Class Matters and The Two Income Trap - Book Report/Review Example

corporations started to transfer production jobs and service jobs to low-wage workers. Along with that, in many Third World countries of export-oriented development strategies made the global market for both skilled and unskilled labor to grow bigger. Reducing the cost of such imports as toys from China and shoes from Indonesia, it destroyed the jobs. Unfortunately, every sector from foreign competition, an ever growing number of manufacturing and service jobs were eliminated by technological innovations, which is a trend that will probably prove even more important than globalization over time (Are We Still a Middle Class Nation).

Due to technologically driven increases in productivity, advances in manufacturing and automation have slashed the prices of consumer appliances such as televisions and personal computers. However, productivity growth threatens the middle class and other social classes in three ways due to the poor structure of globalization, which could increase economic growth if reconstructed correctly (Are We Still a Middle Class Nation). As it is stated in the book, a cow in a foreign country makes more money than anyone in the world, which most economists cannot realize as a problem.

With that fact, the books suggest that social class and economical spending among any household need to be restructured in order to benefit everyone.This is generally blamed on overconsumption and claims that we are a credit card generation that it is paying the price for its free spending ways. And no doubt credit spending has its role in the financial problems of middle America. But Warren and Tyagi make a compelling case that this is not necessarily the whole story. Instead, they propose that the culprit is in large part the ever escalating cost of housing and education in America's suburbs.

As many parents chase the better schools in an attempt to assure their children the best possible education, real estate prices in areas serviced by those schools rise and with it the cost of the homes (Two Incomes). After reading both books and through personal research, poverty causes programs such as child welfare, which is an economic strain on the country. Child welfare is a set of government and private services that protects children and encourages family stability. These services include investigations of alleged child abuse, foster care, adoption services, and services that can provide support at-risk families so that they can remain intact especially in poorer countries where the government infrastructure is much weaker (Child Welfare 2003).

However, there are many challenges that child welfare is facing due to lack of funding and resources. Some of these challenges come from child abuse, where parents' rights come first rather than the child's best interest. From there, when there is a case of child abuse, it seems that the parents' rights come before the child's best interest because the welfare system wants to keep family unity intact; however in some cases, it is clear that there are no chances of loving environment. In return, when it is clear that there is no chance of a loving environment, the child should be removed from the home immediately and into the potential adopted home since he or she have suffered enough from the abuse (Bartholet 1999).

Another challenge is adoption because so many potential parents are