IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04380064.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Middle-Class Politics: A Force for Equality or Inequality ?

Author

Listed:
  • Bradley Smith

    (UPN - Université Paris Nanterre, CREA (EA 370) - Centre de Recherches Anglophones - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre, UPN LCE - Université Paris Nanterre - UFR Langues et cultures étrangères - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre)

Abstract

The 1950s saw the emergence of the ideology that the United States had become a "middle-class society," thanks in part to the political legacy of the New Deal. Between the development of a welfare state, higher taxes on upper incomes and a policy of home ownership, many working-class Americans were able to swell the ranks of the middle classes, while wealthier Americans saw their share of income decline. The middle classes thus appear to be a political engine for equality. However, since the late 1970s, the United States has witnessed a return to levels of economic inequality not seen since the 1920s. Some blamed this on the greed of high finance; others, on the irresponsibility of the over-indebted working and middle classes. Without denying that there is some truth in these analyses, this paper highlights the central political role played by the middle classes in the dynamic that led to widening inequalities and the subprime crisis. Paradoxically, the middle classes can also be a driving force behind inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Bradley Smith, 2017. "Middle-Class Politics: A Force for Equality or Inequality ?," Post-Print hal-04380064, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04380064
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04380064. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.