The Politics and Pedagogy of Economic Inequality: A Short Contribution

I cannot speak to the actual content of pedagogy in schools; my comments therefore focus on general perceptions and useful precepts. General perceptions appear to result in a handful of slogans and statistics, propagated largely in good faith on the basis of a few famous works and some oft-repeated...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PS, political science & politics political science & politics, 2017-10, Vol.50 (4), p.1074-1076
Main Author: Galbraith, James K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
20th century
Capitalism
Coding
Disposable income
Earnings
Economic crisis
Family Income
Family Structure
Finance Reform
Income inequality
Income taxes
Industrial Structure
Inequality
Insurance
Intellectuals
Library Services
Pedagogy
Perceptions
Power
Productivity
Public services
Risk
Schools
Social Systems
Standard of living
Statistics
Symposium: The Politics and Pedagogy of Economic Inequality
The Teacher
Truth
Wages
Wages & salaries
Wealth
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Summary:I cannot speak to the actual content of pedagogy in schools; my comments therefore focus on general perceptions and useful precepts. General perceptions appear to result in a handful of slogans and statistics, propagated largely in good faith on the basis of a few famous works and some oft-repeated measures. These perceptions show that economic inequality is rising, apparently as high as it was in the late 1920s, before the Great Crash and the Great Depression. A certain percentage of people (usually the top 1%) earns a certain percentage of all income and controls a certain percentage of all wealth; this is widely supposed to be a bad thing. Median wages fail to keep up with productivity and, therefore, it is inferred that living standards are stagnant. In short, the general perception is that matters are dire and getting worse. Certain scholars--notably, Piketty (2014)--argue that it is in the nature of capitalism that economic inequality should always get worse. Except for the accident of world war in the twentieth century, Piketty argues, inequality would never have gotten better--as for a time it surely did--and a return to the standards of the nineteenth century, to the era of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, is underway. The truth known to careful scholars is more subtle. A proper respect for the topic requires, above all, careful attention to the quirks and the qualities of measures employed. Without that, practically everything we may be tempted to say runs the risk of being shown as wrong.
ISSN:1049-0965
1537-5935
DOI:10.1017/S1049096517001330