Perhaps the existence of poverty serves as an incentive, encouraging everyone to work harder than they otherwise might, to avoid becoming poor, and thereby boosting the general level of wealth. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, poverty would be recognized as symbols (or labels) given to each other. Sociologists would study the personal relationships between the impoverished. They would look at stereotypes that people have towards impoverished people. They may also look at stereotypes the impoverished have towards the wealthy.
Karl Marx believed that the means, relations, and mode of production all relate to the inequality in a capitalist society. What he is talking about when he says means of production in society are physical non-human inputs used to produce goods. A means of production could be a natural resource or it could also be technology. Whoever controls the means of production is going to have the most power. The capitalist owned the means of production in capitalism and therefore basically were able to control the economy.
However industrialization also brought human suffering, unhealthy working conditions and pollution to the society. This overall led to a huge wealth gap between the rich and the poor. Many different philosophies emerged in hopes to solve poverty and to ensure peoples happiness. Laissez-Faire Liberalism was planning to make a capitalist society that supported the idea “the survival of the fittest”. This believed that humans would progress without any regulations.
Further more , at this point every small business face trade-off , people running small businesses make decision for changes in strategic by comparing benefits and cost at the margin , as long as the marginal profit exceed the marginal cost . It can increase the cost of running the business and to keep their business profit stable, the opportunity cost is that employers may not be able to employ as many employees The higher minimum wage make less skilled workers become useless and benefit the better skilled workers. In the price floor analysis, if the minimum wage is above the equilibrium level, the quantity of labour supplied is larger than quantity demanded .Finally the consequence is unemployment. Therefore the
those who owned the means of production, i.e. the individual factory owners. 3. Under capitalism, Marx believed that class struggle is the unavoidable consequence of the contradictory wants of the “have-nots” and the “haves.” The owners desire high prices but low wages, while the workers want low prices and high wages. 4.
Marxists would agree with this as they believe that due to the capitalist society we live in the rich get richer and the poor get poorer so therefore the poor woulg live in poverty during their lives. They also believe that this is true due to the difficulty of breaking out of poverty itself as even if the child is exremely clever the home values may to be just accept the situation and 'live for the moment' and due to primary socialisation they will do this and many believe the only way for them to not continue to experience poverty throughout their lives would be to educate and train children to compensate for their home values. New right also agree with this to an extent they believe that the 'underserving poor' which does involve children as they have no say into what type of family they are born into, remain in poverty for the duration of their lives as they learn through the culture of poverty to live for the moment and through socialisation depend on state provision and creates 'welfare dependancy' which they will carry on during the course of their lives. However, other sociologists do not agree with this as functionalists would argue we live in a meritocratic society in which it does not matter if you are poor or working class if you put in the effort you will be rewarded. For
Capitalism mostly has a "free market" economy, which means people buy and sell things by their own judgment. Opposingly, socialism is an economic system characterised by a kind of society where people work together to get a fair standard of living (TheFreeDictionary, 2013). Socialists believe capitalism is bad for society and the government is responsible for reducing it via programs that benefit the poor such as free public education, free or subsidized healthcare, higher taxes on the rich. In contrast, capitalists believe that government does not use economic resources as efficiently as private enterprise and therefore society is better off with the free market determining economic winners and losers (Diffen, 2013). In capitalism, the market determines price, including the price of labour.
Due to the wide disparity between the rich and the poor, people who are working as lower class e.g. cleaners, security guards may not earn enough to satisfy their basic needs, while people who are working as higher class e.g. professionals are having their luxurious life. In the view of this phenomenon, minimum wage is introduced to narrow the wealth gap between the rich and poor. However, there are many controversies over the implementation of minimum wage claimed by the economist, especially on the effect of unemployment.
Disharmony might arise when people felt the system was not fair, for example, when large bonuses are paid to bankers during a recession. Parsons and inequality Parsons developed Durkheim’s ideas and said that: In industrialised societies stratification, and therefore inequality, exists on the basis of which roles are agreed by the most important, and therefore the most functional for society. The agreement occurs because people are socialised into the shared norms and values for society, initially by the family, and subsequently by education and the other agents. The value consensus that results is what holds society together and it gives it social order.
Marx agreed with the liberal economic viewpoint that a free-market is “good” with benefits gained from competition. The distinction is in a liberal capitalistic system without government intervention there is an inevitable abuse of the lower class by the capitalists. On the other hand, the lack of an invisible hand in a socialist economy can lead to things like lower quality of goods produced, scarcity etc. This grey area is what often divides liberals from Marxists. Does one value equality between his peers at the cost of certain freedoms?