Tag Archives: Class

Class, the welfare state, and redistributive attitudes: A methodological Intervention

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Melcher, C. R., van der Naald, J., Torres, C., & Lindsay, S. C. (2025). Class, the welfare state, and redistributive attitudes: A methodological Intervention. The Social Science Journal, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/03623319.2025.2582481

Prior research has found that measures of welfare state generosity and social class are, at best, unevenly related to individual redistributive attitudes. We suggest that these uneven relationships are at least partially due to a methodological misspecification prevalent in much of the existing literature, as well as a theoretical shortcoming of the rational choice assumptions undergirding the supposed link between economic self-interest and redistributive attitudes. Using a cross-national sample and multi-level modeling, we illustrate that the effect of income on subjective perceptions of economic well-being differs greatly depending on the generosity of the welfare state. Individuals perceive their class position differently depending on the welfare state context. Thus, we argue that the welfare state moderates the effect of class on redistributive attitudes, not just mediates it, as much of the existing literature assumes. We illustrate this moderating effect systematically using a battery of redistributive attitudes.

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Policing Welfare: Punitive Adversarialism in Public Assistance

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Headworth, Spencer. 2021. Policing Welfare: Punitive Adversarialism in Public Assistance. University of Chicago Press.

policing welfare

Means-tested government assistance in the United States requires recipients to meet certain criteria and continue to maintain their eligibility so that benefits are paid to the “truly needy.”  Welfare is regarded with such suspicion in this country that considerable resources are spent policing the boundaries of eligibility, which are delineated by an often confusing and baroque set of rules and regulations.  Even minor infractions of the many rules can cause people to be dropped from these programs, and possibly face criminal prosecution.  In this book, Spencer Headworth offers the first study of the structure of fraud control in the welfare system by examining the relations between different levels of governmental agencies, from federal to local, and their enforcement practices. Policing Welfare shows how the enforcement regime of welfare has been constructed to further stigmatize those already living in poverty and deepens disparities of class, race, and gender in our society.

Book Review: First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship

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Please enjoy this review of Richard Lachmann’s First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship by Emily Erikson.

First Class Passengers

Throw me a life vest, please!

by Emily Erikson, Yale University 

I think we can all agree that Richard Lachmann’s latest book, First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship, is a masterful work of history and political analysis. The question I want to address is whether this book should be read as an analysis of the current situation of the United States, a work on elite conflict theory, or as a work on imperial decline? Or perhaps this question could be better phrased as whether this work’s greatest contribution is to contemporary analysis of the state of the United States, to the development of elite-conflict theory, or to theories of empire. 

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When Race Race Meets Class: African Americans Coming of Age in a Small City

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Levine, Rhonda F. 2019. When Race Race Meets Class: African Americans Coming of Age in a Small City. Routledge.

When Race Meets ClassA rare, 15-year ethnography, this book follows the lives of individual, low-income African American youth from the beginning of high school into their early adult years. Levine shows how their interaction and experience with multiple institutions (family, school, community) and individuals (parents, friends, teachers, coaches, strangers) shape their hopes, fears, aspirations, and worldviews. The intersectionality of their social identities—how race, class, and gender come together to influence how they come to think about who they are—influences many behaviors that directly contradict their stated aspirations. Affected, too, by limited access to resources, these youths often take a path profoundly different from their stated values and life goals. Levine explores the volatility and constraints underlying their decision-making and behaviors. The book reveals the critical junctures and turning points shaping life trajectories, challenging many long-held assumptions about the persistence of racial inequality by offering new insights on the educational and occupational barriers facing young African Americans.

First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Power

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Lachmann, Richard. 2020. First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Power. Verso Books.

First Class PassengersThe extent and irreversibility of US decline is becoming ever more obvious as America loses war after war and as one industry after another loses its technological edge. Lachmann explains why the United States will not be able to sustain its global dominance. He contrasts America’s relatively brief period of hegemony with the Netherlands’ similarly short primacy and Britain’s far longer era of leadership.

Decline in all those cases was not inevitable and did not respond to global capitalist cycles. Rather, decline is the product of elites’ success in grabbing control of resources and governmental powers. Not only are ordinary people harmed, but also capitalists become increasingly unable to coordinate their interests and adopt policies and make investments necessary to counter economic and geopolitical competitors elsewhere in the world.

Conflicts among elites and challenges by non-elites determine the timing and mold the contours of decline. Lachmann traces the transformation of US politics from an era of elite consensus to present-day paralysis combined with neoliberal plunder, explains the paradox of an American military with an unprecedented technological edge unable to subdue even the weakest enemies, and the consequences of finance’s cannibalization of the US economy.