Middle Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies

Description

Based on income alone, nearly half of all adults in the United States can be considered "middle class," complete with the reassurance of a steady job, the ability to raise a family, and the comforts of owning a home. And yet, for many, because of structural forces reshaping the finances of the American middle class, the margin between a stable life and a fragile one is narrowing. The new edition of Middle-Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies tells the story of the struggling American middle class by weaving together sociological and economical research, personalized portraits and examples, and a profusion of current data illustrating significant social, economic, and political trends. The authors extend their analysis to include the COVID-19 pandemic, a focus on the effect of race and ethnicity, as well as the ever-increasing costs of housing, health care, and education. In clear, accessible writing, the authors provide a sociological and balanced understanding of the causes and implications of increasing middle class precarity. Middle-Class Meltdown in America is particularly well-suited for courses in sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, and American Studies. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Exhibits Preface A Note Regarding Classroom Use 1 The Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity Discussions Questions Notes 2 The Struggling Middle Class Stories Behind the Statistics David and Monica Tread Water Alton and LaTonya Need a Snorkel Our Diagnosis Three Examples of Indebtedness: Feudal Peasants, Southern Sharecroppers, and the Twenty-First-Century American Middle Class? Feudalism in a Contemporary Context: Tenant Farming in the Deep South Twenty-First-Century Middle Class Meltdown— The New Indentured Servitude? Discussion Questions Notes 3 Macroeconomics and the Income/Credit Squeeze Market Economies and Purchasing Power: A Digression Into Macroeconomic Theory Enter Macroeconomics The Revival of New Classical and Monetarist Economics Supply-Side Economics and the Reagan Revolution Public Policy, Purchasing Power, and the Middle Class The Income/Credit Squeeze Stagnant Incomes for the Middle, Rising Incomes for the Top What Was Happening at the Top? The Captains of Industry Cash In Lower Wages and Job Instability Consumer Credit! Discussion Questions for Chapter 3 Notes 4 Robbing the Productivity Train What Is Productivity? Profits and Reinvestment: The Other Activities That Productivity Gains Support What Did Corporate America Do With Profits and Productivity Gains? So Some People Got Rich! Doesn’t Everyone Own Stock These Days? Corporate Takeovers as a Competitive Strategy What If Wages Were Indexed to Productivity? Discussion Questions Notes 5 Where Did All That Credit Come From? The Evolution of Consumer Credit The Deregulation of the Banking Industry: A Sleepy Industry Wakes Up A Credit Card for Everybody Other Sources of Ready Money Home Equity—Betting the House? Auto Leasing—Renting the Car Pawnshops Go Middle Class Taking Your Pay Before You Earn It: Check Cashing, Payday Loans, and Title Loans Car Title Loans Rent-to-Own Or Rent-To-Drown? And to Spread the Risk, Investors Buy Asset-Backed Securities Are Credit Cards and Pawn Shops Substitutes for Getting Paid? Discussion Questions Notes 6 From Washington to Wall Street: Marketing the Illusion The Neoconservative Persuasion The Triumph of Supply-Side Economics The Effects of Tax Cuts The Reality for Everyone Else—Rising Taxes as a Percentage of Personal Income But Wait a Minute! Didn’t the Bush Tax Cuts and the Trump 2017 Tax Cuts Do Better? Persistent Inflation and Benefit Declines for the Middle Class Affording the Middle Class Lifestyle Vanishing Benefits and the Costs of Working Retirement and the Collapse of Enron Discussion Questions Notes 7 The Great Recession of 2008–2009 and the COVID Recession of 2020–2021: The Illusion Exposed The Financial Crisis: The Emperors Have No Clothes Betting the House and Losing Unemployment, Job Loss, and Collapsing Demand: The New Poor Then, Just as Things Were Getting Better, We Crashed Into COVID-19 Socialism for the Banks, Capitalism for the Rest of Us: Government Policy Responses The Response to the COVID-19 Recession of 2020— The Jury Is Still Out But There Appear to Be Some Lessons Learned Discussion Questions Notes 8 The Consequences of Middle Class Meltdown “A Pox On Both Their Houses”: Examples of Middle Class Alienation From Politics and Community Record Numbers of Bankruptcies The Cultural Contradictions of American Politics The Fraying of Community Political Alienation and Anger: Hardening of Public Discourse, Cultural Fragmentation, and the Politics of Displacement And Please! Let’s Fight About Anything But Money … Discussion Questions Notes 9 What Can We Do? A Manifesto for the Middle Class Individual Responses: Avoiding the Trap of Middle Class Indebtedness Credit Is a Good Servant But a Bad Master Buy the Big-Ticket Items You Want, and Don’t Lease Or Rent Them Saving Money Is a Habit That Starts Small When the Time Comes, Buy a House You Can Afford Collective Responses: As a Nation, We Can Do Better Than This If We Value Families, We Should Put Our Money Where Our Mouth Is The COVID Recession Has Made Many Rethink Their Relationship Between Work, Income, and Wealth—and the Political Class Is Noticing Discussion Questions Notes Appendix Exhibit A.9 Productivity: An Elusive Concept References Index