GEND 356: Mantsios' "Rewards and Opportunities"

"The privileged in our society require a class-structured social order in order to maintain and enhance their economic and political well-being.  Industrial profits depend on cheap labor and on a pool of unemployed to keep workers in check.  Real Estate speculators and developers create and depend on slums for tax evading investments" (477)

This section gave me chills.  This is not just an arbitrary system.  There is something very intentional about the neglect of the poor and the attention to the wealth gap.  This has nothing to do with not working hard enough--this is a central point to Mantsios' argument.  Class plays a huge factor in many things that hold the upper class in place at the top.  The media feeds into this idea that the poor and working class are not making enough money because they are lazy and stupid because the wealthy depend on this image to keep themselves at the top.  If the masses truly began to realize this simultaneously instead of eating up the image that the media and news stations preach, there would be more movements than "Occupy Wall Street" but because class plays such a huge role in an individual's access to education it makes these kinds of discoveries difficult.  

"The median income of the top one percent of the population is 22 times greater than that of the remaining 99 percent.  The median Net Financial Assets of the top one percent is 237 times greater than the median of the other 99 percent of the population." (478)

This is important in demonstrating that income is not enough to demonstrate the class struggle in the United States.  Statistics involving wealth, investments, interest and so on really bring to light the vast inequality in this country.  The fact that Warren Buffet "makes more money in two days of nonwork that most people earn in a lifetime of work" is outrageous (477).  This is purely income generated by interest from this man's accumulated wealth.  #EatTheRich

"People do not choose to be poor or working class, instead they are limited and confined by the opportunities afforded or denied them by a social system" (479)

INDIVIDUALISM IS A MYTH.  The poor and working class are struggling, productivity is up but the minimum wage is stagnant.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/07/news/economy/compensation-productivity/
There is something extremely wrong with this, especially because this is not the mainstream representation of the working class and those working for minimum wage.  People are still up in arms about raising the minimum wage and having more budget go to SNAP programs, as if those who are in dire need do not deserve it because they are lazy or are not trying hard enough.  But these are the lies that are fed to us by the people on top who are clinging to their mountains of wealth, pointing the finger at the dirty homeless youth at the side of the street like they are some kind of criminal.  

But "[Class is] for European democracies or something else--it isn't for the United States of America.  We are not going to be divided by class" --George Bush, 1988 (466)

and 

"Who will iron my shirts and rake the yard?" (477)


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