Download or read book Teaching Economic Inequality and Capitalism in Contemporary America written by Kristin Haltinner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses pedagogical solutions that enable students to see how capitalist processes and economic inequalities intersect and shape our assumptions and behaviours. The contributors provide thoughtful reflections on the struggles and opportunities instructors face in teaching about these topics while competing against the invisibility of capitalist forces and prevalent social myths, such as “anyone who works hard can achieve”. This book will not only help instructors empower students to recognize economic injustice and its interaction with capitalist organization, but also develops and acts on transformative solutions. Through analysis of the classed dimensions of the current political, economics, and cultural climate, as well as presenting novel lesson plans and classroom activities, this book is of great value for college and university professors.

Download or read book Schooling in Capitalist America written by Samuel Bowles and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This seminal work . . . establishes a persuasive new paradigm."--Contemporary Sociology No book since Schooling in Capitalist America has taken on the systemic forces hard at work undermining our education system. This classic reprint is an invaluable resource for radical educators. Samuel Bowles is research professor and director of the behavioral sciences program at the Santa Fe Institute, and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts. Herbert Gintis is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and emeritus professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts.

Download or read book Post Industrial Capitalism written by Joel I. Nelson and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1995-07-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work is provocative and ambitious and the writing is clear. --Choice "It is a topic in need of systematic analysis. . . . Joel I. Nelson understands and, in fact, has mastered the issues. . . . It will undoubtedly be a major contribution. . . . His approach is fresh and refreshing. . . . He has the appropriate conceptual tools to complete his synthesis. . . . I believe not only scholars--sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians, would find Post-Industrial Capitalism useful but policymakers might also find it of interest. . . . The book can also be used as a text in an advanced undergraduate class and in a graduate seminar. . . . Nelson′s thesis is coherent and logically developed. . . . I imagine this book as a college text or on a desk in Washington, DC. . . . Nelson′s last book Economic Inequality was a huge success. . . . Certainly the many who relied on it in their teaching and research will welcome and use Post-Industrial Capitalism." --Lionel L. Lewis, State University of New York at Buffalo "Too often authors focus only on the positive aspects or on the downside of postindustrialism. Joel I. Nelson is proposing something that fits neatly between the two camps. . . . Nelson′s strategy of building a new explanation based on a synthesis of these older approaches is very attractive. . . . There are no other books that attempt this. . . . Post-Industrial Capitalism might also be used in an advanced undergraduate course on economic sociology or social change. . . . [It] will be also acquired by professionals in sociology, social work, political science, and economics. . . . The sequence of the topics are clear and concise. . . . Each chapter pulls together arguments that--heretofore--have been scattered across numerous books and articles (and across disciplines for that matter)." --Charles M. Tolbert II, Professor of Sociology and Rural Sociology, Louisiana State University The social and economic well-being of many Americans is increasingly at risk. Disparities in earnings and wealth are escalating, reversing a century of declining inequality. Excesses of the free market are growing-and growing more difficult to contain. Politics are increasingly conservative across the ideological spectrum, with economic competitiveness considered more important than equality and humanitarian aid. Post-Industrial Capitalism offers an alternative to the dominant and unsuccessful Marxist and industrialist views by providing a framework for explaining the widening polarization within American society. This work demonstrates a more comprehensive explanation of inequality and locates its source in the transformation of American business. It provides a fresh illustration of Schumpeter′s insistence on the ability of capitalism to develop by creatively destroying its past. It not only describes the shifts in corporate resources, illustrates their use by the corporate sector, and traces their implications for inequality across the institutional spectrum, but also demonstrates how these strategies have been used by companies to intensify competition, effect greater political control, and widen the economic gap in America. Scholars interested in the question of modernity and post-industrialization, theorists of multiple theoretical persuasions, and students interested in social stratification, inequality, and social change will find Postindustrial Capitalism to be extremely valuable.

Download or read book Capitalism and Equality in America written by Peter L. Berger and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1987 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive work, along with its companion volume (see listing below), provides a thorough review of modern capitalism by some of today's most knowledgeable scholars. Contributors include: Peter L. Berger, Boston University; Samuel McCracken, Boston University; Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University; Edgar K. Browning, Texas A & M University; Walter D. Connor, Boston University; Alan M. Kantrow, Harvard Business Review; Laura L. Nash, Harvard University's Center for Business and Government; Richard John Neuhaus, Rockford Institute's Center on Religion and Society; Stephen Miller, author of Special Interest Groups in American Politics; Marc F. Plattner, author of Rousseau's State of Nature; Delba Winthrop, Harvard University. Co-published with the Institute for Educational Affairs.

Download or read book Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Economic Disparity written by Cory Wright-Maley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Economic Disparity addresses the intersections between democratic education and economic inequality in American society. Drawing upon well-established theoretical constructs in the literature on democratic citizenship as well as recent events, this volume outlines the ways in which students can not only be educated about democracy, but become actively engaged in the social issues of their time. The collection begins with an examination of how the confluence of capitalism and education have problematized the current model of democratic education, before transitioning into discussions of how teachers can confront economic disparity both economically and civically in the classroom. The authors then introduce a variety of ways in which teachers can engage and empower students’ civic action at all grade levels. As a final component, the volume explores new avenues for civic action, including the use of social media for democratic engagement in schools and opportunities for critical reflection and cross-cultural dialogue. This book is a valuable resource for both scholars interested in the research on democratic education and practicing teachers wishing to turn their students into critical, active citizens.

Download or read book Inequality Boom and Bust written by Howard J. Sherman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is enormous inequality between the income and wealth of the richest 1 percent and all other Americans. While the top 1 percent own 42 percent of all wealth in America, the lower half on the income ladder has only 2 percent of all of the wealth. This book develops a viewpoint contrary to the prevailing conservative paradigm, setting out both reasons for this inequality and the impact of this. To explain inequality, conservative economists focus on individual characteristics such as intelligence and hard work. This book puts forward new evidence to show that changes in economic inequality are primarily due to characteristics inherent in the standard operation of capitalist institutions. Furthermore, the authors seek to explain the cycle of boom and bust by considering political and social factors often overlooked by conservative economists. This book also explores how wealth influences political policies in a way that increases economic inequality even more than its present level. Through analysis of American political and economic institutions, Inequality, Boom, and Bust presents concrete steps for an activist, progressive policy to greatly reduce inequality through free healthcare, free higher education, and reduced unemployment.

Download or read book The Politics of Inequality written by Michael Thompson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early days of the American republic, political thinkers have maintained that a grossly unequal division of property, wealth, and power would lead to the erosion of democratic life. Yet over the past thirty-five years, neoconservatives and neoliberals alike have redrawn the tenets of American liberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in our current mainstream political discourse, in which the politics of economic inequality are rarely discussed. In this impassioned book, Michael J. Thompson reaches back into America's rich intellectual history to reclaim the politics of inequality from the distortion of recent American conservatism. He begins by tracing the development of the idea of economic inequality as it has been conceived by political thinkers throughout American history. Then he considers the change in ideas and values that have led to the acceptance and occasional legitimization of economic divisions. Thompson argues that American liberalism has made a profound departure from its original practice of egalitarian critique. It has all but abandoned its antihierarchical and antiaristocratic discourse. Only by resuscitating this tradition can democracy again become meaningful to Americans. The intellectuals who pioneered egalitarian thinking in America believed political and social relations should be free from all forms of domination, servitude, and dependency. They wished to expose the antidemocratic character of economic life under capitalism and hoped to prevent the kind of inequalities that compromise human dignity and freedom-the core principles of early American politics. In their wisdom is a much broader, more compelling view of democratic life and community than we have today, and with this book, Thompson eloquently and adamantly fights to recover this crucial strand of political thought. In this impassioned book, Michael J. Thompson reaches back into America's rich intellectual history to reclaim the politics of inequality from the distortion of recent American conservatism. He begins by tracing the development of the idea of economic inequality as it has been conceived by political thinkers throughout American history. Then he considers the change in ideas and values that have led to the acceptance and occasional legitimization of economic divisions. Thompson argues that American liberalism has made a profound departure from its original practice of egalitarian critique; it has all but abandoned its antihierarchical and antiaristocratic discourse. Only by resuscitating this tradition can democracy again become meaningful to Americans. The intellectuals who pioneered egalitarian thinking in America believed political and social relations should be free from all forms of domination, servitude, and dependency. They wished to expose the antidemocratic character of economic life under capitalism and hoped to prevent the kind of inequalities that compromise human dignity and freedom--the core principles of early American politics. In their wisdom is a much broader, more compelling view of democratic life and community than we have today, and with this book, Thompson eloquently and adamantly fights to recover this crucial strand of political thought.

Download or read book Post Pandemic Social Studies written by Wayne Journell and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COVID-19 offers a unique opportunity to transform the K–12 social studies curriculum, but history suggests that changes to the formal curriculum will not come easily or automatically. This book was conceived in the space between the dismantling of our old way of life and the anticipation of what comes next. The authors in this volume—leading voices in social studies education—make the case that COVID-19 has exposed deficiencies in much of the traditional narrative found in textbooks and state curriculum standards, and they offer guidance for how educators can use the pandemic to pursue a more justice-oriented, critical examination of contemporary society. Divided into two sections, this volume first focuses on how elementary and secondary educators might teach about the pandemic, both as a contentious public issue and as a recent historical event. The second section asks teachers to reconsider many long-standing aspects of social studies teaching and learning, from content and instructional approaches to testing. Book Features: Guidance on how to teach about the COVID-19 crisis as a recent, controversial historical event.Examples of teaching approaches and classroom projects that align with the C3 Framework.Lessons about COVID-19 for use in K–12 classrooms, as well as chapters on the history of pandemics and on how teachers can help students cope with death and grief.A critical examination of the idea of American exceptionalism, the role of race and class in U.S. society, and fundamental practices within social studies education. Contributors: Sohyun An, Varenka Servín Arcos, Brooke Blevins, Lisa Brown Buchanan, Yun-Wen Chan, Ya-Fang Cheng, Rebecca C. Christ, Christopher H. Clark, Kristen E. Duncan, Leonel Pérez Expósito, Anna Falkner, David Gerwin, Maggie Guggenheimer; Michael Gurlea, Tracy Hargrove, Jennifer Hauver, Mark E. Helmsing, David Hicks, Karon LeCompte, Kevin R. Magill, Catherine Mas, Sarah A. Mathews, Carly Muetterties, Amber Neal, Katherina A. Payne, Noreen Naseem Rodríguez, Sandra J. Schmidt, Lynn Sikma, Amy Taylor, Stephanie van Hover, Cathryn van Kessel, Bretton A. Varga, Cara Ward, Tyler Woodward, Holly Wright

Download or read book Income Inequality in America written by Stacey M. Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-01-18 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a one-stop resource for understanding the full dimensions of income inequality in the United States, including chief socioeconomic drivers of inequality and proposals to reduce the widening gap between rich and poor in America. Carefully researched and scrupulously nonpartisan, this resource examines the history and current state of income inequality in the United States, with a particular focus on key issues, events, and political/economic philosophies relevant to the enduring divide between rich and poor in America. One of the most valuable aspects of the book is that it surveys the complex history of income inequality in an easy-to-understand fashion that helps readers identify and assess the ways in which income inequality shapes many aspects of modern American society. The book is even-handed in its treatment of the academic and policy debates over the causes, consequences, and appropriate response to today's growing inequality. In addition, this resource provides insights into the financial underpinnings of debt and wealth and capitalism and how all of those factors perpetuate themselves. It also examines problems and challenges related to child care, education, transportation, housing, and saving for retirement that hamper so many poor people in their efforts to lift their households out of poverty.

Download or read book Analyzing Oppression written by Ann E. Cudd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing Oppression presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? Cudd argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression. This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. Cudd argues that oppression is an institutionally structured harm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes the central feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears to absolve society from responsibility. While on Cudd's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. Cudd examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. She discusses strategies that groups have used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. In the concluding chapter Cudd proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual is only possible when we achieve freedom for all others.

Download or read book Third Wave Capitalism written by John Ehrenreich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Third Wave Capitalism, John Ehrenreich documents the emergence of a new stage in the history of American capitalism. Just as the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century gave way to corporate capitalism in the twentieth, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism."Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the 1 percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, personal misery, and political rage; the apotheosis of the individual and the deterioration of democracy; increases in life expectancy and out-of-control medical costs; an African American president and the incarceration of a large percentage of the black population.Ehrenreich asserts that these phenomena are evidence that a virulent, individualist, winner-take-all ideology and a virtual fusion of government and business have subverted the American dream. Greed and economic inequality reinforce the sense that each of us is "on our own." The result is widespread lack of faith in collective responses to our common problems. The collapse of any organized opposition to business demands makes political solutions ever more difficult to imagine. Ehrenreich traces the impact of these changes on American health care, school reform, income distribution, racial inequities, and personal emotional distress. Not simply a lament, Ehrenreich's book seeks clues for breaking out of our current stalemate and proposes a strategy to create a new narrative in which change becomes possible.

Download or read book Capitalism and Inequality written by G.P. Manish and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capitalism and Inequality rejects the popular view that attributes the recent surge in inequality to a failure of market institutions. Bringing together new and original research from established scholars, it analyzes the inequality inherent in a free market from an economic and historical perspective. In the process, the question of whether the recent increase in inequality is the result of crony capitalism and government intervention is explored in depth. The book features sections on theoretical perspectives on inequality, the political economy of inequality, and the measurement of inequality. Chapters explore several key questions such as the difference between the effects of market-driven inequality and the inequality caused by government intervention; how the inequality created by regulation affects those who are less well-off; and whether the economic growth that accompanies market-driven inequality always benefits an elite minority while leaving the vast majority behind. The main policy conclusions that emerge from this analysis depart from those that are currently popular. The authors in this book argue that increasing the role of markets and reducing the extent of regulation is the best way to lower inequality while ensuring greater material well-being for all sections of society. This key text makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on inequality and markets and is essential reading for students, scholars, and policymakers.

Download or read book The Vision of a Real Free Market Society written by Marcellus Andrews and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free market capitalism has created a divided American society. Conservative economic and social policy thinking drove the Right’s Project from 1980 to its collapse in 2008, leaving the world in ruins and fascism on the march. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society challenges the Left to create new forms of the market economy that promote efficiency and equality while permanently thwarting concentrated power. Many recent commentators have offered policy recommendations based on existing economic institutions. By contrast, this book calls for root-and-branch changes to the inherent structure of American capitalism. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society: Re-Imagining American Freedom presents a Left-egalitarian case for limited government that overcomes the failures of conservatism while rescuing economic justice from the weaknesses of tax and transfer liberalism. The book explains why the system fails so many Americans in so many different ways, and outlines how we can build a better economy that simultaneously promotes freedom and social justice while crippling the powers of America’s oligarchs. Exploring the idea of a left-wing case for strong but small government, the book makes the case for fundamental reforms that will lead to a truly free and fair society. This provocative book will be of great relevance to anyone with an interest in politics, philosophy or economics, and will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions concerning the prospects for combining justice with fairness in the modern world.

Download or read book Capital in the Twenty First Century written by Thomas Piketty and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

Download or read book Capitalists Arise written by Peter Georgescu and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Showing how the short-term thinking spawned by shareholder primacy lies at the root of our current economic malaise and social breakdown, this sobering depiction offers concrete actions that capitalists themselves can take to create a better future. --

Download or read book Class War written by Benjamin I. Page and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent battles in Washington over how to fix America’s fiscal failures strengthened the widespread impression that economic issues sharply divide average citizens. Indeed, many commentators split Americans into two opposing groups: uncompromising supporters of unfettered free markets and advocates for government solutions to economic problems. But such dichotomies, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs contend, ring false. In Class War? they present compelling evidence that most Americans favor free enterprise and practical government programs to distribute wealth more equitably. At every income level and in both major political parties, majorities embrace conservative egalitarianism—a philosophy that prizes individualism and self-reliance as well as public intervention to help Americans pursue these ideals on a level playing field. Drawing on hundreds of opinion studies spanning more than seventy years, including a new comprehensive survey, Page and Jacobs reveal that this worldview translates to broad support for policies aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor and creating genuine opportunity for all. They find, for example, that across economic, geographical, and ideological lines, most Americans support higher minimum wages, improved public education, wider access to universal health insurance coverage, and the use of tax dollars to fund these programs. In this surprising and heartening assessment, Page and Jacobs provide our new administration with a popular mandate to combat the economic inequity that plagues our nation.

Download or read book Disposable Americans written by Paul Buchheit and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inequality has dramatically increased in America, with few solutions on the horizon. Serious social inequalities persist. For example, the 14 richest Americans earned enough money from their investments in 2015 to hire two million preschool teachers (while the USA ranks low among developed countries in preschool enrollment). Following the Great Recession, the richest one percent took 116 percent of the new income gains, a statistic caused by so many middle-class Americans moving backward, many losing investments in property and experiencing interruptions in work. Author Paul Buchheit looks hopefully to solutions in a book that vividly portrays the rapidly changing inequality of American society. More Americans have become "disposable" as middle-class jobs have disappeared at an alarming rate. Buchheit presents innovative proposals that could quickly begin to reverse these trends, including a guaranteed basic income drawn from new revenues, such as a Financial Speculation Tax and a Carbon Tax. Discussing the challenges and obstacles to such measures, he finds optimism in past successes in American history. Ideal for classroom assignment, the book uniquely pairs historical events with current, real-life struggles faced by citizens, pointing to measures that can improve personal and social well-being and trust in government.