Thursday, December 2, 2010

Monopoly and Social class

In class the other day we played monopoly, but in  a more realistic way. Instead of everyone starting off with the same amount of money we did it based off social classes. Each person had to role the dice and who ever got the highest was the upper class, then middle class, working class, and lower class. I was lower class and found that it was very hard to move up in class while playing the game. Of coarse since the  upper class got to start off with a lot of money and owned a bunch of property, that person at the end of the game ended with the most money.Since the upper class owned a lot of the property almost each turn I had, I would land on that persons property and have to pay. It was very frustrating to keep having to pay and lose money while the person who was upper class kept getting paid more and more. At the end of the game I ended up with less than I started with which seemed crazy to me. Then I realized how this applies to real life of how people in lower class can't get a break and gain more money. People may work really hard and get paid a good amount of money, but by the time their done paying their bills and buying food and clothes for their family, they are back to the amount where they started or even worse. This makes me sad that even though people may work really hard they still can't get over the hump and be able to live without worrying so much about money. I was only playing in that social class for that one period, but others are in it for the long run and can't change it no matter how hard they try. I don't think it is fair that the rich get richer with some of them doing nothing, while some people who are in the lower class who work really hard get poorer and poorer or live just getting by.

1 comment:

  1. the same thing happened to me when i played. it seemed like i lost more money paying off bills and tax's then actually gaining any property at all!

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