Rank Ch. 3: Poverty as a Structural Failing

       In chapter 3 of Robert Rank's One Nation Underprivileged, Rank addresses three aspects to show poverty as the result of structural failings in the United States. Under economic, political and social levels, Rank shows us the consistent and systemic failures in the American system that result in mass poverty on a nation-wide scale. One of Rank's contentions on this issue is how the social ideologies and psychological standpoints of American society reinforce poverty and prevent any major changes to the system. Rank argues that in the American system, those who are born into a a particular wealth class tend to stay in that class throughout the duration on their lives and even pass it on to future generations. For example, middle class parents tend to have children who will remain in the middle class and so on and so forth. Though there are very few exceptions to these instances, this remains true for the majority of all Americans. Rank further explains that America does not provide a level playing ground and compares it to a large game of Monopoly where all the players start off with different quantities of money. This goes on to reinforce Rank's idea that citizens living in anything but the upper classes cannot afford upward mobility.
       I completely agree with Rank's argument in regard to poverty as a partial result of social institutions in the U.S. A large part of upward mobility in terms of personal finance requires a large amount of personal finance to begin with. For example, one could argue that in order to acquire a high paying job, one must have a high level of education which requires a large amount of money. Those struggling to put food on their tables due to low paying jobs are far less likely to afford a high quality education than those who had already inherited large sums of money from prior wealthy generations in the same bloodline. In the previous chapter Rank also showed a variety of tables showing that socio-economic status was also based on race, gender, sex, age, etc. which brings about a variety of sub-issues in the same category. In the U.S. the system is designed to keep particular groups wealthy (as shown by the charts, typically older, white, males) and particular groups not nearly as wealthy (particularly minorities). Rank ultimately shows us that the system is flawed and in my own opinion, the economic and social institutions of this nation would need to see some drastic changes in order to help reduce poverty levels.