June 17 Meeting: The Tangled Arc of Democracy and Equality in America

Democracy and equality have been in tension in our Republic since its founding. Through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, and our own lifetimes the two have followed a tangled arc, not always moving in the same direction.

Excesses of both inequality and democracy have long been a concern. On the eve of the Revolution, Connecticut Governor Benjamin Turnbull worried that if a few were allowed to “amass all the riches and wealth of a country” they would “by fraud or force . . . oppress and tyrannize over their fellow-men.” James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10  that “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Many of us in this discussion group are of a generation that has witnessed some of the most dramatic acts in this play. In our youth, America saw a period of unusually broad prosperity and perhaps its greatest degree of economic equality. We may ourselves have taken part in the civil rights movement, an important step toward greater democracy. Today, wealth is again highly concentrated, while debates over voting rights, campaign finance, and the health of democratic institutions remain very much alive.

Our discussion this month will give us a chance to reflect. Are Turnbull’s and Madison’s warnings as relevant now as they were 250 years ago?

Recommended readings

• Paul Krugman, “The New Inequality,” May 2026. AI Summary. Original Substack.
• “Political Responsibility for Billionaires,” Draft.
• Daniel Mandell, “The Founders New Great Inequality Could Destroy us All,” Time.
• Jeffrey G. Williamson and Peter Lindert, “Unequal gains: American growth and inequality since 1700,” Vox EU.