The Betrayal of the American Dream

July 9, 2012
The ostensibly willful destruction of the American middle class is laid bare in this villains and underdogs story from the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting duo, Barlett and Steele (coauthors, America: What Went Wrong?). The authors describe economic policy changes in the decades since WWII, and demonstrate how fiscal rejiggering at the governmental level has produced a powerful and unchecked economic elite in America. Addressing issues like outsourcing, "the skewing of the tax code in favor of the rich," and the deregulation of major industries, and investigating case studies like Boeing, Apple, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the authors paint a sobering picture of collusion between a money-hungry Congress, big business, and the "financial cowboys" of Wall Street, who have dismantled the opportunities and hopes of the American middle class in order to increase the rate of cash flow to the rich. Stories of hard-working employees and business owners watching their jobs and retirement accounts vanish will pull on readers' heartstrings, while inflammatory language accompanies descriptions of the "charlatans" and "financial bandits" engineering Joe Mainstreet's downfall. The book is simplistic in its depiction of the good guys versus the bad, and policy wonks will be disappointed with the surface-level analysis of complex economic theory and history. But for folks bowled over by the recent financial meltdown, Barlett and Steele's book will resonate.