Unequal Democracy (ebook)

Argumento de Unequal Democracy (ebook)

Using a vast swath of data spanning the past six decades, Unequal Democracy debunks many myths about politics in contemporary America, using the widening gap between the rich and the poor to shed disturbing light on the workings of American democracy. Larry Bartels shows the gap between the rich and poor has increased greatly under Republican administrations and decreased slightly under Democrats, leaving America grossly unequal. This is not simply the result of economic forces, but the product of broad-reaching policy choices in a political system dominated by partisan ideologies and the interests of the wealthy.

Bartels demonstrates that elected officials respond to the views of affluent constituents but ignore the views of poor people. He shows that Republican presidents in particular have consistently produced much less income growth for middle-class and working-poor families than for affluent families, greatly increasing inequality. He provides revealing case studies of key policy shifts contributing to inequality, including the massive Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the erosion of the minimum wage. Finally, he challenges conventional explanations for why many voters seem to vote against their own economic interests, contending that working-class voters have not been lured into the Republican camp by "values issues" like abortion and gay marriage, as commonly believed, but that Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in timing income growth to cater to short-sighted voters.

Unequal Democracy is social science at its very best. It provides a deep and searching analysis of the political causes and consequences of America's growing income gap, and a sobering assessment of the capacity of the American political system to live up to its democratic ideals.

"Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy is a major landmark in political scientists' efforts to grapple with inequality. . . . Bartels has done so much, and has done it so well, that anyone who quibbles with his interpretations or suggests that he has left important questions unanswered is likely to seem ungenerous, even churlish. . . . Unequal Democracy should be taken as a major contribution and as a touchstone for further research."--Benjamin I. Page, Perspectives on Politics

"Unequal Democracy makes the choice voters face clear: Democratic policies spread the wealth and Republican policies protect the wealthy."--Julian E. Zelizer, The Huffington Post

"Obama can connect with voters on the economy by using history as a guideline. He should start by reading Unequal Democracy, by Princeton academic Larry Bartels. The non-partisan and non-political Bartels points out devastatingly after an exhaustive study of Democratic and Republican presidents that the Democrats built a better economy and a more just society."--James Carville, CNN

"Bartels is the political scientist of the moment. Along with Obama, Bill Clinton also read and recommends Unequal Democracy. [M]ost people on the street could have told Bartels that the working poor fare better under Democrats . . . but the importance of these and some other findings in the book . . . is that they use scholarly methods to provide political explanations for economic problems."--Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books

"For a book targeted at both academic and nonacademic audiences, Bartels strikes a nice balance between exhaustive empirical rigor and accessibility. . . . Bartels gives us a wide-ranging framework for thinking about the ways that citizens interact with the political system, and in so doing maps an agenda for the next generation of research on American democracy in action."--Nicholas J. G. Winter, Public Opinion Quarterly

"[I recommend] Larry M. Bartels's Unequal Democracy. Especially at this time every thoughtful American needs to learn as much as possible about the relationship of politics to economics."--Bill Clinton, Daily Beast

"Many Americans know that there are characteristic policy differences between the [Republican and Democratic] parties. But few are aware of two important facts about the post-World War II era, both of which are brilliantly delineated in a new book, Unequal Democracy, by Larry M. Bartels, a professor of political science at Princeton. Understanding them might help voters see what could be at stake, economically speaking, in November."--Alan Blinder, New York Times

"A provocative new book by Princeton professor Larry M. Bartels, one of the country's leading political scientists."--Dan Balz, Washington Post

"Unequal Democracy is the sort of book to which every political scientist should aspire--it is methodologically rigorous, conceptually serious, and above all, it addresses urgent concerns of our fellow citizens. As Bartels shows, much of what we think we know about the politics of economic inequality is dead wrong. Bartels's perplexing and often unexpected discoveries should help refocus the gathering public debate about inequality and what to do about it."--Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone

"This is a fantastic book, a real tour de force. It is a hugely important study of increasing economic inequality in America and the failure of the political system to mitigate its effects on poor citizens. It is the best work that has been done on the political economy of income inequality."--Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution

"Unequal Democracy completes the story of why America's wealthy have become superrich. As Larry Bartels, one of the nation's top political scientists, convincingly demonstrates, the rich get richer when the Republicans are in power and when the less affluent fail to vote. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants answers to why so many of America's working- and middle-class families are struggling to get by."--Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard University

"Economists tend to see economic inequality as the unhappy but unavoidable result of markets--working-class people have to become relatively poorer because they are competing in a globalized world. This book suggests that economists are wrong and that the growing inequality in America is not the product of world forces but of Republican administrations during which income grows more slowly, inequality soars, and no one notices because they pump up the economy during election years. Low-income people have very little influence but which party is in power makes a vast difference for their fate. If you care about economic justice, you need to seriously examine the powerful data in this book and recognize that we can choose a better, fairer society."--Gary Orfield, University of California, Los Angeles

"No political scientist is more widely or rightly respected than Larry Bartels, and Unequal Democracy is a brilliant book that only he could have written. The book proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the main fault for sizable socioeconomic inequalities in America lies not in our economy but in our increasingly polarized and partisan politics. With intellectual force, Unequal Democracy pulls back the sheets on Washington's pamper-the-rich policy process and offers ideas about how we can do better by average citizens and the poor. It is Bartels at his very best, and his very best is the best there is."--John J. DiIulio, Jr., University of Pennsylvania, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

"The book is exemplary throughout in its transparency with regard to the data and Bartels's analytic strategy for using them, in its attention to alternative explanations for a given outcome, and in its balance between not over-reaching and asserting a clear, controversial, and important thesis. . . . Full of evidence, insights, and surprises. . . . The book is never less than provocative and is often revelatory."--Jennifer Hochschild, Perspectives on Politics

"Prodigiously researched and cogently argued, Bartels's timely work should interest academics and lay readers alike."--Blake A. Ellis, Journal of Southern History

"[E]xtraordinarily insightful."--Bob Braun, Newark Star-Ledger

"A short review cannot convey the rich variety of arguments and data Bartels deploys in making his case. Some of his analysis focuses on broadly characterized partisan differences, some on high profile examples such as the politics of the minimum wage and the estate tax. He will have done a considerable service if the next time we start thinking about economics we also think about politics. Bartels shows that social issues do not create as strong a headwind against class-based voting as is often assumed and that lower income voters do tend to vote Democratic while upper-income voters do tend to vote Republican. Unequal Democracy offers an important case for why this might be."--Robert Grafstein, Science

Winner of the 2009 Gladys M. Kammerer Award, American Political Science Association
Winner of the 2009 Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award, Political Organizations and Parties Section of the American Political Science Association0Preface ix

Chapter 1. The New Gilded Age 1
Escalating Economic Inequality 6
Interpreting Inequality 13
Economic Inequality as a Po litical Issue 19
Inequality and American Democracy 23

Chapter 2. The Partisan Political Economy 29
Partisan Patterns of Income Growth 31
A Partisan Coincidence? 34
Partisan Differences in Macroeconomic Policy 42
Macroeconomic Per for mance and Income Growth 47
Partisan Policies and Post- Tax Income Growth 54
Democrats, Republicans, and the Rise of In equality 61

Chapter 3. Class Politics and Partisan Change 64
In Search of the Working Class 66
Has the White Working Class Abandoned the Democratic Party? 72
Have Working- Class Whites Become More Conservative? 78
Do "Moral Values" Trump Economics? 83
Are Religious Voters Distracted from Economic Issues? 90
Class Politics, Alive and Well 93

Chapter 4. Partisan Biases in Economic Accountability 98
Myopic Voters 99
The Political Timing of Income Growth 104
Class Biases in Economic Voting 110
The Wealthy Give Something Back: Partisan Biases in Campaign Spending 116
Political Consequences of Biased Accountability 120

Chapter 5. Do Americans Care about In equality? 127
Egalitarian Values 130
Rich and Poor 136
Perceptions of Inequality 143
Facts and Values in the Realm of In equality 148

Chapter 6. Homer Gets a Tax Cut 162
The Bush Tax Cuts 164
Public Support for the Tax Cuts 170
Unenlightened Self- Interest 176
The Impact of Political Information 181
Chump Change 186
Into the Sunset 193

Chapter 7. The Strange Appeal of Estate Tax Repeal 197
Public Support for Estate Tax Repeal 198
Is Public Support for Repeal a Product of Misinformation? 205
Did Interest Groups Manufacture Public Antipathy to the Estate Tax? 214
Elite Ideology and the Politics of Estate Tax Repeal 217

Chapter 8. The Eroding Minimum Wage 223
The Economic Effects of the Minimum Wage 227
Public Support for the Minimum Wage 229
The Politics of Inaction 232
Democrats, Unions, and the Eroding Minimum Wage 239
The Earned Income Tax Credit 246
Reversing the Tide 247

Chapter 9. Economic Inequality and Po litical Representation 252
Ideological Representation 254
Unequal Responsiveness 257
Unequal Responsiveness on Social Issues: The Case of Abortion 265
Partisan Differences in Repre sen ta tion 267
Why Are the Poor Unrepresented? 275

10. Unequal Democracy 283
Who Governs? 285
Partisan Politics and the "Have- Nots" 288
Political Obstacles to Economic Equality 294
The City of Utmost Necessity 298

Selected References 305
Index 317