Working-Class Blues

"Managed capitalism, which allowed most Americans to prosper in the latter part of the 20th century, has been gradually dismantled. We now have a government that serves the interests of corporations rather than those of its citizens. The book's lack of an examination of what this transformation means for our future gives a cut-and-paste feel to the individual stories, which is accentuated by charts and graphs. He includes too many leaden recapitulations of material in previous chapters.
"The chapters, organized under such headings as jobs, health, housing, education, the poor and retirement, allow Gosselin to show pieces of the puzzle. They are important pieces. But unless we grasp that there is a dark logic to this transformation, that an engorged and empowered new oligarchy holds our economic and political life hostage to corporate interests and profits, we cannot grasp the grave implications for our future."

In the Los Angeles Times, Chris Hedges reviews Peter Gosselin's High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families.


"Democrats have disdained so-called social issues as distractions from real economic problems. Douthat and Salam say to the contrary that the social issues are a major part of working-class insecurity. 'Safe streets, successful marriages, cultural solidarity and vibrant religious and civic institutions make working-class Americans more likely to be wealthy, healthy and upwardly mobile. Public disorder, family disintegration, cultural fragmentation and civic and religious disaffection, on the other hand, breed downward mobility and financial strain—which in turn breeds further social dislocation, in a vicious cycle that threatens to transform a working class into an underclass.'"

And in The New York Times, Norman Ornstein reviews Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam's Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.