09-10-2012, 02:58 PM
|
 |
Moderator
|
|
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: East Of Eden
Gender: 
Posts: 18,572
Thanks: 16,038
Thanked 10,902 Times in 7,197 Posts
|
|
Re: What Are You Reading?
The Betrayal of the American Dream
Quote:
A fiercely-reported indictment of how the American middle class has been condemned to terminal decline, from the authors of the New York Times bestseller America: What Went Wrong
THE BETRAYAL OF THE AMERICAN DREAM is the story of how a small number of people in power have deliberately put in place policies that have enriched themselves while cutting the ground out from underneath America's greatest asset--its middle class. Their actions, going back more than three decades, have relegated untold numbers of American men and women to the economic scrap heap--to lives of reduced earnings, chronic job insecurity, and a retirement with fewer and fewer benefits. Millions have lost their jobs. Others have lost their homes. Nearly all face an uncertain future.
The attack on the middle class goes back long before that. We warned that by squeezing the middle class, the nation was heading toward a two-class society dramatically imbalanced in favor of the wealthy. At the time, the plight of middle-class Americans victimized by corporate excess was dismissed by economists as nothing more than the result of a dynamic market economy in which some people lose jobs while others move into new jobs--"creative destruction," it was called. Soon, they said, the economy would create new opportunities and new jobs. We said, Don't believe it. What happened to the middle class...wasn't just a blip, but part of a disturbing pattern: a shift by Washington away from policies that had built the American middle class and enabled successive generations to do better than their parents, in favor of policies that catered to Wall Street, corporate chieftains, and America's wealthiest citizens.
In the process, both Democratic and Republican administrations ditched the notion that all Americans should be treated equally, that the playing field should be level for everyone. America must stop sacrificing its greatest asset. Because, without a middle class, there isn't really an America.
|
The Betrayal of the American Dream is an eye opener and most disturbing.The notion that we are just going through an economic "cycle" and that this is "just another recession" is false. It's about policy and betrayal for profit and the idea that the middle class is truly expendable.
Interesting and very depressing.
|
Linear Mode
