Eden C. Stein
To begin our study of economic inequality, a high interest opening article from Forbes for the whole class to read is “Five Economic Lessons from the Hunger Games.”
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The Hunger Games
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a wildly popular young adult novel by Suzanne Collins, depicts a dystopia consisting of twelve districts, each with a specialized function for the society. Most of the students will either have read the novel or seen the movie and will be familiar with the structure of the society. The heroine of the novel, Katniss Everdeen, lives in the poorest district, labeled District 12. District 12 is divided into two sections: The Seam, where the coal miners live, and the town, where the merchant class lives. The article points out that The Capitol, a high tech and extremely wealthy epicenter, controls District 12 and other district slave laborers with propaganda, force and the Hunger Games ritual, which involves a deadly game where two child tributes from each district are practically offered up as human sacrifices. In terms of the economic side of the story, the thirteen Districts supply The Capitol with resources and wealth. This is what makes the story and the article a great place to begin the discussion of economic inequality with middle school students. The lessons to be learned from
The Hunger Games
include that market economies are more efficient than command economies, globalization only works if markets are really free and you don’t extract resources and wealth from developing nations, economic inequality is bad for business in that it ultimately leads to only superficial success of the wealthy and revolutions of the workers, war drains economic resources, and technology can be used for good or evil.” Many details of
The Hunger Games
text with its worker heroine Katniss Everdeen who inspires a revolt among the slave laboring districts are used to illustrate these lessons. The conclusion that spreading the wealth across all demographics creates more stable societies will set students up for some of the complicated controversies in the remainder of this unit of study.
Economic Inequality: The American Dream Under Siege
by Coral Celeste Frazer
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At this point in the unit the class reads the core text,
Economic Inequality: The American Dream Under Siege
by Coral Celeste Frazer. During the reading of the text, students will learn important literacy strategies of note taking, summarizing, and responding to nonfiction. The first section of the text reviews the history of economic inequality in the United States of America. Students in the later part of Grade 8 have already studied an overview of much of American History. They will be particularly interested in how the industrial revolution with its transition to a cash based, market driven economy and more wage earners led to greater economic inequality. The gilded age and the controversy over viewing its elite as robber baron or captains of industry will also be familiar to them. Political cartoons will be viewed here and also later in the unit as yet another type of text for students to interpret and critically evaluate. More attention will have to be paid for the history of trade unions perhaps here branching off into the advantages and disadvantages or regulatory capture by professions themselves or those with a vested interest in regulating the profession. Students will see how artisan guilds of the middle ages evolved into present day trade unions, and at times professional organizations enact legislation to control incomers to their professions. They may make it seem like they are protecting the public when in fact they are making it impossible for hardworking individuals to find a gateway into a profession or climb out of poverty. Further, the facts that trade unions are what helped common workers be treated in a humane fashion by helping to pass laws requiring safe working conditions, the 8-hour work day, and prohibiting child labor as well as demanding a living wage will be important to emphasize. Listening to a podcast from Planet Money may serve to keep students engaged and also tie the past into the present.
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Finally, the section concludes with describing how the strong productivity of the 1980s led to extreme profits for top management but not for workers. When these profits were combined with the decline in United States (US) manufacturing, changes in the tax structure, trade unions losing strength, and the growth in service sectors with its low paying and non-unionized jobs, the consequence is our current extremely unequal situation.
“How Unequal Are We”
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explains some essential terms and presents the data of the present situation. The difference between mean and median should be known to the students from math class. In addition to viewing the charts in the books student will directly examine charts on the World Inequality Database and interpret these charts for themselves.
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The demographic of inequality including that of race will connect to the novel
Monster
by Walter Dean Myers,
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in which a young African American male faces the inequity of the judicial system in Harlem, read by the class earlier in the year. However, the difference between poverty and inequality will be important for the students to note and they will also read about Piketty’s observations of how money makes money.
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Time will be spent discussing the differences between income inequality and wealth inequality and examining data for the two respective measures.
In the next section (Chapter 3), of our core text, students will study the costs of economic inequality. The text has colorful graphics illustrating one theory of how economic inequality can harm our society: the difference between the vicious and virtuous cycles. During a vicious cycle, there is a large gap between rich and poor and the majority of consumers have few resources. Consumers spend less and buy fewer goods. This leads to companies making less money and resulting in lower wages. Thus, tax revenue decreases and the government invests less money continuing the vicious cycle. During a virtuous cycle, there is a smaller gap between rich and poor and good-paying jobs are available for many. Consumers have more resources and are able to buy more good and services. Companies makes more money and wages can increase. Tax revenue increases and the government can invest more so that the cycle is continued.
Here a classroom debate will be introduced on whether cutting taxes for the rich actually creates jobs. Arguably the most complex information for students to digest will pertain to the housing bubble that occurred in our own century and the burst of it in 2006. Students may find it shocking how little of the money provided by the government to “bailout” the banks and mortgage companies actually reached ordinary people struggling to stay in their homes. The human costs of decreased savings, increased debt, and the resultant impact on healthcare and health, diet, stress and lifespan may be illustrated by viewing parts of the film “The Divide” by Katharine Round,
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which outlines the lives of seven individuals and how they have each been impacted by economic inequality. Furthermore, data on deaths of despair, meaning deaths resulting from suicide or alcohol or drug abuse, in the United States as compared with other countries will also be examined.
“The Inequality of Opportunity” is the topic of the next section of our text and the unit.
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That fulfillment of the American Dream largely depends on where you grow up, how much money your parents have, as well as your gender and race may be disturbing to students, though it should not be shocking to them at this point in their studies. The concept of absolute upward mobility and relative mobility will be introduced. Illustrations of how quality of schools are tied into property taxes for the community here in Connecticut will be of particular interest. The data showing that students in poor schools are more likely to be suspended, spend more time out of school, fail, be less able to get into college, and eventually turn to crime is very troubling. On a different note, the increasing cost of higher education in the US and increasing student debt is impacting many young people in the middle class whose parents earn too much to qualify for financial aid packages and is resulting in a whole generation of young people who may never have the familiar trappings they accept as their birthright such as home ownership. This consequence can be seen both in people who can’t afford a college education, or people who get one at such an exorbitant cost that they end up paying back students loans for many of their prime earning years and cannot afford to purchase their own homes.
The next section covers how the wealthy maintain their power over the government in the US through political activity, differentially more voting, lobbying and other political activity. The high costs of running for office and the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that people can spend as much as they want on political advertising will also serve to illustrate how the wealthy have managed to monopolize our current government. The connection to obtaining government contracts, leasing of government land, tax breaks and changes in the tax code are covered. All of these differential benefits can be and are paid for by the wealthiest members of society through lobbying. Another classroom debate can be conducted in this section on raising the federal minimum wage and impacts this could have on the economy. In addition to reading articles on the Internet and the summaries of positions at procon.org, the short film “Raise the Wage,” available for streaming at izzit.org, discusses the history of the minimum wage and also explores unintended consequences of raising the minimum wage. It is vital to assist students in recognizing the bias in this film as close analysis reveals the filmmakers to clearly be against the raising of minimum wage in our country.
The final section of content for this unit is what can be done about economic inequality. First, the last chapter of Frazer’s book discusses the point of view that such inequality is healthy for a society in accordance with our American ideas that successful businesses and individuals should be rewarded, and distrust of big government and its excessive regulation. It is also important to note the belief by some that taking money from the rich discourages innovation, and that inequality encourages work ethic. The remainder of the text outlines the main areas that can be focused on to try and make our society more economically equal.
Analyzing Cartoons
The analysis of images is a vital area to focus on in the language arts classroom during the 21st century as they are prevalent on the Internet and in digital social media. A wide variety of cartoons addressing issues pertaining to economic equality are available at the Cartoonist Group website.
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Student will be allowed to choose one cartoon he or she finds engaging for analysis using a graphic organizer. The class will be instructed regarding the importance of investigating the context, intended audience, symbols and techniques such as sarcasm, irony, caricature, exaggeration and stereotypes. Following the analysis students will write a response summarizing the point of view of the cartoonists, evaluating the persuasiveness of the cartoon, and explaining his or her own agreement or disagreement with the point of view. The students will then present their chosen cartoons to the class.
Culminating Project
At this point in the unit students may choose one of the proposed solutions for economic inequality to focus on, research and to write an argumentative essay and present an overview to the class. At this point in their education students have some experience with research and will be expected to have at least two additional sources in addition to the information in the core text. Assistance will be given to those students who require it. The students will need to cite evidence from the sources in their essays as well as explaining the evidence. In the conclusion they will evaluate the viability of the proposed solutions via a classroom debate. A brief presentation will be made to the class utilizing a digital platform. A choice will also be given to those students expressing the opinion that economic inequality is not a negative phenomenon for our society to write their essays on that topic.
The first idea for a solution and choice for students to focus on is
redistribution,
with Piketty’s version of taxing the rich heavily and distribute the money equally through the form of a basic income like has been tried in Norway.
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This can be contrasted to Atkinson’s idea of participatory income in which all individuals participate in a socially meaningful activity.
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A closely connected solution to our economic problems is
shifting the tax burden
by eliminating the sales tax, increasing tax on capital gains, and removing tax loopholes for the rich and corporations. The second major choice is to focus on the rising cost of
healthcare
and the unique role of insurance companies in the US, with an emphasis on what can be done to mitigate this factor. Next is the idea of
investing in communities
by making sure all families have the money, services and benefits they need to raise children, investing in our public education system, and investing in infrastructure and public transportation. The last main area is more and tighter
government regulation
in limiting money spent on political advertising, restricting lobbying, controlling banking and financial industries and higher minimum wage. Finally, there is an alternative of choosing some other smaller areas to focus on for solutions that are also mentioned in the text such as
increasing union membership, citizen action through protest, increased voting, boycotts and new business models
. It should be also recognized that some students may decide economic inequality is not such an important issue for our society and may want to have this as the thesis for their argumentative essays. Each student will present his or her topic to the class using a digital platform.
Through this unit, students have been introduced to basic economic information including types of economies, the laws of supply and demand, and quality of life and its measurement. They have studied about the American Dream, and economic mobility. Most importantly, students will have covered exactly what economic inequality consists of, how it impacts our lives, and finally what can be done about it. It is hoped that in addition to teaching valuable skills of critical literacy and data analysis the unit also provides a more educated citizenship for the future of our society.