Download or read book America S Shrinking Middle Class written by Vahab Aghai Ph.D. and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-08-29 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does a middle class nation do without a middle class? An abundance of evidence suggests that we here in the United States are about to find out. Americas Shrinking Middle Class documents trends that have been building not just since the Great Recession, but for over four decades. In 1970, the share of U.S. income that went to the middle class was 62 percent. By 2010 that figure had fallen to 45 percent. In that same year, the median income for middle class Americans had gone from $72,956 to $69,487 a decline of nearly 5 percent in just one year. A shrinking middle class would mean a shrinking economy and an America dominated by a growing lower class. Life would be less comfortable, less prosperous, and less secure. With less money coming in to government and businesses alike, tax burdens would become onerous. One example: Obamacare. It could cost the average taxpayer nearly $6,000 in extra taxes and create a total of 20 new taxes or tax hikes. For a weakened and shrinking middle class, it could be a fatal blow.

Download or read book The Shrinking Middle Class written by Emanuel Collado and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The middle class of our society has an important roleacting as the glue that holds the upper and lower classes together. But what will happen if the middle class crumbles? The Shrinking Middle Class is a comprehensive study of the economic meltdown and its long-term effects on the middle class. Emanuel Collado is a self-made businessman who focuses the results of his extensive research into a trend first detected in the 1980s. He provides fascinating case studies of middle class families, alarming statistics, and causes of the current economic crisis that both the United States and the world face. As Collado compares past decisions with current issues, he offers explanations for why America has such a disparity in our society and where the social fabric is being skewed to expand at both ends and grow thinner in the middle. Not so long ago, being middle class meant a reliable job with good pay, a home, access to health care, good education for youth, and a dignified retired life. Collado provides an in-depth look into why the United States is becoming a two-class society and what we can do now to prevent it from happening.

Download or read book America s Shrinking Middle Class written by Ph. D. Vahab Aghai and published by . This book was released on 2014-08-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does a middle class nation do without a middle class? An abundance of evidence suggests that we here in the United States are about to find out. America's Shrinking Middle Class documents trends that have been building not just since the Great Recession, but for over four decades. In 1970, the share of U.S. income that went to the middle class was 62 percent. By 2010 that figure had fallen to 45 percent. In that same year, the median income for middle class Americans had gone from $72,956 to $69,487 a decline of nearly 5 percent in just one year. A shrinking middle class would mean a shrinking economy and an America dominated by a growing lower class. Life would be less comfortable, less prosperous, and less secure. With less money coming in to government and businesses alike, tax burdens would become onerous. One example: Obamacare. It could cost the average taxpayer nearly $6,000 in extra taxes and create a total of 20 new taxes or tax hikes. For a weakened and shrinking middle class, it could be a fatal blow.

Download or read book America s Shrinking Middle Class written by Vahab Aghai and published by . This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does a middle class nation do without a middle class? An abundance of evidence suggests that we here in the United States are about to find out.Americas Shrinking Middle Class documents trends that have been building not just since the Great Recession, but for over four decades. In 1970, the share of U.S. income that went to the middle class was 62 percent. By 2010 that figure had fallen to 45 percent. In that same year, the median income for middle class Americans had gone from $72,956 to $69,487 a decline of nearly 5 percent in just one year.A shrinking middle class would mean a shrinking economy and an America dominated by a growing lower class. Life would be less comfortable, less prosperous, and less secure. With less money coming in to government and businesses alike, tax burdens would become onerous. One example: Obamacare. It could cost the average taxpayer nearly $6,000 in extra taxes and create a total of 20 new taxes or tax hikes. For a weakened and shrinking middle class, it could be a fatal blow.

Download or read book The Shrinking American Middle Class written by Joseph Dillon Davey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States lost one third of its factory jobs in the past decade as jobs were outsourced offshore, mostly to Asia. Jobs that require a college degree are next to go. China will award six times as many degrees this year as they did ten years ago and any job that can be digitized will be 'tradable'. Estimates of the number of vulnerable jobs range from a low 11 million to a staggering 56 million 'middle class' jobs. The median United States household income has already dropped by seven percent since 2000 and without dramatic changes in the American workforce that trend will become a disaster for middle class Americans.

Download or read book The Vanishing Middle Class new epilogue written by Peter Temin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

Download or read book Under Pressure The Squeezed Middle Class written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Middle-class households feel left behind and have questioned the benefits of economic globalisation.

Download or read book A New Contract with the Middle Class written by Richard V. Reeves and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A better future for the middle class is no longer an aspiration. It is a necessity. The disintegration of the American Dream is more visible than ever before. The understanding—the contract—that existed between individuals willing to work and contribute and a society willing to support those individuals when they needed it is falling apart. Now is the time to draft a new contract with America's middle class. One that rewards work and service, improves upward mobility, and reduces inequality. In A New Contract with the Middle Class Brookings senior fellows Isabel Sawhill and Richard Reeves outline the foundations of what that new contract should be, based on discussions they had across the country with middle-class Americans. Sawhill and Reeves' recommendations provide solutions to issues that came up time and time again in these conversations: money, time, relationships, health, and respect. Some of the bold recommendations included in A New Contract with the Middle Class: • Eliminate virtually all income taxes paid by the middle class. • Raise the minimum wage and subsidize wages below the median with a worker tax credit. • Offer scholarships for those who undertake at least a year of national service. • Ensure four weeks of paid leave per year. • Align school and working hours and boost child care to help working parents. America is only as strong as the American middle-class. A New Contract with the Middle Class proposes a new way forward.

Download or read book Dream Hoarders written by Richard Reeves and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.

Download or read book The 9 9 Percent written by Matthew Stewart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A trenchant analysis of how the wealthiest 9.9 percent of Americans -- those just below the tip of the wealth pyramid -- have exacerbated the growing inequality in our country and distorted our social values"--

Download or read book America What Went Wrong written by Donald L. Barlett and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 1992 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Articles and graphics describe economic conditions since the 1980s and their effect on the nation.

Download or read book Winner Take All Politics written by Jacob S. Hacker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the growing divide between the incomes of the wealthy class and those of middle-income Americans, exonerating popular suspects to argue that the nation's political system promotes greed and under-representation.

Download or read book Plutocracy in America written by Ronald P. Formisano and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This data-driven book offers insight into the fallacy of widespread opportunity, the fate of the middle class, and the mechanisms that perpetuate income disparity.

Download or read book The Riches of This Land written by Jim Tankersley and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid character-driven narrative, fused with important new economic and political reporting and research, that busts the myths about middle class decline and points the way to its revival. For over a decade, Jim Tankersley has been on a journey to understand what the hell happened to the world's greatest middle-class success story -- the post-World-War-II boom that faded into decades of stagnation and frustration for American workers. In The Riches of This Land, Tankersley fuses the story of forgotten Americans-- struggling women and men who he met on his journey into the travails of the middle class-- with important new economic and political research, providing fresh understanding how to create a more widespread prosperity. He begins by unraveling the real mystery of the American economy since the 1970s - not where did the jobs go, but why haven't new and better ones been created to replace them. His analysis begins with the revelation that women and minorities played a far more crucial role in building the post-war middle class than today's politicians typically acknowledge, and policies that have done nothing to address the structural shifts of the American economy have enabled a privileged few to capture nearly all the benefits of America's growing prosperity. Meanwhile, the "angry white men of Ohio" have been sold by Trump and his ilk a theory of the economy that is dangerously backward, one that pits them against immigrants, minorities, and women who should be their allies. At the culmination of his journey, Tankersley lays out specific policy prescriptions and social undertakings that can begin moving the needle in the effort to make new and better jobs appear. By fostering an economy that opens new pathways for all workers to reach their full potential -- men and women, immigrant or native-born, regardless of race -- America can once again restore the upward flow of talent that can power growth and prosperity.

Download or read book The Coming Class War and How to Avoid It written by Frederick R. Strobel and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1999-05-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strobel and Peterson offer a clear, accessible analysis of the worsening distribution of income and wealth in America. In addressing the decline of the middle class, the authors determine that the middle class has not only continued to shrink, but that the majority of economic benefits have become concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. There is a close analysis of the linkage between economic and political power, as well as the increasing inability of the growing lower and shrinking middle classes to voice their economic views in Washington. The result is a uniquely American form of class conflict, which adds to our historic racial tension, and new clashes along gender and generational lines. Widening income disparities further split society. Single issue politics often emerge as a refuge for those voters unwilling or unable to deal with these complicated and seemingly insoluble issues. To prevent further class conflict in the coming quarter century, the authors outline strategic changes in policy, including a plan to strengthen social security. Anyone with an interest in current economic issues and problems will find this book helpful in understanding how the worsening income and wealth distribution came about, the consequences inherent in this situation, and suggestions for the future. Frederick R. Strobel is the William G. and Marie Selby Professor of Economics at the New College of the University of South Florida in Sarasota. This is his second book on middle class decline. He has written numerous articles on economics and economic policy, which have appeared in a wide variety of business and professional journals, including Business Week, Chicago Tribune, and American Banker. Wallace C. Peterson is the George Homes Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. This is also his second book on middle class decline. He is the author of many other works on economic policy, including the award-winning newspaper column Money in America. He is the past president of several academic associations, including the Midwest Economics Association, the Association for Evolutionary Economics, and the Association for Social Economics.

Download or read book Promised Land written by David Stebenne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explains how the American middle class ballooned at mid-century until it dominated the nation, showing who benefited and what brought the expansion to an end"--

Download or read book Squeezed written by Alissa Quart and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of TIME’s Best New Books to Read This Summer “Brilliant—a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today. Through vivid stories, sharp analysis and wit, Quart anatomizes the middle class’s fall while also offering solutions and hope.” — Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed Families today are squeezed on every side—from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible. Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects—from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses—have been wrung out by a system that doesn’t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite. Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving. Writtenin the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.