Middle Class Inequality

We know that democracies are common among the economically urbanized countries and rare between the very deprived ones. The reason we scrutinize this pattern is not that democracies are more probable to emerge, as a result, of economic development but that they are to a large extent more possible to survive if they occur to emerge in most urbanized countries. The paths to democracy are diverse. Indeed, they appear to follow no unsurprising pattern. But once democracy is conventional, for whatever reasons, its endurance depends on a few, easily particular, factors.

As one can clearly see it is evident that democracy, in this state of affairs at least, is not equal to either monarchy or aristocracy because “democracy is by institution, the beginning both of aristocracy and monarchy” (Hobbes, 1651, p. 141). Wise men will rapidly and swiftly substitute either aristocracy or monarchy due to the fact that democracy is a predominantly unstable and unreliable type of government. Now that a foundation has been laid and we have a better understanding of

Democracy has become the most widespread political form of government during the past decade, after the fall of all its alternatives. During the second part of the 20th century, the 3 main enemies of democracy, namely communism, fascism and Nazism, lost most of their power and influence. However, democracy is still only to be found in less than half of this world's countries. China with a fifth of the total population "had never experienced a democratic government" and Russia still doesn't have a well established democracy. By adopting a democratic perspective, 3 types of governments emerge, non-democratic, new democracies, and old democracies, and all have a different challenge to overcome: either to become democratic, to "consolidate"

In Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore, Robert H. Frank paints a picture to the reader about the struggles of pier pressure. For example: an upper-classmen chooses to buy a big house and fancy clothing. This acts as a “frame of reference” to the changes and norms of the society. If he spends money on something nice, a middle-classmen will then go and decide to do the same thing, and then a lower-classmen…all the way down the social hierarchy. This is what he calls an “expenditure cascade.” Robert relates this with a person’s downfalls, which can be traced due to lower income inequality. Income inequality basically means that in a given quantity, the dispersion of income is underlined by the gap between individuals and or households with

I think this argument is more coherent because includes the economic influences. If the economy is weak in a country is related to decisions made by the government. Even though we live in a time where the idea of free market and capitalism is highly applied by states, it is also truth that the states have an influential role in the economy, choosing policies that improve or decrease their economic growth. Even further, institutions are created to “reduce uncertainty by stablishing a stable (but not necessarily efficient) structure to human interaction” (North, 1990, p. 6), thus economic interaction is also a kind of behavior that must be regulated by the state through institutions which “are the humanly devised constraints” (North, 1990, p.3), thus if they are not working correctly in the economic, social, political realm is more likely to have a democracy breakdown. I think in this direction we must to understand the argument of Slater, Smith & Nair (2014) remark that the bureaucracy which

Income inequality has been a major issue in American history. There are many different factors that contribute to inequality. These include education, wealth, discrimination, ability, and monopoly power.

After many countries in Latin America received their independence, limited change of conditions occurred and the elite maintained control in the new republics. The basis for economic inequality remained the same and the patterns persisted. In the early 19th century, the majority of countries had developed republican democracies yet the upper class still had the power to act in their own interests. A direct bearing established the extent of the elite’s ability to influence the formation of government policies. Landowners opposed any institutional change that could transfer power

Since the dawn of human civilization, individuals have been constantly immersed in conflict with each other. Whether these conflicts stemmed from socio-economic inequalities, political disputes, property rights, religious disagreements, or any other contentious matter, the creation of human governments has necessarily been to handle, organize, and resolve conflicts between people within communities in the least destructive manner possible. Governments act as a formal instrument through which individuals in a society can agree upon shared rules, solve problems, and engage in cooperative behavior, and it helps avoid the severe repercussions resulting from revolutionary social upheaval. The purpose of government – as spelled out in the Preamble of the Constitution – is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” While countless forms of government have sprung up over the centuries, only one has been resilient enough and has had the pervasive influence necessary to stand the test of time: democracy. While there are many different types of democracies, this paper will focus on liberal democracy specifically. A liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy that operates under the paradigm of classical liberalism. According to the Center for Research on Globalization, liberal democracy is defined as:

Income inequality has been a major concern around the world, and it mainly links to how economic metrics are distributed among individuals in a country. Economists generally categorise these metrics in wealth, income and consumption. Wilkinson and Picket (2009) showed in their studies that inequality has drawbacks that lead to social problems. This is because income inequality and wealth concentration can hinder or delay long term growth. In 2011, International Monetary Fund economists showed that less income inequality increased the duration of countries’ economic growth spells more than free trade, low government corruption, foreign investment or low foreign debt (Berg and Ostry, 2011).

The government in the United States supposedly revolves around American ideals such as equality and diversity; however, this is simply not the case as perpetuated by class inequalities. The meaning of democracy has been skewed in the United States to represent something entirely different than it did in 1776. Today, American democracy behaves more like an aristocracy, where the upper class exercises power within the government and state, influencing discourse and therefore the laws and resources in our country, which are purportedly “for the people”. Democracy is presumed to provide everyone with equal political power, but the government in today’s America, although seemingly following this ideal model, does not. Instead, the elite upper class has a monopoly over the political influence and are the sole benefactors from public policies due to their influence over the policy making process. The upper class has an overall benefit from class inequality, as it greatly impacts American ‘democracy’ through the significant power gained through money and status, leadership roles that impact government, and the influence in the policymaking process that creates upper class advantages.

In the "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy", the author Barrington Moore Jr. discusses or presents how the upper class and peasants were represented in different in the processes like democracy, fascism, and communism. In the book, Barrington separates the book into 2 parts. Part I focuses on the process to achieving democracy and capitalism in the cases of England, France and the United States of America. Part II of the book focuses on communism, fascism, and an Asian form of democracy for the countries of China, Japan, and India respectively. While there is a lot of material to discuss, reading about the evolutions of these country 's political systems was interesting to read and makes you think about how far we have come not

Karl Mannheim claimed that the earliest stage of democracy was focused on freedom and rationality. However, with a shift to mass politics, he claimed that it could lead to a dictatorship. Due to “urbanization, transportation, and the mass media,” the lower class could enter the political sphere (Colins and Makowsky 207). However, it had a negative effect because politics could no longer be considered intellectual, but based on the emotions of the lower class. Thus, instead of solutions based on reason for a problem, the solutions were “simplistic” (Colins and Makowsky 207). Another threat to democracy was interdependency. The government, transportation, and media become centralized and it brings a large amount of people together. Thus, when there is either a conflict or crisis everyone is affected. Lastly, a concentration of power can threaten democracy. When there is a concentration of power, the

Rodrik’s work contributes to the extensive corpus on the relationship between institutions and labor-market outcomes, as well as the economic consequences of political democracy; however, most research on the role of institutions focuses heavily on labor-market institutions, while most research on the consequences of political democracy examines its

The question of what facilitates democratisation is one of great debate, with numerous theoretical paradigms attempting to provide an answer. Structuralism is one such approach, generally placing emphasis on macrocosmic forces and processes that are abstracted from individual situations, and thus apply universally. Structuralism has been dominated since the 1950s by socio-economic theories, starting largely with Lipset . He asserted that various factors related to socio-economic development “increasingly load the dice” in favour of democratisation, suggesting the existence of a linear and natural process of state development. Theories of this nature are often referred

Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) perceive that democracy is sustained when the elites give access to power to the opposition, otherwise elites make choices that generate poverty on purpose, so politics is crucial in explaining inequality. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that EU institutions will promote democracy through enabling 1) democratic access to power and resources and 2) policies that curb economic inequality in Eastern Europe. Regardless of the strong formal resolve of EU institutions to reform the economic structure of Eastern European, these policies and initiatives produced superficial results because the process had unintentional outcome that 1) legally transferred power and resources in the hands of the former communist elites and 2) generated significant income inequality during and after the transition to democracy.