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- iHaveNet.com: Economy
by Arianna Huffington
The press is all abuzz with news of the
The
The results have been devastating: a disappearing middle class, a precipitous drop in economic and social mobility, and ultimately, the undermining of the foundation of our democracy.
Thirty years ago, top executives at
I recently came upon a story that struck me as emblematic of where America's middle class finds itself these days. It feels like a dark reboot of the American Dream. Think Horatio Alger rewritten by O. Henry.
It's the story of Dean Blackburn of Alameda, Calif. The first part of his life was a classic American success story. Raised in Minnesota by a single mom, a teacher, he was "middle class by default." Through a combination of smarts and hard work, he made his way to
Then came February 2009, when he was laid off on the last day of the month. His boss chose that day because it meant the company wouldn't have to pay for another month of his health coverage.
Fourteen months later, he is still looking for a new job. As he, his wife, and their 2-year-old daughter deal with the immediate financial struggles his extended unemployment has brought, Blackburn has become acutely aware of the broader implications of the shorting of the middle class.
It's one of the reasons he's decided to try to start his own company, NaviDate, a data-driven twist on online dating sites: "It's no longer a trade-off between doing what you love and having stability. Stability is long gone, so you better do something you love!"
Achieving middle class stability and having your children do better than you, the way you had done better than your parents, has always been the American Dream, but, as Blackburn notes, mobility now is increasingly one way: "The plateaus of each step, which can be a great place to stop a bit and catch your breath, are gone. Now, it's climb, climb, climb, or start sliding back down immediately." The result: "The odds are you're going to wind up at the bottom eventually, unless you get lucky."
Luck. That's what the American Dream now rests on. It used to be about education, hard work and perseverance, but the system is rigged to such an extent now that the way to keep your head above water is to get lucky. The middle class life is now the prize on a scratch-off lottery ticket.
The evidence that the middle class has been consistently shorted is so overwhelming that even bastions of establishment thinking are on alert. In a new strategy paper,
After reading the details of the
The urgent need for the reorganization of our financial system goes far beyond the upcoming debate on new financial regulations. And it goes far beyond the media's right-versus-left framing. It's a question about the future of our country, and whether we are going to stop the slide toward a Third World system in which there are just two classes: those at the bottom and those at the top.
A lot of people at the top of the economic food chain have done very well shorting the middle class. But the losers in those bets weren't
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Shorting The Middle Class: The Real Wall Street Crime