Tag: American Dream

2020’s Equality Policies 101

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By Karen Petrou

On July 18, the Economic Policy Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee turned its attention from the panel’s usual agenda to an unusual hearing on the challenges posed by U.S. economic inequality and what Congress might actually do about them.  For the first time, we saw a shared belief by senators on both sides of the aisle and diverse witnesses that, over the past two decades, Americans have become mired in the income and wealth into which they are born.  This isn’t exactly a news flash – see our prior blog posts on how unequal America has become and our most recent one on the dearth of public resources with which to counter fierce economic downdrafts.  However, it isn’t just that senators finally discovered inequality – it’s that the outline of a bipartisan response took shape.  Thus, for all the difficulty in Congress doing anything about even something as critical as economic inequality, the session was a break-out moment. Continue reading “2020’s Equality Policies 101” →

The Morass That Swallowed the Middle Class

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By Matthew Shaw

While much of the inequality debate focuses on the gains of “the 1%,” less attention has been paid to the economic well-being of what is broadly termed the middle class, which is all too often just lumped into the other “99%.”  However, focusing the debate on only the 1% obscures important trends within each of these groups, including that there is ample evidence that the gains of the 1% are largely driven by the wealthiest among this already-elite group along with diminishing prospects for the rest of us.  Today, we look at one of these groups with diminishing prospects and a concerning trend recently highlighted by IMF staff: the “hollowing out” of the U.S. middle class.  Continue reading “The Morass That Swallowed the Middle Class” →