Social Class:Monopoly

This week we've been discussing poverty, and social class. In order to represent the concept of social class and its role in our society,  we played monopoly. While playing this, each player had to roll to see what class they'd be in. This is kind of in a way like how it happens in real life.  Like Sal said, you don't get to pick your class. You get it by luck, or by being born into it. When I rolled, I ended up in the upper middle class. While playing, instead of getting 200,000 dollars everytime you pass go, you only get what your income is. As I was playing,  I started to realize that the higher class players had a huge advantage to win the game. They were able to start buying properties right away since they had the money. Then, everytime someone would land on the property,  people of the lower classes had a hard time paying.  As the game went om, eventually, all the money I had was slowly decreasing and I lost all of it and was put on welfare. Once I was put on welfare, I realized that I was stuck. I think that this was an important lesson because it taught us how certain people of certain classes have a huge advantage of getting more and more money, while people at the bottom get nothing,  and they are stuck there, holding onto whatever they can. This unit has really me alot. Many people could ignorantly say that people in poverty put themselves in poverty and don't try. However, people are literally stuck at the bottom, and its extremely difficult to make it up a class. This unit really opened up my eyes about things Ive never had to think about. Even though it was just a game, I realized that people that are actually in a situation where they are on welfare feel hopeless. I didn't even want to try anymore to try to win the game or make more money because I knew that it was just not possible with the rules.