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    The New Gilded Age: From Unequal Democracy
    The New Gilded Age: From Unequal Democracy
    The New Gilded Age: From Unequal Democracy
    Ebook140 pages1 hour

    The New Gilded Age: From Unequal Democracy

    By Larry M. Bartels

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    "We are the 99%" has quickly become the slogan of our political era as growing numbers of Americans express concern about the disappearing middle class and the ever-widening gap between the super-rich and everyone else. Has America really entered a New Gilded Age? What are the political consequences of the growing income gap? Can democracy survive such vast economic inequality? These questions dominate our political moment--and Larry Bartels provides answers backed by sobering data.


    Princeton Shorts are brief selections taken from influential Princeton University Press books and produced exclusively in ebook format. Providing unmatched insight into important contemporary issues or timeless passages from classic works of the past, Princeton Shorts enable you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateMay 6, 2012
    ISBN9781400843138
    The New Gilded Age: From Unequal Democracy

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      Book preview

      The New Gilded Age - Larry M. Bartels

      The New Gilded Age

      LARRY M. BARTELS

      A PRINCETON SHORTS selection from Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

      We are the 99% has quickly become the slogan of our political era as growing numbers of Americans express concern about the disappearing middle class and the ever-widening gap between the super-rich and everyone else. Has America really entered a New Gilded Age? What are the political consequences of the growing income gap? Can democracy survive such vast economic inequality? These questions dominate our political moment—and Larry Bartels provides answers backed by sobering data.

      PRINCETON SHORTS are brief selections taken from influential Princeton University Press books and produced exclusively in eBook format. Providing unmatched insight into important contemporary issues or timeless passages from classic works of the past, Princeton Shorts enable you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium. For more information and a complete list of books in the series, please visit http://press.princeton.edu/PrincetonShorts.

      The New Gilded Age comprises chapters 1 and 5 from Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, by Larry M. Bartels. Copyright © 2008 by Russell Sage Foundation

      Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX201 TW

      Russell Sage Foundation, 112 East 64th Street, New York, New York 10021

      press.princeton.edu

      All Rights Reserved

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Bartels, Larry M., 1956–

      Unequal democracy : the political economy of the new gilded age /

      Larry M. Bartels.

      p. cm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-691-13663-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

      1. United States—Economic conditions—1945– 2. Equality—Economic aspects—United States. 3. Political culture—United States—History. 4. Social classes—Political aspects— United States. 5. Power (Social sciences)—Economic aspects—United States. 6. Democracy—Economic aspects—United States.

      I. Title.

      HC106.5.B347 2008

      330.973—dc22     2007044382

      British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

      Princeton Shorts edition, 2012

      eISBN 978-1-400-84313-8

      CONTENTS

      The New Gilded Age

      Do Americans Care about Inequality?

      Notes to Chapter 1

      Notes to Chapter 5

      About the Author

      Related Titles

      THE NEW GILDED AGE

      In the first sentence of one of the greatest works of modern political science, Robert Dahl posed a question of profound importance for democratic theory and practice: In a political system where nearly every adult may vote but where knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials, and other resources are unequally distributed, who actually governs?¹

      Dahl’s answer to this question, for one American city in the late 1950s, was that political power was surprisingly widely dispersed. Examining politics and policy making in New Haven, Connecticut, he concluded that shifting, largely distinct coalitions of elected and unelected leaders influenced key decisions in different issue areas. This pluralistic pattern was facilitated by the fact that many individuals and groups with substantial resources at their disposal chose not to devote those resources to political activity. Even economic notables—the wealthy property owners, businessmen, and bank directors constituting the top tier of New Haven’s economic elite—were simply one of the many groups out of which individuals sporadically emerge to influence the policies and acts of city officials.²

      The significance of Dahl’s question has been magnified, and the pertinence of his answer has been cast in doubt, by dramatic economic and political changes in the United States over the past half-century. Economically, America has become vastly richer and vastly more unequal. Perhaps most strikingly, the share of total income going to people at the level of Dahl’s economic notables—the top 0.1% of income-earners—has more than tripled, from 3.2% in the late 1950s to 10.9% in 2005. The share going to the top 1% of income-earners—a much broader but still very affluent group—more than doubled over the same period, from 10.2% to 21.8%.³ It seems natural to wonder whether the pluralistic democracy Dahl found in the 1950s has survived this rapid concentration of vast additional resources in the hands of America’s wealthiest citizens.⁴

      Meanwhile, the political process has evolved in ways that seem likely to reinforce the advantages of wealth. Political campaigns have become dramatically more expensive since the 1950s, increasing the reliance of elected officials on people who can afford to help finance their bids for reelection. Lobbying activities by corporations and business and professional organizations have accelerated greatly, outpacing the growth of public interest groups. Membership in labor unions has declined substantially, eroding the primary mechanism for organized representation of working people in the governmental process.

      How have these economic and political developments affected who actually governs? In 2004, the Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, convened by the American Political Science Association, concluded that political scientists know astonishingly little about the cumulative effects on American democracy of these economic and political changes. However, based on what we do know, the task force members worried that rising economic inequality will solidify longstanding disparities in political voice and influence, and perhaps exacerbate such disparities.⁵

      This book provides a multifaceted examination of the political causes and consequences of economic inequality in contemporary America. Political scientists since Aristotle have wrestled with the question of whether substantial economic inequality is compatible with democracy. My evidence on that score is not encouraging. I find that elected officials are utterly unresponsive to the policy preferences of millions of low-income citizens, leaving their political interests to be served or ignored as the ideological whims of incumbent elites may dictate. Dahl suggested that democracy entails continued responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.⁶ The contemporary United States is a very long way from meeting that standard.

      Economic inequality clearly has profound ramifications for democratic politics. However, that is only half the story of this book. The other half of the story is that politics also profoundly shapes economics. While technological change, globalization, demographic shifts, and other economic and social forces have produced powerful pressures toward greater inequality in recent decades, politics and public policy can and do significantly reinforce or mitigate those pressures, depending on the political aims and priorities of elected officials. I trace the impact of public policies on changes in the U.S. income distribution over the past half-century, from the tripled income share of Dahl’s economic notables at the top to the plight of minimum wage workers at the bottom. I find that partisan politics and the ideological convictions of political elites have had a substantial impact on the American economy, especially on the economic fortunes of middle-class and poor people. Economic inequality is, in substantial part, a political phenomenon.

      In theory, public opinion constrains the ideological convictions of political elites in democratic political systems. In practice, however, elected officials have a great deal of political leeway. This fact is strikingly illustrated by the behavior of Democratic and Republican senators from the same state, who routinely pursue vastly different policies while representing precisely the same constituents. On a broader historical scale, political latitude is also demonstrated by consistent, marked shifts in economic priorities and performance when Democrats replace Republicans, or when Republicans replace Democrats, in the White House. In these respects, among others, conventional democratic theory misses much of what is most interesting and important about the actual workings of the American political system.

      My examination of the partisan politics of economic inequality, in chapter 2, reveals that Democratic and Republican presidents over the past half-century have presided over dramatically different patterns of income growth. On average, the real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under

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