While recent studies have highlighted the phenomenon and risks of increased inequalities between the top and the bottom of society, little research has so far been carried out on trends relating to the median income range that generally represents the middle class. This volume examines the following questions: what are the main transformations in the world of work over the last 20 years in terms of the labour market, social dialogue, and conditions of work, wages and incomes that may have affected the middle class? How has the middle class been altered by the financial and economic crisis? What are the long-term trends for the middle class in Europe?
Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.
This volume delves into the study of the world’s emerging middle class. With essays on Europe, the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the book studies recent trends and developments in middle class evolution at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It reconsiders the conceptualization of the middle class, with a focus on the diversity of middle class formation in different regions and zones of world society. It also explores middle class lifestyles and everyday experiences, including experiences of social mobility, feelings of insecurity and anxiety, and even middle class engagement with social activism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book provides a sophisticated analysis of this new and rapidly expanding socioeconomic group and puts forth some provocative ideas for intellectual and policy debates. It will be of importance to students and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, political studies, Latin American studies, and Asian Studies.
In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.
Drawing inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu’s social space theory, this book provides an unprecedent overview of class relations, covering topics such as class polarisation, cultural reproduction, political orientations, and globalisation. The book applies Bourdieusian social space approach to show how class boundaries have been maintained or transformed in different European countries. Based on quantiative data, it proposes a renewal of the analysis of distances, divides, and relations of domination between social classes, documenting objective and symbolic boundaries that form the basis of individuals’ living and working conditions in 11 European countries. Focusing on transformations of wealth inequalities, education strategies, and European labour markets, the book examines the role of cultural, economic and social capital. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, in particular to those studying social and wealth inequalities in a comparative perspective and Master's students in European studies.
The response of the middle classes to the financial crisis of 2008 is a central theme in the political systems of most developed, Western countries. This book approaches middle class politics from a historical perspective, looking at its progression since the early 1900s. The middle classes contributed significantly and in various ways to the evolution of mass politics in the West, with middle class intellectuals oriented to social and political reform, such as Leonard Hobhouse, Herbert Croly and Leon Bourgeois, influencing the setup of politics and the building of institutions in the early 20th century, and with lower-middle class disaffection fuelling protest politics in the 1890s and 1900s. The rise of Fascism in the interwar period owed much to the perception of liquidation permeating the middle classes in the 1920s and the 1930s as a result of post-World War I hardship and the Crash of 1929-31. Conversely, mass affluence during the “trente glorieuses” was the result of the post-World War II growth strategies adopted by conservatives and social democrats alike. The rise of Thatcherism led to the emergence of a more consumerist and market-oriented middle class that enjoyed a high living standard, but was subjected simultaneously to the turbulences of globalization and the fluctuations of the markets. Political realignments that are currently taking shape after the Crash of 2008 are related to the loss of status and purchasing power of the vast middle class formed during the postwar years. It is also of historical significance to compare various middle class responses in the 2010s to those to the Crash of the 1920s and 1930s. Although authoritarianism and Fascism were the ultimate outcomes of interwar politics, there were, and still are, viable democratic and socially inclusive alternatives.
Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities--from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime--stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy. Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work. "Wilson is the keenest liberal analyst of the most perplexing of all American problems...[This book is] more ambitious and more accessible than anything he has done before." --The New Yorker
This book explores the new politics of class in 21st century Britain. It shows how the changing shape of the class structure since 1945 has led political parties to change, which has both reduced class voting and increased class non-voting. This argument is developed in three stages. The first is to show that there has been enormous social continuity in class divisions. The authors demonstrate this using extensive evidence on class and educational inequality, perceptions of inequality, identity and awareness, and political attitudes over more than fifty years. The second stage is to show that there has been enormous political change in response to changing class sizes. Party policies, politicians' rhetoric, and the social composition of political elites have radically altered. Parties offer similar policies, appeal less to specific classes, and are populated by people from more similar backgrounds. Simultaneously the mass media have stopped talking about the politics of class. The third stage is to show that these political changes have had three major consequences. First, as Labour and the Conservatives became more similar, class differences in party preferences disappeared. Second, new parties, most notably UKIP, have taken working class voters from the mainstream parties. Third, and most importantly, the lack of choice offered by the mainstream parties has led to a huge increase in class-based abstention from voting. Working class people have become much less likely to vote. In that sense, Britain appears to have followed the US down a path of working class political exclusion, ultimately undermining the representativeness of our democracy. They conclude with a discussion of the Brexit referendum and the role that working class alienation played in its historic outcome.
The New York Times bestseller from CNN Political Commentator and 2020 former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, this thought-provoking and prescient call-to-action outlines the urgent steps America must take, including Universal Basic Income (UBI), to stabilize our economy amid rapid technological change and automation. The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. Not in the distant future--now. One recent estimate predicts 45 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next twelve years--jobs that won't be replaced. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society? In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and automation software are making millions of Americans' livelihoods irrelevant. The consequences of these trends are already being felt across our communities in the form of political unrest, drug use, and other social ills. The future looks dire-but is it unavoidable? In The War on Normal People, Yang imagines a different future--one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. At this vision's core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income-and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls "human capitalism."
