Leslie McCall.
“Americans’ Beliefs About Inequality: What, When, Who and Why?” Chapter 3 of The Undeserving Rich: Americans’ Beliefs
About Inequality, Opportunity and Redistribution (Cambridge University
Press, 2013). Group 1-2
Martin Gilens.
Chapters 1 - 3 of Why Americans Hate
Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (University of
Chicago Press, 2000). Group 3
The fact the Americans are against inequality, raises many questions in my head as a non American! As per my small knowledge about Americans they strongly believe in individualism and they believe that citizens are responsible for themselves and each on should work hard to earn his/her living ,so eventually each on gets what s/he deserves !
ReplyDeleteAlso based on a survey 78% of Americans don't think that the government should be the answer for all their problems .All this raise questions like : how Americans think they can achieve income equality? would they seek government intervention ? and if the government intervene, does that contradict with the concept of individualism and the principle of deserve ?
Not surprisingly, McCall's survey examination shows that Americans do care about income inequality. What I took away from the article is that Americans must feel inequality ,in itself, contributes to the economic misfortunes of themselves and others before they become deeply concerned. However, this also runs counter to the narrative you speak of Sahar. I believe Americans are also concerned about the availability of opportunity and unenthusiastic about towards government redistributions of wealth (raising taxes on the one percent), especially if they seem removed from improving the economic lot of low-income and middle-income Americans.
ReplyDeleteMy take away from McCall's work was that whilst Americans have emerging views about inequality which are tied to access to opportunity and personal impact, they remain ambivalent about many of the things that we non-Americans have mostly accepted e.g that inequality might require some sort of redistribution strategy.
ReplyDeleteHere is a good summary of inequality in America and the difference between perceived and actual inequality. Its a short video but well worth watching if you haven't already seen it. Andrew Gill
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM