The Road to Inequality

The Road to Inequality

Author: Clayton Nall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1108417590

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Shows how highways facilitated the sorting of Democrats and Republicans along urban-suburban lines, polarizing the politics of metropolitan development.


Neoliberalism and the Road to Inequality and Stagnation

Neoliberalism and the Road to Inequality and Stagnation

Author: Palley, Thomas I.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2021-11-05

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1802200088

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tom Palley has made a significant contribution to understanding the meaning and significance of neoliberalism. This chronicle collects some of his best work to explain how global adoption of neoliberal policies over the past thirty years has increased income inequality and created tendencies to stagnation.


Segregation by Design

Segregation by Design

Author: Jessica Trounstine

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1108637086

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Segregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation. Starting in the early twentieth century, cities have used their power of land use control to determine the location and availability of housing, amenities (such as parks), and negative land uses (such as garbage dumps). The result has been segregation - first within cities and more recently between them. Documenting changing patterns of segregation and their political mechanisms, Trounstine argues that city governments have pursued these policies to enhance the wealth and resources of white property owners at the expense of people of color and the poor. Contrary to leading theories of urban politics, local democracy has not functioned to represent all residents. The result is unequal access to fundamental local services - from schools, to safe neighborhoods, to clean water.


Recovering Inequality

Recovering Inequality

Author: Steve Kroll-Smith

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2018-08-15

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1477316116

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A lethal mix of natural disaster, dangerously flawed construction, and reckless human actions devastated San Francisco in 1906 and New Orleans in 2005. Eighty percent of the built environments of both cities were destroyed in the catastrophes, and the poor, the elderly, and the medically infirm were disproportionately among the thousands who perished. These striking similarities in the impacts of cataclysms separated by a century impelled Steve Kroll-Smith to look for commonalities in how the cities recovered from disaster. In Recovering Inequality, he builds a convincing case that disaster recovery and the reestablishment of social and economic inequality are inseparable. Kroll-Smith demonstrates that disaster and recovery in New Orleans and San Francisco followed a similar pattern. In the immediate aftermath of the flooding and the firestorm, social boundaries were disordered and the communities came together in expressions of unity and support. But these were quickly replaced by other narratives and actions, including the depiction of the poor as looters, uneven access to disaster assistance, and successful efforts by the powerful to take valuable urban real estate from vulnerable people. Kroll-Smith concludes that inexorable market forces ensured that recovery efforts in both cities would reestablish the patterns of inequality that existed before the catastrophes. The major difference he finds between the cities is that, from a market standpoint, New Orleans was expendable, while San Francisco rose from the ashes because it was a hub of commerce.


The Road to Inequality

The Road to Inequality

Author: Clayton Nall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1108280978

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Road to Inequality shows how policies that shape geographic space change our politics, focusing on the effects of the largest public works project in American history: the federal highway system. For decades, federally subsidized highways have selectively facilitated migration into fast-growing suburbs, producing an increasingly non-urban Republican electorate. This book examines the highway programs' policy origins at the national level and traces how these intersected with local politics and interests to facilitate complex, mutually-reinforcing processes that have shaped America's growing urban-suburban divide and, with it, the politics of metropolitan public investment. As Americans have become more polarized on urban-suburban lines, attitudes towards transportation policy - a once quintessentially 'local' and non-partisan policy area - are now themselves driven by partisanship, endangering investments in metropolitan programs that provide access to opportunity for millions of Americans.


The Political Geography of Inequality

The Political Geography of Inequality

Author: Pablo Beramendi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-03-26

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1107378281

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book addresses two questions - why some political systems have more centralized systems of interpersonal redistribution than others, and why some political unions make larger efforts to equalize resources among their constituent units than others. This book presents a new theory of the origin of fiscal structures in systems with several levels of government. The argument points to two major factors to account for the variation in redistribution: the interplay between economic geography and political representation on the one hand, and the scope of interregional economic externalities on the other. To test the empirical implications derived from the argument, the book relies on in-depth studies of the choice of fiscal structures in unions as diverse as the European Union, Canada and the United States in the aftermath of the Great Depression; Germany before and after Reunification; and Spain after the transition to democracy.


Is Inequality in America Irreversible?

Is Inequality in America Irreversible?

Author: Chuck Collins

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2018-05-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781509522507

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

We are living in a time of extreme inequality: America’s three richest people now own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. Although most accept that this is grotesque, many politicians accept it as irreversible. In this book, leading US researcher and activist Chuck Collins succinctly diagnoses the drivers of rampant inequality, arguing that such disparities have their roots in 40 years of the powerful rigging the system in their favor. He proposes a far-reaching policy agenda, analyzes the barriers to progress, and shows how transformative local campaigns can become a national movement for change. This book is a powerful analysis of how the plutocracy sold us a toxic lie, and what we can do to reverse inequality.


The Great Leveler

The Great Leveler

Author: Walter Scheidel

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 0691184313

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent—and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon.


Class Dismissed

Class Dismissed

Author: John Marsh

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1583672702

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Class Dismissed, John Marsh debunks a myth cherished by journalists, politicians, and economists: that growing poverty and inequality in the United States can be solved through education. Using sophisticated analysis combined with personal experience in the classroom, Marsh not only shows that education has little impact on poverty and inequality, but that our mistaken beliefs actively shape the way we structure our schools and what we teach in them. Rather than focus attention on the hierarchy of jobs and power--where most jobs require relatively little education, and the poor enjoy very little political power--money is funneled into educational endeavors that ultimately do nothing to challenge established social structures, and in fact reinforce them. And when educational programs prove ineffective at reducing inequality, the ones whom these programs were intended to help end up blaming themselves. Marsh's struggle to grasp the connection between education, poverty, and inequality is both powerful and poignant.


Engine of Inequality

Engine of Inequality

Author: Karen Petrou

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-03-03

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1119726743

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book to reveal how the Federal Reserve holds the key to making us more economically equal, written by an author with unparalleled expertise in the real world of financial policy Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy placed much greater focus on stabilizing the market than on helping struggling Americans. As a result, the richest Americans got a lot richer while the middle class shrank and economic and wealth inequality skyrocketed. In Engine of Inequality, Karen Petrou offers pragmatic solutions for creating more inclusive monetary policy and equality-enhancing financial regulation as quickly and painlessly as possible. Karen Petrou is a leading financial-policy analyst and consultant with unrivaled knowledge of what drives the decisions of federal officials and how big banks respond to financial policy in the real world. Instead of proposing legislation that would never pass Congress, the author provides an insider's look at politically plausible, high-impact financial policy fixes that will radically shift the equality balance. Offering an innovative, powerful, and highly practical solution for immediately turning around the enormous nationwide problem of economic inequality, this groundbreaking book: Presents practical ways America can and should tackle economic inequality with fast-acting results Provides revealing examples of exactly how bad economic inequality in America has become no matter how hard we all work Demonstrates that increasing inequality is disastrous for long-term economic growth, political action, and even personal happiness Explains why your bank's interest rates are still only a fraction of what they were even though the rich are getting richer than ever, faster than ever Reveals the dangers of FinTech and BigTech companies taking over banking Shows how Facebook wants to control even the dollars in your wallet Discusses who shares the blame for our economic inequality, including the Fed, regulators, Congress, and even economists Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America should be required reading for leaders, policymakers, regulators, media professionals, and all Americans wanting to ensure that the nation’s financial policy will be a force for promoting economic equality.