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Tuition partially paid by a federal loan more than half the cost of university instruction is paid for by taxpayers , chemistry lab paid for with grants from the National Science Foundation a federal agency and smaller grants from business corporations made possible by federal income tax deductions for charitable contributions.

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This state of affairs is called autocracy. Where a small group—perhaps landowners, military officers, or the wealthy—controls most of the governing decisions, that government is said to be an oligarchy.

If citizens are vested with the po wer to r ule themselves, that government is a democracy. Governments also vary considerably in terms of how they govern. In the United States and a small number of other nations, governments are limited as to what they are permitted to contr ol substantive limits and ho w they go about it pr ocedural limits.

Governments that are limited in this way are called constitutional governments, or liberal governments. In other nations, including some in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the law imposes fe w real limits.

The government, however, is nev ertheless kept in check by other political and social institutions that it is unable to contr ol and must come to terms with—such as autonomous territories, an organized religion, organized business groups, or organized labor unions. Such governments are generally called authoritarian.

In a third group of nations, including the Soviet Union under Joseph S talin, N azi G ermany, perhaps prewar Japan and I taly, and N orth K orea today, governments not only are free of legal limits but also seek to eliminate those organized social groups that might challenge or limit their authority. These governments typically attempt to dominate or control every sphere of political, economic, and social life and, as a result, are called totalitarian see Figure 1.

Americans have the good for tune to liv e in a nation in which limits ar e placed on what governments can do and ho w they can do it. B y one measur e, just 40 per cent of the global population those living in 86 countries enjo y sufficient levels of political and personal fr eedom to be classi fied as living in a constitutional democracy.

Prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, governments seldom sought—and rar ely received—the support of their subjects. The available evidence strongly suggests that ordinary people often had little love for the government or for the social order.

After all, they had no stake in it. First, go vernments began to ackno wledge formal limits on their po wer. S econd, a small number of go vernments began to pr ovide ordinary citizens with a formal Who governs Type of government One person Small group e.

Obviously, the desirability of limits on government and the expansion of popular influence were at the heart of the American Revolution in But even before the Revolution, a tradition of limiting go vernment and expanding participation in the political process had developed throughout western Europe. Locke argued that governments need the consent of the people. The key force behind the imposition of limits on government power was a new social class, the bourgeoisie, which became an important political for ce in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In order to gain a shar e of control of government, joining or even displacing the kings, aristocrats, and gentry who had dominated go vernment for centuries, the bourgeoisie sought to change existing institutions—especially parliaments—into instr uments of r eal political participation.

Parliaments had existed for centuries but w ere generally aristocratic institutions. The bourgeoisie embraced parliaments as means by which they could exert the w eight of their superior numbers and gr owing economic adv antage over their aristocratic rivals. At the same time, the bourgeoisie sought to place r estraints on the capacity of governments to threaten these economic and political interests by placing formal or constitutional limits on governmental power.

Although motivated primarily by the need to protect and defend their own interests, the bourgeoisie advanced many of the principles that would define the central underpinnings of individual liberty for all citizens—freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, and freedom from arbitrary search and seizur e.

The work of political theorists such as J ohn Locke — and, later , John Stuart Mill —73 helped shape these evolving ideas about liberty and political rights. However, it is important to note that the bourgeoisie generally did not favor democracy as we know it. They were advocates of electoral and representative institutions, but they favored property requirements and other restrictions so as to limit participation to the middle and upper classes. Yet once these institutions of politics and the protection of the right to engage in politics were established, it was difficult to limit them to the bourgeoisie.

In some nations, popular participation was expanded by the Crown or the aristocracy, which ironically saw common people as potential political allies against the bourgeoisie. Thus, in nineteenth-century Prussia, for example, it was the emperor and his great minister Otto von Bismarck who expanded popular participation in order to build political support among the lower orders. But seldom was such agitation by itself enough to secure the right to participate.

Usually, expansion of voting rights resulted from a combination of pressure from below and help from above. The gradual expansion of voting rights by groups hoping to derive some political advantage has been typical of American history. After the Civil War, one of the chief reasons that R epublicans moved to enfranchise ne wly freed slav es was to use the support of the former slaves to maintain Republican control over the defeated southern states.

Politics is an important term. In its broadest sense, it r efers to conflicts over the character, membership, and policies of any organization to which people belong. Here, politics will be used to r efer only to conflicts and struggles over the leader ship, structure, and policies of governments. Having a share is called having power or influence. Participation in politics can take many forms, including blogging and posting opinion pieces online, sending emails to go vernment officials, voting, lobb ying legislators on behalf of par ticular programs, and par ticipating in pr otest marches and ev en violent demonstrations.

A system of go vernment that giv es citiz ens a regular oppor tunity to elect the top go vernment officials is usually called a representative democracy, or republic. A system that permits citiz ens to v ote directly on laws and policies is often called a direct democracy. A t the national lev el, the United States is a r epresentative democracy in which citiz ens select go vernment officials but do not vote on legislation.

Some states and cities, ho wever, have provisions for direct legislation through popular initiatives and ballot referenda. These procedures allo w citiz ens to collect petitions r equiring an issue to be br ought directly to the v oters for a decision. I n , initiativ es appear ed on state ballots, often dealing with hot-button issues. Five states considered measures legalizing medical or recreational marijuana.

Eight states considered restrictions on taxes, 3 considered initiatives on abortion access and funding, and 21 voted on elections policies such as redistricting, voting requirements, and campaign finance. In voters in Maine decided to expand M edicaid under the Affordable Care Act after the governor had v etoed expansion multiple times, becoming the first state to decide the issue by direct democracy.

Their political activities include providing funds for candidates, lobbying, and trying to influence public opinion. The pattern of struggles among interests is called group politics, or pluralism. Americans have always been ambivalent about pluralist politics. O n the one hand, the right of groups to press their views and compete for influence in the government is the essence of liber ty. People often hold public rallies or protests to draw attention to issues.

These concerns can range from inequality in police practices left , animal rights center , taxes and government spending right. We return to this problem in Chapter Sometimes, of course, politics does not take place through formal channels at all but instead inv olves direct action.

D irect action politics can include either violent politics or civil disobedience, both of which attempt to shock r ulers into behaving more responsibly. Direct action can also be a form of r evolutionary politics, which rejects the system entirely and attempts to replace it with a new ruling group and a new set of r ules.

In recent years in the U nited States, groups ranging fr om animal rights activists to right-to-life advocates to the Tea Party to Black Lives Matter protesters have used direct action to underline their demands. Many forms of peaceful direct political action are protected by the U. Citizenship: Participation, Knowledge, and Efficacy Citizen participation is the hallmark of the democratic form of government.

The very legitimacy of democratic government depends on political participation, which takes a v ariety of forms, from the conventional— voting, contacting elected officials, working on a campaign, making political donations, attending political meetings—to the unconv entional—protesting, boycotting, and signing petitions.

One key ingr edient for political par ticipation is political knowledge and informa tion. Indeed, our definition of citizenship derives from the ideal put for th by the ancient G reeks: enlightened political engagement.

It is important to know the rules and strategies that govern political institutions and the principles on which they ar e based, and to know them in ways that relate to your own interests. If your street is rendered impassable by snow, what can you do? Is snow removal the responsibility of the federal government? Is it a state or municipal r esponsibility? Knowing that you have a stake in a clear road does not help much if you do not know that snow removal is a city or a county responsibility and if you cannot identify the municipal agency that deals with the problem.

Americans are fond of complaining that government is not responsive to their needs, but in some cases, it is possible that citizens simply lack the information they need to present their problems to the appropriate government officials.

Without political knowledge, citizens cannot be aware of their stakes in political disputes. Citizens need kno wledge in or der to assess their interests and to know when to act on them.

The internet can greatly facilitate acquisition of knowledge about politics. A Pew survey found that over the previous year, 65 percent of Americans had used the internet to find data or information about government, including visiting a local, state, or federal go vernment website.

D igital citizens are more likely to be inter ested in politics and to discuss politics with friends, family, and coworkers than individuals who do not use online political information. They are also more likely to vote and participate in other ways in elections. Can we have democratic government without knowledgeable and aware citizens? This digital divide which we discuss fur ther in Chapters 7 and 8 exacerbates inequalities in political participation. Even though the internet has made it easier than ever to learn about politics, the state of political knowledge in the United States today is spotty.

Most Americans know little about curr ent issues or debates, or even the basics of how government works. For example, in only 26 per cent of those sur veyed could identify all three branches of the federal go vernment and only 54 per cent knew that Congress has the power to declare war.

During the summer before the presidential election, just 22 per cent of the public could identify the D emocratic vice-presidential candidate and 37 percent could identify the Republican vice-presidential candidate. On the other hand, more than three-quarters of those surveyed knew that Congress has the power to raise tax es and cannot establish an official religion for the nation see Table 1.

Those of you who make the effort to become more knowledgeable will be much better pr epared to influence the political system regarding the issues and concerns that you care most about. Another ingredient in political par ticipation is political efficacy, the belief that ordinary citiz ens can affect what government does.

Why bother to par ticipate if y ou believ e it makes no difference? In , only 25 percent felt shut out of government. Not every effort of ordinary citizens to influence government will succeed, but without any such efforts, go vernment decisions will be made b y a smaller and smaller circle of powerful people. Such loss of broad popular influence over government actions undermines the key featur e of American democracy— government by the people. There are ways that individuals can build their sense of political efficacy.

Most people do not want to be politically active every day of their lives, but it is essential to American political ideals that all citizens be informed and able to act. Who Are Americans? Who are Americans? Through the course of American history, politicians, religious leaders, prominent scholars, and ordinary Americans have puzzled over and fought about the answer to this fundamental question.

Since the Founding, the American population has gr own from 3. At the time of the F ounding, when the U nited S tates consisted of 13 states along the Eastern Seaboard, 81 percent of Americans counted by the census traced their roots to Europe, mostly England and northern Europe; and nearly 20 percent were of African origin, the v ast majority of whom w ere slaves.

There was also an unkno wn number of N ative Americans, the original inhabitants of the land, not counted b y the census because the go vernment did not consider them Americans. The first estimates of Native Americans and H ispanics in the mid s showed that each gr oup made up less than 1 percent of the total population.

The country now stretched across the continent, and waves of immigrants, mainly from Europe, boosted the population to 76 million. In the United States was predominantly composed of whites of European ancestry, but this number now included many from southern and eastern as well as northern Europe; the black population stood at 12 percent.

Residents who traced their origin to Latin America or Asia each accounted for less than 1 percent of the entire population. By the time this photo of Red Cloud and other Sioux warriors was taken, around , Native Americans made up about 1 percent of the American population.

The growing numbers of immigrants fr om southern and eastern Europe who were crowding into American cities spurred heated debates about how long those with United Kingdom and northern European ancestry could dominate. Much as today, politicians and scholars argued about whether the country could absorb such large numbers of immigrants. Concerns ranged fr om whether their political and social values were compatible with American democracy to whether they would learn English to alarm about the diseases they might bring into the United States.

Those worried about new immigrants noted their different religious affiliations as well. The first immigrants to the United States were overwhelmingly Protestant, many of them fleeing religious persecution. The arrival of G ermans and I rish in the mids began to shift that balance with incr easing numbers of Catholics. Even so, in four out of five Americans w ere still P rotestants.

The large-scale immigration of the early tw entieth century threatened to reduce the proportion of Protestants significantly. Many of the eastern E uropean immigrants pouring into the countr y, especially those fr om R ussia, w ere J ewish; the southern E uropeans, especially the Italians, were Catholic.

A more religiously diverse country challenged the implicit Protestantism embedded in many aspects of American public life. For example, r eligious diversity introduced new conflicts into public schooling as Catholics sought public funding for parochial schools and dissident Protestant sects lobbied to eliminate Bible reading and prayer in the schools.

Anxieties about immigration spar ked intense debate. S hould the numbers of immigrants entering the countr y be limited? S hould restrictions be placed on the types of immigrants to be granted entr y? After World War I, Congr ess responded to the fears swirling ar ound immigration with ne w laws that sharply limited the number who could enter the countr y each year.

This diversity and the changes in the population have frequently raised challenging questions in American politics. It did not include Native Americans or other groups. The census did not count Hispanic Americans.

In , the U. Census Bureau estimated that the population of the South and the West continued to grow more rapidly than the Northeast and Midwest. What are some of the political implications of this trend? Today, Americans over age 37 outnumber Americans under 37—and older adults are more likely to participate in the political process.

What do you think this means for the kinds of issues and policies taken up by the government? Today, individuals hoping to immigrate to the United States often apply for a visa at the U. Customs and Border Protection checks their identity and legal status. The new system set up a hierar chy of admissions: nor thern European countries received generous quotas for ne w immigrants, whereas eastern and southern European countries were granted very small quotas.

These restrictions ratcheted down the numbers of immigrants so that b y the foreign-born population in the United States reached an all-time low of 5 percent. The very first census, as just mentioned, did not count Native Americans; in fact, no N ative Americans became citiz ens until Although the Constitution infamously declar ed that each slav e would count as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning r epresentation among the states, most people of African descent were not officially citizens until , when the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution conferred citizenship on the freed slaves see Chapter 2.

Over half a century earlier, the federal government had sought to limit the nonwhite population with a law stipulating that only free whites could become naturalized citizens. Not until did Congr ess lift the ban on the naturaliza tion of nonwhites.

In addition to the restrictions on blacks and Native Americans, restrictions applied to Asians. Additional barriers enacted after World War I meant that vir tually no Asians enter ed the country as immigrants until the s. People of Hispanic origin do not fit simply into the American system of racial classification. In , for example, the census counted people of Mexican origin as nonwhite but reversed this decision a decade later—after protests by the Mexican-origin population and the M exican government.

Only in did the census officially begin counting persons of Hispanic origin, noting that they could be any race. One consequence of the shift has been the gr owth in the H ispanic, or Latino, population. Census figures for sho w that H ispanics, who can be of any race, constitute The black, or African American, population is Non-Hispanic white Americans account for 61 percent of the population—their lowest shar e ever. Moreover, 3. How does that compare with immigration in the twenty-first century?

The blurring of racial categories poses challenges to a host of policies—many of them put in place to r emedy past discrimination—that r ely on racial counts of the population. Large-scale immigration means that many more r esidents ar e foreign-born. I n , By just Estimates put the number of undocumented immigrants at Doe that Texas could not deny funding for undocumented students.

Religion The new patterns of immigration combined with differences in birth rates and underlying social changes to alter the r eligious affiliations of Americans. In , 80 per cent of the American adult population was P rotestant; by only 44 per cent of Americans identified themselves as P rotestants.

A small Muslim population had also grown, with nearly 1 percent of the population. One of the most important shifts in r eligious affiliation during the latter half of the twentieth century was the percentage of people who pr ofessed no organized religion: in , 23 per cent of the population was not affiliated with an organized chur ch.

These changes suggest an important shift in American r eligious identity. How does the racial and ethnic diversity of the United States compare to that of other countries around the world? Racial and ethnic diversity stem not only from immigration but also geography, historical legacies, and whether the government has favored certain groups over others.

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa were colonized by multiple empires, whose governments often drew borders that encompassed multiple ethnic groups in the region. State-building and nationalism are also very new to these regions, meaning that local identities remain stronger than national ones. In contrast many western European and Asian countries have histories of past conflict and strong state-building efforts, resulting in less diversity either by eliminating rival groups or forcibly assimilating them.

More recent waves of immigrants, however, have highlighted potential problems with this policy. What types of values and policies would we expect to see in countries with a high degree of diversity versus those with less diversity? John R. In only 4 per cent of the population was o ver age As life expectancy increased, the number of older Americans grew with it: by , Over the same period, the per centage of children under the age of 18 fell, from The share of the population aged 65 and o ver is 20 per cent in the E uropean Union and 27 per cent in Japan.

As the elderly population gr ows and the wor king-age population shrinks, questions arise about how we will fund programs for the elderly such as Social Security. Increasing racial and ethnic diversity? Increasing urbanization? Increased economic inequality? Before less than half the population liv ed in urban ar eas; today 82 per cent of Americans do. The constitutional provision allocating each state two senators, for example, overrepresents sparsely populated rural states and underrepresents urban states, where the population is far more concentrated.

In addition to becoming more urban over time, the American population has shifted regionally. During the past 50 years especially, many Americans left the N ortheast and M idwest and mo ved to the S outh and S outhwest. As congressional seats hav e been r eapportioned to r eflect the population shift, many problems that particularly plague the Midwest and Northeast, such as the decline in manufacturing jobs, receive less attention in national politics.

Socioeconomic Status Americans hav e fallen into div erse economic gr oups throughout American history. For much of Americanhistory most people were relatively poor working people, many of them farmers.

By nearly one -quarter of the total annual income w ent to the top 1 per cent of earners; the top 10 percent took home 46 percent of total annual income. After the New Deal in the s, a large middle class took shape and the shar e going to those at the top dr opped sharply.

By the top 1 per cent took home only 9 percent of the national annual income. S ince then, however, economic inequality has once again widened as a tiny group of super-rich has emerged.

By the top 1 percent earned Population and Politics The shifting contours of the American people have regu- larly raised challenging questions about our politics and go verning arrangements. The lower graph shows the portion of all income in the United States that goes to each group, with an increasing share going to the richest Americans in recent years. What are some of the ways that this shift might matter for American politics? Does the growing economic gap between the richest groups and most other Americans conflict with the political value of equality?

These changes have sparked controversy over political issues. These conflicts have major implications for the representation of different regions of the country—for the balance of representation between urban and r ural ar eas. The representation of v arious demographic and political groups may also be affected, as there is substantial evidence of gr owing geographic sorting of citiz ens b y education, income, marriage rates, and par ty v oting. The different languages and customs that immigrants bring to the U nited States trigger fears among some that the countr y is changing in ways that may undermine American v alues and alter fundamental identities.

The large number of unauthorized immigrants in the country today makes these anxieties even more acute. Yet a changing population has been one of the constants of American histor y. M ost Americans affirm the values of liberty, equality, and democracy. I f Americans shar ed no v alues, they would hav e difficulty communicating, much less agreeing on a common system of government and politics.

However, sharing broad values does not guarantee political consensus. We can agree on principles but disagr ee over their application or ho w they ar e to be balanced. Analyze whether the U. Even though Americans have disagreed over the meaning of such political ideals as equality, they still agree on the importance of those ideals.

The values, beliefs, and attitudes that form our political culture and hold together the United States and its people date back to the time of the founding of the Union. The essential documents of the American Founding—the D eclaration of Independence and the Constitution—enunciated a set of political principles about the purposes of the new republic. In contrast with many other democracies, in the United States these political ideals did not just r emain words on dusty documents.

Americans actively embraced the principles of the Founders and made them central to the national identity. Let us look mor e closely at thr ee of these ideals: liber ty, equality, and democracy. For Americans, liberty means both personal fr eedom and economic fr eedom. Both are closely linked to the idea of limited government. I n fact, the wor d liberty has come to mean many of the fr eedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech and writing, the right to assemble fr eely, and the right to practice r eligious beliefs without interference from the government.

Over the course of American history, the scope of personal liberties has expanded as laws have become more tolerant and as individuals have successfully used the courts to challenge restrictions on their individual freedoms. Far fewer restrictions exist today on the press, political speech, and individual moral behavior than in the early years of the nation.

Even so, conflicts persist over how personal liberties should be extended and when personal liberties violate community norms. Designed to limit the pr esence of the homeless and make city str eets more attractive to pedestrians, the ordinances have also been denounced as infringements on individual liberties.

The central historical conflict regarding liberty in the United States was about the enslavement of blacks. The facts of slavery and the differential treatment of the races have cast a long shado w over all of American histor y. In fact, scholars today note that the American definition of freedom has been formed in relation to the concept of slavery.

Since the Founding, economic freedom has been linked to capitalism, free markets, and the pr otection of priv ate property. Laissez-faire capitalism allowed very little room for the national government to regulate trade or restrict the use of private property, even in the public interest. Americans still strongly support capitalism and economic liberty, but they now also endorse some restrictions on economic freedoms to protect the public. Today, federal and state governments deploy a wide array of regulations in the name of public protection.

These include health and safety laws, environmental rules, and workplace regulations. Not surprisingly, fierce disagr eements often er upt o ver what the pr oper scope of government r egulation should be. What some people r egard as pr otecting the public, others see as an infringement on their o wn freedom to run their businesses and use their pr operty as they see fit.

For example, many business leaders opposed the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform legislation informally known as Obamacare, because it required businesses with over 50 employees to provide health coverage for their emplo yees and establishes standar ds about which health ser vices should be covered by the insurance.

In addition, the law required that insurers pay for access to contraceptiv e care. Many businesses, ho wever, opposed the law as unwanted go vernment intr usion. And some businesses strongly denounced the r equirement to cover contraception, in par ticular, as a violation of their fundamental liberties to run their businesses as they see fit.

In fact, in a company called Hobby Lobby successfully challenged this provision of the act when the Supreme Court ruled that family firms could be exempted on the basis of religious objections.

The NSA is the agency charged with protecting the United States by monitoring electronic data flows— including radio, email, and cellular telephone calls—for foreign threats. The leaked documents revealed that the American go vernment was listening in on the priv ate communications of for eign go vernments, including many American allies, such as G ermany and B razil.

The revelation that the NSA had been collecting this information for three years without public knowledge set off a storm of controversy since the NSA is supposed to monitor foreign communications, not track Americans.

However, a new court order to Apple related to an iPhone used in a drug conspiracy case made it clear that the tension between privacy and security will continue. On the one hand, w e tr easure liber ty; but on the other hand, w e r ecognize that the liv es of thousands of Americans have already been lost and countless others ar e threatened by terrorism.

Can we reconcile liberty and security? Liberty and order? In previous national emergencies, Americans accepted r estrictions on liber ty with the under standing that these would be temporary. Few Americans have wholeheartedly embraced the ideal of full equality of results, but most Americans share the ideal of equality of opportunity—that is, the notion that each person should be giv en a fair chance to go as far as his or her talents will allo w.

Yet it is hard for Americans to reach agreement on what constitutes equality of oppor tunity. Should inequalities in the legal, political, and economic spheres be given the same weight?

In contrast to liberty, which requires limits on the role of government, equality implies an obligation of the government to the people. Political equality means that members of the American politi cal community hav e the right to par ticipate in politics on equal terms. Although considerable conflict remains over whether the political system makes participation in it harder for some people and easier for others and whether the role of money in politics has drowned out the public voice, Americans agree that all citizens should have an equal right to participate and that government should enforce that right.

In par t because Americans believ e that individuals ar e free to wor k as har d as they choose, they have always been less concerned about social or economic inequality. Many Americans regard economic differences as the consequence of individual choices, virtues, or failur es. Because of this, Americans tend to be less suppor tive than most Europeans of government action to ensure economic equality. One area of debate is in education.

Data from www. Even then, however, they have endorsed only a limited government role designed to help people get back on their feet or to open up opportunity. Because equality is such an elusive concept, many conflicts have arisen over what it should mean in practice. Americans hav e engaged in three kinds of controversies about the public role in addressing inequality.

The first is determining what constitutes equality of access to public institutions. I n the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v.

S ome argue that the unequal financing of public schools in cities, suburbs, and rural districts is a violation of the right to equal education. To date, these claims hav e not been supported by the federal courts, which have rejected the notion that the unequal economic impacts of public policy outcomes are a constitutional matter, leaving the issue to the states. Although Americans generally agr ee that discrimination should not be tolerated, people disagree over what should be done to ensure equality of opportunity see Table 1.

Supporters of affirmative action claim that such programs are necessary to compensate for past discrimination in order to establish true equality of opportunity today. Opponents maintain that affirmative action amounts to r everse discrimination and that a society that espouses tr ue equality should not ackno wledge gender or racial differences.

The question of the public responsibility for private inequalities is central to gender issues. In November fast food workers in hundreds of cities around the country went on strike to rally for higher pay and the right to unionize.

How do these survey results reflect disagreement about what equality means in practice? See endnote 47 for specific reports. In this perspective, the challenges women face in the labor force due to family responsibilities fall outside the range of public concern. I n the past 30 years especially, these traditional views have come under fire as advocates for women have argued that private inequalities are a topic of public concern.

Unlike in other countries, income inequality has not been an enduring topic of political controversy in the United States, which currently has the largest gap in income and wealth betw een rich and poor citiz ens of any dev eloped nation. Americans hav e generally tolerated great differences among rich and poor citizens, in part because of a pervasive belief that mobility is possible and that economic success is the pr oduct of individual effort.

Many politicians and news commentators say that inequality is threatening the middle class. Is there any evidence that the American public is worried about the growth in inequality? During the presidential race, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and B ernie S anders discussed economic inequality , as did R epublican candidates such as D onald Trump and M arco Rubio, although their pr oposed solutions dif fered.

Public opinion polls revealed concerns about inequality as well. In twothirds of Americans said the distribution of wealth and money is not fair and should be more evenly distributed; in , 63 per cent of Americans said upper -income people pay too little in taxes, and 67 percent said corporations pay too little. The main characters of this classics, philosophy story are Kira Argounova, Leo Kovalensky.

The book has been awarded with,. Instructional goals of We The People. Essentials Twelfth Edition.



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