Positive Effects Of Poverty

Throughout our society, there are many families who struggle financially and this circumstance affects their lives as a whole. Some may argue that there are positive effects of poverty that are important to the society but there are also factors that require us to look beyond the mass media and our social structure and focus on the societies bigger problems. This is represented through the documentary “Two American Families” and can also be supported with the Social Policy and The Sociological Imagination, two essays written by C. Wright Mills and Herbert J. Hans. Poverty does play a role in our society and the effects it has are tremendous. According to Herbert J. Gans in “The Uses of Poverty”, he claims that there are many positive effects

He goes on to say that when people are well aware of their struggles but can not change a thing about how they are living, the more aware they become of how they are living the more boarded in they seem to feel. The white family in “Two American Families” seemed as though this defined their situation perfectly. They were conformists to the ideas of being poor and poverty itself and in turn became trapped to this way of thinking (Frontline Video, 2013). “The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live.”(Mills 1959) In the beginning of the “Two American Families” the white family was happy and thriving. After the man of the house lost his job the poverty level they had dropped dramatically and they got trapped in the loop hole and didn’t ever find a way out as opposed to the second family. One difference between the white family and the black family is the attitude they each have. It seemed as though the white family was focused on the problem, hence feeling trapped, and the black family was focused on the solution and the positive outlook of the situation. Mills says, “It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self- and to the relations between the two.” The point that Mills is making is the primary difference between the two families. The white family seems as

The amount of people that find the “poverty” stereotype and think they can change what a normal family is and causing urbanization to being poor is absurd. People think that since they are working poor they deserve value. People like Tony and Claude, the parental figures in the white family of the “Two American Families” need to work harder to obtain social control and stability. According to “The State of America’s Middle Class” there are many factors in today’s society affecting poverty and the way average citizens live. In the Article, it says wages are down, especially from a steadily gaining income in the previous decades. This article full of charts also shows that more money is going to the top 20 percent of our society and the middle classmen are having a steady decrease in income throughout the years. But then again part time work is going through the roof. All of these facts are found in “The State of America’s Middle Class” (Frontline Charts, 2013). According to these same charts Middle class debt is at an all-time high and the amount of money people are saving is at an all-time low. The amount of stigma that these people are going through is outrageous and unnecessary. We should listen to the ideals of Gans and make the dirty work labor higher paying and have a dominating middle class where more people are happy and can support their