An unconventional perspective on contemporary economic inequality in America and its dangers for democracy, using comparisons with Russia, China and Germany.
Since the economic liberalization wave that began in the late 1970s, inequality around the world has skyrocketed.
In The Returns to Power, Thomas F. Remington examines the rise of extreme economic inequality in the United States since the late 1970s by drawing comparisons to the effects of market reforms in transition countries such as Russia, China, and Germany. Employing an unconventional comparative framework, he brings together the latest scholarship in economics and political science and draws on Russian, Chinese, and German-language sources. As he shows, the US embraced deregulation and market-based solutions around the same time that China and Russia implemented major privatization and liberalization reforms. The long-term result was increasing inequality in all three nations. To illustrate why, Remington contrasts the effects of these policies with the postwar economic recovery program in Germany, which succeeded in protecting market competition within the framework of a social market economy that provides widely shared prosperity, high growth, and robust democracy. The book concludes with
an analysis of the political dangers posed by high inequality and calls for a new public philosophy of liberal capitalism and liberal democracy that would restore political equality and inclusive growth by strengthening political and market competition, expanding the provision of public goods, and broadening social insurance protection.
An ambitious account of why political and economic inequality has increased so much in recent times, The Returns to Power's emphasis on policy variation across democracies also reminds us that it did not have to turn out this way.
Author(s): Thomas F. Remington
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 428
City: New York
Cover
Half-title
The Returns to Power
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Threat to Democracy
2. Growing Apart: Trends in the Distribution of Income and Wealth
2.1. The Interplay of Politics and Economics
2.2. Grasping Inequality
2.3. Denying, Defending, and Deflecting Inequality
2.4. Measuring Inequality
2.4.1. The Gini Coefficient
2.4.2. Incomes at the Top
2.5. Hidden Incomes
2.6. Spatial Inequality
3. The Theory of Economic Rents
3.1. Defining Rents
3.2. Thought Experiments
3.3. Liberal Theory and Economic Rents
3.4. The Demise of Antitrust
3.5. Bringing in Politics
3.6. Measuring the Scale of Rents in the Economy
3.7. Conclusion
4. Rents and Market Reform
4.1. Deregulation, Competition, and Concentration
4.2. Tax Cuts
4.3. Relaxation of Antitrust Enforcement
4.4. Labor Rights
4.5. Privatization of Social Protection
4.6. Market Power in Healthcare
4.7. Conclusion
5. The Union of Wealth and Power
5.1. Democracy and Political Equality
5.1.1. Early Winners
5.1.2. The Ascendancy of Corporate Power in the United States
5.1.3. The Rights of Corporations
5.2. Privatization of Public Goods
5.2.1. Education
5.2.2. The News Industry
5.2.3. Criminal Justice
5.3. Conclusion: Labeling the Union of Wealth and Power
6. Financialization, Rents, and Inequality
6.1. Finance and Rents
6.2. Financialization
6.3. Privatizing Profits, Socializing Risk
6.4. Political Influence
6.5. Finance and Inequality
6.6. Conclusions
7. Autocracy and Oligarchy in Russia
7.1. The Political Economy of the Putin Regime
7.2. Economic Transition in Russia
7.2.1. Shock Therapy
7.2.2. Privatization
7.2.3. Voucher Privatization
7.2.4. Formation of the Alliance of Wealth and Power
7.3. Putin and the New Rules of the Game
7.4. Competition, Concentration, and Rents
7.5. Return to the Mobilization Regime
8. Market Transition and Inequality in China
8.1. Rents and the Dual Economy
8.1.1. Liberalization
8.1.2. Cronyism, Localism, and Corruption
8.2. Market Power and Inequality in China
8.3. Income Growth and Inequality
8.4. Spatial Inequality
8.5. Government Policy Responses to Inequality
8.6. Strangled Democratization
9. The Social Market Economy in Germany
9.1. Prosperity for All?
9.2. The Social Market Economy Paradigm
9.3. The Ordoliberal Contribution
9.4. Ludwig Erhard and the “Economic Miracle”
9.5. Evolution of Social Policy
9.6. Unification
9.7. How Stable Is the German System?
9.8. Reckoning with History
10. Necessary Opportunities
10.1. The Challenge of Political Equality
10.2. Ideologies and Collective Self-Interest
10.3. Polarization and Extremism
10.3.1. Geographic Sorting
10.3.2. Sociopolitical Sorting
10.4. Necessary Opportunities
Notes
Index
