Abstract
In Chapter 4, I examine the general trend in the orientation of laws and institutions and income inequality in the United States from the mid-1930s through the 1970s. I show that laws were made more inclusive and the income share of the top 1 percent decreased. I then explore some explanations for why we have such a mixed record of ameliorating income inequality in the United States when our political system is based on equality. Finding these explanations lacking, the chapter ends in suspense.
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Notes
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Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “Remarks by the President at ‘Remembering Franklin D. Roosevelt,’ 50th Anniversary Commemorative Services,” The Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia, April 12, 1995, cited in Theda Skocpol, “The G.I. Bill and U.S. Social Policy, Past and Future,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 14 (Summer 1997), pp. 95–6.
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Nixon enforced Lyndon Johnson’s affirmative action plan, explains Katznelson, because he wanted “to embarrass organized labor, and enlarge a growing schism between the civil rights movement and white members of unions who might be persuaded to shift their votes to the Republican Party.” See Katznelson, I. (2005). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 147.
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This paragraph and the following two take considerably from: Stelzner, Mark. 2014. “Political Contest, Policy Control, and Inequality in the United States,” Review of Keynesian Economics, Vol. 2 No. 3, Autumn 2014. pp. 365–83.
Vogel, D. (1989). Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America. New York: Basic Books. p. 146.
In talking about the nation’s commitment to equality, Lincoln was quoting the Declaration of Independence because the only mention of equality in the Constitution, before the Reconstruction amendments, was in “granting each state an equal number of senators.” See Foner, E. (1998). The Story of American Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 107.
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Lindsey, A. (1964). The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Taken from Montgomery, D. (1987). “The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925.” Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press. p. 209.
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Stelzner, M. (2015). Mixed Results. In: Economic Inequality and Policy Control in the United States. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388117_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388117_4
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