Class attitudes in America: sympathy for the poor, resentment of the rich, and political implications

This volume explains a long-standing puzzle in American politics: why so many Americans support downwardly redistributive social welfare programmes, when such support seems to fly in the face of standard conceptions of the American public as anti-government, individualistic and racially prejudiced.

Bringing class attitudes into the analysis, Spencer Piston demonstrates through rigorous empirical analysis that sympathy for the poor and resentment of the rich explain American support for downwardly redistributive programmes - not only those that benefit the middle class, but also those that explicitly target the poor.