Bartels In The Unequal Democracy

One of the most important issues rarely mentioned is the gap between rich and poor in America. The issue with this not being a hotter topic is that the gap is been growing. That is the conclusion that Bartels’ comes to in Unequal Democracy. In the book, one of Bartels’ points is that there is a biased pattern to the size of the gap between the rich and the poor. He concludes that over the past half-century, Republican presidents have allowed income inequality to expand, while Democratic presidents generally have not. He then goes into deeper detail to discuss the patterns the presidents affect the growth. For instance, Democratic presidents have consistently produced strong income growth in their second year of presidency while on the other hand, Republican presidents have consistently produced extremely weak income growth in their second year. Facts and statistics such as this litter the entire book adding legitimacy to his findings.
One of the best portions of the book is when Bartels goes to great pains in his introduction to anticipate the counterattack he expects from republican critics. He adds that in doing this work, he "was quite surprised to discover how often and how profoundly partisan differences in ideologies and values have shaped key policy decisions and economic outcomes. I have done my best to follow my evidence where it led me."
In Bartels' analysis, the period from the late 1940s to the early '70s was one of "rapid and remarkably egalitarian" growth in real incomes. Since 1974, the pattern has skewed significantly toward the rich. Overall income growth has slowed, and it has slowed far more for those at the bottom than at the top.
In his book, Bartels recognizes that there can be many explanations for growing ...

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...level "turn out to have fared much better under Republican presidents than under Democrats," Bartels writes. "Whether through political skill or pure good luck, Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in targeting income growth to coincide with presidential elections." This last conclusion really solidifies Bartels lack of bias in his book.
Bartles’ book was very methodical and data driven although often dry. However, through all of this, I do not think that there is enough data to arrive at a final conclusion. Specifically, I think that different economic policies played a major role in income growth rates over the past few decades. There is just not simply enough data to tease out the effects of economic policy on income growth. However, Bartels makes several great points with numbers to back them and it is certainly apparent that there is a trend.