What Attempts Have Been Made To Reduce Social Inequalities? (continued)

The last lesson showed how governments try to reduce inequality through taxes, benefits, free education and law. This one asks the awkward follow up: does any of it actually work, and might some of it even make things worse? Every major perspective has a sharp criticism to make. The New Right warns that generous welfare can trap people in dependency and breed an underclass. Marxists say the welfare state only patches up a system that produces poverty in the first place. Feminists say equality laws look good on paper but leave deep gender inequalities untouched.

You will learn to set these criticisms against the measures, weigh the evidence, and avoid the trap of treating any policy as a simple cure. You will meet the idea of a dependency culture and the underclass, the disputed culture of poverty, the Marxist view that welfare props up capitalism, the limits of charities and NGOs, and the feminist case that the law does not reach the real roots of women's inequality. By the end you will be able to argue both that the state can reduce inequality and that its efforts fall short.