Capitalism and Inequality

Catalog description

This class is about market economies: how they are theorized, how they operate, and how they affect the humans who live and work within them. The first part of this course offers an overview of major modern theorists of capitalism (with selections chosen for a political science audience), including Smith, Veblen, Schumpeter and Keynes. These thinkers have made influential contributions to debates about the proper role of government in regulating and shaping economic relations and conditions. We then turn to contemporary theories of distributive justice, including libertarianism and egalitarianism. The second half of the course explores realities of socioeconomic inequality, the experience of poverty in the U.S., as well as the kinds of policies which might alleviate or resolve various dimensions of inequality and poverty. This course prepares students to evaluate public policies and articulate policy positions while attending to their economic and human costs.