Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Russell Sage Foundation Co-Pub) | 
| Author: Larry M. Bartels
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
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Sales Rank: 554
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 328
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0691136637
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.973
EAN: 9780691136639
ASIN: 0691136637
Publication Date: April 27, 2008
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Product Description
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 that increasing inequality 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Insightful! September 6, 2008
"Unequal Democracy" presents the results of a six-year exploration of the political causes and consequences of economic inequality in America. It was inspired by the substantial escalation of this inequality in recent years. Total income going to the top 0.1% of income earners has more than tripled, from 3.2% in the late 1950s to 10.9% in 2005; that going to the top 1% rose from 10.2% to 21.8%. Further, this widening is accelerating. Despite this trend, 80% believe that though you may start out poor, if you work hard you can make lots of money - more than any other developed nation. This belief undermines motivation for change.
Bartels believes that the most significant domestic policy initiative of the past decade has been a massive government-engineered transfer of additional wealth from the lower and middle classes to the rich via substantial reduction in federal income taxes for the rich.
Economists have found little evidence that large disparities promote growth, or that progressive tax rates retard growth by discouraging economic effort.
Meanwhile, political campaigns have become dramatically more expensive, increasing the reliance of elected officials on those who can afford to help finance their re-election bids. At the same time, membership in labor groups, a previously countervailing force, has substantially declined.
On average over the past half century, real incomes of middle-class families grew 2X under Democrats vs. Republicans, and working poor families grew 6X faster under Democrats - even after allowing for differences in economic circumstances.
So why do those with lower incomes vote for Republicans? Bartels tells us that contrary to the theme of "What Happened to Kansas," moral values do not trump economics as a basis for lower-income voting behavior. Bartels offers evidence that the contradiction is explained by confusion generated by mixing "working class" (defined often as those w/o a college education) with lower-income. The working class has a lot of relatively high earners that are influenced by the moral values issues.
Bartels then contends that Republican success in presidential races is due to voters' overemphasis on election-year economic growth, vs. the superior longer-term performance of Democratic presidents, but lesser achievement during the last year of their terms.
Finally, its on to the estate ("death") tax. Actions to reduce and eliminate it during the early Bush II years represent about 15% of the impact of the overall tax reduction package. Bartels asserts that there is enormous misunderstanding about this tax regarding the wideness of its applicability. As a result, it is a wonder that it still exists.
Bottom Line: "Unequal Democracy" presents a carefully documented set of conclusions about an important and timely topic; its only drawback is that sometimes the statistics get too deep.
 what a specious idea for a book September 1, 2008
2 out of 20 found this review helpful
I would hardly trust a political scientist to do the work of an economist - and this is what this author attempts to do. A basic fallacy taught in introductory economics is "post hoc ergo proctor hoc" - after the fact, therefore because of the fact - and could it not be that Bartel's causation works the same way? His assertions are causally flawed - for example, one cannot attribute the growth of the 1990's to Clinton - the economic "successes" of his administration are purely a case of a candidate that was elected at the right place at the right time. Clinton is such a shameless, vain individual that he (and now his wife) happily credit their savvy with our successes as a nation during that period. It's unfortunant that we work like Bartel's that only add to their ego.
A less salacious reframing would be to simply note that the poor's position has grown over all election cycles, just like the rich. Granted, the rich's position has grown faster, but then so has our economy. The true, central failing of this text is that Bartel, like so many others, preys on peoples notion that the economy is a finite pie and if the rich have more, the poor have less.
Recommended reading for the envious and political science majors who think their degree has value beyond a predictable path to law school.
Very eye opening August 31, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been searching for some data on how well off people are during the different rules and along came unequal democracy. If you now people that keep trying to convince you that if you vote for the Dems, you will be over taxed to the gates of hell, this is a must read. It's a text book but very readable.
Great Political Read August 26, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Regardless of the political party you identify with, this is a great informative read if you are interested in US politics, especially in this day and age with our failing economy.
 From June Cleaver to Madonna August 9, 2008
4 out of 43 found this review helpful
This book is yet another socialist tome from the 1960's hippie, university mono-culture. The entire point: democracy should produce equal economic results, is wholly anti-American. If the Constitution had said that the goal of democracy was to affect equal economic outcomes throughout our society the theme of the book would have been perfectly compatible with America. But, for some reason, our founders, who created the greatest, wealthiest country in the history of humanity, forgot that little detail in the Constitution. In fact, it seems not to have occurred to anybody until Karl Marx conjured it up out of a deranged mind that eventually could be held directly responsible for impoverishing 100's of millions and killing 100-200 million people. Despite the deadly failure of every socialist gov't since Marx, the university mono-culture still imagines that its' wisdom can perfect the socialist formula in America even as the billions in Russia, China, and India turn toward the capitalism that our founders miraculously gave us, and away from the socialism that Marx gave them.
One can only wonder how liberals are so blind to what is happening so obviously right under their own noses. Recently, I had dinner with a friend who suggested a Republican understanding of America different from the one commonly suggested by university liberals. She teaches elementary school in the South Bronx. She told me about how some of her students had recently immigrated from Bangladesh where just 2 weeks before the start of the semester they had lived, literally, outside; with no modern conveniences including electricity, toilets, or running water. But somehow, she said, those students were performing better than native Americans who were born in the South Bronx. How could this be? The answer is simple: the South Bronx is the most liberal place on earth. Native American kids bring that culture with them to school. They feel the liberal, Marxist, Democratic entitlement attitude in their souls. In their souls they are victims or the children of victims who are entitled to have their needs met by their victimizers. Why should they work hard in school when Marx instructed them long ago: "to each according to his needs".
Conversely, the Bangladeshi kids have the American, colonialist, capitalist attitude. They and their families are thrilled to be free in a capitalist country where they can create and enjoy their own lives based on what they can provide for themselves, not based on what they are "entitled" to from more productive people. Serendipitously, in a capitalist system, to provide for oneself one has to, firstly, provide more for other people. Hence, capitalism has produced the greatest wealth for all, although not the same quantity of wealth for all at any given time. After all, some have just arrived from Bangladesh, and some who arrived a long ago are just liberals.
Additionally, the author bemoans the loss of union jobs in America. To the author, it is intuitively obvious that unions jobs are good jobs because they are higher paying jobs that, accordingly, result in more equal democracy. Completely and wholly lost is the idea that in a free,wealthy, capitalist society one should get wages or prices that other free people agree to pay for one's goods and services since other people provide an impartial point of view about what goods and services, at what prices, actually constitute a standard of living improvement for the purchaser. When liberal professors or socialist gov't bureaucrats makes those choices they choose wrong and standards of living go down, rather than up, as history has repeatedly shown us.
The liberal, union principle is that one gets whatever one can by blackmailing one's employer for higher wages. Forgotten is that, 1) everyone, including union members, must then pay more for expensive union made goods, thereby eliminating any net gain, 2) blackmail, rather than greater productivity, as a means to get ahead, diminishes an individual's, company's, and economy's focus on productivity, competitiveness, and wealth creation, 3) non-union companies and countries will have lower prices and more competitive products so that unionized companies will ultimately go bankrupt and cost the blackmailing union members their jobs.
For example, American liberals now seems poised to lose GM, Ford, and Chrysler and the millions of jobs that they directly and indirectly provide, in large part because of unions. So why on earth do university liberals still imagine that unions and socialism are a good thing? The answer is that it is only way for them to participate in a free capitalist society that functions very precisely and well without their irrelevant academic disportment. They can come up with childlike and absurd new theories and arguments to promote old fashioned socialism, and try to foist them upon us, but in the end they can't educate one child in the South Bronx or produce one competitive automobile.
If equality is the real issue, why do the top 1%, under Bush, now have to pay 40% (up from 32% prior to Bush) of all Federal Taxes? Why do the poor get free health care and education through high-school, in addition to numerous other entitlements, without which their lives would not be sustainable? Why did Bush introduce the first $2 Trillion budget and then the first $3 Trillion budget if not to help the poor in America? Why did Bush introduce the Prescription Drug Bill - the costliest entitlement since the 1960's - if not to help the poor? The issue isn't that the poor need more economic democracy, it's that liberals (some of whom are truckling or confused Republicans) have declared war on the poor with their caring, preposterous, and counterproductive programs. The liberal attitude toward education and unions constitute two of the many battles in the liberal war against the poor.
At another time one might mention how liberal, hip hop, feminist, welfare culture destroyed the idea of love and family in poor America by replacing June Cleaver with Britney Spears and Madonna so that most kids are now born to single impoverished mothers, but that's another battle in the liberal war on the poor that, again, would only be exacerbated by "economic democracy." When the most sucessful black leader of the last 35 years, Rev. Jesse Jackson, looks at this and then wants to castrate Barak Obama for advocating responsible paternity, we don't need "economic democracy," we, sadly, need liberals who can think above the retarded level. bje1000@aol.com
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