Download or read book Middle Class and Welfare State written by Marlon Barbehön and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the relationship between the middle class and the welfare state. Taking an interpretive approach which understands the middle class as a socially constructed category, it combines discourse analysis, welfare state theory, and interpretive policy analysis in an innovative way to investigate how the middle class becomes a meaningful object of public debates and policymaking. Comparing Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the book reconstructs the prevalent images and meanings of the middle class from each country’s public debates and tracks how the middle classes with their various meanings and characteristics are entangled with the identification of societal problems, the articulation of political demands, and the construction of welfare policies. Ultimately, it shows how the formation and consolidation of different welfare regimes can be interpreted as specific ways of solving the puzzle of how to incorporate the middle class in the construction of a welfare state consensus. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative welfare state research, policy analysis, political sociology, political theory, and European and comparative politics.

Download or read book Stuck in the Middle written by Antonio Estache and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stuck in the Middle examines both economic and social public policy initiatives in its assertion that enhancing the welfare of people in developed and developing nations requires an explicit focus on the middle class. Contents Foreword 1. Overview: Fiscal Policy, Distribution, and the Middle Class 2. Stylized Facts on the Middle Class and the Development Process 3. The Future of Global Income Inequality 4. The Scope and Limits of Subsidies 5. Policies for Lower Global Wealth Inequality 6. Can Happiness Research Help Fiscal Policy? 7. The Politics of Effective and Sustainable Redistribution

Download or read book A New Contract with the Middle Class written by Richard V. Reeves and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A better future for the middle class is no longer an aspiration. It is a necessity. The disintegration of the American Dream is more visible than ever before. The understanding—the contract—that existed between individuals willing to work and contribute and a society willing to support those individuals when they needed it is falling apart. Now is the time to draft a new contract with America's middle class. One that rewards work and service, improves upward mobility, and reduces inequality. In A New Contract with the Middle Class Brookings senior fellows Isabel Sawhill and Richard Reeves outline the foundations of what that new contract should be, based on discussions they had across the country with middle-class Americans. Sawhill and Reeves' recommendations provide solutions to issues that came up time and time again in these conversations: money, time, relationships, health, and respect. Some of the bold recommendations included in A New Contract with the Middle Class: • Eliminate virtually all income taxes paid by the middle class. • Raise the minimum wage and subsidize wages below the median with a worker tax credit. • Offer scholarships for those who undertake at least a year of national service. • Ensure four weeks of paid leave per year. • Align school and working hours and boost child care to help working parents. America is only as strong as the American middle-class. A New Contract with the Middle Class proposes a new way forward.

Download or read book Islam Charity and Activism written by Janine A. Clark and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Middle East, Islamist charities and social welfare organizations play a major role in addressing the socioeconomic needs of Muslim societies, independently of the state. Through case studies of Islamic medical clinics in Egypt, the Islamic Center Charity Society in Jordan, and the Islah Women's Charitable Society in Yemen, Janine A. Clark examines the structure and dynamics of moderate Islamic institutions and their social and political impact. Questioning the widespread assumption that such organizations primarily serve the poorer classes, Clark argues that these organizations in fact are run by and for the middle class. Rather than the vertical recruitment or mobilization of the poor that they are often presumed to promote, Islamic social institutions play an important role in strengthening social networks that bind middle-class professionals, volunteers, and clients. Ties of solidarity that develop along these horizontal lines foster the development of new social networks and the diffusion of new ideas.

Download or read book The Vanishing Middle Class new epilogue written by Peter Temin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

Download or read book Forgotten Americans written by Isabel Sawhill and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Download or read book Not Only the Poor written by Robert E Goodin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1987 Not Only the Poor explores the self-interested involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state, particularly the middle class. Using evidence from Britain, America, and Australia, they show that the non-poor were crucial in the founding of the welfare state, and in all three countries the non-poor benefit extensively from key welfare programmes, including those ostensibly targeted on the poor. Goodin and Le Grand conclude that the beneficial involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state is probably inevitable, but this may be no bad thing, depending on the alternative and on the nature of the egalitarian ideal adopted.

Download or read book Income Inequality written by Janet C. Gornick and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This state-of-the-art volume presents comparative, empirical research on a topic that has long preoccupied scholars, politicians, and everyday citizens: economic inequality. While income and wealth inequality across all populations is the primary focus, the contributions to this book pay special attention to the middle class, a segment often not addressed in inequality literature. Written by leading scholars in the field of economic inequality, all 17 chapters draw on microdata from the databases of LIS, an esteemed cross-national data center based in Luxembourg. Using LIS data to structure a comparative approach, the contributors paint a complex portrait of inequality across affluent countries at the beginning of the 21st century. The volume also trail-blazes new research into inequality in countries newly entering the LIS databases, including Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa.

Download or read book Working with Class written by Daniel J. Walkowitz and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2003-07-11 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polls tell us that most Americans--whether they earn $20,000 or $200,000 a year--think of themselves as middle class. As this phenomenon suggests, "middle class" is a category whose definition is not necessarily self-evident. In this book, historian Daniel Walkowitz approaches the question of what it means to be middle class from an innovative angle. Focusing on the history of social workers--who daily patrol the boundaries of class--he examines the changed and contested meaning of the term over the last one hundred years. Walkowitz uses the study of social workers to explore the interplay of race, ethnicity, and gender with class. He examines the trade union movement within the mostly female field of social work and looks at how a paradigmatic conflict between blacks and Jews in New York City during the 1960s shaped late-twentieth-century social policy concerning work, opportunity, and entitlements. In all, this is a story about the ways race and gender divisions in American society have underlain the confusion about the identity and role of the middle class.

Download or read book Gender and Welfare in Mexico written by Nichole Sanders and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines the political and social influences behind the creation of the postrevolutionary Mexican welfare state in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Restoring the Middle Class through Wage Policy written by Oren M. Levin-Waldman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delivers a fresh and fascinating perspective on the issue of the minimum wage. While most discussions of the minimum wage place it at the center of a debate between those who oppose such a policy and argue it leads to greater unemployment, and those who favor it and argue it improves the economic well-being of low-income workers, Levin-Waldman makes the case for the minimum wage as a way to improve the well-being of middle-income workers, strengthen the US economy, reduce income inequality, and enhance democracy. Making a timely and original contribution to the defining issues of our time—the state of the middle class, the problem of inequality, and the crisis of democratic governance—Restoring the Middle Class through Wage Policy will be of interest to students and researchers considering the impact of such approaches across the fields of public policy, economics, and political science.

Download or read book The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution written by Ganesh Sitaraman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.

Download or read book Caring Capitalism written by Ronald M. Glassman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2000-07-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere one travels in the world, people are excited about the new high technology production system. But the global villagers are also perplexed about the new social service needs that seem to accompany the high-tech economy: child care needs for working couples, elder care facilities for infirm senior citizens, burgeoning health care costs accompanying high-tech medicine, nursery school and college tuition costs, and more. There has been a global response to these social service needs, and this book will present and analyse that response. For, a new phenomenon may be emerging, as contradictory as it may appear, a kind of 'caring capitalism' may arise, worldwide. This book explores the various attempts around the globe to create a system of 'caring capitalism' and why nations have been pressured by the 'new middle class' to do so.

Download or read book Race Money and the American Welfare State written by Michael E. Brown and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American welfare state is often blamed for exacerbating social problems confronting African Americans while failing to improve their economic lot. Michael K. Brown contends that our welfare system has in fact denied them the social provision it gives white citizens while stigmatizing them as recipients of government benefits for low income citizens. In his provocative history of America's "safety net" from its origins in the New Deal through much of its dismantling in the 1990s, Brown explains how the forces of fiscal conservatism and racism combined to shape a welfare state in which blacks are disproportionately excluded from mainstream programs.Brown describes how business and middle class opposition to taxes and spending limited the scope of the Social Security Act and work relief programs of the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s. These decisions produced a welfare state that relies heavily on privately provided health and pension programs and cash benefits for the poor. In a society characterized by pervasive racial discrimination, this outcome, Michael Brown makes clear, has led to a racially stratified welfare system: by denying African Americans work, whites limited their access to private benefits as well as to social security and other forms of social insurance, making welfare their "main occupation." In his conclusion, Brown addresses the implications of his argument for both conservative and liberal critiques of the Great Society and for policies designed to remedy inner-city poverty.

Download or read book Black Picket Fences written by Mary Pattillo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores an American demographic group too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. Nearly fifteen years later, this book remains a groundbreaking study of a group still underrepresented in the academic and public spheres. The result of living for three years in “Groveland,” a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, Black Picket Fences explored both the advantages the black middle class has and the boundaries they still face. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo showed a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal. Stark, moving, and still timely, the book is updated for this edition with a new epilogue by the author that details how the neighborhood and its residents fared in the recession of 2008, as well as new interviews with many of the same neighborhood residents featured in the original. Also included is a new foreword by acclaimed University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau.

Download or read book The Sinking Middle Class written by David Roediger and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sinking Middle Class challenges the “save the middle class” rhetoric that dominates our political imagination. The slogan misleads us regarding class, nation, and race. Talk of middle class salvation reinforces myths holding that the US is a providentially middle class nation. Implicitly white, the middle class becomes viewed as unheard amidst supposed concerns for racial justice and for the poor. Roediger shows how little the US has been a middle class nation. The term seldom appeared in US writing before 1900. Many white Americans were self-employed, but this social experience separated them from the contemporary middle class of today, overwhelmingly employed and surveilled. Today’s highly unequal US hardly qualifies as sustaining the middle class. The idea of the US as a middle class place required nurturing. Those doing that ideological work—from the business press, to pollsters, to intellectuals celebrating the results of free enterprise—gained little traction until the Depression and Cold War expanded the middle class brand. Much later, the book’s sections on liberal strategist Stanley Greenberg detail, “saving the middle class” entered presidential politics. Both parties soon defined the middle class to include over 90% of the population, precluding intelligent attention to the poor and the very rich. Resurrecting radical historical critiques of the middle class, Roediger argues that middle class identities have so long been shaped by debt, anxiety about falling, and having to sell one’s personality at work that misery defines a middle class existence as much as fulfillment.

Download or read book The Submerged State written by Suzanne Mettler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process.