Professor Reich Sociological Analysis

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Inequality amongst society is quite obvious especially from the middle class and the rich individuals. Since World War II, the economy has been controlled from the prices of goods, quality of goods, and the number of people each company can hire. The rich do not spend that much from his or her incomes compared to the middle class and the poor. This explains why most of the money goes to the rich rather than the other classes. Consumers are declining, which means less people are getting hired and businesses are not expanding. The rich are able to live their lives with the income they make but the middle class has to borrow money in order to get a home and live the life he or she wishes just to get by. The economy will not continue to grow if …show more content…
The two theories that go along with what Reich was saying is functionalist and conflict theory. Functionalist theory is the term that states that inequality is necessary in a society. In the film, Reich talked about many people who find inequality being needed in a society. On the other hand, many did not agree with it, which is explained with the conflict theory. This is defined as inequality not being needed in a society. For the rich, there are no issues because they are not paying that many taxes and still increasing his or her income. The middle class is not going anywhere even when they are working a job or even two jobs. Just like in the film, globalization has been brought up in our previous lectures. The increase of globalization comes along with decreased demand for United States made products. Another term that relates to technology and machines taking over many individual’s jobs in the United States is continuous process production. This is when a machine has a mechanized workers role to produce the goods of the computer to make the same products over and over again. A human worker is needed to look over the production being done but more jobs are lost because of having the machines do all of the work like Reich stated. Technology “deskills” the workforce. The major term that relates with Reich’s arguments is deindustrialization. There is a decline of manufacturing jobs throughout society. Less people are needed due to the increase of technology. Also, there are many outsourcing of jobs, which is another reason why deindustrialization is

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