Transcript
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    UNEQUAL DEMOCRACY

    THE POLITICAL ECONOtvlY OF THE NE\V GILDED AGE

    Larry Al. Bartels

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    7.

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    I Io111er Gets a Tax Ct1t Tlte Buslt Tax Cuts

    CO:\TE:\TS

    Puhlic Su ppor/ for !lie Tax Cu ts r l11c11I iglite1 wd Sci (-Tut crest Tltc l111pac/ t II E , : 1 m11~1act11rc Public A 11 tiJJatliy

    o 1c state Tax? Elite Idmlogy r111d Ifie l'The Erodmg ~finimum W1af' The Eco11~111iic Effects if'~ ,1. . P I 1. .I.I' . As a studl'nt of democracy, it also SC'emed important to me to explore the ramifications of f'Scalating f'conomic i1lf'quality for the American political system. Probably most sentif'nt obsPrvers of AmC'rican politics suspect that the concentration of vast additional wealth in the hands of alTiuent people has augmented their influence in the political arf'H

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    x PREFACE

    which will only be intelligible or interesting to people with some background in social science or statistics or hoth. I recognize that any compromise of this sort is bound to leave readers in both camps less than fully satisfied; how-ever, I view it as a necessary accommodation to the prevalence of social-scientific illiteracy among Americans who read (and write) about politics and public affairs.

    I suspect that the prevalence of social-scientific illiteracy in American public discourse is both a cause and an effect of the fact that social-scientific research is woefully undersupported in American society. 1 lowever, I have been unusually fortunate in finding generous financial, institutional, and personal support for my work, and it is a great pleasure to acknowledge that support lwre.

    Princeton University and its \Voodrow \Vilson School have provided time and facilities for research, as well as regular access to stimulating students and colleagues. I am grateful to the past and present deans of the \Voodrow Wilson School, Michael Rothschild and Anne-Marie Slaughter, for building and maintaining a vibrant intellectual community in which to pursue serious analysis of significant public issues. I am also grateful to students in my \Vilson School seminar on Inequality and American Democracy for se1ving as an invaluable test-audience for the first complete draft of the book, and to my colleagues Roland Benabou, Angus Deaton, Alan Krueger, Jonathan Parker, and Mark \Vatson for providing generous advice about economic issues and literature.

    Within the Woodrow Wilson School, my primary home for the past eight years has been the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. The faculty, visitors, students, and staff there have provided abundant intellectual and moral support, including appropriate mixtures of criticism and encouragement in response to half-baked arguments presented in lunch seminars, conferences, and common room chats. I am especially grateful to Doug Arnold, Brandice Canes-Wrone, Michele Epstein, Marty Gilens, Dave Lewis, Nolan McCarty, and Markus Prior for helpful reactions and suggestions. As I have come to expect over the years, Chris Achen provided especially cogent advice and especially generous encouragement. He also graciously tolerated the constraints imposed by this project on the progress of our long-running collaborative work on democratic accountability. Next!

    I have also benefited greatly, and repeatedly, from the generous support of the Russell Sage Foundation and its president, Eric Wanner. The first stages of my research were conducted as part of the Princeton \Vorking Group on Inequality, one of several interdisciplinary research teams sup-ported by the Russell Sage Foundation through its Social Dimensions of In-equality project. I thank Bruce Western, the ringleader of the Princeton Working Group, for involving me in the project, and Bruce, Paul DiMaggio,

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    PREl'ACE

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    xii PREFACE

    Political Science Association (200.5), the European Consortium for Political Hesearch (20o.5), and the National 'fax Association (2006). Each of these pre-sentations generate

  • _________ CHAPTER 1---------

    The New Gilded Age

    IN THE FIRST sentence of one of the greatest works of modern political sci-ence, Hobert Dahl posed a question of profound importance for dlmocratic theory and practice: "In a political system where nearly ewry adult may vote but where knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials, and other resources are unequally distributed, who actually governs?"'

    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 influ-enced 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, busi-nessmen, and bank directors constituting the top tier of New Haven's economic elite-were "simply one of the many groups out of which indi-viduals sporadically emerge to influence the policies and acts of city offi-cials."2

    The significance of Dahl's question has been magnified, m1d the pertinence of his answer has been cast in doubt, by dramatic economic mid political clumges in the United States over the past half-century. Economically, Amer-ica 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 won-der whether the pluralistic democracy Dahl found in the 19.50s has survived

    1 Dahl (1961). 1. 2 Of the 238 people in this group, only three were among the 23 most influential participants

    in the city's politics and policy making. Nine more were "minor leaders" -all in the field of ur-ban redevelopment, a policy area of distinctive relevance for their economic interests (Dahl 1961, 72 and chapter 6).

    ~These figures are from tabulations by Piketty and Saez (2003), updated at http://elsa .berkeley.edu/-saez/, table A3.

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    I tJ I i

  • 2 CHAPTER J

    this ra1)id co11co11tr1t1'c) f ' ' no vist l IT I Wl'altliicst citizcns ' ' . .ic

  • 4 CHAPTER I

    Moreover, low-income white voters continue to attach less weight to social is-sues than to economic issues-and they attach less weight to social issues than more affluent white voters do. The familiar image of a party system transformed by Republican gains among working-class cultural consel\latives turns out to be largely mythical.

    Then why haw Republican pnsidential candidates fared so well over the PL~t half-century? J'vfy analysis in chapter 4 identifies three distinct biasE'S in po-litical accountability that explain 111uch of their success. One is a myopic focus of voters on very recent economic perfonnance, which rewards Republicans' smprising success in concentrating income growth in election years. Another is the peculiar sensitivity of voters at all income levels to high-income growth rates, which rewards Republicans' success in generating election-year income growth among afTiuent families specifically. Finally, the responsiveness of vot-ers to campaign spending rewards Republic

  • CHAPTER I and political ec1ua)ih1: ".R l"t .. I .

    . ') 0 I IC.l equ1)1h' nom1c inequality as dis1clv111t1 I ' 'J ... poses a constant challe11ge t . ' ' ' aec group t" o eco-1 tanan demands lead to eq111J-~ 1' . I s_pe it1on the state for redress E I t B I ' 1zmg eg1s itm I l g.1 -';;. . _ut t ie co1~tinuing disparities in th~ '.1, sue~ as t ie progressive income

    el ectiveness ol such laws is tlie . eco11om1c sph

  • 8

    ~ 0 0

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    ~ 100

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    6

    _...._ 5 "' c

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    ~ 2

    0 1945

    CHAPTER l

    ---99.99th percentile - - - 99.9th percentile - - - 99.5th percentile - - 99th percentile 95th ercentile

    1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 Figure 1.3 Top Incomes by Income Percentile, 1947-200.5

    2005

    Ev~n the di~~arities in income growth for affluent, middle-class, and poor Ame~ica'.1 fanuhes charted in figures 1.1 and 1.2 understate the extent of es-calatmg mequality over the past 30 years, since much of the real action has been concen~rated at the very top of the income distribution. While the Cen-sus Bureau figures document the experience of families affluent enough to have reac:hed the 9.5th percentile of the national income distribution, they ~heel no light .on what has happened to people with much higher incomes. As it turns out, mcome gains among the ultra-rich have vastly outpaced those among the merely affluent.

    iTconomists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez have used information co ected by the ~ntemal Revenue Seivice to trac.:k the economic fortunes of1

    P_eople much lugher up the economic ladder than the Census Bureau tab-u atJons reach Figure 1 3 prese t ti t b I

    n s ieJr a u ahons of the real incomes (in

    TllE NEW GILDED AGE 11

    millions of 2006 dollars) of ta."Xpayers at the 9.5th, 99th, 99 .. 5th, 99.9th, and 99.99th percentiles of the income distribution since 1947. 12

    What is most striking in figure I.:3 is that, even at this elevated incorne level, income growth over the past 2.5 years has accelerated with every addi-tional step up the economic ladder. For example, while the real income of taxpayers at the 99th percentile doubled behwen 1981 and 200.5, the real in-come of ht'Xpayers at the 99.9th percentile nearly tripled, and the real income of taxpayers at the 99.99th percentile-a hyper-rich stratum comprising about 13,000 t

  • 12 CHAPTER I

    ---Top5% 45

    -- -Top 1%

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    35

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    .c 25 "' 0 E 0 u 20 .5

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    5

    o~~-.--.----.~.---.---.--.---J F" 1915 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

    gure 1.4 Income Shares of Top 501 1 d...,.. Im YOcn 10P w,1917-2005

    accounted for 2:3.0% of total income in accounted for IO 0% of tot I . . 1981 but 37.2% in 2005. The top I% . cl mcome m 1981 b t 21 B% . mg gradually over most of tl1e t t' ti u . o m 2005; after declin-1 d , wen 1e 1 centur ti J t ian

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    -l 14 CHAPTER l

    made uneasy by the sheer magnitude of the gulf betwpen the rich and the poor in contemporary America, evpn if thPy cannot quite pinpoint why. Still others art' less concPmPd about inpquality per SP than about the absolute living standards of the poor or about the Pxtent of their opportunity to work their way up the economic ladder.

    For the most part, discussions of escalating inequality have focused on four related issues: economic growth, economic mobility, fairness, and inevitabil-ity. One crucial-and highly contentious-question is whether dramatic in-come gains among the hn1er-rich '"trickle down" to middle-class an

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    I :

    16 CHAPTER 1

    o'.dinary ~mericans detennined bv their startin . t . lnerarchy? One commentator ~t '! . I K' I g pom s Ill the economic

    ' ic 1'1E ms ey w1n1e l ti '" over generations is what c01iaE"1ls f1'111 "I d'fc' ' c lat nnmobility E

    1-o ' ' 11c1,1 1 1erenc:es t I I c I . uropean-style social class."2h II , , , .

    111 0 o c -1as none

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    CHAPTER I

    reapt>d little of the gains in productivity O\'f'r the past :3.5 years .... The micro data tPll a shocking story of gains accruing disproportionatpJy tu the top one percPnt and 0.1 percent of the income distribution. They characterized the first fivp years of the twPnty-first century as "an tmprPcedented dichotomy of macroeconomic glow and gloom." On one liand, lahor productivity and out-put growth exploded; on the othPr hand, mPdian family income fell by 3.8 percent from 1999 to 2004.:~i

    The "unprecedented dichotomy" noted by Dew-Becker and Gordon be-tween booming output and stagnant or declining incomes for ordinary work-ers has been a rPcurrPnt political problem for the Bush administration. On the eve of the 2CXl4 presidential campaign, the New fork Times announced "A Recovery for Profits, But Not for Workers." A similar headline in the midst of the 2006 midtPnn campaign asked, "After Years of Growth, What about WorkPrs' Share?" Press reports noted that the president was making little headway in convincing the American public that the Pconomy was prosper-ing, despite robust output growth and increasing average wages. The "strange and unlikely combination" of "strong and healthy aggregate macroeconomic indicators and a grumpy populace," one report said, was "a source of befud-dlPment to the administration and its allies.":11

    Faced with this "grumpy populace" and an imminent election, Treasury SPcretary Henry Paulson acknowledged that "amid this countrys strong eco-nomic expansion, many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits.'' Paul-son blamed that fact on "market forces" that "work to provide the greatest rewards to those with the needed skills in the growth areas." Paulson's prede-cessor as treasury secretary, John Snow, spoke in similar terms about the "long-tenn trend to differentiate compensation."

    According to one observer, "'Long-term,' when used this way by this sort of official, tends to mean 'fundamentally unstoppable.' And, in this case, in-explicable, like a sort of financial global-warming process that may be man-made or (who knows?) a natural cycle that we would welcome if only we knew its function. Snow, a trained economist and former corporate C.E.O., doesn't pretend to be able to explain what's causing this whole compensation differential. Nor does he seem tortured by his ignorance. '\Ve've moved into a star system for some reason,' he said, 'which is not fully understood.' ":i.;

    ~Ibid., 60, 3, 1. :i

    1

    Louis lJchitelle, A Recovery for Profits, But Not for Workers," N,,rc fork Ti11ws, Decem-ber 21, 2003, BU 4; Eduardo Porter, "After Years of Growth, What about Workers' Share?" Nt'fc fork Times, October 15, 2006, BU 3; Daniel Gross, "When Sweet StatistiC's Clash with a Sour Mood," N,,rc fork Ti11ws, June 4, 2006, BU 3.

    . t; Remarks Prepared for Delivery by 'freasury Secretary Henry H. Paulson at Columbia Uni-versity, August 1, 2006, http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp41.htm; Walter Kim, "Way Up-stairs, Downstairs," Mw fork Tinw.~ Aiflt!,flZiiw, April 16, 2006, 11.

    THE NEW GILDED AGE 19

    . . . i is an inf'vitable, purely natural phe-The notion that econonuc mequl,1! ty. t'fi . p1tiin by a self-proclaimed

    b ven 1 pseu( o-sc1en I IC ' ' ' k k nomenun has een g1 .. ' . f M I d Victor Yakovenko. "\:a oven o

    ,, } U 1vers1ty o ary an ' "econophysicist at t ie n . . 1 the dispersion of U.S. incomes noted that, aside from a long up)~ .!a\;ution-the same kin

  • . i

    I I I,

    20 ~------------~ CHAPTER I

    o~ the~mal equilibrium as reflected in ti . . often frame discussions of . 1 . ic exponential distribution but ti 1. . mequa 1ty Ill .1 c I , iey ( istmctly apolitical way. The st111d1 I ' ur.10us y passive, tPclmical ind t ., ' ' re perspective h r 11 ' ' s ory Ill T11e Eco110111ist o11 "I 1 . . is ;]Jtnec J)' a 2006 cov I nequa 1ty m An ,, Tl er

    trem s in the American economy over ti iencl'.l. ie report summarized . le precec mg decade:

    Thanks to a jump in productivity growth after 1995 A . , paced other rich countries' f. . cl I . , mencas economy has out-

    . or ,1 ecac e. Its wo k . more each hour they work ti. t r e1s now produce over 30% I cl Mn en yeITS 1go In ti I s iare in this boom Tl I . ' ' . le ate 1990s everybod

    wug 1 mcomes were risin f; t Y wages far outpaced inflation. g ,1s est at the top, all workers'

    But 1fter "OOO I . . . ' - so met ung chan ed. The ) . . .

    nsmg again, but now it seems to b: !'fit J ,ice of productivity growth has been f 't . I . I mg iewer bo1ts Tl f 1v1 y gams iave been skewed t . I I . ' . . . . ie ruits of produc-. ow,1rc s t 1e lughest .

    mes, whose profits have reached . cl I e,1mers, and towards compa-recor evels as a share of CDP.:111

    :he re1~ort 1:rovided no hint of what "somethin " . 2000. Nor did it offer my expli t' fi g nught have chanaed ifter

    dd I ' , na 10n or why "Am . . 0 ' su Pn y widPned after 1980,, nor wh " . encas mcome disparities wards the end of the decade ti11t . Yb.f urmg the 1990s, particularly to-narrowed." ., ' g.1p sta 'ized and, by some measures, even

    Hello? George W Bush? Romld the report offered no sug~estio ' ti .~eagan? ~ill Clinton? In 3,000 words e.lected officials might have con~~-b1,~ ~ny plohcy choice by these or othe; nzed. Rather, "the main c1use w1 It u ~ to t ie economic trends it summa-for ski!.led workers relativ~ to th~:r ;~ m~Io~, which increased the demand effect. The report also sugg t d I PP y, With freer trade reinforcing the ti k es e t nt '" ft t' I ie wea ening of unions," mi ht lnve '.. ms I u iona changes, particularly the bottom" and that "greed g b '. made the going harder for people it

    J Y usmessm " I b ' sa anes for eacl1 other at thee . f Jen nug it e "sanction[ing] huge

    Reports of ti . b . xpense o s iareholders." . . . us sort o v10usly do little . "

    ?anties Ill wealth and income" n t d b , to 1~,1ke. the presence of vast dis-~can ~olitics." Indeed, the autho~se of ~1Dahl a lu~h?' salient issue in Amer-assurmg their readers tl11t "A . . de Econonusts cover story beg111 by

    . ' men cans . ' tween nch and poor is bigger ti . o not go Ill for envy. The g1p he-p J ian m any othe cl d ' eop e are unconcenied. \.YI . E r cl vance country, but most nomic pie is divided An1 . iere,1s uropeans fret about the w1y tl1e eco

    . , encans wm1t to . . I . , -out o~ ten, more than anywhere el . b /om t ie nch, not soak them. Eight poor, '.f you work hard, you can ma~: o~ ieve that tho~gh you may start out American Dream.":l!J P of money. It is a central part of the

    :i.-rhe Rieh, the fl . d I 2006, 28. oor ,u1 t le Growing Gap between Them " .

    :lfi Ibid. ' Tlie l'..f:o110111isf, June I7,

    ~~~~'--

    THE NEW GILDED AGE 21

    The political economy of inequality might be very different if, contrary to Dahl's observation, the presence of vast disparitiPs in wealth and income teas a highly salient issue in American politics. How likely is that, and how might it happen?

    One admittedly unsystematic barometer of the popular zeitgeist is the an-nual "\Vhat People Earn" issue of Parade Maga:::;i11e, a popular Sunday news-paper supplement claiming 71 million readers. For several years, Parade has published annual "Special Reports" including dozens of Americans' names, photos, occupations, and salaries. Most are ordinary people with five-figure incomes; some are immensely wealthy celebrities like Michael Jordan, Don-ald Trump, and SpongeBob Squarepants. (Interestingly, more conventional affluent professionals and businesspeople seem to be distinctly underrepre-sented.10) The stories accompanying these "salary surveys" have attempted to summarize the current economic climate and job prospects. In doing so, they have also provided some insight into the shifting resonance of economic ine-quality in contemporary American culture.

    In early 2002, Parade depicted "the mood of the nation" as "resolutely con-fident despite wage freezes, benefit reductions and shrinking job security." An accompanying essay by financial writer Andrew Tobias put the gulf be-tween the incomes of the rich mid famous on one hand and ordinary people on the other in reassuring perspective, noting that in "Uganda or Peru ... plumbers and librarians earn a whole lot less" than in the United States. "Yes. Life is unfair,'' Tobias wrote. "But for most of us, it could be a lot worse. And in America there's at least a fighting chance that, if you work at it, you-or your kids anyway-can close the gap."11

    The following year, Tobias's essay "How Much Is Fair?" revisited the issue of economic inequality, but in a rather different tone. Tobias remained san-guine about the millions earned by Ben Affleck, Madonna, and Stephen King. ("I don't mind a bit. This is America! More power to them.") However, he was more skeptical about the earnings of CEOs, acknowledging that "most would agree it is best left to the free market to decide" how much they should be paid, but adding that in some cases "the market isn't really free and the CEO largely sets his own pay." Noting that one modestly paid CEO earned more than "the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton-combined!" Tobias concluded, somewhat defensively,

    40 'l11e 2007 survey included 97 people with incomes below $100,000, 16 with incomes be-

    tween $100,000 and $750,000, and 29 multimillionaires (mostly entertainers and professional athletes). The modestly wealthy group included three political celebrities (Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, and Karl Rove), a professional golfer, and a ~bronc rider," as well as a uni\'ersity presi-dent, a judge, two photographers, a railroad conductor, an architect, three real estate brokers, a mortgage broker, and a physidan's assistant.

    41 Lynn Brenner, "How Did fou Do?" l'arrufe Maga;:;i1w, March 3, 2002, 4-5; Andrew 'lbbias, Are They Worth It?" Pamde Maga;:;iue, March 3, 2002, 8.

  • 22 CHAPTER I

    that "it is not class warfare to face these facts, obseJVe these trends and raise the,e q neHom. Many will conclude that >UI ;, '~ it lmnld be. Othe.., Will "Y things have gotten out of whack. The ability to confront, debate and occa-sionally course-correct is one of our nation's greatest strengths."12

    By 2004, Parade headlined that "Tl1e economys growing again, and we're spending more-but jobs and wages aren't keeping pace." Some :30 para-graphs later, the report mentioned that "The gap between Americas highest. and lowest-paid workers ... got wider last year" and that the latter "lost ground to inflation." In 2005, the Parade report noted that productivity "has risen steadily; but economists say that, so far, the resulting benefits have gone into corporate profits."1:1

    By 2007, the disparity between "government statistics" and the "daily ex-perience" of workers had become a major theme of Parades annual report on the state of the U.S. economy. One prominent subhead announced that "most Americans didn't see the long economic boom reflected in their pay-checks"; another reported that "the salary gains of the last five years have gone to the highest-paid workers." The body of the story reported that "many Americans are troubled by the income gap between the nations highest eani-ers and everyone else-a gap that has grown dramatically in recent de-cades."11

    Meanwhile, in a very different segment of tl1e Sunday magazine market, the Neu: York Times Magazine in 2007 published a special "Money Issue" ti-tled "Inside the Income Gap." Lengthy articles focused on class disparities in schooling, John Edwardss "poverty platform" in the 2008 presidential race, and the implications of an increasingly global labor market. However, the im-pact of these weighty examinations of the sociology and politics of economic inequality was diminished by the distracting interspersion of colorful adver-tisements for investment companies, exotic consumer goods, and high-end real estate. One three-page article on "The Inequality Conundrum" ("How can you promote equality without killing off the genie of American prosper-ity?") was woven around advertisements for a private bank and financial plan-ning company ("an entire team of wealth experts"), high definition flat-screen televisions ("the ultimate 1V experience"), the national airline of tl1e Cayman Islands ("Endless beauty. Non-stop flights"), and luxury apartments on New Yorks Fifth Avenue ("From $10.25 million").15

    The lifestyles of New 101* Times Magazine readers are emblematic of a striking social gulf between the people who are most likely to read lengthy

    42

    Andrew Tobias, "How Much Is Fair?" l'rmu/e Mflf!,flZiue, Mardi 2, 2003, 10-11. "-

    1

    Lynn Brenner, "How Did fo" Do?" l'flmr/e lllflf!,flZi11.e, Mareh 14, 2004, 4-12; Brenner, "How Did fo11 Do?" l'flmr/" Mflf!,flzbw, March 13, 200.5, 4-10. 1

    1

    Lynn Brenner, "How Did li111 Do?" l'rmu/" Mflgflzbw, April 1.5, 2007, 4-8. i

    5

    "Inside the Income Gap," New liirk Ti111"s Mfl{!,flZiitll, June 10, 2007.

    THE NEW GILDED AGE 23

    . . 1 m

  • 24 CHAPTER I

    money, political power, welfare, leisure time, and love .... The aim of egalitari-anism is not the elimination of all differences, which would be impossible, nor even the elimination of differences within any one of these spheres, which might also be impossible unless the state continually intervened. Rather, the goal is to keep the spheres autonomous and their boundaries intact. Success in one sphere should not be convertible into success in another sphere. Political power, which is the most dangerous slitical l/istory of the American Rich, political analyst Kevin Phillips called attention to a variety of striking economic and po-litical parallels between the "capitalist heydays" of the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the contemporary era. Economically, he argued, all three periods were marked by "major economic

  • 2() CHAPTER I It probably should not be su11Jrising, in light of tllf'ir scholarly expertise

    an l groups." For examp e, 11 d . . tl e fedenl minimum wage, t ielf

    . tl fwore ra1smcr l . . ' , t strongly and cons1sten y ' . 1 l t> " l v1lue of the minimulll wagt o

    . . l . e allowec t ie rt.1 ' l " . Elected rerxesentatwes MV l 19''0 "1oreover my ana ys1s m O'* . the ate o s. '" ' decline by more than 4 o ~111~~ " 1 voting on a minimum wage increase clnpter 9 shows that electe o 1c1.1 s f . le poor enough to be directly Pa~d no attention at all to the vie,bvs o dpe~p11l.ysis indicates that this sort of l. l ge My roa er ,u ' . l affected by that po icy c ian " . r common pattern in Amencan po -unresponsiveness is no anomaly, but ,1 ve Y icy making. . . f conventional political-economic mocl-

    The gap between the pred1ct1ons o . d.e111ocr1cy also reflects the pro-l k f Amencan ' 1 els and the actua wor mgs o d' t s in connecting specific po icy

    . 1 . f d by or mary c1 izen 1 t k found dill icu ties ace d . t Economic analvses o ten a e l . l es m mteres s. ' 1 . Proposals to t ielf own va u ' c eople on many issues t iey me

    . c . t d- but ior many p such connections ior gr,m e , 1 . . np11lses often fail to get trans-

    . 1 g Ega itanan n 1. misconstrned or snnp y nussm . . . . d t grlSp the polic:y imp icabons d' . ry citizens o no ' hted into policy because or ma l . l . t r 7 I show that almost two-' . 1 ~ exm1p e m c MP e ' of their egalitanan va ues. or ' ' l tl . tl1ey should in ta.xes never-

    l tl rich pay ess ian . . l thirds of the people w 10 say ie . t tl 1t only affects the nc iest . l c d . l est-ite tax-a ax i,

    theless favor repealmg t ie ie era . , d st"nd the political economy . attempt to un er " . f 1-2% of taxpayers. Any seno~s 1. vith the political psychology 0 of the New Gilded Age reqmres grapp mg \

    ;;c; Dahl (1982), li2. . z (1999 2004). I s; Bembou (1996); Perotti (19%); Rodrigue . , of the American political system tot 1e

    ' f ti responsiveness 51

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    CllAPTER I

    American votffs and with the real li111ihtions . . . . democratic policy making. ' . of public opm1on as a basis for

    Escalating Pconomic inequality . . . . . . ocratic ideals. The nature of ti . pto~le~ 1'11 c. l uc1al challenge to America's dem-1 I I l,1 c l,l enge Ins bee . I i" IC iae Kinsley: "Accordina t f. .1. . ' . n mce y captured by

    I t-> o our ouuumg cloet t I myt l, we are all created eqll'll 111cl ti t mien anc our national ti . . ' ' leu I s up to us I 1 .

    ungs is mitigated in two ways: first b . I . . n.eq ua ity Ill material second, by full civic equ1lity I .. t , y eq.u,1 opp01 tumty at the start and I ' c esp1 e material