To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination" (1959). In order for one to fully understand the current recession and his/her position within society he or she needs to do two things. The first is be self-conscious of the intimate and personal decisions one has made that has led him/her down his/her current path, the second thing is to understand the structural factors that ultimately precipitate the economic downturn. The aforementioned paragraphs give one, at least, a cursory understanding of why he/she is unemployed or underemployed. The economy, despite several infusions of cash by the Federal Government - TARP (trouble assets relief program) or as it's also known, "the bank-bailout" and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- has still not fully recovered. Ironically, the banks are now thriving once again, the stock market has recovered, but many people in the middle class are still struggling, still languishing. In 1959 when Mills wrote this piece, CEO salaries where roughly 30 times greater than the average employee. Now, CEO salaries are roughly 300 times greater than the average employee (Mishel, 2006). The system has changed. Some may even argue that the system is broken. In 1954 the marginal tax rate on individuals making more than $100,000/year was 89%. In 2010, the marginal tax rate on individuals making more than $100,000/year was 28%. What is more outrageous is that passive income is taxed at 15%. That's income that's made from the stock market. So, when a Wall Street tycoon cuts himself his billion-dollar paycheck for the year from his stock portfolio, that money only gets taxed at 15%, the same marginal rate a working stiff making $8,000/yr pays (Mishel, 2006). The implication here is that this corporate greed and avarice has a negative impact on the middle class. One can argue that unemployment and underemployment is as high for many reasons, globalization, global overcapacity, U.S. monetary policy (fiat currency), the rising national...

But one would be very hard pressed to leave corporate greed and the exploitation of the working man off that list.
Mills writes, "Ours is a time of uneasiness and indifference - not yet formulated in such ways as to permit the work of reason and the play of sensibility" (1959). One can argue that since that time the dust has settled and that with the advent of the Internet and the rise of the information one is more aware and more self-conscious than he/she has ever been. he/she knows or has the capacity to research in an effort to understand the larger system at work. And with that knowledge and understanding of the broader forces at work, hopefully, he/she can exercise his/her sociological imagination and negotiate those overlapping and interdependent milieux with his/her personal problems to make sense of the situation. Then again, one can stand to reason that we are still in a time of uneasiness and indifference. When faced with a system that is too big to fail and with a society that seems genuinely apathetic in the face of all the information that's out there regarding the abuse and corruption within this system, it may be that one's only option is to assimilate and hew to the soul of the common man, which is currently one part uneasiness and two parts "I don't really care." It's at times like this when one is reminded of a Cornel West quote, "Indifference is the very trait that makes the angels weep."

Works Cited

Lewis, M. (2010). The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: W.W.

Norton & Company.

Mills, C.W. (1959). Sociological Imagination. Retrieved from http://legacy.lclark.edu/~goldman/socimagination.html

Mishel, L. (2006). CEO-to-worker pay imbalance grows. Economic Policy Institute.

Retrieved

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/

Sorkin, A.R. (2009). Too Big to Fail. New York: Viking Publishing.