Download or read book Economic Injustice and the Rhetoric of the American Dream written by Luke Winslow and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-07-24 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our economic arrangements require a persuasive story that can explain who is rich, who is poor, and why. This story shapes our attitudes toward what is just and unjust; this story dispenses power to some and withholds it from others; and the deeply political and paradoxical nature of this story presents a valuable site of rhetorical inquiry. Economic Injustice and the Rhetoric of the American Dream fills an important scholarly gap by connecting the need to make sense of economic arrangements with the rhetoric of the American Dream. Luke Winslow examines how the rhetoric of the American Dream has emerged as a dominant cultural touchstone in oscillation with a widespread shift to individualistic explanations for economic arrangements, the arrival of neoliberalism, growing levels on inequality, and dismal rates of economic mobility. By developing the tools of rhetorical and ideological criticism this book explores the American Dream in relation to religious, economic, educational, and political institutions ranging from Prosperity Theology to the candidacy and election of Donald Trump. Recommended for scholars in Communication, Economics, Political Science, and Religious Studies.

Download or read book Economic Inequality written by Coral Celeste Frazer and published by Twenty-First Century Books (Tm). This book was released on 2018 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of Americans don't earn enough money to pay for decent housing, food, health care, and education. Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer. Learn how governments, businesses, and citizens are fighting to close the economic gap.

Download or read book Reclaiming the American Dream written by Ben Hecht and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlocking the American Dream At a time when deep divisions headline the national discourse on equality, Reclaiming the American Dream: Proven Solutions for Creating Economic Opportunity for All uses real-world examples to illustrate how America can evolve to include everyone in its promise of opportunity. Living Cities President and CEO Ben Hecht has spent decades exploring how leaders take proactive measures to combat growing racial disparity, without relying on slow-moving policies or the whims of Washington, D.C., to make changes in their own backyards. The strategies highlighted in Reclaiming the American Dream offer a blueprint for how communities can rekindle the promise of the American Dream through improving educational opportunities, strengthening civic engagement, and providing a ladder to economic security. Each of us—whether as an elected leader, engaged neighbor, corporate CEO, philanthropist, or investor—can act right now to secure the economic future of our country and help level the playing field for struggling Americans everywhere.

Download or read book Equal Is Unfair written by Don Watkins and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’ve all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we’re told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage. But what if that narrative is wrong? What if the real threat to the American Dream isn’t rising income inequality—but an all-out war on success? In Equal is Unfair, a timely and thought-provoking work, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook reveal that almost everything we’ve been taught about inequality is wrong. You’ll discover: • why successful CEOs make so much money—and deserve to • how the minimum wage hurts the very people it claims to help • why middle-class stagnation is a myth • how the little-known history of Sweden reveals the dangers of forced equality • the disturbing philosophy behind Obama’s economic agenda. The critics of inequality are right about one thing: the American Dream is under attack. But instead of fighting to make America a place where anyone can achieve success, they are fighting to tear down those who already have. The real key to making America a freer, fairer, more prosperous nation is to protect and celebrate the pursuit of success—not pull down the high fliers in the name of equality.

Download or read book The American Dream vs The Gospel of Wealth written by Norton Garfinkle and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norton Garfinkle paints a disquieting picture of America today: a nation increasingly divided between economic winners and losers, a nation in which the middle-class American Dream seems more and more elusive. Recent government policies reflect a commitment to a new supply-side winner-take-all Gospel of Wealth. Garfinkle warns that this supply-side economic vision favors the privileged few over the majority of American citizens striving to better their economic condition. Garfinkle employs historical insight and data-based economic analysis to demonstrate compellingly the sharp departure of the supply-side Gospel of Wealth from an American ideal that dates back to Abraham Lincoln—the vision of America as a society in which ordinary, hard-working individuals can get ahead and attain a middle-class living, and in which government plays an active role in expanding opportunities and ensuring against economic exploitation. Supply-side economic policies increase economic disparities and, Garfinkle insists, they fail on technical, factual, moral, and political grounds. He outlines a fresh economic vision, consonant with the great American tradition of ensuring strong economic growth, while preserving the middle-class American Dream.

Download or read book The American Dream Is Not Dead written by Michael R. Strain and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populists on both sides of the political aisle routinely announce that the American Dream is dead. According to them, the game has been rigged by elites, workers can’t get ahead, wages have been stagnant for decades, and the middle class is dying. Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disputes this rhetoric as wrong and dangerous. In this succinctly argued volume, he shows that, on measures of economic opportunity and quality of life, there has never been a better time to be alive in America. He backs his argument with overwhelming—and underreported—data to show how the facts favor realistic optimism. He warns, however, that the false prophets of populism pose a serious danger to our current and future prosperity. Their policies would leave workers worse off. And their erroneous claim that the American Dream is dead could discourage people from taking advantage of real opportunities to better their lives. If enough people start to believe the Dream is dead, they could, in effect, kill it. To prevent this self-fulfilling prophecy, Strain’s book is urgent reading for anyone feeling the pull of the populists. E. J. Dionne and Henry Olsen provide spirited responses to Strain’s argument.

Download or read book Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements written by Luke Winslow and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines “Rhetorical Children” as visible and vocal communicators, shaping public discourse on contentious social issues related to organized labor, civil rights, gun violence, and climate change. This book explores four key social movement case studies: the 1903 Mother Jones-led March of the Mill Children to reform child labor laws, the 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,-led Children’s Crusade to end segregation, the 2018 Parkland student-led March for Our Lives movement to end gun violence, and the ongoing struggle for climate change mitigation led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Through these case studies, the book outlines three rhetorical strategies, namely children’s ability to activate adults’ moral obligation; to invoke threats to natality and lost childhood; and to disrupt social order. It enables readers to better understand rhetorical children and the rhetorical tools required for social movements. Assessing the powerful role children play in shaping public discourse, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Communication Studies, Rhetoric, Public Address, Social Movements, and Cultural Studies.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream written by Robert C. Hauhart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean by the American dream? Can we define it? Or does any discussion of the phrase end inconclusively, the solid turned liquid—like ice melting? Do we know whether the American dream motivates and inspires or, alternately, obscures and deceives? The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream offers distinctive, authoritative, original essays by well-known scholars that address the social, economic, historical, philosophic, legal, and cultural dimensions of the American dream for the twenty-first century. The American dream, first discussed and defined in print by James Truslow Adams’s The Epic of America (1931), has become nearly synonymous with being American. Adams’s definition, although known to scholars, is often lost in our ubiquitous use of the term. When used today, the iconic phrase seems to encapsulate every fashion, fad, trend, association, or image the user identifies with the United States or American life. The American dream’s ubiquity, though, argues eloquently for a deeper understanding of its heritage, its implications, and its impact—to be found in this first research handbook ever published on the topic.

Download or read book Dividing Paradise written by Jennifer Sherman and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How rural areas have become uneven proving grounds for the American Dream Late-stage capitalism is trying to remake rural America in its own image, and the resistance is telling. Small-town economies that have traditionally been based on logging, mining, farming, and ranching now increasingly rely on tourism, second-home ownership, and retirement migration. In Dividing Paradise, Jennifer Sherman tells the story of Paradise Valley, Washington, a rural community where amenity-driven economic growth has resulted in a new social landscape of inequality and privilege, with deep fault lines between old-timers and newcomers. In this complicated cultural reality, "class blindness" allows privileged newcomers to ignore or justify their impact on these towns, papering over the sentiments of anger, loss, and disempowerment of longtime locals. Based on in-depth interviews with individuals on both sides of the divide, this book explores the causes and repercussions of the stark inequity that has become commonplace across the United States. It exposes the mechanisms by which inequality flourishes and by which Americans have come to believe that disparity is acceptable and deserved. Sherman, who is known for her work on rural America, presents here a powerful case study of the ever-growing tensions between those who can and those who cannot achieve their visions of the American dream.

Download or read book The Vanishing American Dream written by Eugene Allan Ludwig and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As America struggles to point its way out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we can't lose sight of the economic problems that existed before the crisis. Even when the unemployment rate was near record lows and the stock market near record highs, the gap between low- and moderate-income Americans and their wealthier counterparts had become unconscionably wide. A future economic recovery presents an opportunity to address this deeper, troubling challenge and to rectify the economic injustice that threatens so many Americans. In 2019, founder and CEO of Promontory Financial Group Gene Ludwig gathered a bipartisan group of the nation's foremost economic thinkers -- academics and politicians, CEOs and former presidential advisors -- to break with convention and candidly discuss that widening gap. The Vanishing American Dream: A Frank Look at the Economic Realities Facing Middle- and Lower-Income Americans comes from their insights. The opportunity to rebuild our economy should inspire the most important conversations and ideas of our time. The dialogue captured in this book provides broad and experienced perspectives on inequality and policy shortcomings, along with examples of ideas that have successfully narrowed the wealth gap, from government investment to the role of the private sector. As we remap our economy, we have an opportunity to rebuild the American Dream for the long-term. Combining expertise with optimism, The Vanishing American Dream invites readers to take a seat at the table for a bracing look at the road back to widespread opportunity, security, and prosperity. With Contributions By: Sarah Bloom Raskin, Glenn Hubbard, Deval Patrick, Robert Shiller, Larry Summers, Luke Bronin, Daryl Byrd, Oren Cass, Jacob Hacker Heather Gerken, Susan Krause Bell, Andrea Levere, Zachary Liscow, Jonathan Macey, Daniel Markovits, Mary Miller, Michael Moskow, David Newville, Steven Pearlstein, Isabel Sawhill, Jay Shambaugh, Anika Singh Lemar, and Andrew Tisch.

Download or read book Rhetoric of the Protestant Sermon in America written by Eric C. Miller and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rhetoric of the Protestant Sermon in America: Pulpit Discourse at the Turn of the Millennium, ten scholars analyze notable sermons from the fifty-year span between 1965 and 2015, during which the Protestant sermon has undergone significant change in the United States. Contributors examine how this turbulent time period witnessed a variety of important shifts in the arguments, evidences, and rhetorical strategies employed by contemporary preachers. Because religious practice is inextricably tangled in the culture, politics, and economy of its historical situation, the public expression of a faith is certain to move with the times. In their treatment of race, sex, gender, class, and citizenship, sermons apply ancient texts to current events and controversies, often to revealing effect. This collection, thoughtfully edited by Eric C. Miller and Jonathan J. Edwards, demonstrates how the genre of the Protestant sermon has evolved—or resisted evolution—across the years. Scholars of religion, rhetoric, communication, sociology, and cultural studies will find this book particularly useful.

Download or read book Ours Was the Shining Future written by David Leonhardt and published by Random House. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The clear-eyed, definitive history of the modern American economy and the decline of the American Dream, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist behind The New York Times's “The Morning” newsletter. “With the even-handed incisiveness that has made him one of the country’s most-respected voices on economics, David Leonhardt illuminates the inside history of the players and missteps that have stolen so many Americans’ futures.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money Two decades into the twenty-first century, the stagnation of living standards has become the defining trend of American life. Life expectancy has declined, economic inequality has soared, and, after some progress, the Black-white wage gap is once again as large as it was in the 1950s. How did this happen in the world’s most powerful country? And what happened to the “American dream”—the promise of a happier, healthier, more prosperous future—which was once such an inextricable part of our national identity? Drawing on decades of writing about the economy for The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer David Leonhardt examines the past century of American history, from the Great Depression to today’s Great Stagnation, in search of an answer. To make sense of the rise and subsequent fall of the American dream, Leonhardt tells the story of the modern American economy as an ongoing battle between two competing forms of capitalism: one that envisions prosperity for most, and one that serves the individual and favors the wealthy. In vivid prose, Ours Was the Shining Future traces how democratic capitalism flourished to make the American dream possible, until the latter decades of the twentieth century when, bit by bit, the dream was corrupted to serve only the privileged few. Ours Was the Shining Future is a sweeping narrative full of innovation and grit, human drama and hope. Featuring the trailblazing figures who helped shape the American dream—Frances Perkins, Paul Hoffman, Cesar Chavez, Robert Kennedy, A. Philip Randolph, Grace Hopper, and more—this engaging history reveals the power of grassroots democratic movements from across the political spectrum. And though the American dream feels lost to us now, Leonhardt shows how Americans—if they commit themselves to transforming the economy, as they did in the past—have the power to revive the dream once more.

Download or read book Immigration and Faith written by Hoover, Brett C. and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immigration and Faith is a comprehensive textbook for theology and religious studies courses that addresses migration to and within the United States and beyond.

Download or read book The Main Street Moment written by Gerald McEntee and published by Nation Books. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the recent economic crises have put American labor and the middle class on the defensive against powerful interests concerned only with increasing profits, and calls for progressives and working people to defend democracy and justice.

Download or read book A Post Neoliberal Era in Latin America written by Nehring, Daniel and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2019-02-27 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Ongoing conflicts between neoliberal and post-neoliberal politics have resulted in growing social instability in Latin America. This book explores the cultural dynamics of neoliberalism and anti-neoliberal resistance in Latin America as a complex set of interrelated cultural forms, examining the ways in which neoliberalism has transformed public discourses of self and social relationships, popular cultures and modes of everyday experience. Contributors from an international range of different disciplinary perspectives look at how Latin Americans construct subjectivities, build communities and make meaning in their everyday lives in order to analyse the discourses and cultural practices through which a societal consensus for the pursuit of neoliberal politics may be established, defended and contested.

Download or read book The Undeserving Rich written by Leslie McCall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chapter One Introduction: Thinking about Income Inequality In the past decade, we have witnessed one sensational event after another connected in some way to rising income inequality. As I write, it is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is not only demanding greater economic and social equality for the bottom ninety-nine against the top one "percenters" but coining a new set of class categories in the process. Almost a decade ago, when I began research on American beliefs about rising inequality, it was the scandals surrounding Enron that were making front page news, with the pension funds of workers and retirees evaporating into thin air as the coffers of executives mysteriously survived. In between Enron and Occupy Wall Street, there is no shortage of occasions to reflect on the state of income inequality in the U.S. -the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the outsourcing of middle class jobs to Ireland and India, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis and the Great Recession. At each turn in the road, reporters and commentators concerned about rising income inequality but dismayed by the lack of political attention given to the issue declared that finally it would be taken seriously. And this says nothing of the events prior to the 2000s, several of which pointed the finger at rising inequality just as vehemently, as I show in my analysis of media coverage of income inequality in chapter 3. Yet nothing has changed. Income inequality continues its rise to heights unfathomable just a few generations ago. The late public intellectual and eminent Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell wrote in 1973 that earnings inequality "will be one of the most vexing questions in a post-industrial society." Heconomies of the past"--

Download or read book I the People written by Paul Elliott Johnson and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In practice, because conservatism traditionally relies on negative definition to imagine its exclusion from the American political system, American conservatism ends up defining both 'the people' and the market as forces with a mutual skepticism of an overweening political order. Johnson also tackles the suggestion that conservatives learned to practice identity politics from social progressives. From the beginning, conservatism was an identity politics. U.S. conservatism relied on a rhetoric of victimhood, whether critiquing the liberal Cold War consensus or fears about Barack Obama's electoral success. Finally, the manuscript makes an important contribution to conversations about populism. Just because conservatism invokes 'the people' does not make it a collective, public-facing enterprise. .