Overview

Recent battles in Washington over how to fix America’s fiscal failures strengthened the widespread impression that economic issues sharply divide average citizens. Indeed, many commentators split Americans into two opposing groups: uncompromising supporters of unfettered free markets and advocates for government solutions to economic problems. But such dichotomies, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs contend, ring false. In Class War? they present compelling evidence that most Americans favor free enterprise and practical government programs to distribute wealth more equitably. At every income level and in both major political parties, majorities embrace conservative egalitarianism—a philosophy that prizes individualism and self-reliance as well as public intervention to help Americans pursue these ideals on a level playing field. Drawing on hundreds of opinion studies spanning more than seventy years, including a new comprehensive survey, Page and Jacobs reveal that this worldview translates to broad support for policies aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor and creating genuine opportunity for all. They find, for example, that across economic, geographical, and ideological lines, most Americans support higher minimum wages, improved public education, wider access to universal health insurance coverage, and the use of tax dollars to fund these programs. In this surprising and heartening assessment, Page and Jacobs provide our new administration with a popular mandate to combat the economic inequity that plagues our nation.

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9780226644547

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Reviews

Innovative and fascinating, Class War? is the only book I know of that investigates public attitudes about inequality with an open mind. Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs make a sensible, lucid, and broadly persuasive argument that although Americans tend to identify with conservative philosophies, they also favor egalitarian policies when those policies are presented in pragmatic terms. - James K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State

Author Information

Benjamin I. Page is the Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.

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