(Ebook) Middle Class Meltdown in America Causes Consequences and Remedies 2nd Edition by Kevin T Leicht, Scott T Fitzgerald ISBN 9780415709514 0415709512

(Ebook) Middle Class Meltdown in America Causes Consequences and Remedies 2nd Edition by Kevin T Leicht, Scott T Fitzgerald ISBN 9780415709514 0415709512

(Ebook) Middle Class Meltdown in America Causes Consequences and Remedies 2nd Edition by Kevin T Leicht, Scott T Fitzgerald - Ebook PDF Instant Download/Delivery: 9780415709514, 0415709512
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Product details:

ISBN 10: 0415709512
ISBN 13: 9780415709514
Author: Kevin T Leicht, Scott T Fitzgerald

(Ebook) Middle Class Meltdown in America Causes Consequences and Remedies 2nd Edition Table of contents:

1. The Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity in the United States

• Introduction

• Why Study the Middle Class?

• The Changing Rules of Middle Class Life

• Overview of Key Economic Trends and Outline of Chapters

2. The Struggling Middle Class

• Stories Behind the Statistics: Trying Not to Drown in Debt

  • Dave and Monica Tread Water

  • Bill and Sheryl Need a Snorkel

  • Our Diagnosis

• Three Examples of Indebtedness: Feudal Peasants, Southern Sharecroppers, and the Twenty-First-Century American Middle Class

  • Our Feudal Past

  • Feudalism in a Contemporary Context: Tenant Farming in the Deep South

  • Twenty-First-Century Middle Class Meltdown—The New Indentured Servitude?

3. Macroeconomics and the Income/Credit Squeeze

• Market Economies and Purchasing Power: A Digression into Macroeconomic Theory

  • Enter Macroeconomics

  • The Revival of New Classical and Monetarist Economics

  • Supply-Side Economics and the Reagan Revolution

• Public Policy, Purchasing Power, and the Middle Class

• The Income/Credit Squeeze

  • The Deflated Income Balloon

  • Stagnant Incomes for the Middle, Rising Incomes for the Top

  • What Was Happening at the Top? The Captains of Industry Cash In

  • Lower Wages and Job Instability

  • Consumer Credit!

4. Robbing the Productivity Train

• What Is Productivity?

  • Profits and Reinvestment: The Other Activities That Productivity Gains Support

• What Did Corporate America Do with Profits and Productivity Gains?

  • So Some People Got Rich! Doesn’t Everyone Own Stock These Days?

  • Corporate Takeovers as a Competitive Strategy

  • What If Wages Were Indexed to Productivity?

5. Where Did All That Credit Come From?

• The Evolution of Consumer Credit

  • The Deregulation of the Banking Industry: A Sleepy Industry Wakes Up

• A Credit Card for Everybody

• Other Sources of Ready Money: Home Equity—Betting the House?

  • Auto Leasing—Renting the Car

  • Pawnshops Go Middle Class

  • Taking Your Pay Before You Earn It: Check Cashing, Payday Loans, and Title Loans

  • Rent-to-Own or Rent-to-Drown?

  • And to Spread the Risk, Investors Buy Asset-Backed Securities

  • Are Credit Cards and Pawnshops Substitutes for Getting Paid?

6. From Washington to Wall Street: Marketing the Illusion

• The Neoconservative Persuasion

  • The Triumph of Supply-Side Economics

  • The Effects of Tax Cuts

• The Reality for Everyone Else—Rising Taxes as a Percentage of Personal Income

  • But Wait a Minute! Didn’t the 2004 Bush Tax Cuts Do Better?

• Persistent Inflation and Benefit Declines for the Middle Class

  • Affording the Middle Class Lifestyle

  • The High Cost of College Education

  • Vanishing Benefits and the Costs of Working

• Retirement and the Collapse of Enron

7. The Great Recession of 2008–2009: The Illusion Exposed

• The Financial Crisis: The Emperors Have No Clothes

• Betting the House and Losing

• Unemployment, Job Loss, and Collapsing Demand: The New Poor

• Socialism for the Banks, Capitalism for the Rest of Us: Government Policy Responses

8. The Consequences of Middle Class Meltdown

• “A Pox on Both Their Houses”: Examples of Middle Class Alienation from Politics and Community

  • Record Numbers of Bankruptcies

  • The Cultural Contradictions of American Politics

  • The Fraying of Community

  • Political Alienation and Anger: The Hardening of Public Discourse and the Politics of Displacement

  • And Please! Let’s Fight About Anything but Money…

9. What Can We Do? A Manifesto for the Middle Class

• Individual Responses: Avoiding the Trap of Middle Class Indebtedness

  • Credit Is a Good Servant but a Bad Master

  • Buy the Big-Ticket Items You Want, and Don’t Lease or Rent Them

  • Saving Money Is a Habit That Starts Small

  • When the Time Comes, Buy a House You Can Afford

• Collective Responses: As a Nation, We Can Do Better Than This

  • Reevaluating the Successes of the Past

  • Reconnecting Capital Accumulation to Middle Class Prosperity

  • If We Value Families, We Should Put Our Money Where Our Mouths Are

  • Finally, We Need to Acknowledge That Inequality Is a Social Problem

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Tags: Kevin T Leicht, Scott T Fitzgerald, Middle Class Meltdown, America, Remedies