ABSTRACT
According to most observers at the beginning of this new century, the United States is not only in a typical period of economic expansion, but its brand of flexible restructuring has made it the most envied and dynamic economy in the world. Some project that the new American economy is even immune to future recessions. Indeed, unemployment has fallen below the level at which inflation was supposed to rise and growth was expected to moderate, and yet neither has come to pass. If this stunning turnaround from the turbulent 1980s meant that everyone was better off and the rich were better off still, the “new inequality” might go unnoticed.1 But a broad cross section of Americans have seen their living standards stagnate or fall since at least the 1970s, while the wealthy have enjoyed rising incomes, record levels of investment in the stock market, and growing corporate profits. In fact, many forms of economic inequality in the United States are now higher and rising faster than in just about any other advanced capitalist nation. One cannot help but to conclude that economic growth no longer promises significant reductions in poverty and inequality as it once did in the twentyfive years following World War II. Instead, prosperous times are now met with persistent inequalities, to say nothing of what will happen when the economy eventually bottoms out. 2
Although the United States is in the midst of historic economic and social changes, the problem of economic inequality is certainly not a new one. Issues of economic stratification and controversies over distributive justice have been central ones for much of America’s history. Yet despite major federal policy initiatives to alleviate inequality in the
1930s and again in the 1960s, economic inequality still stands as one of the most important and visible of America’s social problems. What, then, is the response to the enduring problem of inequality at the beginning of this new century? Three distinct perspectives are at the forefront of the debate over the causes of and solutions to contemporary inequality.
