ISBN:
9780415709514
Language:
English
Pages:
Online-Ressource (206 p)
Parallel Title:
Print version Middle Class Meltdown in America : Causes, Consequences, and Remedies
DDC:
305.5/50973
Keywords:
Electronic books
Abstract:
〈P〉In accessible prose for North American undergraduate students, this short text provides a sociological understanding of the causes and consequences of growing middle class inequality, with an abundance of supporting, empirical data. The book also addresses what we, as individuals and as a society, can do to put middle class Americans on a sounder footing. 〈/P〉
Description / Table of Contents:
Cover; Title; Copyright; Brief Contents; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1 The Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity in the United States; i. Introduction; ii. Why Study the Middle Class?; iii. The Changing Rules of Middle Class Life; iv. Overview of Key Economic Trends and Outline of Chapters; 2 The Struggling Middle Class; i. Stories behind the Statistics: Trying Not to Drown in Debt; 1. Dave and Monica Tread Water; 2. Bill and Sheryl Need a Snorkel; 3. Our Diagnosis
Description / Table of Contents:
ii. Three Examples of Indebtedness: Feudal Peasants, Southern Sharecroppers, and the Twenty-First-Century American Middle Class1. Our Feudal Past; 2. Feudalism in a Contemporary Context: Tenant Farming in the Deep South; 3. Twenty-First-Century Middle Class Meltdown-The New Indentured Servitude?; 3 Macroeconomics and the Income/Credit Squeeze; i. Market Economies and Purchasing Power: A Digression into Macroeconomic Theory; 1. Enter Macroeconomics; 2. The Revival of New Classical and Monetarist Economics; 3. Supply-Side Economics and the Reagan Revolution
Description / Table of Contents:
ii. Public Policy, Purchasing Power, and the Middle Classiii. The Income/Credit Squeeze; 1. The Deflated Income Balloon; 2. Stagnant Incomes for the Middle, Rising Incomes for the Top; 3. What Was Happening at the Top? The Captains of Industry Cash In; 4. Lower Wages and Job Instability; 5. Consumer Credit!; 4 Robbing the Productivity Train; i. What Is Productivity?; 1. Profits and Reinvestment: The Other Activities That Productivity Gains Support; ii. What Did Corporate America Do with Profits and Productivity Gains?; 1. So Some People Got Rich! Doesn't Everyone Own Stock These Days?
Description / Table of Contents:
2. Corporate Takeovers as a Competitive Strategy3. What If Wages Were Indexed to Productivity?; 5 Where Did All That Credit Come From?; i. The Evolution of Consumer Credit; 1. The Deregulation of the Banking Industry: A Sleepy Industry Wakes Up; ii. A Credit Card for Everybody; iii. Other Sources of Ready Money: Home Equity-Betting the House?; 1. Auto Leasing-Renting the Car; 2. Pawnshops Go Middle Class; 3. Taking Your Pay before You Earn It: Check Cashing, Payday Loans, and Title Loans; 4. Rent-to-Own or Rent-to-Drown?; 5. And to Spread the Risk, Investors Buy Asset-Backed Securities
Description / Table of Contents:
6. Are Credit Cards and Pawnshops Substitutes for Getting Paid?6 From Washington to Wall Street: Marketing the Illusion; i. The Neoconservative Persuasion; 1. The Triumph of Supply-Side Economics; 2. The Effects of Tax Cuts; i. The Reality for Everyone Else-Rising Taxes as a Percentage of Personal Income; 1. But Wait a Minute! Didn't the 2004 Bush Tax Cuts Do Better?; ii. Persistent Inflation and Benefit Declines for the Middle Class; 1. Affording the Middle Class Lifestyle; 2. The High Cost of College Education; 3. Vanishing Benefits and the Costs of Working
Description / Table of Contents:
iii. Retirement and the Collapse of Enron
Note:
Description based upon print version of record
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