Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality

by Benjamin I. Page, Lawrence R. Jacobs

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Sociology

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Benjamin I. Page is a Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Policy Research. Page holds a PhD from Stanford University and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Page works on American politics and U.S. foreign policy, specializing in public opinion, democratic policy making, the media, and economic inequality. He is best known for his work (with Robert Y. Shapiro) on the “rationality” of public opinion: the general stability, coherence, and responsiveness to new information of Americans’ collective policy preferences. He is currently studying the political attitudes and behavior of wealthy Americans – the top 1% of U.S. wealth-holders – investigating how they often disagree with average citizens but tend to get their way in policy making. Page’s past civic involvement has been limited, but he is now committed to helping Americans understand the barriers that stand in the way of democratic responsiveness.

Professor Page's interests include public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, political economy, policy formation, the presidency, and American foreign policy. He is author of a number of articles, including "Effects of Public Opinion on Policy" and "What Moves Public Opinion," both in the American Political Science Review, and of 11 books, including Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (with Tao Xie, Columbia University Press, 2010); Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality (with Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Chicago Press, 2009); The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (with Robert Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, 1992), Who Deliberates: Mass Media in Modern Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and What Government Can Do: Dealing with Poverty and Inequality (with James Simmons, University of Chicago Press, 2000). His research interests include public opinion, policy making, the mass media, and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently engaged in a large collaborative project to study Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good.

Reviews

[Lis Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Page and Jacobs argue that there is, in fact, no "class war" brewing in America--that in fact a philosophically conservative American public, in a natural fidelity to fundamental American values of hard work, independence, basic fairness, and equality of opportunity, broadly favors some pragmatically "liberal" government policies. Those policies include public education, progressive taxation, food stamps, and other economic support programs that make it possible for the poor to maintain themselves and those born into poor families to have a genuine opportunity to achieve better lives. Merely saying, "you can do it if you work hard enough," is not enough. For our egalitarian values to mean anything, they have to be backed up by access to the tools that a talented and determined young person can really use to achieve success.

This won't be a welcome message to everyone. We have some politicians who are deeply invested in the idea that the rich resent taxation, and that the middle class resent any money spent on the poor. Page and Jacobs questioned that, and decided to dig into the question in the most pragmatic possible way: looking at, and analyzing, polls on social and economic issues conducted over the last seventy years, plus a new, large-scale, comprehensive poll, on the same questions, using the same wording. What they found is startling: We are not divided on party lines, or economic lines, or social class lines, or geographic lines. In both major parties, all economic classes, and every region of the country, Americans favor both individualism and self-reliance, as well as public intervention to make the "playing field" fair enough to give everyone a real opportunity for success if they work at it. Across economic, geographic, and ideological lines, most Americans support a higher minimum wage, improved public education, wider access to health insurance coverage, and the use of tax dollars to fund these programs. Why? Because you don't have a realistic, fair shot at success, no matter how hard you're willing to work, if you can't get a decent education, or if you can't get medical care when you're sick, or if working full-time at a minimum wage job doesn't provide you the security and stability to save, get more education or training, and take that next step up the ladder.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic copy of this book from the publisher.

[Paola · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book feels a lot like a missed opportunity: it could have done so much more, and be a rebuttal to Murray's Coming Apart: The State Of White America, 1960-2010 , but sadly, it does not.
In a nutshell, the central argument the authors make is: it is not true that Americans are against taxes: they are happy to pay them if they go to deserving causes, which include education projects as well as helping out those hard working people who have lost their job through no fault of their own. This is based on evidence coming from various surveys plus one commissioned by the authors.
The two main shortcomings for me are first of all, as several people have already noted, the books is quite repetitive. Secondly, they could have done much more in presenting the data - these are almost always presented disaggregated by the categories "All americans, Republicans, High income", with no further "shading", e.g. controlling for the type of occupation, or geographical location, number of children and so on. It could be because this would have generated a sparsely populated table (after all, their original survey only includes just over 600 individuals), but still it would have been good to know. For instance, when the authors state that

Only 30 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of the affluent support “decreased” taxes in general

, we do not know how much these two categories overlap, so that it could in principle be that no Republicans are affluent, so that there is a 60% support for decreased taxes.

In addition, if the evidence is so strong, they should have let it speak more, whereas in various places the exposition feels not at all objective (e.g. when a 4% changes from modest to many, as in "the modest 35 percent who said they favored abolishing the estate tax" and "many Americans (39 percent) realize that lower-income people pay more of their earnings in payroll taxes"). Or similarly, not really probing the isues, as for instance when they claim that Republicans do not represent their voters: so why do voters keep voting them?

In short, I am glad I read this book as it was somewhat informative, but I am glad this was one of the monthly freebies from the University of Chicago Press.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Class War is written by political scientists who, via various surveys through time, have found Americans are conservative egalitarians, conservative philosophically, but often liberal operationally. They think this is news the nation needs to hear and should alter policy, as Americans, at least in surveys, are willing to increase taxes to provide a social safety net and to bring income and wealth inequality more into balance. It is an intriguing, even hopeful, thought, but this brief book would have been better as a briefer article as the authors repeat themselves and drag out every description.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little book has been sitting on my side table for too long. I finally picked it up — only 111 pages, parsing the results of a survey conducted in 2008 that reveals HEY, MAYBE INCOME INEQUALITY IS BAD is a feeling held by the majority of members of both political parties. I thought the results were very interesting — and given that this was written in 2008, I wonder if anything has changed. Rallying against regressive taxes is the main thrust of this book’s agenda. I definitely agree with that.

[Mlg · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little dated, but an interesting survey on how Americans view income inequality. It's a big surprising in the lack of difference between Democrats and Republicans.

[Public Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dynamite subject matter... very easy for the layman to understand, this is a quick and eye-opening read.

[Milt · Rating 3 out of 5]

late night mini e-book UofC Press.