Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality

Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality PDF Author: Edward O'Donnell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
America's remarkable explosion of industrial output and national wealth at the end of the nineteenth century was matched by a troubling rise in poverty and worker unrest. As politicians and intellectuals fought over the causes of this crisis, Henry George (1839–1897) published a radical critique of laissez-faire capitalism and its threat to the nation's republican traditions. Progress and Poverty (1879), which became a surprise best-seller, offered a provocative solution for preserving these traditions while preventing the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few: a single tax on land values. George's writings and years of social activism almost won him the mayor's seat in New York City in 1886. Though he lost the election, his ideas proved instrumental to shaping a popular progressivism that remains essential to tackling inequality today. Edward T. O'Donnell's exploration of George's life and times merges labor, ethnic, intellectual, and political history to illuminate the early militant labor movement in New York during the Gilded Age. He locates in George's rise to prominence the beginning of a larger effort by American workers to regain control of the workplace and obtain economic security and opportunity. The Gilded Age was the first but by no means the last era in which Americans confronted the mixed outcomes of modern capitalism. George's accessible, forward-thinking ideas on democracy, equality, and freedom have tremendous value for contemporary debates over the future of unions, corporate power, Wall Street recklessness, government regulation, and political polarization.

Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality

Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality PDF Author: Edward O'Donnell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
America's remarkable explosion of industrial output and national wealth at the end of the nineteenth century was matched by a troubling rise in poverty and worker unrest. As politicians and intellectuals fought over the causes of this crisis, Henry George (1839–1897) published a radical critique of laissez-faire capitalism and its threat to the nation's republican traditions. Progress and Poverty (1879), which became a surprise best-seller, offered a provocative solution for preserving these traditions while preventing the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few: a single tax on land values. George's writings and years of social activism almost won him the mayor's seat in New York City in 1886. Though he lost the election, his ideas proved instrumental to shaping a popular progressivism that remains essential to tackling inequality today. Edward T. O'Donnell's exploration of George's life and times merges labor, ethnic, intellectual, and political history to illuminate the early militant labor movement in New York during the Gilded Age. He locates in George's rise to prominence the beginning of a larger effort by American workers to regain control of the workplace and obtain economic security and opportunity. The Gilded Age was the first but by no means the last era in which Americans confronted the mixed outcomes of modern capitalism. George's accessible, forward-thinking ideas on democracy, equality, and freedom have tremendous value for contemporary debates over the future of unions, corporate power, Wall Street recklessness, government regulation, and political polarization.

How to Fight Inequality

How to Fight Inequality PDF Author: Ben Phillips
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509543104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 91

Get Book Here

Book Description
Inequality is the crisis of our time. The growing gap between a few at the top and the rest of society damages us all. No longer able to deny the crisis, every government in the world is now pledged to fix it – and yet it keeps on getting worse. In this book, international anti-inequality campaigner Ben Phillips shows why winning the debate is not enough: we have to win the fight. Drawing on his insider experience, and his personal exchanges with the real-life heroes of successful movements, he shows how the battle against inequality has been won before, and he shares a practical plan for defeating inequality again. He sets a route map for us to overcome deference, build our collective power, and create a new story. Most books on inequality are about what other people ought to do about it – this book is about why winning the fight needs you. Tired of feeling helpless in the face of spiralling inequality? Want to know what you can do about it? This is the book for you.

The Great Divergence

The Great Divergence PDF Author: Timothy Noah
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608196348
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
For the past three decades, America has steadily become a nation of haves and have-nots. Our incomes are increasingly unequal. This steady growing apart is often mentioned as a troubling indicator by scholars and policy analysts, though seldom addressed by politicians. What economics Nobelist Paul Krugman terms "the Great Divergence" has till now been treated as little more than a talking point, a rhetorical club to be wielded in ideological battles. But this Great Divergence may be the most important change in this country during our lifetimes-a drastic, elemental change in the character of American society, and not at all for the better. The inequality gap is much more than a left-right hot potato-its causes and consequences call for a patient, non-partisan exploration. Timothy Noah's The Great Divergence, based on his award-winning series of articles for Slate, surveys the roots of the wealth gap, drawing on the best thinking of contemporary economists and political scientists. Noah also explores potential solutions to the problem, and explores why the growing rich-poor divide has sparked remarkably little public anger, in contrast to social unrest that prevailed before the New Deal. The Great Divergence is poised to be one of the most talked-about books of 2012, a jump-start to the national conversation about the shape of American society in the 21st century, and a work that will help frame the debate in a Presidential election year.

Judging Inequality

Judging Inequality PDF Author: James L. Gibson
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 161044907X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Get Book Here

Book Description
Social scientists have convincingly documented soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality in the United States. Missing from this picture of rampant inequality, however, is any attention to the significant role of state law and courts in establishing policies that either ameliorate or exacerbate inequality. In Judging Inequality, political scientists James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson demonstrate the influential role of the fifty state supreme courts in shaping the widespread inequalities that define America today, focusing on court-made public policy on issues ranging from educational equity and adequacy to LGBT rights to access to justice to worker’s rights. Drawing on an analysis of an original database of nearly 6,000 decisions made by over 900 judges on 50 state supreme courts over a quarter century, Judging Inequality documents two ways that state high courts have crafted policies relevant to inequality: through substantive policy decisions that fail to advance equality and by rulings favoring more privileged litigants (typically known as “upperdogs”). The authors discover that whether court-sanctioned policies lead to greater or lesser inequality depends on the ideologies of the justices serving on these high benches, the policy preferences of their constituents (the people of their state), and the institutional structures that determine who becomes a judge as well as who decides whether those individuals remain in office. Gibson and Nelson decisively reject the conventional theory that state supreme courts tend to protect underdog litigants from the wrath of majorities. Instead, the authors demonstrate that the ideological compositions of state supreme courts most often mirror the dominant political coalition in their state at a given point in time. As a result, state supreme courts are unlikely to stand as an independent force against the rise of inequality in the United States, instead making decisions compatible with the preferences of political elites already in power. At least at the state high court level, the myth of judicial independence truly is a myth. Judging Inequality offers a comprehensive examination of the powerful role that state supreme courts play in shaping public policies pertinent to inequality. This volume is a landmark contribution to scholarly work on the intersection of American jurisprudence and inequality, one that essentially rewrites the “conventional wisdom” on the role of courts in America’s democracy.

The Inequality Crisis

The Inequality Crisis PDF Author: Roger Brown
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447337581
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Economic inequality has at last taken center stage in political discourse, but little is said to explain or to offer solutions to it. Written by an award-winning academic and policy maker, The Inequality Crisis provides a comprehensive, evenhanded survey of all the available evidence. Fully up to date with the latest developments, from Brexit to Donald Trump's election, this accessible, jargon-free introduction is international in scope and packed with eye-opening facts. In his closing chapters, Roger Brown evaluates whether current UK government policies will actually help reduce inequality and offers practical suggestions relevant the world over, including raising taxes on higher earners, implementing tougher action against tax dodgers, helping people on lower incomes to save, and reducing inequalities in education.

Crisis and Inequality

Crisis and Inequality PDF Author: Mattias Vermeiren
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509537708
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Spiralling inequality since the 1970s and the global financial crisis of 2008 have been the two most important challenges to democratic capitalism since the Great Depression. To understand the political economy of contemporary Europe and America we must, therefore, put inequality and crisis at the heart of the picture. In this innovative new textbook Mattias Vermeiren does just this, demonstrating that both the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis resulted from a mutually reinforcing but ultimately unsustainable relationship between countries with debt-led and export-led growth models, models fundamentally shaped by soaring income and wealth inequality. He traces the emergence of these two growth models by giving a comprehensive overview, deeply informed by the comparative and international political economy literature, of recent developments in the four key domains that have shaped the dynamics of crisis and inequality: macroeconomic policy, social policy, corporate governance and financial policy. He goes on to assess the prospects for the emergence of a more egalitarian and sustainable form of democratic capitalism. This fresh and insightful overview of contemporary Western capitalism will be essential reading for all students and scholars of international and comparative political economy.

Inequality

Inequality PDF Author: Max Rashbrooke
Publisher: Bridget Williams Books
ISBN: 1927131510
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
The divide between New Zealand’s poorest and wealthiest inhabitants has widened alarmingly over recent decades. Differences in income have grown faster than in most other developed countries. New Zealand society is being reshaped, stretching to accommodate new distance between those who ‘have’ and those who ‘have not’. Income inequality is a crisis that affects us all. A diverse gathering of New Zealand scholars, journalists, researchers, business leaders, workers, students and parents share these pages. Their voices speak to the complex shape of income inequality, and its effects on the communities of these Pacific islands.

Information Inequality

Information Inequality PDF Author: Herbert Schiller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135216312
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
Herbert Schiller, long one of America's leading critics of the communications industry, here offers a salvo in the battle over information. In Information Inequality he explains how privatization and the corporate economy directly affect our most highly prized democratic institutions: schools and libraries, media, and political culture. A master media-watcher, Schiller presents a crisp and far-reaching indictment of the "data deprivation" corporate interests are inflicting on the social fabric.

Restoring Opportunity

Restoring Opportunity PDF Author: Greg J. Duncan
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1612506364
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this landmark volume, Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane lay out a meticulously researched case showing how—in a time of spiraling inequality—strategically targeted interventions and supports can help schools significantly improve the life chances of low-income children. The authors offer a brilliant synthesis of recent research on inequality and its effects on families, children, and schools. They describe the interplay of social and economic factors that has made it increasingly hard for schools to counteract the effects of inequality and that has created a widening wedge between low- and high-income students. Restoring Opportunity provides detailed portraits of proven initiatives that are transforming the lives of low-income children from prekindergarten through high school. All of these programs are research-tested and have demonstrated sustained effectiveness over time and at significant scale. Together, they offer a powerful vision of what good instruction in effective schools can look like. The authors conclude by outlining the elements of a new agenda for education reform. Restoring Opportunity is a crowning contribution from these two leading economists in the field of education and a passionate call to action on behalf of the young people on whom our nation’s future depends. Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation

Inequality and Instability

Inequality and Instability PDF Author: James K. Galbraith
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019985565X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Get Book Here

Book Description
Demonstrates that finance is the driveshaft that links inequality to economic instability.