Class Attitudes in America

Class Attitudes in America
Author: Spencer Piston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108426980

Sympathy for the poor and resentment of the rich are widespread, and they influence Americans' political preferences.

The Big Sort

The Big Sort
Author: Bill Bishop
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2009-05-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0547525192

The award-winning journalist reveals the untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided in this groundbreaking book. Armed with startling demographic data, Bill Bishop demonstrates how Americans have spent decades sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities—not by region or by state, but by city and neighborhood. With ever-increasing specificity, we choose the communities and media that are compatible with our lifestyles and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. In The Big Sort, Bishop explores how this phenomenon came to be, and its dire implications for our country. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

The Politics of Millennials

The Politics of Millennials
Author: Stella M. Rouse
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-08-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472124412

Today the Millennial generation, the cohort born from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, is the largest generation in the United States. It exceeds one-quarter of the population and is the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Millennials grew up experiencing September 11, the global proliferation of the Internet and of smart phones, and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Their young adulthood has been marked by rates of unemployment and underemployment surpassing those of their parents and grandparents, making them the first generation in the modern era to have higher rates of poverty than their predecessors at the same age. The Politics of Millennials explores the factors that shape the Millennial generation’s unique political identity, how this identity conditions political choices, and how this cohort’s diversity informs political attitudes and beliefs. Few scholars have empirically identified and studied the political attitudes and policy preferences of Millennials, despite the size and influence of this generation. This book explores politics from a generational perspective, first, and then combines this with other group identities that include race and ethnicity to bring a new perspective to how we examine identity politics.

The Next America

The Next America
Author: Paul Taylor
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1610396685

The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use. Today's Millennials -- well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twenty-somethings -- are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they'd hoped. This graying of our population has helped polarize our politics, put stresses on our social safety net, and presented our elected leaders with a daunting challenge: How to keep faith with the old without bankrupting the young and starving the future. Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. By mid-century, the population of the United States will be majority non-white and our median age will edge above 40 -- both unprecedented milestones. But other rapidly-aging economic powers like China, Germany, and Japan will have populations that are much older. With our heavy immigration flows, the US is poised to remain relatively young. If we can get our spending priorities and generational equities in order, we can keep our economy second to none. But doing so means we have to rebalance the social compact that binds young and old. In tomorrow's world, yesterday's math will not add up. Drawing on Pew Research Center's extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we're headed -- toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.

Politics Beyond Black and White

Politics Beyond Black and White
Author: Lauren Davenport
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108425984

This book investigates the social and political implications of the US multiracial population, which has surged in recent decades.

Ideology in America

Ideology in America
Author: Christopher Ellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2012-04-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1107019036

This book explains why the American public thinks of itself as conservative, but supports liberal positions on specific policy matters. Much scholarly work and popular commentary discusses the ideology of the American public: whether the public should be thought of as liberal or conservative, and why. This book is the first to focus squarely on the contradiction in public attitudes. By doing so, it can provide a broader explanation of American political ideology, and how American citizens connect their own beliefs and values to the choices presented by policy makers.

Deep Roots

Deep Roots
Author: Avidit Acharya
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691203725

"Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven't these sentiments evolved or changed? Deep Roots shows that the entrenched political and racial views of contemporary white southerners are a direct consequence of the region's slaveholding history, which continues to shape economic, political, and social spheres. Today, southern whites who live in areas once reliant on slavery--compared to areas that were not--are more racially hostile and less amenable to policies that could promote black progress. Highlighting the connection between historical institutions and contemporary political attitudes, the authors explore the period following the Civil War when elite whites in former bastions of slavery had political and economic incentives to encourage the development of anti-black laws and practices. Deep Roots shows that these forces created a local political culture steeped in racial prejudice, and that these viewpoints have been passed down over generations, from parents to children and via communities, through a process called behavioral path dependence. While legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act made huge strides in increasing economic opportunity and reducing educational disparities, southern slavery has had a profound, lasting, and self-reinforcing influence on regional and national politics that can still be felt today. A groundbreaking look at the ways institutions of the past continue to sway attitudes of the present, Deep Roots demonstrates how social beliefs persist long after the formal policies that created those beliefs have been eradicated."--Jacket.

How Partisan Media Polarize America

How Partisan Media Polarize America
Author: Matthew Levendusky
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2013-09-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 022606915X

Forty years ago, viewers who wanted to watch the news could only choose from among the major broadcast networks, all of which presented the same news without any particular point of view. Today we have a much broader array of choices, including cable channels offering a partisan take. With partisan programs gaining in popularity, some argue that they are polarizing American politics, while others counter that only a tiny portion of the population watches such programs and that their viewers tend to already hold similar beliefs. In How Partisan Media Polarize America, Matthew Levendusky confirms—but also qualifies—both of these claims. Drawing on experiments and survey data, he shows that Americans who watch partisan programming do become more certain of their beliefs and less willing to weigh the merits of opposing views or to compromise. And while only a small segment of the American population watches partisan media programs, those who do tend to be more politically engaged, and their effects on national politics are therefore far-reaching. In a time when politics seem doomed to partisan discord, How Partisan Media Polarize America offers a much-needed clarification of the role partisan media might play.

Why Americans Hate Politics

Why Americans Hate Politics
Author: E.J. Dionne
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2004-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780743265737

One of our shrewdest political observers traces thirty years of volatile political history and finds that on point after point, liberals and conservatives are framing issues as a series of "false choices," making it impossible for politicians to solve problems, and alienating voters in the process.

Forgotten Americans

Forgotten Americans
Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300241062

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.