Coming up: Quiz and Class Background Assignment

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• Coming up Quiz and Class Background Assignment
• Reading Economic Apartheid
• III. A 1950s Take on Inequality in the U.S.
  (online film)
• IV. Is Inequality Something to Worry About?
• V. Growing Inequality in the U.S. What the Data
  Show

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Quiz and Class Background Assignment Keep up and
plan ahead! Read instructions carefully! Use the
study guide for the exam! Take note of the
checklist for your paper!
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• Reading Economic Apartheid(and just about
  everything)
• Be able to distinguish between and evaluate
• facts
• concepts
• explanatory theories
• normative statements

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Americas Distribution of Wealth (1955 film)
Are we still exposed to propaganda like this?
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Is growing inequality something to worry
about? Arguments pro and con
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If you ask me whether we should worry about the
fact that some people on Wall Street and
basketball players are making a lot of money, I
say no. The problem is not inequality, but
poverty Martin Feldstein Mr. Feldstein, like
many economists, has come to see inequality as a
basic feature of the new high-tech economic
scene, the natural consequence of an economy that
has begun to reward talent, skills, education and
entrepreneurial risk with increasing
efficiency. Article by Alexander Still in the
New York Times
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There is no doubt that market forces have spoken
in favor of more inequality.The question is
whether you lean against the wind of the market
to try to preserve decent living standards for
working and poor people. Europe and Japan are
leaning against the wind. Richard Freeman
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• Some words and phrases to think about
• natural consequence
• efficiency
• market forces have spoken
• leaning against the wind

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Collins and Yeskels argument about why growing
inequality is badbe able to elaborate the key
points
1) A threat to families and households 2) A
threat to the economy--and to prosperity 3) A
threat to democracy 4) A threat to public
health 5) A threat to social cohesion in society
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Social PolarizationTwo Kinds of Gated
Communities
Over 7 million people in gated communities in 2001
Over 2 million people in state and federal
prisonsthe highest incarceration rate in the
world
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The New Individualism in a society of little
social cohesion
In the long run, there is no turning back this
age of self-determinism..your choices will make
or break youSo do your homework. The choice is
yours. Time, Jan. 28, 2002 issue
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• Neoliberalism The Dominant Ideology
• faith in the virtues of markets the best
  allocator of resources
• claim that government regulation or intervention
  generally make things worse
• deregulation and privatization as key policy
  goalspower and resources should be shifted from
  the public to the private sphere
• freedom unfettered markets, trade, mobility
  of capital freedom from regulation or
  restriction in the service of social goals
• Choice, Personal Responsibility, Individualism
  as paramount values. Minimal collective
  responsibility. Everyone responsible for
  themselves and no one else.
• an updated version of 19th century
  laissez-faire liberalism

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Were surrounded by anti-government messages
conveying a neoliberal view of the world
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Evidence of Growing Economic InequalityReview
the tables in Chapter 2 to explore

• Growing income inequality
• income shares
• real income growth
• the CEO pay gap
• 1947-1979 vs. 1979-today

• Growing concentration of wealth
• why wealth matters more than income
• net worth
• the color of wealth
• wealth shares
• routes to wealth

Collins and Yeskels baseball analogy
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A Quick Look at Global Inequality

• The richest 10 of the worlds population
  receives about ½ of the worlds income
• Between 40 and 50 of the worlds population
  lives in poverty (less than 2 per day)
• By most measures, global inequality is increasing