Poor vs Rich

This week I was assigned a reading, "Positive Functions of Undeserving Poor: Uses of the Underclass in America" by Herbert J. Gans. He described thirteen ways that poor people have a positive contribute to society, even when it seems wrong.

1. Risk Reduction
2. Scapegoating and displacement
3. Economic banishment
4. Supplying illegal goods
5. Job Creation
6. Moral legitimization
7. Norm reinforcement
8. Supplying popular cultural villains
9. Institutional scapegoating 
10. Conservation power shifting
11. Spatial purification
12. Reproduction of stigma and stigmatized
13. Extermination of surplus

This reading was very interesting to read, it opened my eyes to view things from another prospective and helped me think outside of the box when it comes to how the poor people are seem as today. Herbert explained how the poor are useful to rich people in multiple ways, for example if criminals continue in the street, the security job rates wouldn't go down. So therefore, judges, lawyers, police officers, etc, have jobs because of criminals being the the street.
Herbert also stated another way that the poor are useful to rich is that the poor exist! (page three, paragraph 5) without poor their wouldn't be teachers, doctors, school for the "special" in need, drug treatment centers and anger management programs and what not, because if they are trying to control they poor, they have a job, so as people are trying to lower the poor population and try to create a positive life for them, for example teaching them and persuading them to go to school, teachers have a job. And while, the government is trying to prevent the poor from spreading diseases such as HIV and AIDS, and are trying to inform them about how to stay healthy, doctors continue to have a job. And what Herbert is trying to say is that no one looks at the poor as a positive contribution but as a bad thing.
Herbert states that this shouldn't continue but without it the world as we know it wouldn't be the same.