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 Social Security and the Middle Class Squeeze written by Leonard J. Santow and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2005-09-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outset of his second term, President Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security has touched off a debate of enormous proportion. Disentangling the rhetoric and hyperbole from fact is essential for anyone trying to evaluate the potential merits or pitfalls of the plan. Leonard and Mark Santow—a father-and-son team who integrate two different political viewpoints (fiscally conservative and socially liberal, respectively)—offer specific recommendations for improving Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in socially responsible ways that relieve some of the stress on the middle class and promote upward mobility. Explaining sophisticated economic concepts in layman's terms, the Santows expose myths about how entitlement programs actually work, arguing, for example, that while the financial state of Social Security gets most of the press, Medicare and Medicaid are in much more serious trouble. They integrate conservative and liberal viewponts to propose a package of reforms that includes both tax cuts and increases and an overhaul of the government's economic forecasting system. Synthesizing mountains of data and explaining sophisticated economic concepts in layman's terms, the Santows expose myths about how entitlement programs actually work, arguing, for example, that while the financial state of Social Security gets most of the press, Medicare and Medicaid are in much more serious trouble. Moreover, they are highly critical of privatization plans, demonstrating that similar programs have failed in other countries and that such plans are programs are neither fiscally nor socially sound. If the American people value the common commitments that these programs embody, we will need to see them as a package, and fund them accordingly. In response to this challenge, the Santows integrate conservative and liberal viewpoints to propose a package of reforms that includes both tax cuts and increases and an overhaul of the government's economic forecasting system. Featuring a timeline of key events since Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935 and an appendix of data tables, the authors offer a primer for concerned citizens, policymakers, educators, students, and finance professionals—anyone with a stake in designing a system that pays for these essential programs in an equitable manner and contributes to our collective prosperity.
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 Social Security and the Middle Class Squeeze written by Leonard J. Santow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-09-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outset of his second term, President Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security has touched off a debate of enormous proportion. Disentangling the rhetoric and hyperbole from fact is essential for anyone trying to evaluate the potential merits or pitfalls of the plan. Leonard and Mark Santow—a father-and-son team who integrate two different political viewpoints (fiscally conservative and socially liberal, respectively)—offer specific recommendations for improving Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in socially responsible ways that relieve some of the stress on the middle class and promote upward mobility. Explaining sophisticated economic concepts in layman's terms, the Santows expose myths about how entitlement programs actually work, arguing, for example, that while the financial state of Social Security gets most of the press, Medicare and Medicaid are in much more serious trouble. They integrate conservative and liberal viewponts to propose a package of reforms that includes both tax cuts and increases and an overhaul of the government's economic forecasting system. Synthesizing mountains of data and explaining sophisticated economic concepts in layman's terms, the Santows expose myths about how entitlement programs actually work, arguing, for example, that while the financial state of Social Security gets most of the press, Medicare and Medicaid are in much more serious trouble. Moreover, they are highly critical of privatization plans, demonstrating that similar programs have failed in other countries and that such plans are programs are neither fiscally nor socially sound. If the American people value the common commitments that these programs embody, we will need to see them as a package, and fund them accordingly. In response to this challenge, the Santows integrate conservative and liberal viewpoints to propose a package of reforms that includes both tax cuts and increases and an overhaul of the government's economic forecasting system. Featuring a timeline of key events since Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935 and an appendix of data tables, the authors offer a primer for concerned citizens, policymakers, educators, students, and finance professionals—anyone with a stake in designing a system that pays for these essential programs in an equitable manner and contributes to our collective prosperity.
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.
Download or read book Crunch written by Jared Bernstein and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2008-04-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to author Bernstein, economic experts all too often manipulate and distort the science at the heart of important issues. In "Crunch," he offers entertaining, informative, and direct answers to a set of compelling economic questions posed by ordinary people.
Download or read book Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump written by Lance Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative approach to measuring inequality providing the first full integration of distributional and macro level data for the US.
Download or read book The 9 9 Percent written by Matthew Stewart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant” (The Washington Post), “clear-eyed and incisive” (The New Republic) analysis of how the wealthiest group in American society is making life miserable for everyone—including themselves. In 21st-century America, the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90% have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit” to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account” (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.
Download or read book The Big Squeeze written by Steven Greenhouse and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations squeezing their employees dry? In this fresh, carefully researched book, New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse explores the economic, political, and social trends that are transforming America's workplaces, including the decline of the social contract that created the world's largest middle class and guaranteed job security and good pensions. We meet all kinds of workers—white-collar and blue-collar, high-tech and low-tech, middle-class and low-income—as we see shocking examples of injustice, including employees who are locked in during a hurricane or fired after suffering debilitating, on-the-job injuries. With pragmatic recommendations on what government, business and labor should do to alleviate the economic crunch, The Big Squeeze is a balanced, consistently revealing look at a major American crisis.
Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
Download or read book Only One Thing Can Save Us written by Thomas Geoghegan and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is labor's day over or is this the big moment? Acclaimed author Geoghegan asserts that only a new kind of labor movement can help the country switch course toward a future that is fair and prosperous for all 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 Getting Ahead written by Daniel P. McMurrer and published by The Urban Insitute. This book was released on 1998 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adapted in part from the "Opportunity in America" series of policy briefs, this volume focuses on social and economic mobility in the United States. Class or family background has a strong effect on individual success, the authors find. They examine the possible reasons for this relationship; how it has changed over the past century; and the role of the economy, the welfare system, and education in opening up opportunities for the less fortunate.
Download or read book Economics Politics and American Public Policy written by James J. Gosling and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2013-03-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text introduces students to the interrelationship of politics and economics in American public policymaking: how economic concerns have been legislated into law since Franklin Roosevelt's time and how politics (e.g., Washington gridlock) affects the economy and the making of public policy.
Download or read book Indebted written by Caitlin Zaloom and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "'Indebted' takes readers into the homes of middle-class families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life"--Amazon
Download or read book World Inequality Report 2018 written by Facundo Alvaredo and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2018-07-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Inequality Report 2018 is the most authoritative and up-to-date account of global trends in inequality. Researched, compiled, and written by a team of the world’s leading economists of inequality, it presents—with unrivaled clarity and depth—information and analysis that will be vital to policy makers and scholars everywhere. Inequality has taken center stage in public debate as the wealthiest people in most parts of the world have seen their share of the economy soar relative to that of others, many of whom, especially in the West, have experienced stagnation. The resulting political and social pressures have posed harsh new challenges for governments and created a pressing demand for reliable data. The World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, has answered this call by coordinating research into the latest trends in the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth on every continent. This inaugural report analyzes the Lab’s findings, which include data from major countries where information has traditionally been difficult to acquire, such as China, India, and Brazil. Among nations, inequality has been decreasing as traditionally poor countries’ economies have caught up with the West. The report shows, however, that inequality has been steadily deepening within almost every nation, though national trajectories vary, suggesting the importance of institutional and policy frameworks in shaping inequality. World Inequality Report 2018 will be a key document for anyone concerned about one of the most imperative and contentious subjects in contemporary politics and economics.
Download or read book Viking Economics written by George Lakey and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberals worldwide invoke Scandinavia as a promised land of equality, while most conservatives fear it as a hotbed of liberty-threatening socialism. But the left and right can usually agree on one thing: that the Nordic system is impossible to replicate elsewhere. The US and UK are too big, or too individualistic, or too . . . something. In Viking Economics George Lakey dispels these myths. He explores the inner workings of the Nordic economies that boast the world’s happiest, most productive workers, and explains how we can enact some of the changes—including universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and a month of paid vacation for all—that the Scandinavians fought for surprisingly recently. We, too, can refuse to be governed by the elites and embrace equality in our economic policy—here’s how.
