FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“Even before the 2008 financial crash, Jacobs and Page were right in their title and assumption: Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality. Now the equation is clear: in the U.S., runaway inequality nurtures extreme financial arrogance and misbehavior, which often bring about a crash. The next debate ought to be over What Americans Really Want Done about Wall Street and Its Malignant Handiwork.”
Kevin Phillips, author of Bad Money

“Class War? is the right question, and Page and Jacobs provide the right answer: Americans are more concerned about inequality and less divided over what should be done about it than the pundits presume. Everyone interested in America’s widening income gap—and everyone, including our leaders, should be—needs to read this book.”
Jacob S. Hacker, author of The Great Risk Shift

Class War?
What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality

By Benjamin I. Page and Lawrence R. Jacobs

“Some people are vengeful, calling for jail, public humiliation, or even revolution,” the New York Times reported in March, adding to innumerable accounts of outrage at the news that insurance giant A.I.G. planned to use millions of federal bailout dollars for employee bonuses. Punctuated by such anger, the economic crisis has shone a stark light on the growing chasm between America’s haves and have-nots. Striking a timely note of unity, Class War? reveals that both sides of this class divide actually agree to a surprising—and heartening—extent about what government should do to close it.

In fact, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs argue that at every income level and across geographical and ideological lines, most Americans favor public intervention to narrow the gap between rich and poor and create equal economic opportunities for all. Drawing on more than 70 years of opinion studies, they show that majorities support not only higher minimum wages, improved public education, and greater access to healthcare, but also the use of taxation to fund such programs.

As lawmakers battle over how to heal our ailing economy, Class War? provides undeniable proof of the popular consensus their constituents have been building for decades: that our government must take aggressive action against the iniquity that plagues our nation.

Benjamin I. Page is the Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.

 

They are available for interviews. For more information, please contact Megan Marz at (773) 702-7490 or mmarz@uchicago.edu

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