Week 7 Discussion — Earned, Inherited, or Both? — Traditional alternative (no AI)
Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.
Hook
Two coworkers earn the same paycheck, yet one owns a home and the other owes on a student loan. A surgeon earns far more than a home-care aide. One headline says one person in ten was poor in 2024; another measure says more. This week gave you the tools to read all of it: income and wealth, two poverty measures, Weber's three ladders, and three competing explanations of why the ladder exists at all.
Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.
Option A: Pick a real job ladder you know — a hospital, a restaurant, a warehouse, a school, a sports league, a tech company. Take a position: do the different rewards on that ladder mainly reflect how functionally important each position is, as the Davis–Moore thesis argues, or mainly pass advantage down the generations, as Tumin's critique and the conflict view argue, or some mix you can defend? Use income and wealth correctly, and say whether the belief that everyone on that ladder earned their place works as a description or as a legitimating ideology.
Option B: The Census Bureau reported an official poverty rate of 10.6% for 2024 and a Supplemental Poverty Measure of 12.9% for the same year, a gap of 2.3 percentage points. Take a position: if a city council or a local newsroom could lead with only one of these figures, which should it be, and why? Say what each measure counts, whether your choice is closer to an absolute or a relative idea of poverty, and what neither figure can show.
There is no single right answer. The functionalist and conflict accounts each have evidence on their side, and each poverty measure answers a different question, so either option can be argued well in more than one direction. Pick one you actually care about, and tell us your reasoning.
Expectations
Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.
Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):
- Say which option you chose.
- For Option A, name the job ladder and the positions you are comparing; for Option B, name the figure you would lead with and what it counts.
- State your position in one clear sentence and give your reason.
- Use at least two of this week's terms (social stratification, caste system, class system, open system, closed system, meritocracy, legitimating ideology, income, wealth, median, mean, absolute poverty, relative poverty, official poverty measure, Supplemental Poverty Measure, class, status, and party, life chances, social mobility, structural mobility, Davis–Moore thesis, Tumin's critique) correctly.
- Name one thing that complicates your position: for Option A, the strongest point the other account makes; for Option B, what the figure you did not choose shows that yours misses.
- Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):
- Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
- A substantive reply does more than agree: ask whether a poster is mixing up income and wealth, state the account the poster set aside at its full strength, or point out what the other poverty measure would add. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.
What a strong post looks like:
I chose Option A, using a hospital I know. The Davis–Moore thesis explains part of it: surgeons train for years, and high income may be what fills those positions. But Tumin's critique fits too, because an aide who could have trained as a surgeon may never reach the training without family wealth. So I read the ladder as a mix, and I treat "everyone here earned their place" as a legitimating ideology, not a description.
Notice how it states each account fairly, keeps income apart from wealth, and takes a position without pretending the other side has nothing to say. That is the bar.
Participation rubric
This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.
| Criterion | Strong | Developing | Missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality of the initial post (4 pts) | A real job ladder or a real reason for a figure is described, a clear position is taken, and the reasoning ties it to how a society ranks and rewards people or counts poverty | A ladder or figure is present, but the position is asserted without a reason or the example stays vague | Missing, off-topic, or no reasoning about stratification or poverty |
| Use of course concepts (3 pts) | Uses this week's terms precisely, keeping income apart from wealth, stating each account of stratification fairly, and writing the gap between two percentages in percentage points | Uses a term loosely or with a small error | No course terms, or used incorrectly |
| Engagement with peers (3 pts) | Two or more substantive replies that extend or challenge a classmate's reasoning | One substantive reply, or replies that only agree | No replies, or "I agree" with nothing added |
Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.
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