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Click on each question to check your answer.
1. How would you describe economic inequality?
Answer: Economic inequality is the difference in income and wealth across individuals and groups. This also includes the difference in economic power between nations. Marx considered the role of two different classes in creating this economic inequality: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The proletariat was exploited by the bourgeoisie to trade labour for a living wage. However, the amount that they made was far less than what the bourgeoisie could afford to give them. While the binary between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is far more multi-layered now than it was when Marx was writing, it still remains an important principle in defining social inequality in our modern, capitalistic world.
2. Why was class consciousness important to Karl Marx?
Answer: Marx believed that without class consciousness you would never have class equality. You needed class consciousness in order to understand your plight and rise up against the owners of the means of production. Without a general appreciation for the fact that everyone was in the same boat, each individual would simply remain on the same path of having their labour abused by those in charge.
3. Why are class structures in many industrial nations increasingly more complex today?
Answer: Class relations are more complex today because it is no longer essential to own a business to control the means of production. The working class is now international due to global ownership and economic competition. Furthermore, now more than ever, working-class people may form their economic and political identities around competition patterns.
4. What are a few measures of poverty in Canada?
Answer: First, we must define poverty in its two forms. Absolute poverty is the inability to buy even the basic requirements for subsistence. Relative poverty is living below the normal living standard. There is much debate around the most effective way to measure poverty. The low-income measure is a set of figures representing 50 per cent of the median adjusted family income. Incomes are compared to the low-income measures to assess if someone is low-income. The low-income cut-off is another measurement based on the percentage of income devoted to daily necessities. The market-basket measure (MBM) is based on an imaginary basket of goods and services and the amount of income that would be needed to purchase what is in the basket.
5. What problems do you think are connected to urban poverty?
Answer: Lack of affordable housing for low-income families is one serious issue. Also of great concern is homelessness. Since many low-income families are renters not owners, when rent increases, the family is forced out onto the street. In large cities, many of the homeless are young people who run away from their families and live on the streets.