6. What is the effect of redistributive tax policies on innovation?
7. Why, according to the video, the US might become increasingly less appealing to smart professional people?
8. Why is the systemic inequality of opportunity bad for all Americans?
Watch the video for specific information and fill in the gaps in the sentences that follow.
1. ______% of American men raised in the bottom 20% of incomes stay there, while in the UK
that number is _______%, and in Denmark _____%.
2. In the United States, women make _____ cents for every dollar that men make in the workforce.
In _____________ the situation is even worse.
3. In ______________ women make 83 cents for every dollar men make; in Sweden it is ____.
4. The most underrated country is _________________, where women make ______ cents for
every dollar that men make in the workforce.
5. A lot of innovative companies like ____________, ______________, and _______________
started in the US.
Speak Up
DISCUSSION QUESTION
Comment on the following quote, which describes the type of society that inevitably emerges from a meritocracy.
“It would be a society with extremely high and rising inequality yet little circulation of elites. A society in which the pillar institutions were populated by and presided over by group of hypereducated, ambitious overachievers who enjoyed tremendous monetary rewards as well as
Unit II. US: from Democracy to Empire?
Unit II. US: from Democracy to Empire?
unparalleled political power and prestige and yet who managed to insulate themselves from sanction, competition, and accountability, a group of people who could more or less rest assured that now that they have achieved their status, now that they have scaled to the top of the pyramid, they, their peers, and their progeny>1 will stay there.” (Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Christopher Hayes.)
TERM PRESENTATION
Each student is expected to make a 10-min power point presentation on one of topics studied this term (the UK, the USA, the EU).
If you decide to make one on the USA, choose a politically relevant topic and prepare a presentation. Guidelines are to be found in the Manual.
