The Issue of Inequalities in the United States - Essay Example

Welfare reform has been the light of the Unites s government to end the never ending social problems of poverty and inequality in the society. For so many years the government has been running on a welfare reform program known as the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) until the recent change to an alleged newer and better reform program for social mobility known as the TANF or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Just by looking on the changes in the name of the social reform program, it can be told how major changes have happened. Many people are now wondering on whether such changes have made a better impact on the United States social scene and what were the major differences among the two that differentiates one from the other better. According to the NETWORK site which is a global movement for economic and social transformation, the major difference among the two lies on their goals. The goal of AFDC was to provide money to people who are incapacitated or unemployed parents for their children; while the goal of TANF is to help needy parents by promoting marriage, reducing out-of-wedlock births, and promoting work. Aside from setting out a goal change, there were four major changes that came out of welfare reform (NETWORK 2012). First, entitlement is different. In AFDC, all qualified families that met the criteria are provided with cash assistance, while TANF requires that qualified adults must comply with work requirements. It does not simply give away money basing on the declaration of a family for eligibility in the social reform program but nevertheless it encourages people to mobilize and exert effort in finding a job on their own and have a steady income rather than being dependent on the government solely (NETWORK 2012). Second, work requirements are now backed by sanctions for recipients who do not comply. Sanctions depend on the state discretion and can include a reduction to a termination of benefits if the recipient falls short in the number of hours worked that is required. Likewise, there are penalties for states that do not meet the federal work requirements. This way, recipients are obliged to strive and stand on their own and giving fewer burdens to the government by lessening the social expenditure and eventually teaching poor families to live independently by acquiring a stable job (NETWORK 2012). Third, one of the most obvious changes in welfare reform was the time limit on benefits. TANF recipients can receive a maximum of five years of federally-funded cash benefits unlike the AFDC that offers no limit as long as a family remains eligible even without the effort of changing their lives for the better (NETWORK 2012). Lastly, under AFDC recipients received a fixed percentage of welfare payments from the federal government for every individual enrolled in welfare; however, under the TANF, the amount of money received by recipients is fixed (NETWORK 2012). Indeed social welfare was made to change the face of the society. According to DeParle’s American Dream, recipients like Angie, Jewell and Opal benefited from such reform that they were able to survive their lives along poverty. Social reforms have extended their capability to provide for the needs of their family but have also extended their dependency on the government. It can be seen that most people are not really afraid to raise a family on a young age because they knew about these benefits from the government even if they do little or no work at all. Name 2. Among all other nations of the world, The United States have the most number of incarcerated people. Can this be simply explained that most American and the so called Americanized immigrants commit crimes doubly than anyone else in the world? Or it has something to do mainly with the way Americans keep crime perpetrators within the cell that make the number continuously increasing and hitting up the mark. It is either more people are committing crimes or the law is committing perpetrators to more time in prison. California’s three strike law is one example of a loophole in the incarceration rate in the United States. California's three strikes law is a sentencing scheme that adds significant time to the prison sentences of certain repeat offenders convicted of serious or violent felonies. The three strikes law was enacted by both legislative and voter initiatives in the 1990's and was amended in 2000 (Shouse Law Group 2012). Under the provision of the three strike law a repeat offender committing another serious crime or felony will be sentenced for 25 years to life imprisonment. Of course the goal of the said law was to decrease the crime rate but on the contrary some authors say that the promulgation of the said law only added up additional problems. Among the flaws barked upon the California three strikes law is that it violates the Eighth Amendment constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. The creation of this law has doubled the chances of being imprisoned even for less serious offenses if done by crime repeaters. Another flaw is that the three strikes needlessly exacerbate the overcrowding of the California prison system. It is because repeat perpetrators are given longer sentences in prison doubled by the provision of the said law that has resulted in long prison terms for many less serious crimes. According to data, among the 36,000 second-strikers, less than one-fourth were admitted to prison for a violent offense (Prison Policy Org 2012). Because of this more and more people are being incarcerated for longer periods of time even if the need does not require so. This longer imprisonment even adds up to the national expenditure that taxpayers need to shoulder especially for the aging offenders who are still serving life sentences due to the three strike law but no longer pose harm to the public at their age. Lastly the question of whether the three strike law has decreased the crime rate is still being questioned. According to Prison Policy Org on the executive summary of the Three Strike Law after five years, crime rates began to drop in California even before passage of three strikes and have dropped as much or more in some states without a three strikes law. This shows that significantly that even without the provision of the law the crime rate in California has dropped together with all other states. Moreover, serious repeat felons in California already faced life-without-parole sentences before three strikes. This means that serious offenders need not to repeat another crime to show the firm hand of the law of convicting them for serious life imprisonments. Moreover, the chief impact of the law has been to imprison less serious offenders to longer prison terms just as they are aging out of their crime prone years thus only increasing the number of convicted people over the years the reason why the number of incarceration has doubled in the United States until today. The three strike law only adds up to the state expenditure that should have been used more on crime prevention programs rather than putting up more incarceration cells for offenders. In fact, Research shows that the money spent on the additional prisons would prevent far more crimes if it were invested in prevention programs. Name Name 3. According to Hout (2011) Education makes life better. People who pursue more education and achieve it make more money, live healthier lives, divorce less often, and contribute more to the functioning and civility of their communities than less educated people do. That’s why the government has been battling ignorance by strengthening the educational system even for the poor sector of the community. Some might say that disparities are said to be present even at school, this can be attributed to the differences in social status of children. But the efforts of the government to address these needs are socially increasing. True enough that the American educational system is far from where it used to be but still some say that inequalities are still not totally faced out. According to the Harlem Children’s Zone Project Model, Poverty now costs the US about 4% of its gross domestic product annually in lost production, decreased economic output, and increased social expenditures.. As today’s poor children enter tomorrow’s workplace, under-educated and ill-prepared, the cost to America’s future competitiveness in the world marketplace is incalculable. The need for a strategy to combat poverty effectively and broadly to help improve the lives of poor children is one of the major concerns of the government today. The Harlem Children’s Zone has developed such a strategy in Central Harlem, a New York City neighborhood with a child poverty rate of 39%, more than double the national average. The need for additional social services and enrichment programs are needed to reduce educational disparities for poor children to support the aim of the educational reform. Such social reforms as the TANF is needed by families of such poor children to support their other needs aside from school support. In the same context that nutrition is important for the proper cognition of children the social support for poor kid’s nourishment are needed as importantly as the educational reform. The aim to end disparity in school for poor children does not start and end on the aim per se, as one of the five principles of the Harlem Children’s Zone Project entails creation of pipeline of support. Thus it aims to develop excellent, accessible programs and schools and link them to one another so that they provide uninterrupted support for children’s healthy growth, starting with pre-natal programs for parents and finishing from college. This core principle indicates the need for other social support to sustain the educational program reform together. It encourages surrounding the pipeline with additional programs that support families and the larger community in aim to bring better education for poor children so that they can have better chances for better future as the research of Hout (2011) reveals that education yields both personal and social returns on investment. It is a win-win situation where in both the state and the poor benefits. Education pays off because aside from educating young people and making them ready for the labor market it also adds value, it makes the worth of a person even higher not just in the sense of self dignity but also on how other people looks at them. Education lets students acquire new skills and new perspectives that make them better workers, partners, and citizens that can contribute to the betterment of the future (Hout 2011). Name 4. Michael Hout (2011) in his paper stated that “knowledge is better than ignorance, even if we never ?nd use for all our knowledge. But if the topic is public investment in education — and the United States is in the unenviable position of investing a lot but not enough — then education has to justify itself on pragmatic grounds…education yields both personal and social returns on investment. Education pays off because, in addition to sorting and certifying America’s young people, it adds value. College students acquire new skills and new perspectives in the nation’s colleges and universities that make them better workers, partners, and citizens. The universities do not merely identify the young people who ?t the desired pro?le, they disseminate skills and foster values. Higher education causes good things to happen. This agrees with what Michelle Jackson (2001) said about meritocracy in relation to education and employment in the country: Industrialization is predicted to have profound consequences for social structures in modern industrial societies: inscriptive characteristics are deemed irrelevant to the judgment of merit, and are necessarily superseded by achievement criteria designed to allow for the efficient allocation of occupational positions. Modern societies should therefore be characterized by merit selection: merit should be the principal determinant both of an individual’s access to education and of their subsequent position within the social division of labor… “all aspects of individuals’ provenance, apart from those that might contribute directly to the merit they can achieve, will be rendered increasingly irrelevant to the selection procedures at work” Thus, in a meritocratic society, ascribed characteristics should be diminishing in importance in the face of an emphasis on achieved characteristics, such as educational qualifications. The emphasis on achievement through merit entails a degree of equality of opportunity in the society: ascribed characteristics relating to social background become irrelevant. McCall ‘s (2005) study Do They Know and Do They Care? Americans’ Awareness of Rising Inequality show a connection between economic growth and inequality, and that in the United States, ‘the two poles of this relationship moved from the negative to the positive end in the 1980s and then edged back toward the negative pole in the late 1990s’ (p. 36). McCall believes that the raising of the standards of living and economic in the 80s developed a certain “tolerance for inequality” among Americans and they believed that any economic inequality that resulted from wars in the 90s is just temporary anomalies which can be corrected. Americans believed that these setbacks can be corrected easily by government. McCall further states that “Structural impediments to mobility move to the fore and individual impediments to the back, fostering greater opposition to inequality during downturns. Importantly, in this view, when prosperous times return, Americans look toward the economy rather than the government to ameliorate inequality”. Americans believed in the past that inequality is gradually declining and that “class divisions have never been terribly salient” so they “tend to view themselves and the country as a whole as more ‘middle class’ than stratified or polarized (McCall, 2005). Name 5. What has happened to the African Americans in San Francisco is a clear form of social inequality. The belief of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association that if San Francisco decides to compete effectively with other cities for new industries and corporate power, its population will move closer to standard white Anglo-Saxon Protestant characteristics is the most obvious form of racism against the African American residents of the area. Selection of a population’s composition might be undemocratic. The success of the community does not depend on the race rather on the way living is by the people. Indeed there is still disparity in the concept of superiority of race even up to today’s most modern times and social awakening. Although most American states today are composed of mixed culture due to the increased number of immigrants thus the development of minority groups, still the point of modernization and freedom still jumps off in some concepts of equality. The way African Americans are being downsized in San Francisco is an outcome of the inequality, oppression and racism. Once upon a time, over 100,000 African American people lived in San Francisco but recent estimates put the remaining African American population for the city of San Francisco at around 3.9 percent. Since “The African American Out-Migration Report” commissioned in 2009 by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, there has been little in the way of policies by either of the two to stop the eventual wipeout. Remaining residents cannot help but think that if this thing was taking place with any other ethnic group will a citywide state of emergency would have been declared (Sumchai 2010). The implications of the so called black flight that started three decades ago still remains even up to now. The remaining African Americans still residing in the area experience obvious inequality propaganda to make them leave the city as well. African American owned businesses and establishments are having less and less patronizes from the downsized population of African American people. Not to mention the lower than average White American wage African American workers are receiving although this can be attributed to low educational attainment of most African American, that can be attributed to black-white disparity as well. But on the same manner even Asian Americans and other minority groups having the same educational status still receive less than the average White American worker thus it can be concluded that racism and disparity in favor of the light colored skin still remains. The remaining African American people in San Francisco suffer the consequences of inequality brought upon on the color of their skin. According to Neckerman & Torch (2007) contextual inequality is often believed to have an effect as an individual’s awareness of inequality leads to feelings of relative deprivation or injustice and thence to consequences including stress, poor health, criminal behavior, and political support for redistribution. This explains why in areas where inequality and racism often occurs the rate of crime and diseases are often prevalent. This can also attributed why the most number of people in prison are not from the White Anglo Saxon race but are from the opposites. In this case while oppression on the African American race in communities such as San Francisco still remains there will always be high chances of crime, war and dispute among opposing races. 6. The ongoing social inequality and prevalence of poverty are some of effects of the continued residential segregation. However, it took some time to establish the connections between the persistence of poverty and the decreased chances of being able to live a quality life among people that were residentially-segregated. Continuing the segregation schemes between people living in wealth and in poverty creates an inequality of the distribution of wealth, earnings, as well as better opportunities among US citizens, which further results to the greater divisions between social relations of communities (Neckerman & Torche, 2007). This greatly affects the chances for people at the poverty level to have better work and educational opportunities due to the lack of such within their own communities. This situation subsequently adds further problems in bridging the gap between the financial differences between the affluent and the poor, mainly due to the people failing to get good paying jobs, or even just a job for that matter. It also does not help that some public officials do not see the rise of social inequality as a burden, but rather as a reward for the people with work who contributed a lot for the state, and as punishment for the idle people without jobs (Jencks, 2002). Thus, not only do the people themselves help in the persistence of poverty and segregation, but also the public officials themselves do not make forward actions in removing the whole concept of residential segregation itself. One of the main reasons for the continuing struggle to gain equality can be traced to the economic policies in the US, which mostly does not make any large effort in distributing the income of earners among the less privileged citizens, as well as making it hard for the workers to get a salary increase and forming work unions (Jencks, 2002). Also, there is much more focus in capitalist ideals, as well as in trying to come up with the better good for a greater number of people. Still another reason is that while people are becoming aware of the social inequalities, these same people may not exert effort to alleviate such situations, and may even exclude themselves when they are needed to lend a helping hand. By being unable to associate with the hardships of other people, and creating distances from people that have differences from their own culture, the idea of integrating various cultures and peoples become impossible, which in turn maintains the social divides among the classes. This in turn causes people to want to remain as homogeneous as possible in their living conditions, whether rich, middle-class or in poverty (Neckerman & Torche, 2007). Thus, despite the changes in housing laws, people still have a great tendency to lump themselves with people that they can relate to, instead of trying hard to relate or acclimate to places where they could hardly share themselves with. Being separated from other social classes not only keeps the persistence of poverty and inequality but also prevents people from lower social classes to see a world beyond their own. By leaving out people from all possible options, these same people that were unable to have better opportunities other than what they currently have would not be motivated enough to change their lives (Neckerman & Torche, 2007). This, along with the combined effects of the tendency of people to keep sticking to familiar things like cultures and traditions would prevent the rise in levels of trust and reliance towards others with a different background, which in turn could increase social gaps, decrease civic participations and socializations, as well as the persistence of inequality. People who were unable to see the hardships of other people would tend to provide good opportunities to only a handful of people, and lesser marginalized people would believe that they have a chance for growth in a highly-selective society. Too much focus on the self and to similar-thinking people stalls the possible growth and development of the society, separating classes of people and creating bigotry despite the implementation of fairness in civil rights. References Hout M. (2011) Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States. Social & Economic Returns to College. University of California, Berkeley. Jackson, M. (2001). Meritocracy, Education and Occupational Attainment: What Do Employers Really See as Merit? Retrieved from http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/documents/working-papers/2001/2001-03.pdf Jencks, C. (2002). Does inequality matter? Daedalus, 131(1): 49-65. Massey D. & Denton N. (1993) Chapter 13 American Apartheid. Harvard University Press. Pp. 135-139. McCall, L. (2005). Do They Know and Do They Care? Americans’ Awareness of Rising Inequality. Russel Sage Foundation Social Inequality Conference. University of California, Berkeley, May 2005. Neckerman, K., & Torche, F. (2007). Inequality: causes and consequences. Annual Review of Sociology, 33: 335-357. Prison Policy Org (2012) "Three Strikes" Laws: Five Years Later Executive Summary. Retrieved from: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/3strikes.pdf Shouse Law group (2012) California Three Strikes Law and Proposition 36 Reforms. Retrieved from: http://www.shouselaw.com/three-strikes.html Sumchai A. (2010) Black Flight. The San Francisco Bayview. Retrieved from: http://sfbayview.com/2010/black-flight/ The Harlem Children Zone Project Model (2012) The Harlem Children Zone Project Model Executive Summary. Retrieved from: http://www.equitycampaign.org/i/a/document/9857_ExecutiveSummaryHCZ09.pdf Read More