Ch 5 Inequality

Chris Parkin
HST
Andrews

  In China the landlord class were a class of rich families whom owned large amounts of land.  The central government did not typically like this because the rich tended to refuse to pay taxes and since they were often able to form their own armies they had the power to fight back against the governments attempts at collecting.  This left the tax burden heavily on the poor.  Although Wang mang tried to stop this by ruling that all large properties would be taken by the government broken up and given to the poor he was unable to enforce this and was later killed.

The second class in china were the peasants which made up most of the population.  They were typically at the mercy of pests, floods, drought, hail and never had enough to support themselvs.  Peasants were also required ot donate a month of labor to the government for certain projects and young men to serve in the military.

Merchants were hated by the chinese.  Their jobs were seen as lazy and profiting on others work.  Although most still became wealthy they were a pariah in the eyes of the country.

In india the social system was that of the caste system.  This meant that socially the people were divided into 4 groups.  Brahmin were priests and teachers, kshratriya were warriors and rulers, vaisya were farmers merchants and artisans. Sudra were the laborers.  These castes were locally formed and the people in one caste would stay in that caste for life.  The thought was if you lived a good life in the role of that class you may come back in a higher class.  This typically made people accept their position in life and try to do the best that they could with no notion of upward mobility in mind. 

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