Third World America (28 page)

So, as we stand at this inflection point and gradually move
from what Jonas Salk called Epoch A (our survival-focused past) to Epoch B (our meaning-focused future), we have to ask ourselves what this remade world will look like.

Will it be a place where economic opportunity is once again real for everyone, not just the economic elite?

Will it be a place where greed and selfishness are no longer rewarded and “the least among us” are given a helping hand, rather than the back of it?

Will it be a place where bridges are fixed before they collapse, and students aren’t allowed to founder in failing schools?

Will it be a place where the public interest once again trumps the special interests, and public policy is no longer auctioned off to the highest bidder?

Will it be a place where transparency reigns and backroom deals are banished from the halls of power?

Will it be a place where Main Street replaces Wall Street as the center of the economic universe?

Will it be a place where the middle class no longer has a bull’s-eye on its back and the American Dream is more than just a hallucination or a distant memory seen only in our nation’s rearview mirror?

   The choices we make—both as individuals and as a society—will determine whether America becomes a Third World country or the “more perfect union” our founding fathers envisioned.

The moment to act is now. Inflection points in history don’t come along very often.
¹⁸⁶

So often, our desire to take action gets derailed by our uncertainty over exactly what action to take, and how to best make a difference. To bridge the gap between intention and involvement, we’ve created a section on the Huffington Post where you can find out more about what
you
can do to help make sure we never find ourselves living in Third World America. Go to
www.huffingtonpost.com/ThirdWorldAmerica
—and get involved.

A
fter finishing my twelfth book, I asked my daughters and close friends to do an intervention if I ever decided to write another one. “No more books” I promised them—and myself. No more juggling the demands of writing a book and the demands of HuffPost (now a tireless and rambunctious five-year-old that never takes a nap).

And then Richard Pine, my wonderful agent and friend, called. “Roger Scholl wants you to write a book for Crown about—” Politely but firmly, I stopped him. “I don’t want to know,” I said. “I don’t want to be tempted.” A few days later he called back and before I could stop him he told me that Roger had been reading what I’d been writing about the decline of America’s middle class and wanted me to write a book about it. The decline of the middle class was, in fact, a subject I had become obsessed with, both in my own writing and in HuffPost’s coverage of the economic crisis. We had even dedicated one of our reporters, Arthur Delaney, to the beat—putting flesh and blood on the gloomy statistics. We considered calling him our “economic suffering correspondent” but that sounded too lugubrious, so we settled on our “economic impact correspondent.”

So I went from “never again” to “how soon could we bring it out?” As for that intervention thing, I just didn’t tell my daughters or my friends what I was doing until I’d already finished the first draft. So, first of all, thank you to Michael Palgon, the deputy publisher at the Crown Publishing Group, and Editorial Director Roger Scholl for
the idea—and to Michael Palgon for the book title. And thanks for all of Roger’s brilliant editing along the way.

And thank you to Katie Flynn, Nour Akkad, Anna Almendrala, Alex Amend, and Michael Spies for all their help with research, fact-checking, and source notes. My gratitude goes to HuffPost’s editor Roy Sekoff, who read the first draft and vastly improved it, to Stephen Sherrill, for all his great editorial suggestions, and to Grace Kiser and Kerstin Picht, who brought extraordinary dedication and commitment both to the subject and to the process of getting the book to press.

My gratitude also goes to Nick Penniman, Dan Froomkin, Adam Rose, Ryan Grim, Shahien Nasiripour, Marcus Baram, Alex Leo, Ryan McCarthy, Brian Sirgutz, and Mario Ruiz, who read the galleys and offered many improvements and suggestions.

Very special thanks to Brenda Carter, Johnny Parker, Matt Stagliano, Linda D. Wilson, Dean Blackburn, Ron Bednar, Mary McCurnin, Kimberly Rios, Faye Harris, Ricky Macoy, Heather Tanner, Amy Brisendine, Rajiv Narayan, Janet H., Patty C., Henry Chalian, Jim Laman, Troy Renault, Rebecca Admire, Monique Zimmerman-Stein, Gary Stein, H. Lee Grove, and Lesa Deason Crowe for sharing their stories of struggle and resilience.

Many thanks also to Jeff Swafford and Patty Elvey, who kept the rest of my life humming. And thanks to the great team at Crown, including Tricia Wygal, art director Whitney Cookman, who designed the powerful cover, and Rachel Rokicki in publicity and Meredith McGinnis in marketing, who were responsible for bringing the book to the world.

Finally, deep thanks to my daughters, Christina and Isabella, and my sister, Agapi—always an incredible source of love and support. This book is dedicated to the millions of middle-class Americans fighting to keep the American Dream alive.

1
The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini
: Luigi Barzini,
The Europeans
(New York: Penguin, 1983), 14, 234.

2
“America,” Winston Churchill reportedly said
: William Antholis, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: EU-U.S. Cooperation on Climate Change,” 19 Jun. 2009,
www.brookings.edu
.

1
“The middle class has been …”
: Barack Obama, remarks by the president and vice president at Middle Class Task Force Meeting, 25 Jan. 2010,
www.whitehouse.gov
.

2
During the 2008 campaign
: David Plouffe, interviewed by the author in Washington, D.C., 31 Oct. 2009.

3
According to Plouffe, Obama and his team
: David Plouffe,
The Audacity to Win
(New York: Viking, 2009), 9.

4
Just how bad things have
: Elizabeth Warren, “America Without a Middle Class,” 3 Dec. 2009,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

5
In April 2010, the shot heard
: Joshua Gallu and Christine Harper, “Goldman Sachs Sued by SEC for Fraud Tied to CDOs,” 16 Apr. 2010,
www.bloomberg.com
.

6
In November 2008, as the initial
: David Brooks, “The Formerly Middle Class,” 18 Nov. 2010,
www.nytimes.com
.

7
In a 2010 strategy paper
: “From Recession to Recovery to Renewal,” 20 Apr. 2010,
www.brookings.edu
.

8
At least forty-five states
: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “An Update on State Budget Cuts,” 19 Apr. 2010,
www.cbpp.org
.

9
According to a report by
: Ibid.

10
America’s states faced
: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Recession Continues to Batter State Budgets; State Responses Could Slow Recovery,” 25 Feb. 2010,
www.cbpp.org
.

11
These are massive numbers
: Brady Dennis, “AIG Plans Millions More in Bonuses,” 11 Jul. 2010,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

12
$12.9 billion of which
: Christine Harper, “Taxpayers Help Goldman Reach Height of Profit in New Skyscraper,” 21 Dec. 2008,
www.bloomberg.com
.

13
Toss in the $45 billion
: Shahien Nasiripour, “Bank of America TARP Repayment Premature, Analyst Says,” 4 Dec. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

14
and the $45 billion
: Malden Read, “Citigroup: TARP Loans Near $45 billion Mark,” Associated Press, 12 May 2009.

15
California is eliminating CalWORKS
: Judy Lin, “Schwarzenegger Lays Out Bleak California Budget,” Associated Press, 14 May 2010.

16
Minnesota has eliminated a program
: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “An Update on State Budget Cuts,” 19 Apr. 2010,
www.cbpp.org
.

17
Perhaps the reason can
: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, “Labor Underutilization Problems of U.S. Workers Across Household Income Groups at the End of the Great Recession,” Feb. 2010,
www.clms.neu.edu
.

18
These numbers, according to
: Robert Frank, “High Unemployment? Not for the Affluent,” 12 Feb. 2010,
www.wsj.com
.

19
“These are the kinds …”
: Bob Herbert, “The Worst of the Pain,” 9 Feb. 2010,
www.nytimes.com
.

20
In the last chapter of
: Michael Herr,
Dispatches
, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 2009), 201.

21
And Tom Wolfe
: Tom Wolfe, “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’: Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe,”
New York
magazine, 14 Feb. 1972, 38.

22
So, in 1845, he wrote
: Benjamin Disraeli,
Sybil, or the Two Nations
(London: Macmillan, 1895), 74.

23
Forty years ago, top executives
: Kenneth Dodge, “Make CEOs Help the Little Guy,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, 7 Feb. 2010,
www.post-gazette.com
.

24
Between 2007 and 2008, more than
: Derek Douglas and Almas Sayeed, “An Ever Increasing Divide,” Center for American Progress, 1 Sep. 2006,
www.americanprogress.org
.

25
In 2005, households
: Ibid.

26
In 2007, the top 10 percent
: Henry Blodget, “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get … Fired,” 13 Aug. 2010,
www.businessinsider.com
.

27
Between 2000 and 2008, the poverty rate
: “The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008,” 20 Jan. 2010,
www.brookings.edu
.

28
Almost one hundred million Americans
: Matt Miller, “The Upside of Downward Mobility,” 29 Dec. 2010,
www.money.cnn.com
.

29
The percentage of Americans
: Economic Mobility Project, “Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America,” Feb. 2010,
www.economicmobility.org
.

30
If you were born
: Ibid.

31
In a study of economic mobility
: Isabel Sawhill and John E. Morton, “Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?” May 2007,
www.economicmobility.org
.

32
Since the recession began
: Darlene Superville, “Obama: Jobs Bill Will Help Small Business Owners,” 13 Mar. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

33
Over 2 million of those
: Christopher Rugaber, “Millions of Jobs That Were Cut Won’t Likely Return,” 13 May 2010,
www.bostonglobe.com
.

34
We lost 1.2 million
: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Irwin Stelzer, and John Weicher, “Hudson Institute Economic Report,” 8 Jan. 2010,
www.hudson.org
.

35
In 1950, manufacturing accounted
: Richard Florida, “How the Crash Will Reshape America,” Mar. 2009,
www.theatlantic.com
.

36
Indeed, one-third of all
: Richard McCormack, “The Plight of American Manufacturing,” 21 Dec. 2009,
www.prospect.org
.

37
According to Thomas Philippon
: Thomas Philippon, “The Future of the Financial Industry,” 16 Oct. 2008,
www.sternfinance.blogspot.com
.

38
As MIT professor Simon Johnson recounted
: Simon Johnson, “The Quiet Coup,” May 2009,
www.theatlantic.com
.

39
That’s right—over 40
: Ibid.

40
James Kwak, coauthor of
: James Kwak, “ ‘13 Bankers’ in 4 Pictures: Why Wall Street Profits Are Out of Whack,” 15 Apr. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

41
According to
New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman
: Paul Krugman, “Don’t Cry for Wall Street,” 22 Apr. 2010,
www.nytimes.com
.

42
But the data points
: Sandra Pianalto, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, “Forecasting in Uncertain Times,” 18 May 2010,
www.clevelandfed.org
.

43
Her conclusion: “Many people …”
: Ibid.

44
At a D.C. jobs fair
: Laura Bassett, “D.C. Career Fair for Older Workers Attracts Thousands,” 12 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.