Unequal Democracy:
The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age
Larry M. Bartels

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Talking Points with Larry M. Bartels

ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"Economists tend to see economic inequality as the unhappy but unavoidable result of markets--working-class people have to become relatively poorer because they are competing in a globalized world. This book suggests that economists are wrong and that the growing inequality in America is not the product of world forces but of Republican administrations during which income grows more slowly, inequality soars, and no one notices because they pump up the economy during election years. Low-income people have very little influence but which party is in power makes a vast difference for their fate. If you care about economic justice, you need to seriously examine the powerful data in this book and recognize that we can choose a better, fairer society."--Gary Orfield, University of California, Los Angeles

"No political scientist is more widely or rightly respected than Larry Bartels, and Unequal Democracy is a brilliant book that only he could have written. The book proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the main fault for sizable socioeconomic inequalities in America lies not in our economy but in our increasingly polarized and partisan politics. With intellectual force, Unequal Democracy pulls back the sheets on Washington's pamper-the-rich policy process and offers ideas about how we can do better by average citizens and the poor. It is Bartels at his very best, and his very best is the best there is."--John J. DiIulio, Jr., University of Pennsylvania, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

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File created: 8/21/2008

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