Critical Analysis Of David Brooks's How We Are Ruining America

Writer Gregory Mantsios in his article “Class in America”, talks about these things, and how wide the gap is between the rich and the poor and also discusses how the rich continue to get richer, while the poor continue to get poorer. Mantsios gives his readers the profiles and backgrounds of three hard-working Americans, two of them are white males, whose family background as well as education played a role in their success, while the other person is a black woman who is just above the poverty line despite her work as a nurse’s aide. Through these profiles, Mantsios article shows exactly how sex, race and shows how your parental and educational background of a person can play a role in the things that you achieve. Mantsios also talks about one’s performance in school and the level of school completed can suggest whether or not class that person may belong in.

The success of the up-and-coming middle-class made America the place many dreamed to be. It is this similar type of journey of America’s riches to rags history that one will come to recognize has occurred many times throughout the nation. In “RIP The Middle Class-1946-2013”

For example, in his articles “How We Are Ruining America” and “Getting Radical About Inequality” he speaks about the wealthy helping each other and increasing the inequality gap between rich and poor. Brooks writes, “70 percent of the students in the nation’s 200 most competitive schools come from the top quarter of the income distribution” (“How We Are Ruining America”). This creates an endless cycle of allowing wealthy families to continue being wealthy, while simultaneously preventing the poor of the opportunity to climb the social ladder. Along with the cycle of the wealthy families, people tend to try to beat one another rather than help. Brooks writes, “We as individuals and members of our class are competing for dominance and respect.

In Jay McLeod’s influential book, Ain’t No Makin’ It (2009), he discovers new sociological theories and social reproduction through his research over many years. Through social reproduction McLeod shows us how education’s role gets passed down from one generation to the next from class inequality. He claims that aspirations/lack of aspirations is being reproduced. He deeply examines two resident groups of male youths that have opposing views on what their aspirations are in life. McLeod also deciphers what the American Dream is according to them. “The American Dream is held out as a genuine prospect for anyone with the drive to achieve it” (McLeod 2009: 3).

Publisher, Richard V. Reeves, in his online article, "The Dangerous Separation of the American Upper Middle Class," shares how income, education, and political power have caused a split in the upper middle class. Reeves's purpose is to convey the idea that the upper middle class has shifted from being a sociological curiosity to an economic and political problem. Reeves outlines how the upper middle class that was once considered an accessible hope or American dream, is now a blockade and an obstacle for others. He adopts a rational and analytical tone to appeal to the reader's sense of reason. Reeves cites convincing facts and statistics as well as successfully uses emotional appeals. However, toward the end of the article his attempts to appeal to reader's emotions, weakens the credibility and ultimately his argument.

Throughout the article, Krugman attempts to grab the attention of his audience and help them become mindful of how the limited movement between social classes will have an effect on their life. In order to do so, he implements rhetorical questions that appeal to pathos and ethos, while displaying a negative tone and fearful mood. Rhetorical questions are used throughout the article to introduce an important idea and make the readers evaluate their current social status. For example, the author creates a hypothetical situation about the rich wanting to seek more advancements, he then questions, “What would you do?” (11) and follows this question with steps one could take to control the government and receive more leverage over the poor community. This question and response strengthened his argument because it appealed to the readers emotions about the ability the rich have to further harm the poor. Krugman also proposes questions that appeal to his ethos. After stating the steps one could take to “close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible,” (14) he asks, “It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it?”(15). This question is meant to be unanswered but make the audience reflect. If the audience did feel that the

My own children are being raised by parents with both more money and more education. Yet I do not see my children as having significantly better opportunities than I had at their age” (9). Therefore, although unequal opportunity prevents low income segments of the population from having a fair chance at receiving merit based aid, the same argument, according to Mankiw, doesn’t apply to the one percent in relation to the middle class who all have fairly equal opportunity.

David Brooks is testing society with the biblical story of the Prodigal sons. Brooks takes this idea of the Prodigal sons and culminates it into an argument of American society and being capable of accepting these younger brothers that are in society. David Brooks argument is inadequate because he assumes the youngest son always comes back into society, the father’s acceptance only permits the youngest brother to be irresponsible in his ways and he doesn’t account that there’s no elder brothers in some societies. Primarily, Brooks story assumes the idea that after the younger brother learns his lesson about his own irresponsibility of spending that he will waltz back home but that is misleading.

As a minority gets older they realize the hard truths of society. These truths involve many different types of stereotypes that contribute to racism and overall surround the idea of inequality and framing in social economics. In Diana Kendall’s piece “Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption” social inequality is viewed as a heavy topic, that the media abuses. In fact, Kendall uses the Census Bureau to point out that “the net worth of the average white household in 2000 was more than ten times that of the average African American household and more than eight times the average Latino/Latina household” (338). Based on the facts from this source minorities are financially at a disadvantage and are presumed to be unhappy due to lack of wealth. However, money does not control or even affect happiness rather Kendall makes a point that framing does, which can be seen through James McBride life story “The Boy in the Mirror”, where the world McBride’s mother framed for him, one without inequality, begins to crumble . McBride paints a picture of the dramatic change that happened when arriving at adulthood when he writes, “We did not consider ourselves poor or deprived, or depressed, for the rules of the outside world seemed meaningless to us as children. But as we grew up and fanned out into the world as teenagers and college students we brought the outside home with us, and the world that Mommy had so painstakingly created began to fall apart” (415). The simple

The American Dream is not a function of ability and achievement, but a dying illusion. America is not truly the land of the free, but an ignorant classist society. Gregory Clark, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, stated that “America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England or pre-industrial Sweden … That’s the most difficult part of talking about social mobility - it 's shattering people 's dreams” (qtd. in Evans). The United States has an incredibly outdated economic system that does not allow disadvantaged citizens opportunities regardless of how hard they work. People get stuck in their social status and are not able to stray out of it, which affects their further generations. Additionally, immigrants coming to America in hopes of prosperity are likely to have even less luck than immigrants of the pass and widen the gap of social inequality. Clark continues to state, “The truth is that the American Dream was always an illusion. Blindly pursuing

The concept of white privilege helps to highlight the hypocritical nature of the American ideologies of democracy and meritocracy. Ask yourself: Do we live truly in a democratic system if the voices of our nation’s disenfranchised people are not heard? Or are we truly a nation that functions on a meritocratic system if every person-- regardless of socioeconomic background or race-- is not given the same opportunities for development? The concepts of white privilege and male privilege, as used by McIntosh, are meant to unveil the hidden schemes of American ideology.

Johnson, H. B. (2014). The American dream and the power of wealth: Choosing schools and inheriting inequality in the land of opportunity. Routledge.

All families want their children to be happy, healthy, and grow. Social classes make a difference in how parents go about meeting this goal. In Annette Lareau book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, she promotes middle class parents as concerted cultivation. Middle class parents encourage their children’s talents, opinions, and skills. For example, engaging their children in organized activities and closely monitoring children’s experiences in school. According to Lareau, middle class children gain an emerging sense of entitlement through this pattern of converted cultivation. This causes a focus on children’s individual development. There are signs that the middle class children gain advantages from the experience of concerted cultivation. However, the working class and poor children do not gain this advantage.

Over the past few decades, the “American Dream” vision has been quickly vanishing as a result of the increasing troubles and weakening of the middle class. It has lost the view of being the most successful and wealthy middle class in the world, while the middle classes in other countries are excelling in earning higher middle and lower class incomes. The issue of the declining wealth of the middle class explains a huge problem in the United States’ future prosperity and well being for the citizens and the country. There are many issues that affect the success of the middle and lower classes, such as structural differences in the economy, culture, and government. The gap between the middle and high classes is increasing specifically. The United States has the image of giving people life and prosperity, but inequality is increasing significantly due to issues in education, decrease in taxation among the upper class, and decrease of middle class power in the democracy, while other ideas and mechanisms can be take from other nations.

It is said that all men are created equal, but this is not all correct. Thomas Jefferson said that “All men are created equally”, but this feeling has been betrayed if all humans were equal. Then people would all get equal privileges. This is a belief that everyone is equal. Moreover, that they all have the same chance to be successful in life. If humans are, create equally, then why did the government split up the levels of pay rate and social class, and why racism stops people from being what they want to be? In this discussion Gregory Mantsios, the writer of “Class in America”, describes how society has divided into upper class, middle class, and lower class, and that the government is trying to deal with both extremes, forgetting that middle class will face deeper tragedy if it is unnourished. Likewise, Diane Kendall, a sociologist from Baylor University shows how mass media and social class is framed in her essay “Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption”. Kendall discusses how many people frame classes and everyday life. In addition, Mike Rose discusses how people just want to live there in life without people bully them. In his, article “I Just Want to Be Average”. He tells the story about some of his experiences throughout high school. When he was a freshman, he was placed into a vocational program. Rose goes into detail describing specific events and different