It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! confirms what we have all suspected: Washington and Wall Street have really screwed things up for the average American. Work has been devalued. Education costs are out of sight. Effort and ambition have never been so scantily rewarded. Political guru James Carville and pollster extraordinaire Stan Greenberg argue that our political parties must admit their failures and the electorate must reclaim its voice, because taking on the wealthy and the privileged is not class warfare—it is a matter of survival. Told in the alternating voices of these two top political strategists, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! provides eye-opening and provocative arguments on where our government—including the White House—has gone wrong, and what voters can do about it. Controversial and outspoken, authoritative and shrewd, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! is destined to make waves during the 2012 presidential campaign, and will set the agenda for legislative battles and political dust-ups during the next administration.

President Clinton's brilliant advisor offers a provocative look at the radical new shape of American politics, revealing how today's anger has grown out of the middle class's betrayal by both political parties in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Charts; graphs; index.

Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise. America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from? As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy. In The Great Stagnation, Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.

With a timely new foreword by Robert Frank, this groundbreaking book explores the very meaning of happiness and prosperity in America today. Although middle-income families don't earn much more than they did several decades ago, they are buying bigger cars, houses, and appliances. To pay for them, they spend more than they earn and carry record levels of debt. Robert Frank explains how increased concentrations of income and wealth at the top of the economic pyramid have set off "expenditure cascades" that raise the cost of achieving many basic goals for the middle class. Writing in lively prose for a general audience, Frank employs up-to-date economic data and examples drawn from everyday life to shed light on reigning models of consumer behavior. He also suggests reforms that could mitigate the costs of inequality. Falling Behind compels us to rethink how and why we live our economic lives the way we do.

The middle class, where the greatness of this nation is rooted, is under siege by an increasingly unethical system, managed by economic vampires who are sucking the lifeblood out of the American family and ripping the heart out of democracy itself. Big money-and the politicians who are swayed by it-play both parties against each other, using this false battle to distract most of us from the real war, which is a war against the American family. This is it, folks . . . the moment of truth. This will be the moment historians will look back upon and either say it was the moment this great ship of state corrected its course, or the moment it sailed completely away from its democratic ideals. To succeed, we have to reach back and rediscover our greatness. Progress may not come as fast as we, in our impatience and impertinence, demand. But if we are patient and persistent, it will come. All good things in life require a heavy lift, so roll up your sleeves. We are not done yet. --from Killer Politics According to a 2008 Pew Report, more than half of all Americans self-identify as middle class -- but the actual number of Americans with middle-class incomes is declining. The middle class is going away. As increasing numbers of Americans are faced with obstacles to education, health care, jobs, and equity, the middle class as a financial bracket is being replaced by the middle class as little more than a state of mind. The richest Americans are growing exponentially wealthier, while the rest of us struggle to bear the financial and emotional burdens of an increasingly broken system. In Killer Politics, Ed Schultz pulls the wool back from our eyes, shows us what the state of the middle class really is, and gives us the tools we need to fight back.

A vivid character-driven narrative, fused with important new economic and political reporting and research, that busts the myths about middle class decline and points the way to its revival. For over a decade, Jim Tankersley has been on a journey to understand what the hell happened to the world's greatest middle-class success story -- the post-World-War-II boom that faded into decades of stagnation and frustration for American workers. In The Riches of This Land, Tankersley fuses the story of forgotten Americans-- struggling women and men who he met on his journey into the travails of the middle class-- with important new economic and political research, providing fresh understanding how to create a more widespread prosperity. He begins by unraveling the real mystery of the American economy since the 1970s - not where did the jobs go, but why haven't new and better ones been created to replace them. His analysis begins with the revelation that women and minorities played a far more crucial role in building the post-war middle class than today's politicians typically acknowledge, and policies that have done nothing to address the structural shifts of the American economy have enabled a privileged few to capture nearly all the benefits of America's growing prosperity. Meanwhile, the "angry white men of Ohio" have been sold by Trump and his ilk a theory of the economy that is dangerously backward, one that pits them against immigrants, minorities, and women who should be their allies. At the culmination of his journey, Tankersley lays out specific policy prescriptions and social undertakings that can begin moving the needle in the effort to make new and better jobs appear. By fostering an economy that opens new pathways for all workers to reach their full potential -- men and women, immigrant or native-born, regardless of race -- America can once again restore the upward flow of talent that can power growth and prosperity.

Now, in the most provocative look at the inside of a national election battle ever published, Matalin and Carville, the chief strategists for the Bush and Clinton presidential campaigns, tell their sides of the story, laying bare how politicians and their cohorts really operate--and revealing how their romance flourished in the most unlikely circumstances imaginable. 16 pages of photos.

"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017 Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness. White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

Since the end of World War II, most people around the world regarded the United States as the land of opportunity. The baby boomers and Generation X knew it best as "the land of milk and honey." It was a place where people could easily raise a family and with hard work could achieve anything they set their mind to. The American Dream, a dream of a land where life is better, richer and fuller for everyone, was alive. Much has changed, though, in the past four decades. Most Americans today do not realize that since the early 1990s, when the world markets began to merge and globalization took place, America went through a significant transformation. Today, the America of yesterday, a place where children grew up to ultimately earn more than their parents, is no longer reality but, in most cases, just wishful thinking. In today's globalized world, working in America no longer feels any different than earning a living in Europe or Japan. Indeed, income levels and employment opportunities now appear to be similar. Are they, though? Do Americans still have the edge or has the American Dream finally slipped away? Is it possible to conceive that American workers could be disadvantaged when compared to those living and working in other countries? While most people live their everyday lives never knowing, one thing is clear. Recently, political catchphrases such as "Make America Great Again," deeply resonated with frustrated Americans on both sides of the political divide, more so than election pollsters and the media anticipated during the 2016 presidential election. Undoubtedly, anxiety about the future is in the air, but what causes it? Can the past be restored? One thing is certain. Americans cannot afford to remain complacent with the status quo. Visit the author's webpage HERE.

This book describes the living-room artifacts, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from top to bottom.