Middle Class Dreams

America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation - that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream - an American Nightmare of our own making.

The widening wealth gap is all too familiar to many Millennials and GenZers, especially when home ownership and the lack of debt seem like faraway fantasies. And it's no surprise when they only hold about 4.6% of the country's wealth while Boomers held 22% at around the same age. So what happened to the promise of the American Dream? In this entry of his celebrated Hidden History series, Thom Hartmann uncovers the rise of the American middle class through the progressive policies of FDR, through to its downfall with the increasing privatization and economic deregulations of the Reagan era.

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is not just an economic divide but a fracturing of American society along class lines. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.

Through his nightly CNN show Lou Dobbs Tonight, his syndicated radio program, and his monthly magazine column, Lou Dobbs has become one of America's most visible, popular, and respected voices on business and financial matters. Now, with War on the Middle Class, Dobbs takes an impassioned and rousing stance on the all-out class war that is turning the American dream into a nightmare.

Mr. Collins must marry. If Lizzy won’t have him, then Charlotte certainly will. Mr Collins may be a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man, making him the object of considerable scorn for the Bennet sisters, but Charlotte knows to seize an opportunity when it presents itself. After a week in his irksome company, her friend, Elizabeth, can only see his irritating manner. Whereas Charlotte, after a matter of hours, has already estimated his value and weighed it against the mortification she will undoubtedly have to endure. The opportunity to become the wife of a well-connected ...

The American middle class—the so-called backbone of prosperity—has been quietly dismantled. Not by chance, not by “market forces,” and not by personal failure, but by a deliberate system of money manipulation run by the Federal Reserve. How the Fed Has Destroyed the American Middle Class reveals the century-long playbook of engineered booms, busts, inflation, and debt expansion that shifted wealth upward and left workers, savers, and families holding the bag. Written in the blunt, teaching style popularized by Robert Kiyosaki, this book dismantles the myths that have kept the middle...

In the bustling heart of 1920s Dublin, Rita Reilly is born into a life of modest privilege; her family’s thriving shop promising a bright future. Raised in comfort and educated for success, Rita’s world is upended at fourteen when a violent assault shatters her innocence, leaving her pregnant and forced to confront a society that shuns her. Sent to a remote convent in Offaly, she endures isolation and judgment, giving up her daughter to an uncertain fate. Returning home, Rita finds her once-vibrant family crumbling under the weight of shame, financial ruin, and her father’s descent ...

In Privilege Lost, Jessi Streib traces the lives of over 100 youth born into the upper-middle-class. Following them for over 10 years as they transition from teens to young adults, Streib examines who falls from the upper-middle-class, how, and why don't they see it coming. In doing so, she reveals the patterned ways that individuals' resources and identities push them onto mobility paths - and the complicated choices youth make between staying true to themselves and staying in their class position.

Extreme candidates are nothing new in American politics, but very rarely do candidates as extreme as Elizabeth Warren have such a talent for presenting radically dangerous policy ideas as if they are compatible with the American experiment. An increasing number of far-left progressives have worked their way into the upper echelons of Democratic Party leadership, but none have generated the college campus enthusiasm and media coddling that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has created.

The best-selling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America's ailing middle class what she did for the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the world of the white-collar unemployed.

The Surreal Adventures of Dr. Mingus (Las aventuras surreales de Dr. Mingus) is an adventure of the mind, inspired by Fellini, classical theatre, Dante, and the Mexican drug wars. The dreams of the eccentric doctor will carry readers from the chaos of the third world through the nightmare of middle class America. Félix Rodriguez has created a tapestry of modern life unlike anything you have ever read. This book contains both English and Spanish versions of this one of a kind story from one of Mexico's newest, boldest artists.