An excellent profile of middle-class psychology in America, its habits, expectations and frustrations.

Beyond Poverty and Affluence argues that, like a virus which has developed an immunity to the cure, the problems of poverty, environmental degeneration, and unemployment today successfully resist the remedy of growth in industrial production. Bob Goudzwaard and Harry de Lange demonstrate that over the last several decades the solutions used by industrialized nations either have not helped or have dramatically exacerbated these problems. Instead, these predicaments have become structural features of today's economic practice. The authors formulate an alternative, which they call the economics of care, and propose a twelve-step program for economic recovery in Canada. Goudzwaard and de Lange contend that poverty, environmental damage, and unemployment have a common origin: they emerge from structural flaws in classical and contemporary neoclassical economic thought, including that of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Drawing on thinkers as diverse as RenT Girard and Hannah Arendt, on numerous Canadian sources, and on their own Christian tradition, the authors propose a `pre-care' economy, which places care needs first on its list of priorities and only then addresses the scope of production, rather than a 'post-care' economy, which pursues maximum consumption and production above all else. They also describe in detail structural changes the Canadian economy will need to undergo to become an economy of pre-care. Included in their discussion is an assessment of the progress of `sustainable development' in Canada, including the work of the federal and provincial roundtables on environment and economy, and a proposed framework for setting Canadian government finances on a durable foundation. The twelve economic proposals the authors put forward deal with such issues as international currency creation, the environment, the foundation of labour/management relations, the funding of social programs, wage and salary development, the scope of production and technological development, the structure of economic decision-making, the direction of government funding, and the dropping of trade barriers in North America and Europe.

Affluence and Poverty in the Middle East is an introduction to the political economy of the Middle East, focusing on its most salient features - persistent poverty and extreme inequality. El-Ghonemy analyses the factors influencing the region, including its unique historical, religious and cultural mix, as well as its economic foundations and forms of corruption. For each factor he employs case-studies drawn from throughout the region, from Turkey to Sudan and Morocco to Iran. In the final section El-Ghomeny discusses possible solutions to the challenges facing the region, including possible uses of a peace dividend, and the role of democracy.

Why policymaking in the United States privileges the rich over the poor Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy—but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings are staggering: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans' preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not. Gilens shows that representational inequality is spread widely across different policy domains and time periods. Yet Gilens also shows that under specific circumstances the preferences of the middle class and, to a lesser extent, the poor, do seem to matter. In particular, impending elections—especially presidential elections—and an even partisan division in Congress mitigate representational inequality and boost responsiveness to the preferences of the broader public. At a time when economic and political inequality in the United States only continues to rise, Affluence and Influence raises important questions about whether American democracy is truly responding to the needs of all its citizens.

Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.