The Betrayal of the American Dream Read Online Free

that enriched Wall Street and triggered the Great Recession was just the latest in a long series of moves by the economic elite to consolidate their control of the American economy. They have:
• Created a tax system that is heavily weighted against the middle class
• Deregulated sectors of the economy and in so doing killed jobs or lowered wages for employees across entire industries such as airlines and trucking
• Ignited in the financial sector a wildly speculative run-up in mortgage-backed securities of little value that imploded in the 2008–2009 recession
• Encouraged corporations to transfer jobs abroad and eliminate jobs in this country to bolster the value of stock, increase dividends, and boost executive compensation
• Enabled companies to eliminate positions and replace permanent employees with contract workers at lower pay and with no benefits
• Allowed multinational corporations to shelter profits overseas and avoid paying taxes on earnings that could be used to help stimulate jobs at home
• Forced 11 million people with mortgages that exceed the value of their homes to make monthly payments to the banks that caused the housing collapse—a debt they will never be able to pay off
• Refused to support the growth of new industries that could generate jobs for the future
    Look upon all this as the end of a broad-based middle class in America.

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    Throughout its history, America has dazzled the world with the outsized fortunes of its entrepreneurs and industrial titans. But the heart and soul of our democracy has long been its middle class, a beacon of opportunity to the world. Entrance into America’s middle class meant a good job, decent benefits, your own house. Maybe it wasn’t a way to get rich, but at least it was a chance to have a good life. It attracted the brightest and the best to America, and our life, economy, and culture were immeasurably richer.
    The optimism of the past has given way to raw fear—middle America worries over how to pay the bills, whether they can send their kids to college, whether they will ever be able to retire. The insecurity is rampant. “I’d say 99 percent of Americans are not sure they’re going to have a job next year,” says Tom Toner of West Chester, Pennsylvania, a former telecommunications industry manager and engineer who lost two jobs to downsizing and offshoring before trying to start his own business. His income is a fraction of what it once was.
    How did this happen? Who decided to dismantle the American middle class?
    Despite obligatory comments about the importance of the middle class and why it should be helped, America’s ruling class doesn’t really care. They’ve moved on, having successfully created through globalization a world where the middle classes in China and India offer them far more opportunities to get rich.
    The chief executive officer of a global hedge fund made this clear to Reuters journalist Chrystia Freeland when he told her, as she later wrote in the Atlantic, that
his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point [the CEO explained] was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade.”
    The only problem is that no one told working Americans they were going to forfeit their future so that people in China, India, Brazil, and other developing countries could become part of a global middle class. In theory, this should not be a zero-sum game. But it is because Washington and corporate America have structured the rules that way.
    No one disputes that globalization, no matter what policies the federal government