Verbatim Mac

Income inequality – key to democracy

And, income inequality hurts democracy by giving the wealthy disproportionate power over policies that hurt the rest of the country

Nelson, reporter for Vox, quoting Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University, 2015

[Libby, “Read 2015 Nobel Economics Prize winner Angus Deaton's amazing take on inequality,” Vox, October 12, https://www.vox.com/2015/10/12/9508423/angus-deaton-income-inequality, GDI – TM]

Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics today, is best known for his detailed work on consumption and poverty for individuals. But in his 2013 book The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, Deaton made a short, compelling, and clear case for why income inequality in society as a whole is a threat to democracy — and why worrying about it isn't just class warfare or resentment: The political equality that is required by democracy is always under threat from economic inequality, and the more extreme the economic inequality, the greater the threat to democracy. If democracy is compromised, there is a direct loss of wellbeing because people have good reason to value their ability to participate in political life, and the loss of that ability is instrumental in threatening other harm. The very wealthy have little need for state-provided education or health care… They have even less reason to support health insurance for everyone, or to worry about the low quality of public schools that plagues much of the country. They will oppose any regulation of banks that restricts profits, even if it helps those who cannot cover their mortgages or protects the public against predatory lending, deceptive advertising, or even a repetition of the financial crash. To worry about these consequences of extreme inequality has nothing to do with being envious of the rich and everything to do with the fear that rapidly growing top incomes are a threat to the wellbeing of everyone else. In other words, worrying about income inequality doesn't mean being jealous of wealth. It's about the effect on the rest of society when the wealthy are rich enough that they can effectively drive political outcomes so they line up with their unusual policy preferences.

Internal link – inequality education key to civic participation

Educational inequality undermines democracy—spurs unequal civic participation

Chen, PhD candidate at Saint Louis University, publishing in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, 2015

(Amy Yun-Ping, “Educational Inequality: An Impediment to True Democracy in the United States,” Sociology Study, Vol.5 No.5, May 2015, http://www.davidpublisher.org/Public/uploads/Contribute/55f62bc2bf7b8.pdf, accessed 7/10/17, GDI-JG)

Hochschild and Scovronick (2003) stated, “Education also powerfully affects people’s involvement with politics and their community, thereby creating another link between the nested structure of inequalities in schooling and the American dream” (Hochschild and Scovronick 2003: 24). Well-educated members of the community largely understand their obligation as participants in a democratic society, and they likely know current political facts and participate in political activities. The virtue of education in a democracy is that it tends to prepare children for citizenship and to foster in them the knowledge necessary for them to function in a civic society. But today in the United States, only some Americans fully exercise their political rights, and these are often citizens with high incomes, high socioeconomic statuses, and high levels of formal education. According to the American Political Science Association Taskforce (2005):∂ In 1990, nearly nine out of 10 individuals in families with incomes over $75,000 reported voting in presidential elections, while only half of those in families with incomes under $15,000 reported voting. Fifty-six percent (56%) of those with incomes of at least $75,000 reported participating in political campaign activities, compared with a mere 6% among Americans with incomes under $15,000. (American Political Science Association Taskforce 2005: 80-81)∂ The evidence indicates that there is a significant correlation between income status and the practice of citizenship. Americans with higher socioeconomic status usually enjoy not only higher educational achievement and salaries, but also have greater resources and skills to engage in politics and organizations. Education provides opportunities for Americans to acquire knowledge of democracy and to recognize their duty as members of a democratic society. Nevertheless, educational inequalities can lead to disparities in resources and skills between privileged and unprivileged people. The situation demolishes the goal of promoting democracy. The voices of U.S. citizens are heard unequally, and collective decisions respond much more to the privileged than to people of average means. The gap of inequality will increase. Instead of making progress, U.S. politics will continue to involve exclusion and unfairness, which strongly distorts the primary framework of democracy.

Impact – US democracy key

Robust American democracy is a crucial model for global democracy—multiple reasons now is key

Diamond, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, 2016

[Larry, “Democracy After Trump,” Foreign Affairs, November 14, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-11-14/democracy-after-trump GDI -TM]

CITY ON A HILL Perhaps the most ominous trend, however, has been the increasingly manifest problems of democracy within the advanced nations of Europe and the United States. A crucial factor in the success of the third wave of democratization was the unparalleled power of a seemingly successful U.S. democratic model—which U.S. President Ronald Reagan, channeling American colonial governor John Winthrop, called a “shining city on a hill”—to inspire admiration and emulation around the world. Of course, democracy in the United States has always had many scars and imperfections. But during the 1980s and 1990s, the world saw it as economically dynamic, politically functional, morally self-confident, and militarily supreme. The fall of the Berlin Wall and then of the Soviet Union left the United States as the lone superpower at a time when its democratic allies in the EU were attempting to unify the continent in a common market based on liberal values and institutions. In the post–Cold War era, democratic values became universal—in the sense that they appealed to large swaths of humanity in virtually every region of the world—while all ideological rivals were in retreat or, like Iran, geographically contained. With financial and political support from Europe and the United States during these two decades, freedom flourished, markets expanded, civil societies grew, representative institutions strengthened, and democracy became, for the first time in human history, the most common form of government in the world. During this third wave, democracy gained durable footholds in Africa and Asia and became pervasive in Latin America, but its high quality and unquestioned stability in the West remained the foundation of its global success. Europe and the United States provided both an end state toward which emerging democracies could move, and support to help them get there. It was thus possible to imagine the turn of the millennium as the dawn of a new democratic century. That vision has now begun to unravel. There is no consensus on what we are witnessing, but what is beyond dispute is that populism and illiberalism have been surging in the West. Recent events in Europe have been particularly worrisome—across the continent, populist parties have sought to mobilize “the people” against allegedly corrupt elites. In Hungary and Poland, right-wing populist governments have subverted the independence of the judiciary, civil service, and media. Antidemocratic parties have won significant vote shares in Hungary and the Czech Republic, while illiberal, anti-immigrant ones, such as France’s National Front and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, have achieved impressive electoral gains in a number of West European democracies.