SOC 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Offshoring, North American Free Trade Agreement, Center For Responsive Politics
Document Summary
Private ownership: individuals are encouraged to own not only private possessions, but the capital to buy more possessions. Profit maximization: seeking personal gain is morally and socially appropriate. Free competition: in a competitive society, if one agent raises prices too high, then others will step in to sell goods more cheaply. Laissez-faire government: a government that does not intervene in the economy. From manufacturing to services: offshoring and outsourcing. The changing nature of jobs: the more office jobs, fewer/contingent employees, automation, temp work, work from home. Declines of unions and shared prosperity: higher union membership correlates with a lower share of incomes going to the top 10% Very few corporations who are producing the mass of amount of goods that we buy: monopolistic capitalism. Inherent contradiction found within capitalism is the inevitability of monopolies. This economic dominance by huge corporations is contrary to classical economic theory: shared monopoly.
