Question 1

Which of the following statements would best describe the disappointment that active and retired employees express about companies reneging on their pension obligations?

Accepted Answer

A)   Employees and retirees feel that promises made to them have been broken.
B)   A social contract with the government has been violated.
C)   The blue-collar labor unions have failed to police corporations.
D)   The rise in corporate profits is not being used to sustain pension obligations. A

Question 2

Given Bryan Turner's four basic kinds of equality, which of the following would see police officers paid the same as brain surgeons?

Accepted Answer

A)   equality of outcome
B)   equality of opportunity
C)   equality of personhood
D)   equality of fairness A

Question 3

Which of the following statements is true?

Accepted Answer

A)   Inequality has increased in the past decades.
B)   The increasing rate of inequality has levelled off.
C)   Inequality has decreased in recent years.
D)   The rate of inequality has remained consistent. A

Question 4

Despite Americans being attracted to the notion of equality, they often see inequality as necessary for what primary reason(s)?

Accepted Answer

A)   as a motivation to work hard
B)   to keep government out of their lives
C)   certain tasks deserve more rewards
D)   mixed emotions and ambivalence

Question 5

Scholars who accept some degree of social inequality, such as paying a brain surgeon more than a police officer, is exemplary of which viewpoint?

Accepted Answer

A)   functionalist
B)   structuralist
C)   Rousseau's belief of creating private
D)   property as the only motivation

Question 6

What data support the notion that it is getting harder to move into the middle class or fall out of it?

Accepted Answer

A)   statistical data such as the U.S. Census
B)   reportage in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal
C)   personal experience
D)   corporate profit

Question 7

A person who sees inequality as inevitable, arguing that America has an open society and hard work is what it takes to overcome adversity, would most likely agree with which statement?

Accepted Answer

A)   Some people have more talent or more drive to get ahead.
B)   You have to pick the right job to get ahead.
C)   The U.S. is backward in many ways when compared with other developed countries.
D)   I believe in the golden rule-if you earn the most, you deserve the best.

Question 8

What best explains this statement? "During the recent economic crisis, government intrusion into market mechanisms suggested that capitalism and democracy are inherently antagonistic to each other."

Accepted Answer

A)   There is a difference between the equality of result in politics and the inequality of opportunity in economics.
B)   Capitalism is dysfunctional when there is too much government oversight.
C)   Conservatives in business and liberals in government are focused on capitalism's benefits and destructive aspects, respectively.
D)   Capitalism, that is, the economy, is an enemy of democracy.

Question 9

Which definition of class would hold that distinct classes have always existed in the U.S. and do so to this day?

Accepted Answer

A)   Marxian
B)   Weberian
C)   union-management
D)   capitalist

Question 10

Why would some scholars disagree that an incentive system guarantees the survival of a society?

Accepted Answer

A)   The disparities in income would create establish the preconditions for creating privileged and unprivileged groups.
B)   Inequality leads to class warfare.
C)   It creates two discrete economies that are incompatible.
D)   Critical occupations are not really filled but rather depleted.

Question 11

For those who do not see economic inequality as stemming from individuals having the wrong skill sets, where would they see the fault lie when a computer programmer is laid off and must tend a bar for a living?

Accepted Answer

A)   artificial creations of human actions in the political economy
B)   a job change from downsizing
C)   market forces that favor food service workers
D)   off-shoring

Question 12

If inequality arises from the actions of parents, for example, in favoring an older son over a younger son in sending him to college, what kind of inequality is this?

Accepted Answer

A)   individual
B)   institutionalized
C)   cultural
D)   gender

Question 13

Police officers earn far less than brain surgeons-whose theory of inequality might this disprove?

Accepted Answer

A)   Those who believe society is endangered without tolerating disparities in incomes.
B)   Theorists who see the way our system rewards individuals as being unfair.
C)   Theorists who see police work as a superior vocation vis-à-vis society at large.
D)   Those who accept paying brain surgeons more because they do more for social order.

Question 14

Which American value or notion is the most persuasive in discouraging the belief that an American class system exists and prevents one from getting ahead?

Accepted Answer

A)   hard work
B)   the "common folk"
C)   a classless society
D)   the rugged individual

Question 15

Which physical clue might be the best in proving the existence of a class structure in contemporary American society?

Accepted Answer

A)   tax return
B)   race
C)   gender
D)   dress

Exam 1: An Introduction to the Study of Social Inequality