POLT 282 - Politics of Inequality in the United States

FC SSCI

4 credits
This course examines the political and historical sources of inequality in the contemporary United States. We start by unpacking contemporary inequality’s relationship to the restoration of business power in U.S. politics and the consequent decline of New Deal liberalism. We then examine accounts that show how liberalisim itself enabled this restoration and shaped contemporary inequality, either by fostering different patterns of social privilege and marginality or by addressing these patterns in somewhat contradictory and unsustainable ways. We close by considering how the public should collectively respond to inequality in the contemporary U.S., given what we know about its political and historical roots.