San Antonio College Library

To the question "Are the rich getting richer?" Hacker notes that in 1979, 13,505 individuals or families earned the equivalent of $1 million per year. Only fifteen years later, that number had jumped to an incredible 68,064. The last few decades have indeed witnessed the rise of the "$1 Million a Year" American. The rich are getting richer, and more people are joining their ranks, but the lower income echelon is not dwindling. One in five children...

Using the methods of reasoned history and comparative statistics, this work arrives at an assessment of egalitarianism. It traces the rise of egalitarianism from the Renaissance and Reformation onwards. A complementary approach is provided by a wide survey of actual distributions of income and wealth.

"In his new book, Gar Alperovitz argues that the first decade of the twenty-first century - challenged by growing economic inequality, the devaluing of civil liberties, and a government unresponsive to the people - is already producing conditions that will force the United States to undergo historic changes." "There have been five major political realignments in American history, from before the Progressive Era to beyond the New Deal. All have occurred...

Explains the hows and whys of income distribution--why some are rich, some are poor, how income is measured, and the impact of goverment policies on jobs and personal wealth.

Eberstadt argues that the official poverty rate is incapable of accurately representing long-term trends for material want in modern America, and that standards of living for the official poverty population are far higher today than they were in 1964 or 1965, at the start of the War on Poverty.

In this concise and elegant work, first published in 1952, Bertrand de Jouvenel purposely ignores the economic evidence that redistributional efforts sap incentives and are economically destructive. Rather, he stresses the commonly disregarded ethical arguments showing that redistribution is ethically indefensible for, and practically unworkable in, a complex society. A new introduction relates Jouvenel's arguments to current discussions about the...

"The most widely cited social welfare statistics in the United States are based on tabulations of family income. The picture that emerges is cause for concern; real median family income has hardly risen since the early 1970s, while inequality has increased and poverty has remained high. Yet consumption-based statistics as employed in this work yield rigorous and quite different estimates of individual and social welfare. Closely linked to economic...

"This book is about wealth mobility. It is about how some people get rich while others stay poor, and it is about the paths people take during their lives that determine how well-off they will be. The advantages of owning wealth and the elusive nature of true wealth have long made questions about who is rich and why broadly appealing. In recent years, dramatic economic changes, accompanied by rising wealth inequality, have created renewed interest...

Suggests some practical solutions to the problem of excessive wealth; outlines a way to deal with the "too" rich that would also create a healthier economy. The authors create a framework with which to evaluate proposals to redistribute great wealth and income.