of working class individuals whose median income was about $37,651. The departure of whites contributes to urban decay in my community just as Hunter’s observations showed, where low working class came and made up the majority of the population and lived in “extreme poverty and seemingly ever-present violence (Hunter). Education also affected the class shift in my community, there was less people graduating and pursuing higher education. The 1990 census shows that 14.48% attained

In today’s materialistic world, the phrase that ‘money can’t buy happiness’ is tending to be proved hence otherwise. Social research and surveys have shown results based on an individuals income, health and the political scenario which is dominant in his or her region. It is quite obvious that the gap between the privileged and the not so is growing into a great divide giving rise to different class and status, thus defining ones social circle. It should therefore be understood how an individuals economic status affects their personal happiness throughout all aspects of life. Many tend to refer to this age-old quote especially when they tend to belong to sector of people who can’t afford the modern day luxuries of life. What they do not