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Public Debt, Ownership and Power: The Political Economy of Distribution and Redistribution

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dc.contributor.advisorNitzan, Jonathan
dc.creatorHager, Sandy Brian
dc.date.accessioned2014-07-10T16:05:54Z
dc.date.available2014-07-10T16:05:54Z
dc.date.copyright2013-09-17
dc.date.issued2014-07-09
dc.date.updated2014-07-09T15:58:43Z
dc.degree.disciplinePolitical Science
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation offers the first historical examination of the political economy of US public debt ownership. Specifically, the study addresses the following questions: Who owns the US public debt? Is the distribution of federal government bonds concentrated in the hands of a specific group or is it widely held? And what if the identities of those who receive interest payments on government bonds are distinct from those who pay the taxes that finance the interest payments on the public debt? Does this mean that the public debt redistributes income from taxpayers to public creditors? Who ultimately bears the burden of financing the public debt? Despite centuries of debate, political economists have failed to come to any consensus on even the facts concerning ownership of the US public debt and its potential redistributive effects. Some claim that the public debt is heavily concentrated and that interest payments on government bonds redistribute income regressively from poor to rich. Others insist that the public debt has become very widely held and instead redistributes income progressively. Anchored within a ‘capital as power’ theoretical framework, my purpose in this is to shed some much-needed light on the dynamics of distribution and redistribution that lie at the heart of the public debt. I show for the household and corporate sectors how over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, the ownership of federal bonds and federal interest has become rapidly concentrated in the hands of dominant owners, the top 1% of households and the 2,500 largest corporations. Over the same period the federal income tax system has done little to progressively redistribute the federal interest income received by dominant owners. In this way, this dissertation argues that, since the early 1980s, the public debt has come to reinforce and augment the power of those at the very top of the social hierarchy.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/27564
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectPolitical Scienceen_US
dc.subjectEconomicsen_US
dc.subjectFinanceen_US
dc.subject.keywordsH.C. Adamsen_US
dc.subject.keywordsPublic debten_US
dc.subject.keywordsPoweren_US
dc.subject.keywordsDistributionen_US
dc.subject.keywordsRedistributionen_US
dc.subject.keywordsCapital as poweren_US
dc.subject.keywordsTop 1%en_US
dc.subject.keywordsCorporate poweren_US
dc.subject.keywordsDominant financeen_US
dc.subject.keywordsMarxismen_US
dc.subject.keywordsNeoclassical economicsen_US
dc.subject.keywordsFiscal policyen_US
dc.subject.keywordsBond-holding classen_US
dc.titlePublic Debt, Ownership and Power: The Political Economy of Distribution and Redistributionen_US
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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