Seeking equality : the political economy of the common good in the United States and Canada

Summary/Review: "Seeking Equality compares economic inequality in the United States and Canada, North American neighbors with much in common--socially, politically, and economically--yet whose contemporary populations are marked by significant differences of material well-being. This book surveys the data and explores the policy decisions that have influenced discrete economic outcomes. It also discusses why a yawning gap between the very rich and the rest should be a cause for civic anxiety . . . and what can be done about it. Income inequality has increased in almost all advanced industrial economies over the past thirty-five years. Canada and the United States have been at the forefront of this trend, though the gap between the haves and the have-nots is substantially greater in the US. In addition, rates of social mobility are much lower in the United States, making it harder for Americans than Canadians to move up the ladder of economic success independent of who their parents happen to be. In Seeking Equality, John Harles considers the factors accounting for these cross-border differences. He surveys in considerable detail what is known about economic inequality in Canada and the United States and compares the respective political values that both shape and are shaped by ameliorative public policies. Whereas the claims of equality are persuasive in both countries, the US has further to go in achieving a society in which an accident of birth is not the main determinant of an individual's economic well-being. Given that Canada has done a better job of producing a greater equality in economic outcomes for its citizens, Americans can learn from the Canadian experience."--