Structural and Cultural Barriers to the Upward Mobility of the Working Class

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SOCIOLOGY - HOW WORKING-CLASS PEOPLE EXPERIENCE BOTH STRUCTURAL AND CULTURAL BARRIERS TO UPWARD MOBILITY.

The American Dream is a popular cultural fiction that drives many Americans to work hard and persistently for upward mobility. Unfortunately, structural and cultural barriers show that the American Dream is too often a myth for the working class. The works of G. William Domhoff and Barbara Ehrenreich give two valuable perspectives on the obstacles that many in the working class cannot overcome in order to have the American Dream.

Structural Barriers to Upward Mobility

The persistent American Dream of upward mobility through hard work and determination has proven to be a cruel myth for working class people. The cruelty, reasons and effects of the myth are revealed by G. William Domhoff and Barbara Ehrenreich from two different perspectives. Domhoff approaches the myth as a research professor who studies, interprets and sometimes verifies other research regarding the myth. Ehrenreich examines it as a culture critic and writer who deliberately marginalizes herself to experience the lower working class first-hand in Florida, Maine and Minnesota.

The structural barriers faced by the working class are established and maintained by the owners and administrators of America's larger income-generating properties, like corporations, banks and agricultural businesses. According to Domhoff, these wealthy and powerful forces lobby, obviously and directly become involved in planning policy on important national issues, make large campaign donations to politicians supporting their continued domination, influence on the people being appointed to policy-making government positions, and sometimes even their own appointments to policy-making government positions.

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Domhoff's article summarizes his findings that upper class people own nearly 50% of all privately owned stock in corporations, powerfully control corporations through their family offices, investment organizations and holding companies, and represent a high percentage of corporate board members and are supported by middle managers who share their values (Domhoff, 2006, p. 71). If the current financial and power structures in America could be summarized in one sentence, Domhoff would say that the system is "rigged."

Barbara Ehrenreich's experience is different from Domhoff's because she sees the rigged system from the trenches, for example, when she works in Minneapolis and needs a place to live. Though she needs affordable housing, the city's housing vacancy rate was lower than 1% in general and sank to 1/10 of that availability in affordable housing for the working class; consequently, many working class people had to live in shelters rather than in their own rented spaces (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 140). Ehrenreich also experiences structural barriers in the amounts of money she is paid. One full-time job's wages are not enough to pay all necessities like rent and food. In fact, even two full-time jobs fail to give sustain her because working 16-hour days makes her so mentally and physically exhausted that she has to walk out on both her jobs in Florida (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 32). Ehrenreich doesn't make as many large judgments about the rich vs. the poor as does Domhoff because her experience was immediate rather than taken from broad studies; however, she still encounters the.....

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