Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project. Follow us on Facebook!
Sometimes in the history of public policy, an intellectual critical mass on how to deal with a problem is achieved in advance of the political system's readiness to incorporate this new knowledge. One of the best examples of this is the "rediscovery" of poverty in the U.S during the late 1950s by writers like Michael Harrington, Oscar Lewis, Gabriel Kolko, and others. All of these writers laid the groundwork for the War on Poverty several years before Lyndon Johnson would assemble the necessary Democratic majority to make it happen.
We can see something of a similar moment today in regards with inequality. Scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the issue and returning with novel insights, the issue of inequality is becoming more pressing in the popular press despite the conventional wisdom-makers' resistance to talking about it, and we are beginning to see the outlines of an intellectual critical mass that could serve as the basis for a policy agenda.
In part 1 of "Hunting the Elephant in the Room," I'll talk about what what the current trend in inequality studies can teach us, and whether there's an opening in public opinion for this new approach. In part 2, I'll discuss how this knowledge can be applied to our taxation system, and in part 3, how to extend anti-inequality thinking into the murky area of "pre-tax inequality;" i.e, the world we live in.
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