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3 - American Beliefs about Income Inequality

What, When, Who, and Why?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2013

Leslie McCall
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
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Summary

It is often said that Americans do not care about income inequality; if they did, they would be marching in the streets at its historic rise (well before 2011) and pressing for redistributive policies to reduce it. It is even suggested that a shift in social norms toward greater acceptance of inequality was a major factor contributing to the rise. Without public support, the argument goes, how could the egalitarian institutions of the post–World War II era – a period when tax rates on the rich were more than double what they are today, unions were strong, the minimum wage was high, and big employers provided ample benefits to their employees – have eroded to such a significant degree? Indeed, instead of worrying about rising inequality, Americans persist in believing in the importance of hard work in getting ahead, even as the distance needed to travel to the top gets longer by the day. Faith in the American dream of upward mobility appears, astonishingly, to be as strong as ever.

Although such arguments ring true to our ears and conform to our conservative image of Americans as individualistic and antigovernment, they are not a very good barometer of beliefs about income inequality. The reason is fairly straightforward: such arguments are derived from surveys and theoretical models of beliefs about government redistribution and opportunities for upward mobility, not income inequality. Views about the related but distinct matters of redistribution and opportunity – such as lukewarm support for redistributive policies and optimism about the possibility of upward mobility – do imply that income inequality is of trifling concern to Americans.

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The Undeserving Rich
American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution
, pp. 96 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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