Wealth in America

This week in Sociology, we learned about the tremendous gap of distributed wealth in America. We also did an activity where my teacher gave every student in the class 3 pennies and it was a gambling game where everyone gave a portion of their pennies and called heads or tails to see who wins. It seemed at first that it was a fair game because it was 50:50. But soon enough, the majority of the class had zero pennies and only a couple people had more than six. This activity shows that everyone has a chance to move up, but it's all about luck. It's luck if you're born into a wealthy family or a poor family and have less opportunities to rise. People in wealthy families will want to live up to their parents expectations. Since they have worked hard (or not) to earn the money they have and give their children a good future, the they automatically expect to see them graduate high school and go to college. Since I was born into a family of upper class, I know that my parents had high. Expectations of me since they raised me at a good school, etc. I feel that where you were born and the family that raises you have a large impact on your future because they determine where you go to school and show you how to live. America is so diverse in wealth among the people that we even have a social class. America has the biggest gap between the income of the poorest compared to the income of the richest. Americans don't want to believe that we have social classes, but the cold truth is that we do. In the social ladder, there is the lower class, middle class, and the upper class.