The Politics of Inequality in the United States

Catalog description

Economic inequality has been soaring in the United States since the 1970s, making the nation more unequal than it has been since the Gilded Age, and more unequal than any of the world's other wealthy democracies. How has government, politics, and public policy related to the emergence of such stark inequality? And to what extent has government and public policy managed to mitigate it? We will investigate these questions by examining the processes through which citizens seek to influence politics, the operation of government institutions, and specific policies. We will probe how rising economic inequality interacts with long-standing inequalities of race, ethnicity, and gender. Overall, the course analyzes whether such high rates of inequality can co-exist with democracy. (GOVT-AM)