Chapter 1

Notes

1. For additional ideas on the subjective and objective elements of a social problem, see Blumer’s (1971) journal article.

2. You might compare my definition with the definitions of other people in the field, including the following. “A social problem is a condition caused by factors built into the social structure of a particular society that systematically disadvantages or harms a specific segment or a significant number of the society’s population” (Curran & Renzetti, 2000, p. 3). “A social problem is a social condition that a segment of society views as harmful to members of society and in need of remedy” (Mooney, Knox, & Schact, 2002, p. 3). “When most people in a society agree that a condition exists that threatens the quality of their lives and their most cherished values, and they also agree that something should be done to remedy that condition” (Kornblum & Julian, 2001, p. 4). “Social problems are issues that substantial numbers of the society view as violations of society’s social norms or expectations, and about which people believe something can and should be done” (Palen, 2001, p. 10). Parrillo (2002), in his Contemporary Social Problems, stated, “We also must know that recognized social problems have the following four components: 1. They cause physical or mental damage to individuals or society; 2. They offend the values or standards of some powerful segment of society; 3. They persist for an extended period of time; and 4. They generate competing proposed solutions because of varying evaluations from groups in different social positions within society, which delays reaching consensus on how to attack the problem” (pp. 4–5). Eitzen and Zinn (2000), in their Social Problems, stated that there are “two main types of social problems: (1) acts and conditions that violate the norms and values present in society, and (2) societally induced conditions that cause psychic and material suffering for any segment of the population” (p. 7).

3. For excellent discussions of Comte’s life and how he laid the foundation for the beginning of sociology, see Ritzer (1996a) and Turner, Beeghley, and Powers (1995a, 1995e).

4. For excellent discussions of Durkheim’s life and work and of how he began the formal discipline of sociology in the academic setting, see Ritzer (1996b) and Turner, Beeghley, and Powers (1995b, 1995f).

5. For excellent discussions of the life and work of Marx, see Ritzer (1996c) and Turner, Beeghley, and Powers (1995c, 1995g).

6. For an excellent discussion on the life and work of Weber, who was the major figure in starting the formal discipline of sociology in Germany during the late 1800s and early 1900s, see Ritzer (1996d) and Turner, Beeghley, and Powers (1995d, 1995h).

7. The sociologists who take this stance use the writings of Weber, the famous German sociologist, who asserted that sociologists need to remain as objective as possible while we are “wearing the hat” of a sociologist. When we are not in our role as sociologists, such as citizens casting our votes or belonging to certain political parties with certain stances on issues, we can and should voice our opinions. See Weber’s ([1918]1946) discussion on this topic titled “Science as a Vocation.” For example, he asserted, “Politics is out of place in the lecture-room. . . .To take a practical political stand is one thing, and to analyze political structures and party positions is another. When speaking in a political meeting about democracy, one does not hide one’s personal standpoint; indeed, to come out clearly and take a stand is one’s damned duty. The words one uses in such a meeting are not means of scientific analysis but means of canvassing votes and winning over others. They are not plowshares to loosen the soil of contemplative thought; they are swords against the enemies: such words are weapons. It would be an outrage, however, to use words in this fashion in a lecture or in the lecture-room. . . . Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases” (pp. 145–146). See also Weber’s (1949) discussion titled “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” where he maintained that “an empirical science cannot tell anyone what he should do—but rather what he can do” (p. 54).

8. For a more detailed discussion on this matter, see Manis’s (1974) journal article.

9. For a more detailed explanation, see Turner’s (1998) The Structure of Sociological Theory.

10. See a famous book in sociology, Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) The Social Construction of Reality. In their book, they did an excellent job of showing how humans create all kinds of social phenomena.

11. See Weber ([1914]1968), where he discussed three dimensions of inequality: class or money, party or power, and status or prestige. Sociologists use these three dimensions to measure inequality.

12. See Turner (1998, p. 158), where he reformulated the ideas of Weber in a propositional format. See also Weber ([1914]1968). Turner noted that Weber suggests that if society socializes people to be upwardly mobile and tells them that they have equal opportunity when in fact they do not have equal opportunity, we have created social conditions for these people to question the legitimacy of the existing social conditions.

13. For others who have suggested that there may be a sequence or phases or stages of social problems, see Blumer (1971); Case (1924); Frank (1925); Fuller and Myers (1941); Peyrot (1984); and Spector and Kitsuse (1973).

14. For various theoretical propositions based on Blau’s work that I use at various points throughout this book, see Turner (2003).

15. A good place to start to think about what will happen to capitalism and any indicators as to when is to consider the views of Schumpeter (1942).

Chapter 2

Notes

1. Ryan (1981) discussed the need for people to have access to resources such as medical care, quality education, and housing, resulting in income inequality not having such a dire effect on people with low incomes.

2. For a succinct overview of libertarian, conservative, and liberal (“social democratic”) philosophies, see Fine and Shulman’s (2003, pp. 6–13) Talking Sociology.

3. See, for example, the newspaper article by King (2005). This article discusses the continuing debate about whether or not creationism, or a more recent version of creationism called intelligent design, should be taught in a science classroom or in any classroom in a public school.

4. This principle can also be applied to other countries that have congresses and parliaments.

5. Broder (2002) discussed how decreasing tax cuts at the federal level was resulting in less aid for state governments that in turn needed to decrease state funding such as Medicaid for the poor and cut aid to local governments. He noted that the federal tax cuts, besides decreasing federal surpluses and increasing federal deficits, meant that “state and local governments are raising taxes and slashing vital services in order to balance their budgets” (p. A11). Hence, the shortsightedness of decreasing taxes has numerous negative effects on state and local governments and on families, especially lower-income ones.

6. As Schumpeter (1976) noted, “The first and foremost aim of each political party is to prevail over the others in order to get into power or to stay in it” (p. 279).

7. For a discussion of American values, see Williams’s (1970) American Society.

8. Eitzen and Sage (1997) noted that the University of Tennessee of the Southeastern Conference broke the racial barrier when it signed an African American football player for the 1966 to 1967 school year.

9. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee during the early 1960s, African Americans did not live on campus, were not in the fraternities and sororities, and were not athletes for the university. The few black students who were attending the university at the time lived in African American homes. They would take the bus across town in Knoxville, attend classes, and return to the private homes during the evening. As a result, the African American students were less likely to participate in extracurricular activities than were the White students who lived in the dorms and had much more access to extracurricular activities.

10. Max Weber, the great German sociologist, helped us to realize the potential role that values can play in social action in his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, [1905]1958).

11. See, for example, Blau’s (1964) Exchange and Power in Social Life. A key point that exchange theory makes is that not just financial relationships are exchange relationships and that nearly all social relationships have some form of exchange to them. Turner (1991) converted Blau’s ideas into interrelated propositions that can be tested empirically for their validity. For example, one of Turner’s propositions from Blau is the following: “The more profit people expect from one another in emitting a particular activity, the more likely they are to emit that activity” (p. 331).

Chapter 3

Notes

1. For a further discussion of these three dimensions of inequality, see Weber’s ([1914]1968, pp. 926–940) Economy and Society.

2. Marx ([1867]1967), in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, noted how those who have money in a capitalistic society will also have more power.

3. For a discussion of who holds certain positions and therefore has more power in our society, see Mills’s (1959a) The Power Elite.

4. For an excellent discussion of people of the corporate class and how they are employed as top officers in one large corporation and serve on the boards of other large corporations, see Kerbo’s (2009) Social Stratification and Inequality.

5. For a revealing discussion of this process, see Barlett and Steele’s (1992) America: What Went Wrong?

6. Marx and Engels ([1848]1992) put it this way: “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class” (p. 40). In an updated variation on this same theme, see Bookman’s (2002) newspaper article.

7. For an excellent discussion of Weber’s ideas on legitimacy and related consequences, see Turner, Beeghley, and Powers’s (2002) The Emergence of Sociological Theory.

8. In one of my recent social problems classes, no one voted to increase inequality, 12.5% voted to maintain the current inequality, and 87.5% voted to decrease the inequality in our country. The breakdown of conservatives and liberals in the class was interesting. Among conservative students, 30% wanted to keep the current inequality, whereas 70% wanted to decrease it. Among liberal students, 100% wanted to decrease inequality. So, even though the liberals were more in favor of decreasing the current inequality than were conservatives, a strong majority of conservative students wanted to decrease inequality as well.

Chapter 4

Notes

1. Eitzen and Zinn (2003), in their book Social Problems, reported that 12.1 million American children (under 18 years of age) were poor as of 1999 (p. 184) and that, although the overall poverty rate in the United States was 11.8% in 1999, the poverty rate for children was 16.9% (p. 183). Children make up 40% of all the poor people in the United States (p. 210).

2. Yetter (2003) noted that mostly poor single mothers “are being forced to quit jobs or drop out of school, and some will wind up back on the welfare rolls,” according to state officials and advocates who work with the poor (p. A1). Yetter noted that 25 states “are not able to serve all families who apply” (p. A4). Khrystal Johnson of Louisville, Kentucky, said, “I can’t afford with my weekly paycheck to put two kids in day care” (p. A4). Johnson estimated that her day care costs are $230 per week for her two children. Also, an unintended consequence of the lack of funding, noted Yetter, is that it will “cause parents to place children in inadequate care or leave them alone” (p. A4).

3. See TaxCreditResources.org (n.d.a). Currently, 14 states plus the District of Columbia have state programs.

4. See TaxCreditResources.org (n.d.b), which reported that in 1999, the earned income tax credit lifted 4.8 million people above the poverty line.

5. We would need to discuss various ways to do this. For example, we could look into the possibility of issuing something like a credit card that, when used to pay the cashier, would indicate the person’s most recent yearly income.

6. See U.S. Department of Labor (n.d.). For a good overview of the program, see also Almanac of Policy Issues (n.d.).

7. In The Structure of Sociological Theory, Turner (1991) created a number of theoretical propositions from the ideas of Max Weber. The two propositions that are important for the preceding discussion are as follows: (1) “The lower the rates of mobility of social hierarchies of power, prestige, and wealth, the more intense the level of resentment among those denied opportunities and, hence, the more likely they are to withdraw legitimacy” (p. 198); and (2) “The greater the degree of withdrawal of legitimacy from political authority, the more likely is conflict between superordinates and subordinates” (p. 198).

8. For a succinct discussion on our housing crisis, see Eitzen and Zinn’s (2003, pp. 157–162) Social Problems.

9. Eitzen and Zinn (2003, p. 159) noted that whereas as much as 40% of the housing in Germany, France, and The Netherlands is owned by the government, only 1.3% of U.S. housing is publicly owned.

Chapter 5

Notes

1. For three different political views on affirmative action, see Fine and Shulman (2003).

2. Kinsley (2003) stated that race will continue to be seen as a legitimate variable to be used to decide who gets into a school just as other variables, such as whether the applicant is an athlete, plays a musical instrument, is an artist, has parents who give a lot of money to the school, has parents who are alumni, or has high grades, are used. Also, Thomas (2003) noted, “There is not a single word in the U.S. Constitution about educating citizens of the United States, nor is there a word about diversity as a ‘compelling interest’ of the government” (p. A7). He added that we need to place more emphasis on primary and secondary education in our country because this “would ensure that minority (and majority) kids learn their subjects and qualify for admission based on merit” (p. A7).

3. There are a number of reasons given to justify implementing and continuing affirmative action: (a) the 200 years of slavery and 100 years of blatant and severe prejudice, discrimination, and segregation; (b) the current institutional discrimination that puts minorities at a disadvantage, including the “last hired, first fired” policy and the reliance on property taxes for the funding of public schools; and (c) the results of the past 300 years of discrimination. For example, African Americans are disproportionately poor and unemployed and have little wealth compared with Whites and hence are at a disadvantage due to the lower incomes they have, the less wealth they have, the poorer quality schools their children attend, the fewer family resources available to educate their children, and the poorer and more unsafe neighborhoods in which they live. Consequently, as Farley (1995) stated in Majority–Minority Relations, “American society has not yet attained the ideal of equal opportunity” (p. 443).

4. For two sources that seem to be saying that economic factors, rather than racial factors, are increasingly playing an influential role in the upward mobility of minorities, see Wilson’s (1978) The Declining Significance of Race, where he stated that “the current problems of lower-class blacks are substantially related to fundamental structural changes in the economy” (pp. 21–22). See also Conley’s (1999) Being Black, Living in the Red. Conley found that wealth, rather than skin color, had greater predictability of outcomes for minorities (p. 134) and that therefore there needs to be a corresponding “shift to a class-based affirmative action policy—that is, implementing educational, hiring, and contracting preferences that are based on class and not skin color” (p. 152, emphasis added).

5. Wilson (1987) stated that policies such as affirmative action are seen by many Americans as favoring minorities and discriminating against nonminorities, with the result that “the more the public programs are perceived by members of the wider society as benefiting only certain groups, the less support those programs receive” (p. 118). Similar to Wilson’s argument, Fishkin (1983) asserted that social policy needs to be based on the principle of equality of life chances where those who are truly disadvantaged, regardless of their race/ethnicity, would be helped to be upwardly mobile.

Chapter 6

Notes

1. See “State Welfare Cutbacks” (2002) and, in Kentucky, Yetter (2003). The latter article noted that 25 states “are not able to serve all families who apply” (p. A4). Several single mothers who were interviewed felt that, without child care subsidies and with their low wages, “they will be forced to quit jobs” (p. A4). With low wages and no child care subsidies, they regret that they must return to welfare. To the degree that this is a pattern throughout our country, our society could be better served by providing more subsidies for child care so that these mothers can continue in their jobs and have the chance for some kind of upward mobility.

2. See Blumberg (1984) and Turner (2003), where Turner reformulates Blumberg’s theoretical ideas into a number of interrelated theoretical propositions (p. 184).

3. See Clawson and Gerstel (2004, pp. 94–95). Also, in this same edition, see two other articles that discuss paid maternity leaves: Gornick and Meyers (2004, pp. 100–102) and Christopher (2004, p. 109).

4. Christopher (2004) went on to note, “Macroeconomic factors were far more important influences on the unemployment rate” (p. 111).

Chapter 7

Notes

1. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol (1991) observed how there was no staff to teach machine shop even though the school had a machine shop.

2. Before I went for my PhD in sociology so that I would be able to teach at the college level, I taught for 3 years in a public high school. Even though I had bachelor’s and master’s degrees in world history as a major and sociology and political science as minors, I never taught a world history course, but I did teach an economics course even though I had taken only one college economics class. So, the subject area in which I had an interest and depth of knowledge of the subject matter, I never taught. But a subject area in which I had little interest and little knowledge of the subject matter, I was assigned to teach.

3. The National Education Association (NEA, n.d.a) asserted, “It is unacceptable for teachers to be assigned out-of-field. Such assignments are a disservice to students and teachers alike.”

4. The NEA (n.d.a) asserted, “Teacher compensation is a significant deterrent to recruitment. Teachers are still paid less than professions that require comparable education and skills. Teachers still are not valued and respected to the extent of their actual contributions to society.” Moreover, not only is recruiting teachers a challenge due to their low pay, but keeping them is also a problem. The NEA reported that “20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within three years.” In urban districts, “close to 50 percent of newcomers flee the profession during their first five years of teaching.” Besides low compensation, those who leave say “they feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job. Many say they feel isolated and unsupported in their classrooms or that expectations are unclear.”

5. Kozol (1991) noted how in schools in East St. Louis, Illinois, 280 teachers were laid off, along with 166 cooks, 25 teacher aides, and 18 painters, electricians, engineers, and plumbers (p. 24). Loss of 280 teachers caused the size of the East St. Louis classes to get larger, which is the opposite of what needs to happen in a low-income, poverty-ridden city. He noted that the teachers’ paychecks were arriving 2 weeks late and stated, “The city warns its teachers to expect a cut of half their pay until the fiscal crisis has been eased” (p. 24). Also, Fruchter (1998) noted, “We have sufficient evidence that reducing class size and providing intensive professional development, particularly in the early grades, significantly increases student achievement” (p. 15).

6. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT, n.d.a) reported, “The Tennessee STAR [Student Teacher Achievement Ratio] study followed a group of students from kindergarten through third grade, randomly assigning these students to one of three types of classes: small (13–17 students); regular (22–25 students); and regular with an aide. With four years of data, researchers found that students in small classes significantly outperformed the other students in both math and reading, every year, at all grade levels, across all geographic areas.”

7. The National Education Association (n.d.b) reported research on a longitudinal study done in Tennessee titled Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR).

8. See NEA (n.d.b). The NEA also quoted the U.S. Department of Education: “A growing body of research demonstrates that students attending small classes in the early grades make more rapid educational progress than students in larger classes, and that these achievement gains persist well after students move on to larger classes in later grades.”

9. The AFT (n.d.a) noted that with respect to the state of Tennessee’s STAR research on the relationship between class size (the independent variable) and reading and math scores (the dependent variables), “lower class size makes a big difference for children, particularly poor children.” The AFT stated that lowering class size in combination with “high academic standards and a challenging curriculum, safe and orderly classrooms, and qualified teachers [is] also necessary.”

10. The NEA (n.d.c) stated, “Every child deserves the opportunity to learn in a classroom that is modern and equipped with the latest in educational technology. Too many students—one in three, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office—attend classes in schools that fail to meet these criteria.” The NEA further noted that a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office some years ago estimated that it would take $112 billion to restore our nation’s schools to “good overall condition”; given the intervening years and given the increasing enrollments and greater costs in new school construction, the NEA estimates that the cost in 2003 would be approximately $200 billion. Besides the disrepair and the overcrowding, the NEA noted that “forty-six percent of the public schools in America lack the electrical and communication wiring to support today’s computer systems.” As a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress to [Page 287]stimulate the economy, the U.S. Department of Education was given $100 billion in order “to avert teacher layoffs” (U.S. Department of Education, 2009). This attempt to stimulate the economy may turn out to be of great benefit for the nation’s schools.

11. Kozol (1991) stated that when he traveled throughout the country during the years of 1988 and 1989 and visited many public schools, “Looking around some of these inner-city schools, where filth and disrepair were worse than anything I’d seen in 1964, I often wondered why we would agree to let our children go to school in places where no politician, school board president, or business CEO [chief executive officer] would dream of working” (p. 5). The football field had a couple of metal pipes but no crossbar for goalposts, and the school did not have a washing machine to wash the football uniforms, which were 9 years old (p. 25). Kozol noted that there was no heat in the weight room and no staff to teach machine shop even though the school had a machine shop and that the science labs “are 30 to 50 years outdated.” The physics lab had no equipment, and the typewriters did not work (p. 30).

12. Kozol (1991) noted that the teachers in East St. Louis “are running out of chalk and paper” (p. 24).

13. Kozol (1991) discussed the lack of safety in the schools: “The doors [of the schools] were guarded. Police sometimes patrolled the halls. The windows of the schools were often covered with steel grates. Taxi drivers flatly refused to take me to some of these schools” (p. 5).

14. Hooper (2005) reported that the Indianapolis public schools are creating smaller high schools to have higher quality education and to keep more students in school. She reported that one third of the students drop out and that one third graduate without skills to go to college or to work (p. B5). Her article went on to report that the billionaire Bill Gates “believes so strongly that smaller is better that the foundation he and his wife support is sinking billions into helping districts make the change” (p. B5).

15. The NEA (n.d.d) took the stance that one way to make schools safer is to “provide resources for smaller classes and smaller schools.” Also, Fruchter (1998) stated that we have “a growing mass of evidence that reducing scale by creating smaller schools raises student achievement, reduces dropping out, and increases graduation rates at the high school level” (p. 15).

16. Turner (2003, pp. 134–136) discussed Max Weber’s proposition that as there are lower rates of mobility among subordinates of a social system, these subordinates will be more likely to withdraw their belief in the legitimacy of the current political authority and be more likely to pursue conflict with superordinates.

17. See Friedman (1982) for an early statement of the voucher system, where education would be taken out of the hands of government more and more and where individual citizens would choose where and what kind of education they wanted their children to have. In other words, Friedman wanted education to be more in the realm of the marketplace than under the authority of the government.

18. The AFT (n.d.c) noted, “Private and religious schools currently have almost complete autonomy with regard to who they teach.” The public would want any private and religious schools to be accountable given that these schools would be using public money. Yet in research cited in this article, the AFT noted that these private and religious schools “would not be willing to participate in a voucher plan that requires them to meet the kind of accountability standards that the public desires.” This report found that in the school districts studied, even if no conditions were made on these schools, the private and religious schools could accommodate at most only 3.5% of the public school enrollment. This would mean that 96.5% of the students would be left behind, still attending poor-quality public schools. Hence, we would be far from solving our public education problem.

19. A newspaper editorial (“After the Voucher Ruling,” 2002) noted that in the situation in Cleveland, Ohio, “despite legislative intent, suburban public schools and well-off private ones are not participating” (p. A8). The editorial went on to assert that Kentucky and Indiana are finding more promising ways “than spending a lot of money to send relatively few students to religious schools that are publicly unaccountable and economically marginal” (p. A8). It made a final point that is worth considering: “Further, there’s a real threat of creating a vicious circle. Public schools could become even more overburdened and undersupported as they are left with even higher proportions of the special education or behaviorally troubled youngsters private schools won’t accept or keep” (p. A8).

20. Gutmann (2000) stated, “If we [the citizens of this country] were committed to giving poor parents what most parents want for their children, we would not follow the voucher route; we would do whatever it takes to improve public schools” (p. 20).

21. Gutmann (2000) asserted, “A successful voucher movement in this country would therefore provide an enormous subsidy to affluent parents” (p. 20).

22. The AFT (n.d. b) reported on a national representative sample of more than 1,000 adults who were asked the question of whether we should allow students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense; the survey showed that 44% of the respondents favored this, and 50% were against it. Moreover, when asked how the private schools should be accountable with this public tax money, 92% of the respondents said there should be no discrimination based on race, 88% said the private schools should meet state curriculum standards (as of that publication, “No state requires private schools to meet the same state curriculum standards as public schools”), 86% said only certified teachers should be employed (71% of all private school teachers are licensed versus 97.4% of all public school teachers who are licensed), and 83% said the private schools should not discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs.

23. See NEA (n.d.e). Also, the AFT (n.d.b) noted that California’s “proposal to give $4,000 vouchers for students to attend private or religious schools will be a $3 billion windfall to affluent parents whose children already attend private schools.” Luis Huerta, coauthor of the report used by the AFT, stated, “It’s essentially tax relief for the well off.”

Chapter 8

Notes

1. For a more extended discussion of slavery and its consequences, see Franklin and Moss’s (1994) From Slavery to Freedom.

2. Hraba (1994) discussed various Indian nations and how each of them had its own distinct way of life, including different customs, religions, dress, and ways of economic survival (pp. 202–213).

3. See Hraba (1994, pp. 219–231). For a good discussion of the current situation of Native Americans, see Aguirre and Turner’s (2001, pp. 104–133) American Ethnicity.

4. See Merton’s (1968, pp. 185–214) article in Social Theory and Social Structure. See also Cloward and Ohlin’s (1960) Delinquency and Opportunity.

5. Eitzen and Leedham (2004) asserted that one of the major causes of crimes, especially violent crimes such as robbery, assault, murder, and rape, is the greater proportion of Americans living in poverty compared with rates of poverty and crime in other industrialized countries. They also suggested that a second cause of more violent crime can be seen when a country has a weaker safety net for the poor, such as the United States does compared with other industrialized countries (p. 190).

6. Eitzen and Leedham (2004) asserted that one of the four factors that cause crime, especially violent crime, is a large gap between the rich and the poor. They noted, “The United States has the greatest inequality gap among industrialized nations” (p. 190).

Chapter 9

Notes

1. Nadelmann (1988) states, “All of the health costs of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin combined amount to only a small fraction of those caused by tobacco and alcohol” (p. 24). More recent data reported by the Centers for Disease Control (2006) continue to affirm Nadelmann’s assertion.

2. Brownstein (1992) noted, “Efforts to reduce the supply of imported drugs through interdiction have resulted in an expansion of the domestic supply of marijuana, more violence, and possibly even assistance to major drug dealers through elimination of weaker competitors” (p. 220).

3. Nadelmann (1988) noted, “Many illicit drug users commit crimes such as robbery and burglary, as well as drug dealing, prostitution, and numbers running, to earn enough money to purchase the relatively high-priced illicit drugs. . . . If the drugs to which they are addicted were significantly cheaper—which would be the case if they were legalized—the number of crimes committed by drug addicts to pay for their habits would, in all likelihood, decline dramatically. Even if a legal drug policy included the imposition of relatively high consumption taxes in order to discourage consumption, drug prices would probably still be lower than they are today” (p. 17).

4. Nadelmann stated, “Illegal markets tend to breed violence. . . . During Prohibition, violent struggles between bootlegging gangs and hijackings of booze-laden trucks and sea vessels were frequent and notorious occurrences. . . . Most law enforcement officials agree that the dramatic increases in urban murder rates during the past few years [this article was published in 1988] can be explained almost entirely by the rise in drug dealer killings” (p. 18).

5. Nadelmann (1988) noted, “Repeal of Prohibition came to be seen not as a capitulation of Al Capone and his ilk, but as a means of both putting the bootleggers out of business and eliminating most of the costs associated with the Prohibition laws” (p. 13).

6. Szasz (1972) argued, “Like most rights, the right of self-medication should apply only to adults” (p. 77).

7. Nadelmann (1988) noted, “If the marijuana, cocaine, and heroin markets were legal, state and federal governments would collect billions of dollars annually in tax revenues” (p. 16).

8. Becker (2001) also suggested this approach because “legalizing drugs is a venture into the unknown” (p. 32).

9. Brown (1975) noted that the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, created by Congress in 1970, recommended that the possession of marijuana “for personal use no longer be a federal or state offense” (p. 114).

10. Eitzen, Zinn, and Smith (2009) cited that it costs $80,000 to build each new cell and costs approximately $25,000 per year to house a prisoner (p. 404).

11. Nadelmann (1988) agreed. He stated, “Legalization is repeatedly and vociferously dismissed, without any attempt to evaluate it openly and objectively. [Page 293]The past twenty years have demonstrated that a drug policy shaped by exaggerated rhetoric designed to arouse fear has only led to our current disaster. Unless we are willing to honestly evaluate our options, including various legalization strategies, we will run a still greater risk: We may never find the best solution for our drug problems” (p. 31).

12. See Cart (1999). New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson advocated legalizing all drugs and suggested that this issue needs to be discussed, but he heard a lot of negative criticism just for bringing up the issue.

Chapter 10

Notes

1. This was reported on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 9, 2006. One interviewee reported that 46 million Americans are currently uninsured. It was also reported that 69% of American corporations offered health coverage in 2000, whereas only 60% of American corporations offer coverage today (2006). Because health insurance costs so much, and because the cost is going up at 8% or more each year (as reported on the NewsHour), corporations are finding it harder and harder to offer coverage. To cut their costs so as to remain competitive or become more competitive in their respective markets, more and more corporations are reducing or eliminating health insurance coverage for their employees. This trend will put more pressure on the current president and future presidents, as well as the current Congress and future Congresses, to do something in the area of health care for Americans. Zaldivar and Espo (2009, June 24, p. A1) report that 50 million Americans are without health care.

2. Unger (2006) noted, “Many people cannot afford to see a doctor and live with the threat of financial ruin if they get sick” (p. A1).

3. See Carroll (2003, p. A1). By the way, the new prescription drug plan took effect January 1, 2006, not without some problems. Pear (2006b) noted that people who had signed up were not on the government’s list of subscribers, that insurers did not have a way of identifying poorer people who were entitled to extra help, and that pharmacists were on the phone for hours trying to reach insurers to work out the various problems. The new program, Pear noted, appeared to be “too complicated for many people to understand” (p. A12). He stated that this new prescription drug plan “is the most significant expansion of Medicare since creation of the program in 1965” (p. A12). Also, Howington (2006) reported that in 70% of the cases in Kentucky, there were problems in getting prescriptions (p. A1). Retired people were not on the new lists even though they had signed up to be on the lists, and poor people who are on Medicaid were supposed to get their prescription drugs through Medicare, but “Medicare plans wouldn’t pay” (p. A1). A major problem, the article noted, was that there was not enough time to sign up 42 million Americans between the sign-up time of November 15, 2005, and the time the new prescription drug plan kicked in on January 1, 2006.

4. Jewell (2003) reported that Republican congresspersons such as Dan Burton of Indiana and Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri desired the importation of prescription drugs as a way to decrease costs of prescription drugs for the elderly. This article reported that the Eli Lilly drug company, with headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, got 100 of its employees to go to a forum promoting the importation of drugs to speak against this importation. Also, Frommer (2003) reported that the drug industry spent $29 million in lobbying—“more than any other industry” (Frommer, 2003, p. A10). Besides the lobby that spent $8.5 million to work against allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada, individual drug companies also spent their own money to stop the importation of prescription drugs at lower prices; for example, Eli Lilly spent $2.9 million, Bristol–Myers Squibb spent $2.6 million, Johnson & Johnson spent $2.2 million, and Pfizer spent $1.8 million. Ira Loss, a senior health care analyst for the Washington Analysis Corporation, stated, “They [the drug companies] make a lot of money, and they are trying to protect their interests” (Frommer, 2003, p. A10). Frommer reported that the drug industry “enjoyed about $150 billion in U.S. sales last year” (2003, p. A10).

5. Graig (1999) noted, “Many U.S. companies complained that high health care costs put them at a competitive disadvantage with regard to foreign competitors in countries with nationalized health care systems” (p. 18). Graig (1999) reported further that although few employers viewed health care costs as a problem in 1980, two thirds of the executives in a 1990 survey viewed “health benefits costs to be the leading issue companies faced at that time” (p. 19).

6. This was reported on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 12, 2006.

7. Kerbo (2006) noted that good health is unequally distributed in that people with lower incomes will often face the following conditions: (a) poor nutrition, (b) less sanitary living conditions, (c) less knowledge about how to have better health, and (d) more unhealthy work environments, such as working with dangerous machines and chemicals (p. 38).

8. Also, Globerman (1990) noted that there are physicians who are “committed to the well-being of the collective, who support government-run universal health insurance” (p. 12), but that there are also physicians who “oppose government intervention and support free-enterprise medicine” (p. 12). For the physicians who want more free enterprise medicine, the reasons why they want this are “professional ideology, free enterprise ideology, and economic self-interest” (p. 13). So, even though Canada has a universal health care system, there are doctors in Canada who want to abolish this system. A number of these doctors want to bill the patients over and above what the government will reimburse them for services rendered, for example, approximately 12% of doctors “extra-bill” patients (p. 15).

9. Pear and Bogdanich (2003) reported, “Drug companies say they support covering prescription drugs under Medicare. But in the last few years, they have invested several hundred million dollars in campaign contributions, lobbying, and advertising to head off price controls” (p. A7).

10. In a classic work in sociology, The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann (1966) argued that we, as humans, create our own social reality of norms, values, beliefs, and institutions. These norms, values, beliefs, and institutions may be different in different cultures and at different times in history, but they are created by humans over time. Sometimes people forget this and believe that these things have always been and will always be. Berger and Luckmann reminded us how much we socially construct how we live.

11. Daniels and colleagues (1996) presented data showing that “the lowest fifth of the nation has no money left over for medical bills, health insurance premiums, movie going, or any other expenses” (p. 50). So, the lowest 20% of Americans do not make enough money to have health insurance. Moreover, Daniels and colleagues pointed out that the next 20% of Americans do not have much left over after paying their expenses. So, in reality, approximately 40% of Americans either cannot afford health care coverage or have a difficult time in making enough money to pay for health insurance.

12. Graig (1999) discussed the first national health care plan begun under the German leader Otto von Bismarck in 1871. Graig noted that in Bismarck’s health care system “all members of society should have access to health care regardless of ability to pay, and . . . the costs of health care would be spread across the population” (p. 47). Bismarck was responding to the rise of socialism and wanted to retain the loyalty of the workers by implementing such a health care plan. People paid into this plan via their employers and paid into the plan more or less depending on their incomes (p. 47).

13. Daniels and colleagues (1996) asserted that “any health reform must retain a strong emphasis on public health and prevention” (p. 54).

14. Others have come up with similar criteria. For example, Daniels and colleagues (1996) discussed 10 criteria, some of them similar to my criteria. For example, they stated that a new health care system needs to be accessible to all (my Criterion 2), that it needs to be comprehensive in benefits and be uniform in benefits (similar to my Criteria 3 and 4 where all Americans will receive good-quality care and receive it in a timely way), and that it needs to be accountable to the public (similar to my Criteria 8, 9, and 10 where health professionals, drug companies, hospitals, and insurance companies are paid reasonably or are compensated reasonably) (pp. 32–34).

15. See Health Canada (n.d.a), where the Canadians solve the problem of a waiting period by having the province the person is moving from continue to pick up the person’s health care coverage for a 3-month waiting period when the person moves to another province and applies for health care coverage.

16. Yetter (2005) noted, “Children are doing without dental care because their parents don’t have a car or other means to take them out of the county to a dentist” (p. A2).

17. We are already beginning to see preliminary attempts at providing more nutritious food at public schools. See, for example, Schneider’s (2006) newspaper article.

18. This was reported on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 12, 2006.

19. See “Medicare Q & A” (2003, p. A7). Medicare is a federal program, whereas Medicaid is a joint federal and state program where the “programs vary from state to state.” Also, Sherman (2003) noted that whereas the federal government pays for all of the Medicare bill, the “states pay about a third of the cost of Medicaid” (p. A5). From the state governors’ perspectives, because most of them are facing large deficits in their state budgets, they are hoping that the federal government can take over the cost of prescription drugs given that this would help to cut the states’ Medicaid costs, potentially by $7 billion.

20. For a succinct discussion of the libertarian view, see Fine and Shulman’s (2003, pp. 6–9) Talking Sociology.

21. See Archer (1998, p. 77), who suggested changes that could be made in the current system even if we do not go to a national health care system that would greatly improve managed health care: “(1) Pay managed care plans in a manner that creates a financial incentive to recruit patients in poor health and provide them with quality care, and (2) mandate that plans disclose information that can permit evaluation of plan treatment practices” (p. 78). Under this situation, the government would need to pay HMOs enough to give them an incentive to include seriously ill people in their plans. Also, the government would need to stipulate that all HMOs disclose what services they provide so that people can decide which HMO they want to join. Currently, people do not have this information with which to decide what is in their best interest. Also, Newhouse (1996) noted that one of the potential problems managed care raises is that “above average spenders, for example those with chronic illness, may be shunned by every plan” (p. 1719).

22. See Graig (1999). German public opinion “was enraged by the wide disparity in income levels between physicians and other workers” (p. 62). Doctors during the 1970s made five to six times more than the average worker.

23. Marmor (1996) outlined how there were four times in American history when there were attempts “to enact national health insurance” (p. 672). He went on to state, “Now, as then, entrenched interests tried to block national health insurance by skillfully manipulating our deepest fears to protect what they regarded as their interests” (p. 672).

24. See Pear (1999, p. A1). The 46 million figure was reported on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 9, 2006. Also, see Zaldivar and Espo (2009, June 24, p. A1).

25. See Wheeler (2003, p. A4), Dalrymple (2003, p. A10), and Yetter (2003a, pp. A1, A6; 2003b, pp. A1, A6). See also Stolberg (2006, p. A1). By narrow margins in both the Senate and the House, a bill to cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and student loans passed. As a consequence, more elderly and poor will have problems receiving health care.

Chapter 11

Notes

1. Kerbo (2006) noted, for example, that the “gap between the average worker’s pay and that of top corporate executives has shown a staggering increase from 40 to 1 in 1990 to 419 to 1 in 1998” (p. 23). Also, in the fifth edition of Kerbo’s (2003) book, see Tables 2–4 and 2–5, where worker pay ranks 9th among the 13 industrialized nations, whereas chief executive officer salaries are the highest among these industrialized nations (p. 31).

2. Groppe (n.d.) stated that Indiana is one of seven states “that tax the incomes of three- or four-person families earning less than three-quarters of the poverty line.”

3. Kerbo (2006) noted that of 12 industrialized countries, the United States does the least to decrease poverty within its borders (p. 251).

4. See LeVay’s (1991) journal article. Also, for one of the first extensive studies on the sexual behavior of humans, see Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin’s (1948) Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, and Gebhard’s (1953) Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. For a more recent study on the biology of homosexuality, see Hamer and Copeland’s (1994) The Science of Desire. In the study on the sexual behavior of the human male, Kinsey and colleagues (1948) made the following pertinent point: “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex” (p. 639).

5. See the two studies by Kinsey and colleagues (1948, 1953), where in actuality, individual Americans are various degrees of being heterosexual and homosexual.

6. For more recent research on sexuality and how complex it can be (for example, people can be attracted to the same sex, people can engage in sexual behavior with the same sex, people can identify with a certain sexual orientation or some combination of these dimensions), see Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, and Kolata’s (1994) Sex in America.

7. See Merton (1968, pp. 185–214) and Cloward and Ohlin (1960). Both works made connections among the social structure, the opportunities available, and the crime that can result.

8. One of the theoretical propositions that Turner (2003) constructed from the works of Max Weber in constructing a theory of conflict deals with the notion that as there are lower rates of social mobility, “subordinates are more likely to withdraw legitimacy from political authority” (p. 135). As people find less legitimacy in the existing social structure, they are more likely to look for other means to survive and get ahead in that social structure.

Chapter 12

Notes

1. For interesting data to study on this matter and for a comparative look among and between countries and over time, see the 1990 World Population Data Sheet (Population Reference Bureau, 1990), which reported that the world’s doubling time in 1990 was every 39 years. The 1997 World Population Data Sheet (Population Reference Bureau, 1997) reported that the doubling time was 47 years. The 2003 World Population Data Sheet (Population Reference Bureau, 2003) showed a 1.3% increase in population per year, meaning that the world’s population is doubling every 54 years. The 2009 World Population Data Sheet (Population Reference Bureau, 2009) showed a 1.2% increase in population per year, meaning that the world’s population is doubling every 58 years. Also, the 2014 World Population Data Sheet (Population Reference Bureau, 2014) still showed a 1.2% increase in population per year, meaning that the world’s population is still doubling every 58 years.

2. As we have learned since the onset of the war with Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was in power, he favored the Sunni ethnic group in Iraq while discriminating against the Shiites and Kurds with respect to the distribution of resources in that country. The unequal distribution of resources has been a key reason for the conflict in Northern Ireland between the Catholics and the Protestants. The same was true after the breakup of Yugoslavia, where the Serbian ethnic group came to have more power and more resources than did other ethnic groups (Gelles & Levine, 1999, pp. 313–315). During the past few years, we have seen people from the Darfur region of Sudan being beaten, killed, and run out of their homes and have seen their homes and entire villages being set afire by rebel forces and, at times, with the help of the Sudanese government. Brinkley and Polgreen (2006) reported, “More than 200,000 people have died and two million more have been driven from their homes since the conflict began in February, 2003” (p. A3).

3. For example, in western, central, and eastern Africa, families are having approximately five to six children per family, yet the average income of these families is less than $1,700 per year, and some countries have an average income of less than $800 per year. See Population Reference Bureau (2009).

4. Forrester (1975) noted that a lot of countries and families would highly resist international controls on them in terms of family planning. Hence, providing access, education, and transportation would help not only to decrease the birth rate but also to give people freedom.

5. For the George W. Bush administration of 2000 to 2008, see Associated Press (2002, p. A4). For the George H. W. Bush administration of the late 1980s and early 1990s, see Gore (2000, pp. 315–316). For the Obama decision, see Daniel Nasaw (2009).

6. Livernash and Rodenburg (1998) discussed the problems between developed and developing countries and possible solutions to world problems, where the developing nations have emphasized the need to forgive debt, but the developed countries have emphasized family planning policies to decrease the population (pp. 9–10).

Chapter 13

Notes

1. See Gore (2000, p. 30). For the human authorship of much of our current environmental problems, see also Lori Hunter’s (2001) The Environmental Implications of Population Dynamics.

2. For an excellent article on the pollution and waste problems of Mexico City, Mexico, see Harris and Puente (1990).

3. Gore (2000) stated that during the 20th century, “the average global surface temperature climbed one degree Fahrenheit and sea levels rose four to ten inches” (p. xiv). He also noted that data collected indicate that “the north polar cap has thinned 2 percent in just the last decade” (p. 23).

4. Romm (1991) reported that a National Academy of Sciences study, “which predicted a 1–5 degree rise, refused to rule out the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect, with ‘altered weather patterns’ and ‘a sea level several meters higher than it is today.’” (p. 35).

5. Romm (1991) stated that in our post–cold war world, “it is clear that America’s current practice of focusing on short-term military threats will be singularly inadequate for dealing with broader, longer-term threats to the environment and the protection of vital resources” (p. 31).

6. Boeker and Van Grondelle (2000) discussed what will probably happen with the Kyoto Protocol and how, instead of counting national emissions by each country, the emissions should be connected to where the profit is; otherwise, developed countries could put more of their companies in developing countries, and the emissions would be counted as being produced by those countries rather than by the developed countries (p. 84).

7. Murshed (1993) asserted that the process of international agreement making will be crucial if we are to address and solve our environmental problems (p. 41).

8. The final chapter of Gore’s (2000) book, titled “A Global Marshall Plan” (pp. 295–360), has an extensive set of suggestions on how we can solve the environmental problem. Anyone who seriously wishes to solve the environmental problem needs to read and consider what Gore has proposed.

9. Blumenthal (n.d.) reported, “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken.” Blumenthal went on to say, “By 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war.” He also noted that in 2004, “the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.” So, the chaos for not planning ahead was overwhelming in this instance. Hence, there is a critical need for planning and research and for setting aside funding to address potential catastrophes.

10. See Gore (2000, p. xvii). Gore took this position in opposition to what then Texas Governor George W. Bush would eventually do as U.S. president.

11. See Carroll (2002a, p. A10). Thelma Wiggins, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, was quoted as follows: “The nuclear industry has an impeccable safety record,” she said. “We have been transporting fuel for more than 35 years. There’s been more than 3,000 shipments covering 1.7 million miles with no injuries, no fatalities, and no injury to the environment.”

12. For an excellent discussion on vested interests and the influence of economic interests over environmental interests, see Van der Straaten and Ugelow (1993).

Chapter 14

Notes

1. It would seem that to have extended peace and unity in our society would require taking back much freedom and many rights and allowing only a set of common values. Because most of us do not want such a restrictive society, we accept the fact that built into our current society is—whether we like it or not—the potential for continual disagreement, dissatisfaction, opposition, and conflict. However, on further reflection, most of us would not want it any other way.

2. New technologies (for example, computers), new ideologies (for example, attempting to build a sustainable society and world [Brown, 1987]), and recent social movements (for example, for African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, gays, and the elderly) all have been major independent variables promoting social change in our society by producing new kinds of jobs, moving toward closer to equal opportunity for many groups of people, and creating new ways of how we can look at our world.

3. Karl Marx pointed this out in a number of his works. For example, see Communist Manifesto (Marx, [1848]1947), The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx, [1844]1964), and Capital (Marx, [1867]1967). For a more recent work on the creation of social structures by humans, see Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) The Social Construction of Reality.