In the Boston Review, Claude S. Fischer explores how average Americans think about inequality, and references Leslie McCall’s book, “The Undeserving Rich.”
Excerpt:
Now that economic inequality has become a focus of attention—mentions of “income inequality” in the New York Times went up five-fold in the 2010s compared to the 2000s, 200-fold compared to the 1990s—we know a few things about it clearly. For example: American inequality is unusually great among western societies; it has been growing substantially in recent decades; most recently, the gaps have widened especially between the very richest and the rest; and a good deal of inequality is subject to policy decisions (although some folks have been making that point for decades).
One thing that remains quite unclear is how average Americans think about inequality. Do they know about it, care about it, understand it, want to do anything about it?
In her 2013 book, The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution, sociologist Leslie McCall methodically tries to figure out Americans’ thinking about inequality. She disentangles the way Americans have answered a wide variety of survey questions on the topic over the last quarter-century or so, looking for the thread of logic that makes Americans’ knotted-up answers to all those questions coherent. In the end, she concludes that Americans are indeed aware, are concerned, and want action – and in a notably American way.
In sum, while it is true that Americans care more about equality of opportunity than about equality of outcomes, this does not mean they are indifferent to widening economic disparities. They are aware of inequality, dislike inequality, and want something to be done about it, McCall writes, because they fear that outcome inequality is “narrowing opportunities.” She further makes the point that Americans’ concerns grew despite strong messaging by conservative forces in recent years denying or excusing widening inequalities.
Read the entire Boston Review blog post by Claude S. Fischer, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In his bimonthly BR column, Fischer explores controversial social and cultural issues using tools of sociology and history.