Welfare for the Wealthy
Parties, Social Spending, and Inequality in the United States

This book examines how political party power influences public spending and private subsidies, and how these changes affect inequality.

Christopher G. Faricy (Author)

9781107498402, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 June 2016

268 pages, 18 b/w illus. 22 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

'For Faricy, the real question is not some fanciful speculation about whether you can tolerate a welfare state that hampers your freedom, but rather a matter of which of these two welfare states you want: the one that spends public money to increase economic inequality, or the one that spends public money to reduce it.' The New York Times (nytimes.com)

How does political party control determine changes to social policy, and by extension, influence inequality in America? Conventional theories show that Democratic control of the federal government produces more social expenditures and less inequality. Welfare for the Wealthy re-examines this relationship by evaluating how political party power results in changes to both public social spending and subsidies for private welfare - and how a trade-off between the two, in turn, affects income inequality. Christopher Faricy finds that both Democrats and Republicans have increased social spending over the last forty-two years. And while both political parties increase federal social spending, Democrats and Republicans differ in how they spend federal money, which socioeconomic groups benefit, and the resulting consequences for income inequality.

1. The politics of social policy in America
2. The partisan politics of the divided US social welfare state
3. Political parties and public social spending: testing the conventional wisdom
4. Government subsidies and the private American social system: the special case of tax expenditures
5. A Republican welfare state?
6. The modality of social spending and income inequality in America
7. The implications of the divided American welfare state.

Subject Areas: Public finance [KFFD], Welfare economics [KCR], Political economy [KCP], Politics & government [JP], Social welfare & social services [JKS], Social services & welfare, criminology [JK]