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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Indebted: American Private Debt And Its Political Consequences, Giancarlo Andrew Gonzalez
Indebted: American Private Debt And Its Political Consequences, Giancarlo Andrew Gonzalez
Doctoral Dissertations
Private debt, also known as consumer debt, has been increasing exponentially over the past eighty years. Largely spurred by private and governmental action, the growth in consumer debt has allowed Americans to purchase services and commodities that they may not otherwise have been able to afford. However, research has also shown that debt has strong adverse effects on human social behavior. This is especially troublesome given how indebted Americans, and in particular poor and minority Americans, have become in recent years. Thus, I ask if the effects of debt extend to political activity as well as social behavior. In this …
Financial Deregulation, Income Inequality, And Partisan Politics From The Great War To The Great Recession, Eric Reed Keller
Financial Deregulation, Income Inequality, And Partisan Politics From The Great War To The Great Recession, Eric Reed Keller
Doctoral Dissertations
This study examines how financial deregulation and partisan politics shaped American market-based income distribution from 1914 to 2012 through a process called market conditioning. By using time-series data analysis, I access the effect of legislative and bureaucratic financial deregulation on market-based income concentration for the very wealthy. Then, I use process-tracing to determine why both political parties converged in the 1980s to support financial deregulation. I find financial deregulation does increase market-based income for top income earners, especially the top .01 percent. In addition, I determine that both parties were captured by neoliberal economic ideology and through the bureaucracy, …