2018/01/18 by Peter Temin · 2 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Economic Theory and Policy #Political Economy and Marxism
paper · doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262036160.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2018/01/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/31
This book analyses the American economy in the twenty-first century as a <italic>dual economy</italic> in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis. Adapting the subsistence and capitalist sectors characterized by Lewis, the American dual economy contains a low-wage sector and a FTE (Finance, Technology, and Electronics) sector. The transition from the low-wage to the FTE sector is through education, which is becoming increasingly difficult for members of the low-wage sector because the FTE sector largely abandoned the American tradition of quality public schools and universities. Policy debates about public education and other policies that serve the low-wage sector often characterize members of the low-wage sector as black even though the low-wage sector is largely white. The model of a modern dual economy and the American history of race relations explain difficulties in both current politics and governmental actions in criminal justice, education, infrastructure and household debts.