Opportunities Created Equally

All Opportunities Are Not Created Equally
In the United States, a highly liberal market economy, there are obvious differences in the power (money) that is given to certain jobs. “Power relationships” are one the bricks in the foundation of what we call capitalism. The power gap between those with highly sought after jobs and the jobs that no one cares to do is the reason that capitalism can keep working. Everyone is looking to have that power to influence others in society, in our case it is typically money. Voluntary exchanges without coercion would create a society that everyone owned their own business or worked for an incredibly high wage. There are situations in which people are put in that don’t allow them to have the knowledge, the
A prime example of the difference that money makes is secondary education and the opportunities and respect that it leads to for the majority of our population. Excluding opportunity costs for all the other possible routes, a high school diploma is subsidized to the point that it is affordable for everyone in the United States. It is also something that earns little to no respect in the real world. It takes time, work, and a certain amount of luck to get a high school degree, but because it is common in the United States it is taken for granted. When we start spending a little money, the general respect and opportunity rises slightly. The capital spent on going to a community college is relatively affordable, again if the opportunity costs are not accounted for. The positive correlation between money spent and respect in the view of our society continues to rise at the university level. The spending of money on education seems to make its own subtle hierarchy in society. Society provides each level with more and more opportunity not based on merit, but simply cash flow that they had available to them, particular available to them at the ages of
“Each potential new job requires (1) the application, (2) the interview, and (3) the drug test – which is something to ponder with gasoline running at nearly two dollars a gallon,” which is money out of everyone’s pocket in order to get a job. Everyone in society has an opportunity cost to get a job, but some of us are given the opportunity to search for jobs. There are so many factors in getting a job that requires money that it is too complicated for me to go into in just two pages, but the gist is that we need money to get a higher quality job.
The whole point of Nickel and Dimed is to show the cycle that people are put in when they are situational forced to take the low income jobs that are impossible to work out of. The lack of power, or money in the capitalist state, creates a vacuum of opportunity to a large percentage of Americans that are placed in unprivileged