Beyond left-right: teaching inequality with four ideological lenses

Oliver Cooke, Patrick Dolenc and Kimberly Schmidl-Gagne

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1/2, 18-35

Abstract: We believe the economic inequality experienced in many Western countries today threatens democratic principles. Exposing today's undergraduates to the debate over inequality is therefore vitally important. Yet, political discourse surrounding controversial public policy issues, like economic inequality, continues to grow increasingly polarised and adversarial. While we embrace controversy and intellectual disagreement in our classrooms, we believe students should be taught to think in ways that move beyond divisive dichotomies that are often framed as mutually exclusive. The traditional left-right debate over inequality in the USA is representative of this type of discourse. The pedagogical framework described here, which revolves around four political ideologies, circumvents this usual left-right constraint. By allowing students to explore the issue of inequality in a multidimensional political space, our framework engenders a more nuanced and less polarised discourse on inequality.

Keywords: inequality; economic inequality; ideology; Great Compression; Great Divergence; living wage; classical liberal; libertarian; radical; social-democrat; conservatism; liberalism; progressivism; diagnostic; critical thinking. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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