Minimum

This week in class we continued learning about social class and the difficulty of moving into different classes.
And the difficulty did not lie just in the wealth, but also in the social culture.

But this week in class we focused on how unequal our wealth is in this world,
and people who are in low classes, stay in lower class; it's very hard to move up.

We played an unique type of monopoly to better understand this concept.
We had a high class, a upper middle, a lower middle and a low class.
The high class student started out with great wealth, and received more many when passing go.
The low class started out with very vey little and received minimum amount while passing go.
In the end of the game, no one changed classes. Te poor stayed poor while the rich became richer.
We realized how our system makes it almost impossible for a lower class to move up the ladder.

To study this idea even further, we watched an episode of "30 days" where we observed
a man living on minimum wage. We saw that he and his fiance were working multiple jobs just to pay their rent and eat rice and beans every day. They were only able to get furnitue and clothes thanks to the charities around that area.

The people around them were working in the same conditions as them, but many had much more families to support. Watching the couple struggle, but realizing much more families have it harder, made me angry and humble.

Our system obviously doesn't work. Minimum wage isn't helping the poor support themselves. It's not enough. And especially if an emegency occurs and they have to go to the hospital, they can't pay the fees. They don't have money for insurance. They are completly out of luck.

The social class system kind of crushes my hope. Although I am in the middle class, it'll be almost impossible to move up that ladder. It also made me angry that the rich are inherently rich. That although I may work my butt off the rich have an advantage--and that doesn't seem like an equal opportunity. But then again, the poor are at a greater disadvantage than I.

Society is complicated and there's no simple solution to our wealth distribution or social class.