Examines the formidable challenges facing the middle class, calling for fundamental changes while surveying the extent of the problem and identifying the people and agencies most responsible.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes argues that the best way to fight income inequality is with a radically simple idea: a guaranteed income for working people, paid for by the one percent. The first half of Chris Hughes's life played like a movie reel right out of the "American Dream." He grew up in a small town in North Carolina. His parents were people of modest means, but he was accepted into an elite boarding school and then Harvard, both on scholarship....

Celebrated economic policy maker and political theorist Robert B. Reich argues that the nation's 2008 economic collapse is the result of an increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top--and a middle class that had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living. To ensure that prosperity is widely shared, he continues, requires the implementation of a much broader safety net for the middle class financed by higher marginal...

A bold plan to help the middle class, by the New York Times bestselling author of An American Son. For generations, the belief that if you work hard you can offer your children a better life has been known as the American Dream. That dream is on life support today, and not just because of the economic downturn and bad leadership from Washington. America has undergone an economic transformation that our schools, our workers, and too many of our families...

When thousands of people concerned about growing economic inequality gathered in Zuccotti Park in New York City on September 17, 2011, there was little indication that they would fundamentally transform American political debate and ignite a full-scale national and global protest movement. But within a year, the Occupy Wall Street protestors had done just that.This powerful collection of short films, made by Occupy protestors on the ground, tells...

"AlterNet's The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy takes on some of the most deeply held beliefs supporting conservative economic policies in a rigorous and well documented, but also punchy and thoroughly readable style. Among the many myths Joshua Holland will take on are: American can't afford health care reform, home-owners caused the bank crisis, Republicans care about the deficit, the stimulus didn't work, Obama hates businesses, and that...

Predicts a worse crash if key economic changes cannot be made, arguing that American consumer habits are at the heart of today's problems and recommends that the nation declare bankruptcy and rebuild broken systems from scratch.

"These selections form the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of half a century and cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational and political issues....The topics range from late-talking children to "tax cuts for the rich," baseball, race, war, the role of judges, medical care and the rhetoric of politicians."--Dust jacket.

Examines the trend of Americans away from the traditionally mobile, risk-accepting, and adaptable tendencies that defined them for much of recent history, and toward stagnation and comfort, and how this development has the potential to make future changes more disruptive. --Publisher's description.

Over the last several decades, the United States has undergone one of the most radical social and economic transformations in its history: Finance has become America's dominant industry, while manufacturing has nearly disappeared. The financial sector has become increasingly criminalized, with widespread fraud going completely unpunished. Federal tax collections are at their lowest level in sixty years, with the wealthy enjoying the greatest tax reductions....