Warning. There are a lot of statistics here. Don’t let that scare you off. Obviously no one is expected to memorize these–me included. But what I want to have you do is get a sense of the generalizations–both for the country as a whole, and for the various regions and metropolitan districts.
Be aware of the variations, in terms of time, place, and/or in terms of dollars. For example, take a look at the chart Definition of Household Income Groups on p. 23. What has happened across time? What was the minimum income for the upper class in 1980. What is the minimum income now? What does that suggest to you?
I'm going to ask you to use a couple of Adobe Reader tools (the highlighter and the sticky note) on this and other content throughout the semester. In this case I'd like to have you highlight sections which answer the questions in the paragraph above. Then I want you to load up your marked up copy into your dropbox. I'll give a demo in class the day I introduce this web page.
Click on either map to visit the City Data page for New Bedford Massachusetts. The scale below the maps represents median household income for each tract, the paler the color the higher the income. See if you can locate the two census blocks I've clicked upon. You'll be able to explore further data. A muse about your thoughts on this would be much appreciated.
Have you finished Samaritan yet? Just in case we have a blizzard, I'm going to hold off our initial discussion of it until this day. I'll also introduce a bit of writing I'd like to have you do on this book
You can do this in a number of ways. For example, you could project yourself into the future a dozen years, by which time you'll graduated and started on your career path.
You can use your current family as the model
You can use one of the characters from Samaritan
you can invent someone purely fictitious. If you find this interesting you can do it more than once
What social class (or classes, if you did this more than once) did you find yourself it? Were you at all surprised? Come prepared to discuss this.
Be aware of the variations, in terms of time, place, and/or in terms of dollars. For example, take a look at the chart Definition of Household Income Groups on p. 23. What has happened across time? What was the minimum income for the upper class in 1980. What is the minimum income now? What does that suggest to you? 
