The Death and Life of the American Middle Class

The Death and Life of the American Middle Class A Policy Agenda for American Jobs Creation

Abraham Unger

The Death and Life of the American Middle Class

Abraham Unger

The Death and Life of the American Middle Class A Policy Agenda for American Jobs Creation

Abraham Unger Department of Government and Politics Wagner College Staten Island, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-02443-7    ISBN 978-3-030-02444-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02444-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960851 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Pattern © John Rawsterne / patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

I dedicate this book to Martha Laub Schiffer My maternal grandmother, who never stopped evolving from youth to old age Rafi and Ari Unger My sons, who teach me new ways of looking at the world everyday

Preface

From the winter of 2015 through 2016 I was a consultant for a civic organization in Bayonne, New Jersey, working with an academic colleague on a study looking at projections for luxury apartment buildings and economic development on this peninsula. When I first arrived in Bayonne to start our fieldwork walking the neighborhood and speaking with residents, I saw a deindustrialized municipality that once had Standard Oil and a varied commercial strip, but was now without much industry and full of vacancies and 99 cent stores. Texaco too once had a storage and refinery operation there. That all cleared out by the 1980s. There has been a bit of hope offered by the development of a light-rail train that connects Bayonne to its neighboring, gentrified waterfront municipalities of Jersey City and Hoboken and to Manhattan in New York City. Some new buildings had gone up parallel to the light-rail stations. Rumor has it that a few units have already gone Section 8, meaning subsidized, not market-rate for the full rents originally hoped for by the builders. The light rail hasn’t brought in an influx of new residents. It’s still a fairly long wait outside on the train platform to get to the next town over or to the city. As early as 2004 the New York Times did a feature story on Bayonne as a bittersweet emblem of a new kind of city, the kind of city that now houses more and more underemployed men and women, and has seen solid industrial multi-generational middle class jobs leave in droves over the past 30 years. The Times reporter quoted a longtime resident saying “There’s a stronger sense of continuity here than in suburban areas where corporate families move…Bayonne is more stable than that,” but then the reporter commented between the lines of wistful resident quotes, “But for vii

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many families, that kind of continuity was broken by the economic shocks the city has suffered over the decades” (Newman 2004). My consulting contract in Bayonne happened to be during the presidential campaign year of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Both candidates, among a pool of more seasoned politicians, intuited that places like Bayonne were where the votes were, because that part of the American electorate was festering with economic frustration and felt left behind by those affluent, white collar “corporate families” portrayed in Richard Reeves’ book “Dream Hoarders” (2017). A candidate who addressed Bayonne, and the thousands of former industrial hubs across the nation, would capture not only votes, but, in the end, the most important issue rattling America: how can we solve the problem of middle class decline? And indeed, out of over a dozen candidates, the one candidate who figured out how to connect most deeply with this population is the one who became president. I was in Bayonne during this time, and I heard those sidebar conversations about how the rest of America had forgotten these families that had built the industry of our country, and about how their towns and cities once flourished with factories and teeming churches and active libraries and children who played ball in the street. No more. Now we see hollowed out buildings and hollowed out families, dreaming of both yesterday and tomorrow, but living on the edge of despair in between. This is a book that tells that story as a narrative by a social scientist. It is not a journalistic account of towns like Bayonne. It is a review of this type of socio-economic decline and the various approaches taken by scholars in different fields to figure out how to solve this crisis affecting by now the majority of Americans, who are quickly slipping out of the middle class into working, and often jobless, poverty. The work of this study is to tell the reader what others have reported in a way that clarifies all the literature on this issue to date, and then, to move from that survey to solutions. I’ve seen Bayonne and other towns like it, such as Berlin, New Hampshire, and parts of Pennsylvania, and upstate New York. There is a vast American rustbelt waiting for answers, waiting for an opportunity to return to a sense of security and stability now lost. As will be brought to bear in the upcoming pages, it is a population that has seen its men and women marry less and take opioids more. Its jobless men especially are in trouble. They are dying younger and going to jail in greater numbers than ever before (Austin et al. 2018). It was no wonder to me that Donald Trump became president. His voice, one of frustration and homage to American industry, was, and

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remains, the voice of many Americans who lost their place in our democracy because their local political economies were ravaged by globalization. The people I met in Bayonne were not social conservatives. They were hungry. There are no easy answers to the deracination of the American middle class. While we tend to focus on what the government can do, and I do that here also, there is responsibility on all sides. Affluent college educated professionals need to open their hearts and minds more to the experience of their fellow citizens who are living through a decades long economic crisis. The working men and women of America’s factory towns also have a responsibility. They too have to reach out and take account of the fact that, if they want to succeed again, they will have to take some independent action, like re-establishing two parent homes and becoming more civically involved. John Dewey taught us that democracy demands participation or it erodes. We start this book with a description of the features of middle class decline and what it portends for democracy. We then offer some doable policy prescriptions and conclude with reflections on how to heal a fractured America, both its citizens and the hard way we now speak to each other. That third chapter, though more theoretical than practical, may be the most important chapter of all. I still go back to Bayonne. I do some work there, and I feel connected there now. It is far away from my home, but it is a place I need to be in touch with, because it is a town where people are trying hard to upbuild their lives and community. Even in hard times, as the reporter from the New York Times recorded, families have stayed and work at sustaining what is left from day to day. I am an academic and a practitioner in urban economic development. In Bayonne, and places like it, I feel I am doing that work on the ground and helping to grow something more than a new program or a study. I am sustaining community somehow, simply by showing up. In the end, I think that is what is needed—that Americans show up for each other. We all need to step outside of where we are most comfortable and always reaffirmed, to take part in a bigger, more inclusive conversation. That finally is what democracy asks of us. Otherwise, the US will degenerate into a country of enclaves, and then the American experiment will be over. New York City

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References Austin, B., Glaeser, E., & Summers, L. H. (2018). Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st century America. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3_austinetal.pdf

Newman, M. (2004, March 28). The backbone of Bayonne. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/nyregion/thebackbone-of-bayonne.html Reeves, R.V. (2017). Dream hoarders: How the American upper middle class is leaving everyone else in the dust, why that is a problem, and what to do about it. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Acknowledgments

This work was written as the world around us changed in unexpected ways. Who would have thought just two years ago that a resurgent American populism would not only re-emerge, but overwhelm our comparatively staid, post-Vietnam era American politics? We need new ways of thinking about our political economy. More so, we need to be unafraid to overturn old assumptions and predilections of any stripe if the American middle class, our greatest asset to democracy, returns to some degree of economic stability and empowerment. That is the underlying point of this project. My thinking on what may be the most important issue of our time could not have been distilled into this book without the support of those closest to me. I thank my wife Deborah, who continues as my muse. Her strength and support push me forward. My sons Rafi and Ari, just starting middle school, are already engaged in the politics of the day. They debate and discuss in ways that refine my own understanding of the issues at hand. So too are my older stepchildren Sam and Rebecca, whose conversations with me prompt development of new ideas. My parents Myra and Sherwood Unger brought me up in a home where serious conversation and individual, unorthodox thinking was not only allowed, but encouraged. I thank my colleagues in the Government and Politics department at Wagner College, Cyril Ghosh, Shaohua Hu, Steve Snow, and Patricia Moynagh, and provost Jeffrey Kraus. Wagner College President Richard Guarasci has spurred on research that is committed to civic engagement. I thank also Paul Kantor for his consistent support of my work. xi

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I remember in this work my maternal grandmother Martha Laub Schiffer. She is missed every day. It was my Grandma Schiffer, as I called her, who first told me that I should write. In some way, all I do is in homage to her dynamic presence in my formative years.

Contents

1 What Happened to the American Middle Class?  1 2 A Path Forward for Jobs Creation 21 3 The Politics of Growth 45 Index 53

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CHAPTER 1

What Happened to the American Middle Class?

Abstract  This chapter surveys the literature exploring the decline of the American middle class from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from economic to political to social. It lays the groundwork for a policy agenda that integrates these approaches to address this pressing issue tugging at the heart of American democracy. Keywords  Class • Decline • Income gap • Inequality • Populism • Democracy

Purpose In the winter of 2018, Harvard economists Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser, and Lawrence Summers published a paper called Saving the heartland: Placebased policies in 21st century America. This study demonstrated with concise prose and quantitative analysis that “America appears to be evolving into durable islands of wealth and poverty. At the broadest level, the nation can be divided into its wealthy, costly coasts, a reasonably successful Western Heartland, and a painfully not working Eastern Heartland” (p. 5). The rustbelt of deindustrialization and its concomitant rise in joblessness includes “states from Mississippi to Michigan, generally east of the Mississippi and not on the Atlantic coast” (p. 3). Between 2005 and 2010, more manufacturing jobs were lost than “during the worst years of the Depression” (Smil, p. 134).

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The implications of this growing geography of emptied out shells of factories and joblessness starts with economic loss, but it leads to tears in the social fabric of the nation. Increased public rancor and an intensified partisanship are the cost of financial freefall among the disenfranchised majority of Americans who are daily losing their footing in the American dream (Reeves 2017; Pew 2017; Smil 2013). The Pew Research Center, a non-partisan and highly regarded source of demographic surveys, found by 2015 that “The gaps in income and wealth between middle- and upper-­ income households widened substantially in the past three to four decades” (p. 8). The US is now a country of social and economic islands, divided into havens for the haves and wastelands for the have nots. In less than a generation, we have become two Americas. An expanding pool of populist candidates for public office at all levels of government “cry for revolution” on mirroring extremes of the left and right (Sitaraman, p. 273). We are in a socio-economic crisis. Our democracy is at a crossroads. The purpose of this book is to point a practical way toward a better economic future for all Americans. If the middle class regains its economic place within the republic, equality is strengthened. My underlying mission here is not just to survey what has come before for the purpose of theoretical academic review. Whether pluralist or structuralist, the American political scientist is ultimately concerned with contributing toward a polis that is as equitable as possible. That disciplinary aim undergirds this work. In this chapter we synthesize exemplars of current research that describe the features of the American income gap and its most salient social ramifications. By this chapter’s conclusion we will have elicited from the literature a set of core principles that provide a basis for specific policy solutions laid out in the next chapter. We move then in the second chapter to a set of concrete legislative proposals, springing from the literature but new here in their framing. The goal of Chap. 2 is the heart of this study: to propose a set of policies that will make sense to most Americans regardless of ideological persuasion. If that consensus can be achieved, then legislative action is possible. In the third and final chapter, once agendas have been laid out, I offer a renewed American political language that is civil and considers the promise of an inclusive and responsive democracy for future generations. The optimism of this vision is obvious, but it is no dream. Given the current national crisis reported above, this project is an immediate national necessity.

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Class The history of convergence, which posits that all Americans’ incomes would grow together because typically, “migration flowed to high income regions, and capital was attracted by low wages in poorer areas…has slowed or even reversed, and place-based non-employment has become durable” (Austin et  al., p.  2). Convergence, once the hallmark of an American economic system that relied on a widespread middle class living and working alongside the wealthy, has morphed in this postindustrial age into divergence, whether in its strict economic definition of incomes growing more disparate, or, more metaphorically, referencing deepened class separation in terms of place and culture as well. We are living in a binary political economy. One America is more educated, healthier, and growing wealthier in a technologically and service driven economy, while the other is less educated, less healthy, and poorer than its own familial forebears due to the generational loss of manufacturing in its regional span (Temin 2017). In 2016, one year after its diagnosis of a widening inco`me gap, the Pew Research Center stated that “the 10 metropolitan areas with the greatest losses in economic status from 2000 to 2014 have one thing in common—a greater than average reliance on manufacturing” (p. 13). It is not hard to quickly conclude that entrenched regional economic divergence results in social and political divergence as well. The New York Times, citing the Austin, Glaeser, and Summers study, in addition to a host of other experts, reported an ongoing “chasm you can find nationwide” in regional voting patterns based on “the gap between haves and have-nots” (Irwin 2018). The national electoral insurgencies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were campaigns based on middle class jobs creation and propelled one of these two non-traditional populist candidates into the White House. The Sanders–Trump moment may not have been a uniquely aberrant race in US campaign history. The 2016 presidential election was likely the political culmination of a divorce between two divergent Americas, separated socially, spatially, and most palpably, economically. This divorce has been an acrimonious one, lending itself to an exceptionally uncivil current national tone (Zogby 2016; Weber Shandwick 2018). Current political and social patterns are fast becoming an embedded feature of how Americans are now thinking about public policy. One need look no further than the upstart populist candidacies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Brian Kemp in Georgia, each in their own way r­ epresentative

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political heirs of Sanders and Trump, respectively. While Ocasio-­Cortez might be a self-proclaimed socialist and Kemp an anti-regulatory nativist, these emergent political voices share in common a class-driven discourse of aggrieved resentment emphasizing the decline of the middle class and public policy remade for Americans who feel left behind by a national economy that continues to be “hoarded” (Reeves 2017) by an increasingly affluent, white collar cohort. It is critical to point out at the start of this study, for the sake of showing just how urgent our work here is in forging policy agendas for the American middle class, that the downwardly mobile workforce Reeves references, whose American dream of economic security has been snatched from their grip, is 80 percent of US citizens. It is also important to note that this is not a racial divide. It is a socio-economic one. Reeves himself makes explicit that, while race is still a structural cleavage in the US, “class barriers are rising, even as those related to race are slowly lowered” (p. 121). Among scholars, Temin most consistently focuses on race as a location of abiding historic disadvantage in terms of the urban minority poor. But, he suggests that tragic American tradition of not serving the minority poor lends a kind of cultural legitimacy to not serving any poor. Temin continues, “The failure of schools affects white and Latino members of the low-wage sector as much as blacks. Social mobility has decreased as inequality has increased” (p. 154). Neighborhoods too are no longer segregated only by race. Exclusionary zoning restricts building in many affluent communities to expensive, low density residences, thereby disallowing smaller, less expensive multi-family residences. It was implemented to keep blacks out of white municipalities. Now exclusionary zoning is also used by local zoning boards to keep out the increasing population of white lower income families. The Washington Post reported in 2017 that “Since 2000, there has been a 145 percent increase in whites living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty” (Winkler 2017). Race has been found unconstitutional by the Courts as a means to limit local development. Economic status has not (Winkler 2017). Income levels are now more than ever the most ubiquitous form of residential segregation. Classism has not just become a fixture in education and housing. Reeves finds that “on the top rungs of society, where market meritocratic values dominate, class barriers are rising, even as those related to race are slowly lowered” (p. 120). A decisive classism has subsumed our democracy. It is not that the issue of race has fully eroded as a form of spatial division. It is only that it has been superseded by economic class.

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As early as 2000, “the top 20 percent of taxpayers realized nearly three quarters of all income gains” (Davey 2012, p. 23). Those who have been able to make their way into the white collar universe of comfortable skilled employment, better healthcare, and higher education for themselves and their children, may be only 20 percent of Americans, but this narrow minority seems to have become the exclusive managers of opportunities for upward mobility (Reeves 2017). There are more poor people, more rich people, and “fewer Americans in the middle-income tier” (Pew 2016, p. 3). The particularly rapid downward trajectory of former workers out of the manufacturing employment sector into a daily struggle with encroaching poverty is now a regular part of the American socio-economic landscape (Samuel 2014, p. 153). Once legendary among the family of nations for its strong and stable blue collar middle class, by “2015, for the first time in generations, the American middle class no longer comprised the majority of Americans” (Sitaraman 2017, p.  227). The Pew Research Center confirms that those with incomes starting in the mid five figures to a little over $100,000 per year (2016, p. 7) “may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S.” (2016, p. 3). Why does this matter? Isn’t there an alternative story here beyond the by now clichéd narrative of the demise of American manufacturing? After all, if the middle class is shrinking, that doesn’t only mean lots of Americans have lost factory jobs. Some of these scions of families who found unionized security in factory jobs in the heady days of postwar US industry have certainly climbed up the educational and specialized employment ladder and are accumulating greater wealth (Pew 2016, p. 3). Nonetheless, however true it is that a small cohort of ambitious upwardly mobile children of families containing manual laborers and factory employees may succeed (Vance 2016), the hard truth for the future of the American republic is that, in plain terms, a “vanishing middle class” means that the country is “dividing into rich and poor” (Temin 2017, p. xi). A small middle means a wealthy elite and a poorer majority. That is a formula for social and political upheaval (Sitaraman 2017). Increased income inequality is more than just a data point for social scientists tracking the American economy. The heartland rustbelt contains the geographic repository of “America’s social problems, including non-­ employment, disability, opioid-related deaths and rising mortality … concentrated in America’s eastern heartland” (Austin et al., p. 3). The collapse of American manufacturing and the dropping out of most of its workers into a financial spiral has already resulted in less social stability (Davey

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2012). A cohort that has seen its wealth erode, with no end in sight to its decline, not only must feel a lack of security. It naturally grows distant from the values that seem no longer to provide any reward. Why bother with the convictions that once sustained whole communities when their constituents have been disenfranchised by the very cultural and economic system that nurtured them, only to eventually fail them in their hour of crisis? For example, why not abandon a family structure that cannot guarantee the generational transmission of social stability? The frightening response to that question can be seen in the rapid disintegration of the American middle class family. There are more unwed mothers and unemployed fathers than ever before in what were once workforce enclaves (Wilcox and Wang 2017). The increase in the mortality rate due to drugand alcohol-related deaths among adults in these communities only heightens this searing reality (Case and Deaton 2015). Most startlingly, there is less interaction than ever before between working class and more affluent families. Neither knows the other due to increased spatial and institutional segregation, resulting in little, if any, sense of mutual civic purpose or feeling of access and opportunity by those who were once a part of the manufacturing sector (Putnam 2015). With the destabilization of the middle class American family comes a loss in the rest of civil society. After all, it was the middle class that sustained the local public school system, religious and civic institutions such as church and fraternal organizations, and provided for the social undergirding of a municipality in which its citizens felt secure and involved. Now those same residents have been siphoned off from the public sphere by the white collar minority (Kotkin 2014). Even more disheartening, children of the declining blue collar middle class have less opportunity to make contact with institutions that could raise them out of encroaching poverty. American family units live in a country that is now deeply segregated by socio-economic class, and another generation of children is lost. (Putnam 2015; Reeves 2017). The populist and divisive wave of current electoral politics cited earlier offer evidence that vast swaths of citizens feel they are no longer equal stakeholders in the civic and economic present and future of the American experiment. That simmering public frustration may lead this majority of the electorate to question the value of democracy itself. Therein awaits the ultimate danger on the constitutional horizon if the middle class is not restored. Some scholars argue that the constitution itself is now essentially broken due to rampant income inequality (Sitaraman 2017). If

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there is no longer a large majority of the middle class in this country, then the contract the constitution represents, of equality of opportunity and before the law, no longer really exists. The vacuum left in its wake is why Sitaraman claims that incendiary candidates have now entered the mainstream of our politics. The US is now a union of festering incivility and an increasingly disgruntled politics hurling angry rhetoric at our once deliberative democracy. Within that environment, no viable solution to the dropping out of the middle economic rung of Americans has been proposed that takes into account an American politics deeply in flux. It is a politics that must reckon with a dysfunctional legislature (Galston 2012), an imperial Presidency (Schlesinger 1973; Savage 2007), and the politicization of the Supreme and federal courts (Faille 1995; Epstein and Segal 2005). Proposals to date have simply been the imaginings of scholars and pundits, but they have not fully accounted for the political realities of what can actually be accomplished that is doable now to relieve the seemingly insoluble problem of the death of the American middle class, in order to give it economic life again. It is the work of this book to solve that bedeviling public policy quandary. The loss of a secure middle class is therefore a moral issue. It speaks to social justice because its decline foretells the political and economic disenfranchisement of the majority of citizens of the republic. Therefore, middle class revival has transformative social ramifications. The survival of a robust American democracy, in which each citizen feels that there is genuine opportunity to realize one’s private aspirations and advance economically, depends upon the resolution of this problem.

Decline The literature on the American middle class offers more a qualitative portrait of that group rather than a statistical definition of it. Few studies suggest a specific income level that definitively qualifies a family unit as middle class. Temin suggests early in his book that $60,000 per annum for a family of three, presumably three adults and a child, is a middle class living (p. ix). Reeves is bolder and allows up to $112,000 per year to qualify that same typical American family as middle class, since that is the cut-off for the top quintile of American earners (Lowrey 2017, p. 2). I cite here a business journal that offers a sound range of what a middle class income might be. “You are in a middle class household if you earn between $39,554 and $118,072 a year” (Amadeo 2018, para. 3). That disparity leading toward

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the upper tier level income is explained by both location, meaning the variable cost of living in different municipalities, and different lifestyles depending on the size of household (Amadeo 2018). The Pew Research Center posits that Americans in the “middle income” range are “adults whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median, about $42,000 to $126,000 annually in 2014 dollars for a household of three” (Pew 2015, p. 2). These sources make clear that a middle class annual income for a family unit ranges from the mid five figures to the lowest of six figures. Depending on where one lives and the intrinsic locational contingencies of relative salary and monthly expenses, these families are just getting by, not only unable to save, but “accumulating debt at a faster rate than their asset levels were increasing” (Pew 2015, p. 48). This struggling middle class, spending more money than it has per family, and without widespread upward mobility and financial security available to the same degree it was before the collapse of American manufacturing, is now 50 percent of the population (Pew 2015, p. 5). Half the country is not yet poor by definition. However, it is functionally poor and economically insecure. But income levels do not tell the whole story. Life chances do. It is one thing for, say, a college professor to perhaps earn just above or under $100,000 per year. But, due to educational attainment, social networks, and institutional relationships, that professor is likely going to ensure that his or her child goes to college and even graduate school, which remain the most important arbiter of higher paying, white collar jobs (Pew 2015, p. 61; Reeves 2017). In this way, the professor with a middle income salary not only ensures the generational  transmission of at least the salary obtained so far, but enables his or her offspring to achieve more economic success. This is supplemented by the network of white collar relationships and status the professor also has, for example, in securing internships for a child, which can set a young adult on an early career path and assured status in the white collar community. This example speaks to the consensus in the literature that the more accurate criterion for middle class membership is social capital. The degree to which one has access to higher education, skilled employment opportunities, and the mix of other ingredients that all but guarantee economic viability, such as marriage options within the upper middle class to equally or more affluent and educated partners, housing opportunities in areas zoned for more expensive homes supporting a tax base that funds “excellent public schools and public services,” alongside better health and longer

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life spans, is based ultimately on whether one has already made it into the white collar sector (Lowrey 2017, p. 2; Reeves 2017). The US has reached a point in which the class into which one has been born is more than likely either the class in which one will spend his or her life, or will drop out of into less secure financial viability. The “hollowing” of the American middle class so far seems to be a characteristic that has become structurally embedded into the US political economy (Pew 2015, p. 13; Reeves 2017; Sitaraman 2017; Putnam 2015; Davey 2012; Samuel 2014). In the language of economics, the features of working class paralysis and disintegration in the deindustrialized American heartland are “hardening into semi-permanent examples of economic hysteresis” (Austin et  al. 2018, p.  3). As another study states in plain language that “children only have a 7.5 percent chance of making it into the top 20 percent” (Sitaraman 2017, p. 230). There is not much debate either about the list of dispiriting features that characterize our portrait of the contemporary American middle class in former manufacturing regions. These include lower male employment rates, less pay for existing jobs for those who have been downsized from unionized factory roles, higher numbers of single parent homes, mostly female led, increased rates of both male mortality and infant mortality, mental illness, obesity, low rates of college graduation, below average educational performance overall, high rates of opioid use, increased rates of home mortgage debt, and increasing male imprisonment rates (Davey 2012; Pew 2015; Temin 2017; Austin et al. 2018). This set of variables captures the daily lives of millions of Americans across the rustbelt. The flip side of this depressing panoramic of the once vibrant heartland is an upper middle class and wealthy population. This is the minority that is sustaining itself in economic comfort because it emerged out of a white collar demographic that had become largely entrenched by the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the almost total demise of manufacturing (Sitaraman 2017, p. 226). Over the past decades it has successfully replicated itself and accumulated more of the nation’s wealth and access to resources that support increased upward mobility (Reeves 2017). Studies show that families in two parent homes are more economically secure. That security is compounded by intergenerational college education, better healthcare, and access to neighborhoods where land use rules sustain better home values and municipal public goods (Pew 2015; Reeves 2017; Sitaraman 2017).

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Democracy These differences are not only economic and sociological in terms of incomes and behaviors. Income inequality shows up in a cultural separation between the haves and the have nots manifested in voting patterns. This fissure in the once shared values within a commonly understood American socio-economic fabric has unwound to the extent that it is the setting for a thick domestic political divide (Autor et al. 2018). The middle class has historically been a force for stability and social consensus. Its security pre-empted class resentments due to its fundamental comfort and foundational place within a local community. The strength and majority demographic of the American middle income bracket was a primary source of a sense of shared civic commitment and conviction that prosperity was a good that could be accessed by all. Smil comments that the American story is wrapped up in a manufacturing sector upon which the relatively speedy historical rise of the US is founded (2013). Now, at least for the time being, that story has ended. Winters explains that when an oligarchy solidifies, it engages in “wealth defense” (2011). An entrenched wealthy stratum will seek to protect its assets, multiply them, and pass them on safely to their heirs, rather than concern itself with a broader interest in social equity. They can do this not only through their reach into the most profitable aspects of the economy, but through political influence as well. With money comes power, and democracy is not immune to a wealthy few making their potency felt through institutional impact. Sitaraman (2017) argues that it is the top 20 percent of Reeves’ “dream hoarders” (2017) that make and shape policy. We are making our lives then during a period in the US in which democracy is at risk. Democracy is always precarious when there is a small, rich elite concerned most with preserving and enhancing its own familial wealth, and a much more populous frustrated majority that cannot escape its own economic, social, and political insecurity (Winters 2011). There is something here that smacks almost of feudalism, and it is has disrupted the historic belief in an America that promises equality of opportunity, whether educationally or economically. No wonder then that the electorate is not only divided, but cannot find its moderate, bipartisan center. Extremist populism, especially in its nativist form, is the typical trajectory of nations with a disappearing or non-existent middle class (Hanson 2018). Populism may offer a voice to the electorate, but it can easily slip into an adversarial stance filled with class-driven frustration.

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Davey reminds us in clear terms that a healthy democracy requires a majority middle class in the center, so that both poor and rich are small fringes on either end. This large middle creates a feeling of socio-economic togetherness resulting in diminished frustration towards the other classes  (Davey 2012). America is not in that place anymore. Davey presciently wrote back in 2012 that the “economic malaise” faced by the majority of Americans will compel the US to face “its greatest challenge” in facing its own current inequality (p. 139). Regardless of one’s political persuasion or sentiment about the election of Donald Trump, it is clear that the US is experiencing a time of substantial political tension, driven by class differences within the context of income inequality. While their families and lives slip into dysfunction, the former manufacturing workforce is watching a small percentage of its fellow Americans grow wealthier, healthier, and more educated while it dies younger and poorer, without access to the kinds of schools, professional training such as internships, and social network that sustains economic viability (Reeves 2017). One scholar writes plainly in his historical survey of the shrinkage of the middle class that “American skilled factory workers are literally a dying breed” (Samuel 2014, p. 155). How far can the cords of our democracy be pulled before the rope itself snaps?

Hope Before ending this chapter with a set of guiding principles that can be used to develop legislation, it is worth cataloguing the literature’s main emblematic theoretical lenses on the disappearing middle class. From this listing of differing perches from which to frame the decline of the middle class, we can cull in the next chapter an interdisciplinary approach toward a public agenda that covers the social, political, and economic issues involved in this policy arena. As shown by their having been woven together above conceptually and practically in a descriptive sense, there is basic agreement among scholars on characteristic features of those left behind by the American dream. These studies speak to each other seamlessly because they have all come to the same essential conclusions just illuminated. There are four basic policy frameworks available in considering policies to grow the middle class. These are economic, social, political, and lastly, what I will call industrial, since it only focuses on manufacturing, which is the original source of previous middle class success and subsequent decline. I highlight here these four characteristic approaches’ nuances of variation

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for the sake of utilizing their subtly discrete perspectives in the hope of comprehensive reform of nothing less than how our local communities and our government both function. If we are not to implode as a republic, there needs to be a change in the way our political economy operates, and that must take into account the fullness of the policy agendas reviewed below. The challenge will be how to combine these agendas into a realizable model for implementation within the constraints of our current American political system. Austin et al. (2018) look at the decline of the American blue collar workforce through an economic lens. Though recognizing at the outset of their study the extra- economic damage to democracy by the “terrible social problem” resulting from this trend (p. 1), they offer one solution, and it is purely in economic terms. However, it speaks to prioritizing a revised national economic strategy for the benefit of American workers. I will return to that theme in the agenda-setting work coming up in the next chapter. These three economists conclude that the best way to create US middle class jobs for former industrial workers is through place-centered employment subsidies. Our federal government usually implements redistributive policies across the country. Austin, Glaeser, and Summers suggest that doesn’t work as efficiently as refining policies so that different types of redistribute policies go to different types of regions within states. They find that “Place-based policies may not mean large-scale transfers to distressed areas, but place-based tailoring of policies to particular locales. For example, a bevy of current social welfare policies, including Section 8 Housing Vouchers, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), and Disability Insurance, currently tax earnings implicitly. The implicit taxes on housing vouchers and food stamps could be reduced for low income workers from 30 percent to 20 percent in areas where employment is particularly responsive to the returns to working” (Austin et al. 2018, p. 4). These scholars advocate for the strategic place-oriented implementation of extant federal benefits weighted toward local behaviors. They assert that “one-size-fits-all employment policies are similarly mistaken. Stronger employment subsidies are likely to have more benefit in Eastern Tennessee than in San Francisco” (p. 51). Take the case of the Earned Income Tax credit. It is based on annual earnings. It offers low and moderate working families a refund which “essentially offers a proportionate increase in earnings” in a region filled with that type of labor force (p. 51). It is basically a workers’ subsidy but geared toward families, but many families in deindustrialized regions are led by women, and

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many other blue collar workers are effectively single in that their children don’t live with them, as in the case of scores of working class men in increasingly jobless areas. Austin, Glaeser, and Summers claim that “for the Earned Income Tax Credit to be more effective at spurring primeaged male employment, it would have to be more generous to singleperson households” (p. 51). While place-based employment subsidies are singularly suggested by these three economists, they also touch on education, which is an area discussed by most other experts involved with the issue of the declining American middle class. However, it is handled here from a redistributive perspective also. Imagine that Federal Pell grants and other types of subsidies to community colleges were redesigned to incentivize colleges focusing more on “job generating skills” (p. 53). At the least, perhaps “college administrators would begin experimenting with counseling and promoting more employable majors” (p. 53). This incrementalist approach to public policy making that would alleviate the economic decline of the middle class seems hard to realize. While the authors consistently reiterate that they are drawing from already passed historic legislation, refining it place by place seems unwieldy for a federal government that is consistently at an impasse regarding any legislation proposed in these polarized times. Gridlock was already found to be a norm almost 20 years ago (Binder 2000). Additionally, we are considering here policies that are highly divisive between left and right, because they involve public subsidies, an idea that fundamentally anathema to many conservatives in Congress. Partisanship is even more intense since the fall of the middle class (Pew 2017). Ideological suspicion is running high. We therefore take from this discussion the value that sensitivity to location matters in figuring out how to gauge policy for a revitalized American workforce. Reeves offers a different kind of approach to middle class revival (2017). After a largely anecdotal and social analysis describing how the top 20 percent wage earners in the US are monopolizing institutions that support upward mobility, such as through legacy admissions to top universities and exclusionary zoning that prevents middle class access to better public schools, he makes seven proposals. These are (1) better ­contraception, in order to decrease the number of single parent homes, (2) home visits by government employees to teach parenting skills, (3) incentivizing teacher salaries to encourage better teachers in worse school districts, (4) supporting community colleges and vocational programs more, while cutting subsidies that come from easier borrowing by wealth-

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ier colleges, (5) loosen exclusionary zoning, (6) stop legacy admissions to elite colleges by children of alumni who are favored over raw applicants, and (7) end unpaid internships, which favor students who do not have to work while in college, and regulate preferential internships so that family members cannot easily place their children or relatives in exclusive positions (pp. 125–147). A socially driven bundle of broad-based policy proposals seems as unwieldy as an overly incrementalist and place-specific economics approach. On the most basic level, it is hard to imagine that the US government, or even state and local authorities, would become involved in a national contraception campaign. Reeves himself as much as concedes this political and cultural reality (p. 27). It is equally difficult to fathom that the government will start sending out teams of parenting experts to visit new families or that Ivy League universities and elite summer internship opportunities will suddenly reverse their application norms. The other proposals also leave little room for possibility. Exclusionary zoning based on financial status has already been upheld by the Courts (Winkler 2017) and proposed college tuition or funding reform legislation to bring higher education to a broader constituency has been dead on arrival to the legislature, if not sooner, whenever proposed, as Reeves also reports (2017). We are left then with a dreamy vision of towns suddenly letting poorer families into more crowded, smaller homes, teams of government social reformers supporting single parent homes, and an utter transformation of the way higher education has evolved over the course of several generations. But, however idealistic this policy package may be, it is important to bear it in mind, because it calls us to think holistically in order to attack our problem. Reeves thereby teaches that, while our issue may stem from the economics of middle class decline, its impact is finally social. Perhaps most importantly, he reminds us to think about the nature of family itself in considering where to begin in developing a meaningful agenda for upward mobility. His overriding concern with unmarried single parent homes and jobless male absence from those homes, echoed but not wholly addressed by the first batch of economists, is a variable that speaks to the social instability becoming embedded in the declining American middle class (Sitaraman, p. 231). In contrast to an economic or social policy restorative, Temin puts forth a political agenda that highlights political inequality as a piece of the texture in the tapestry of dysfunction woven into our national income gap. Temin pithily suggests a five pronged strategy to relieve middle class

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decline (p.  156). First, restructure early childhood public education to involve families more and fix schools’ physical plants. Second, shift resources that have been allocated for punitive programs such as incarceration toward supportive measures such as investment in human capital. Third, fix American infrastructure and forgive crushing mortgage and educational debts. Fourth, government should stop contracting out through private public partnerships. Delegating public goods delivery to private contractors creates market-based incentives to build businesses rather than democracy. For example, private companies have a motivation to house more prisoners as part of their profit structure (Temin, p. 112). Fifth, fully embrace “American diversity” (Temin, p. 156). This instruction seems to indicate a stronger effort to eradicate racism, such as that against “African Americans, Latinos and other immigrants” (Temin, p. 159). Temin admits that his wide ranging and vaguely worded platform is, in his own words, “a tall order” (p. 159). It is nothing less than a structural overhaul of the American political system, and it stands in its broadly principled language as a direct opposite to Austin, Glaeser, and Summers’ specific set of narrowly adapted economic remedies (2018). But, just as there is value in recalling that the problem of workforce joblessness is economic with social results as Reeves argues (2017), it is vital to understand that there are structural inequalities also in our politics that support the ongoing decline of the middle class. For example, housing debt is a structural issue. It came to light in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis which disproportionately impacted middle to lower income families. Contracting out also has created industries out of public goods that inhibit the original public mission of the delivery of these services. Besides privately run prisons, Temin calls up the development of charter schools. These contracted privately run corporations run schools as businesses. They are actually producing students with earnings less than public school alumni (Temin, p. 120). The problem with Temin’s proposals is that, like Reeves’ positions, they seem beyond the scope of what the government can currently achieve. They also lend themselves to ideological divisiveness. After all, Republicans, and many Democrats too, support privatization. It started in earnest with the Republican Reagan administration and became integrated into American public administration during the reinventing government period of the Democratic Clinton administration (Osborne and Gaebler 1993). The fourth and final option in current thinking about middle class revival is represented by Smil’s contention that America simply has to reindustrialize. It is not easy, but it is a clearer message than those we have so

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far covered. Smil describes a depressing state of affairs in American manufacturing that does not just blame its collapse on the common argument that cheaper labor abroad has caused the export and outsourcing of American productivity. His finding is that robotization, not globalization, has caused the loss of US manufacturing jobs (Smil 2013). That pattern is  more worrisome, because no amount of competitive American economic measures, whether through protective tariffs of foreign goods or tax breaks for US corporations, can overcome the replacement of humans—regardless of location—at the assembly line. Smil paints a dejected picture of possibility for the rebirth of American manufacturing. He essentially ends his evaluation of prospects for renewed middle class industrial jobs on a note of pessimism. His only specific policy recommendation containing some degree of detail is that we deregulate rules for inventors, and “particularly changes that reduce the frequency of interference lawsuits” (p. 169). This type of litigation means contracts are disrupted, and litigiousness costs our companies resources and funds. Smil develops this idea a bit more to suggest “limiting further expansion of federal mandates and regulations” (p. 185). He touches upon other possibilities, such as education reform, which he understands as a necessary corollary to a well-prepared body of laborers. But, Smil concludes that real educational reform would take up to 16 years (p. 200), during which time the middle class that once relied on employment in manufacturing would decline precipitously. Reform would come too late, and has already ended according to Smil, in many failed efforts anyway (p. 200). If nothing else, Smil’s work focuses our project on a clear target in seeking out middle class jobs in industrial employment for non-college educated personnel. That is a bottom line worth remembering, even if Smil is honest in his conclusion that neither he, nor any other scholars who have tackled the issue, have yet found a successful way out of the enduring problem that those jobs seem irreplaceable (p. 221). While the practical impossibility of realizing any of these proposals is clear, even according to many of their own proponents (Reeves 2017; Smil 2013; Temin 2017), there is still a utility in referencing them besides merely recounting themes from a particular social science literature. The importance of this discussion has been the drawing out of essential criteria to build upon in generating policy agendas that may have some chance of adoption by government and the citizenry. We see a universal concern with education, both lower and higher, and a concern as well with the breakdown of the family unit in a time of increased joblessness. We also

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recognize ongoing spatial segregation and structural inequality, especially now in the realm of socio-economic status. Reeves’ special emphasis on exclusionary zoning supports that larger finding (2017). Finally, we read of a struggle with substitute sources of income for lost jobs, whether through employment subsidies or reduced regulation to free up resources for production. The trick now is to try to construct policies that relieve these sources of contraction of the middle class, so that American democracy is made whole again. That is the work of our next chapter.

References Amadeo, K. (2018, July 19). Middle class income: Are you in the middle class? The Balance. Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/definition-of-middleclass-income-4126870 Austin, B., Glaeser, E., & Summers, L. H. (2018). Saving the heartland: Place-­ based policies in 21st century America. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2018/03/3_austinetal.pdf Autor, D., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. (2018). When work disappears: Manufacturing decline and the falling marriage-market value of young men. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from http://www.nber. org/papers/w23173.pdf Binder, S. A. (2000). Going nowhere: A gridlocked Congress. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ going-nowhere-a-gridlocked-congress/ Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2015). Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Washington, DC: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078 Davey, J. D. (2012). The shrinking American middle class: The social and cultural implications of growing inequality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Epstein, L., & Segal, J.  A. (2005). Advice and consent: The politics of judicial appointments. New York: Oxford University Press. Faille, C. (1995). The decline and fall of the Supreme Court: Living out the nightmares of the federalists. Westport: Praeger. Galston, W. A. (2012). Growth through innovation: Political dysfunction and economic decline. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0113_economy_galston.pdf Hanson, V.  D. (2018, June). The good populism. The New Criterion, 37(1). Retrieved from https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/6/the-goodpopulism-9842

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Irwin, N. (2018, July 1). One county thrives while a neighbor struggles. The New York Times, p. B4. Kotkin, J. (2014). The new class conflict. Candor: Telos Press. Lowrey, A. (2017, June 16). The hoarding of the American dream: In a new book, a Brookings scholar argues that the upper-middle class has enriched itself and harmed economic mobility. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoarding-of-the-americandream/530481/ Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1993). Reinventing government: How the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector. New York: Plume. Pew Research Center. (2015). The American middle class is losing ground. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/ Pew Research Center. (2016). America’s shrinking middle class: A close look at changes within metropolitan areas. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/11/americasshrinking-middle-class-a-close-look-at-changes-within-metropolitan-areas/ Pew Research Center. (2017). The partisan divide on political values grows wider. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.peoplepress.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-evenwider/ Putnam, R. D. (2015). Our kids: The American dream in crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster. Reeves, R.  V. (2017). Dream hoarders: How the American upper middle class is leaving everyone else in the dust, why that is a problem, and what to do about it. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Samuel, L. R. (2014). The American middle class: A cultural history. New York: Routledge. Savage, C. (2007). Takeover: The return of the imperial presidency and the subversion of American democracy. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Schlesinger Jr., A. (1973). The imperial presidency. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Sitaraman, G. (2017). The crisis of the middle-class constitution. New York: Vintage Books. Smil, V. (2013). The rise and retreat of American manufacturing. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Temin, P. (2017). The vanishing middle class: Prejudice and power in a dual economy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Vance, J.  D. (2016). Hillbilly elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis. New York: Harper Press. Weber Shandwick. (2018, June 13). Civility in America 2018: Civility at work and in our public squares. New York: Weber Shandwick. Retrieved from https:// www.webershandwick.com/news/civility-in-america-2018-civility-at-workand-in-our-public-squares/

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Wilcox, W. B., & Wang, W. (2017). The marriage divide: How and why working-­ class families are more fragile today. Washington, DC: The American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/ 09/The-Marriage-Divide.pdf Winkler, E. (2017, September 25). ‘Snob zoning’ is racial housing segregation by another name. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/25/snob-zoning-is-racial-housingsegregation-by-another-name/?utm_term=.1630bed9da2f Winters, J. A. (2011). Oligarchy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zogby Analytics. (2016, October 17). Zogby survey on civility. Meadville: Allegheny College. Retrieved from https://zogbyanalytics.com/news/757-2016-presidential-campaign-reveals-chilling-trend-lines-for-civility-in-u-s-politics

CHAPTER 2

A Path Forward for Jobs Creation

Abstract  This chapter proposes detailed policies to close the income gap in America and revitalize the middle class. It focuses on what is doable in American politics right now and offers real world solutions to this seemingly intractable problem. It includes innovative ideas that stress the roles of both the private and public sectors, without neglecting the social implications of American middle class decline and rebirth. Keywords  Policy • Family • Jobs • Regulation • Middle class • Taxes • Investment • Housing

Family In moving forward with this project a choice had to be made. This study is alone in the literature in its survey of a representative sampling of scholarly theoretical perspectives, while simultaneously suggesting manageable solutions to policy makers in government and other practitioners whose occupations interface with jobs creation. These practitioners could be government officials, bankers on a municipal finance team such as Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs’ Urban Investment Group, or those working in non-­ profits like Harlem’s affordable housing organization Abyssinian Development Corporation. The choice before me then as an author on public policy is either to simply reconfigure what has already been written

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and try to come up with a variation on those themes, or alternatively, take into account the underlying thread of previous recommendations and try to develop something new. I chose the latter. Why? Because, as we concluded in the previous chapter, nothing proposed so far has actually proven doable. The purpose of this study is to move past that inaction. We have no choice if the American middle class is to lift itself up. This chapter will present a series of policy remedies in order of importance, one carefully sequenced after another in an innovative plan to bring the US blue collar workforce back to life in terms of its reach into the job market and return to an empowering civic status. If one parses out a bit more closely the underlying thread of the four different disciplinary approaches just covered, we realize that there is a primary variable that stands out as a shared foundational block: the American family. Among scholars, Davey articulates this most bluntly when he writes, “A growing middle class increases stability and increases democratic institutions while reducing levels of violence and even family breakdown” (p. 6). Logically, the converse is a reasonable conclusion to infer. Statistical research proves that workforce economic decline dovetails with less marriage and more single parent homes (Austin et al. 2018). The cost of living for middle class families has “made it increasingly difficult for such families to maintain one’s economic and social status” (Samuel 2014, p. 110). Familial disintegration is inevitable in such a dismal socio-­economic scenario. If we fix the breakdown of the American family slipping through the cracks of society due to the emptying out of our manufacturing sector, we fix the most important piece of our torn social fabric. Though we are dealing with the middle class at large, it is salient to recognize that there is a spillover of this breakdown into the progress of women and minorities in the employment market. Smil highlights that the twentieth century growth in the manufacturing sector also led to the entrance of women and African Americans into the industrial labor force (p. 75). Jobs loss thereby not only affects men vis-à-vis the family, which has occupied much of the focus of the relevant literature, but women and minority families also. Recent findings confirm that a two parent married home correlates positively with economic growth (Hoynes et  al. 2006; Wilcox et al. 2015). Deindustrialization wreaks a havoc that begins with economic loss but ends with a central weakening of perhaps the main ingredient of social stability, and this variable cuts across gender and ethnic groups. Reeves’ whole social program, however untenable, is directed at providing American middle class families with a renewed stake in the

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­ ossibility of upward mobility (2017). Clearly, more marriages and two p parent homes are important features of a stronger economy. Policies that encourage the cohesiveness of family units may support higher incomes. On the most basic level, a two income home generates more financial stability per family than a one income home, if only because of the possibility of two incomes from each parent or the higher probability that at least one parent will work if and when the other is rendered jobless. The family is a kind of safety net unto itself. One recent study summed this up in finding that “Higher levels of marriage, and especially higher levels of married-parent families, are strongly associated with more economic growth, more economic mobility, less child poverty, and higher median family income at the state level in the United States” (Wilcox et al. 2015, p. 3). Simply put, regardless of politics, supporting two parent married families allows children better life chances. It is the flipside of the variable of increasingly single, jobless males and their children’s dimmed prospects. As rustbelt men have married less over the past several decades, they have increased drug use and incarceration rates and are dying younger (Austin et al. 2018). Policies that provide deepened security to the family unit may not in and of themselves create jobs, but they are foundational as a bulwark against the instability created by a middle class employment crisis. This is because a stronger family provides more security and structure for both parents and children. Practically speaking, two parents are better than one in a more competitive job market. While the literature on marriage and the related socio-economic decline of males presumes a traditional family unit, it is outside the scope of this study to discuss the make-up of the American family in terms of varying partisan positions on same sex or heterosexual parent led homes. While I am prepared for the possibility that there may be critics who take ideological stands against this work in its sheer emphasis on two parent homes at all, my goal is just to present policy ideas that speak to the reality on the ground of an American middle class in disarray. The exponential growth in single parent homes is symptomatic of that precipitous decline according to scholars from across the ideological spectrum, as cited above in research published by both the liberal Brookings Institute and the conservative American Enterprise Institute. However, no research I have seen except among the most polemical, and hence likely the most slanted and therefore unreliable, makes heterosexual families the end all and be all of argument for a strengthened American middle class. The stress has been on two parent homes, not on the gender make up of those homes, so I

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­ rogress in this discussion by easily positing that any policy I suggest to p support the American blue collar family in its quest for re-inclusion in the American dream goes uniformly for all two parent homes, whether or not they are heterosexual. The truth is that most American families happen to consist of a male and female parent, and that traditional familial unit is the sociological presumption of scholars who have addressed the downward mobility of the American worker. The only position I am taking in this realm is that of preferential treatment for married homes at large, regardless of parents’ genders, as a deterrent to the finding that single parent led homes are deleterious to both parents and children. While there may yet be arguments against that position as well, the research cited here speaks for itself in emphasizing the stabilizing value of a two parent home. This is not an ideological position. It is based on the literature about middle class decline and what to do about it from a variety of perspectives. There are suggestions already available that propose taking away programs that benefit single parent homes. That indeed was the case prompting the Clinton administration’s 1996 reform of the welfare entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children to become the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. This legislation, according to the federal government’s own stated aim in implementing it, sought to “end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and marriage; to prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and to encourage the formation and maintenance of two parent families” (https://aspe.hhs.gov/aidfamilies-dependent-children-afdc-and-temporary-assistance-needy-families-tanf-overview-0). It did this by turning federal aid to single parent homes into block grants to states to best determine within federal guidelines how to wean single parent homes off of public assistance. In essence, the redesigned program moved public assistance from “welfare” to “workfare.” States were incentivized to lower the numbers of registrants on their welfare rolls. This was accomplished by requiring that single family led homes have a limit of no longer than five years for receipt of cash assistance and that the recipient parent finds employment within that period (http:// time.com/4446348/welfare-reform-20-years/). Republican Senator Phil Gramm was quoted as saying, in reference to welfare recipients, that they should no longer be permitted “to get out of the wagon [of the employment market] and help everybody else pull” (https://www.economist. com/united-states/2006/07/27/from-welfare-to-workfare). This policy

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has not achieved its stated aims as proven by the ongoing spiral of the middle class two parent family over the past two decades since its passage. At best, the scholarly report is mixed (Haskins and Greenberg 2006). Rather than abrupt and harsh policy reform to coerce employment, with looming deadlines for parents and children at risk, especially in a difficult economy for unskilled laborers emerging from several decades of steady economic and social attrition, another strategy is clearly needed. Instead of a punitive approach, perhaps it is time to try a rewards system to re-incentivize a commitment to two parent homes. It is within this overarching framework of supporting marriage, rather than pressuring single parents, that an agenda can be generated which covers all realms of policy reviewed in the previous chapter. We can now explore a kind of possible legislation that takes into account social, political, and economic realities in a way that is empathetic to the hardest hit victims of deindustrialization, yet transformative to the American polity at large, at once by demanding that government and citizens maintain a reciprocal responsibility to each other. The detailing of the following proposal for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for two parent homes will lead us in Chap. 3 to a new language of bipartisan discourse that is able to bypass the crippling social tensions engendered by our current American politics.

Income Most suggestions out front today that directly confront the loss of economic opportunity start with education of the children of middle class families, without first trying to repair the family structure itself. At first glance, that seems fair. It is seemingly less polarizing for a policy maker to keep some distance from entering that social fray by engaging with the idea of the traditional two parent home. Education is central to any successful nation state, especially in a technologically driven global economy. It is a well-worn policy talking point which provides a circuitous political way around facing the support provided by parents and schools in focusing on children, no matter their home environment. But, in the US, it has proven to be among our most “intractable problems” (Fleener 2016). If I am to make good on my promise to offer actionable legislative ideas, then, for all the long-term hopes raised by tackling the education issue, I have to forgo it for now, if only because it is a failed arena of oft-attempted change over decades of effort across party lines (Clark et al. 2017). We will return to it later, but only as one rung on the ensuing hierarchical set of

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planks in our platform of policies. The family however is a new place to start, and it necessarily comes first on our list of policy priorities, because if we don’t address it, no other legislation will succeed. More so, if modeled in a language of caring and opportunity, this variable offers a new, more robust pathway toward thinking about the rebirth of the American middle class. One increasingly bipartisan policy idea in the public square today is the “UBI,” the Universal Basic Income. The UBI offers each American a guaranteed basic monthly check from the government to pay for the most basic expenses. Proposed stipend ranges differ, but they reach up to $1500 per month (Benner and Pugh 2016). Stockton, California will soon start issuing a monthly UBI of $500 to all adult residents (Crane 2018), so this is an idea whose time has arrived. Labor activists view the UBI as an antidote to growing inequality, libertarians see it as “a more efficient way of providing social welfare,” socially concerned tech moguls see it as public compensation to labor as more jobs become specialized and automated, feminists recognize it as payment to women for unpaid work such as mothering, and “historically marginalized groups” support it as a “means of partial reparations for past wrongs” (Benner 2018, pp. 8–9). There is no other policy aimed at helping lower income Americans as broadly supported as the UBI. It does not take too much more imagination to consider the possibility that a family with two parents, and therefore with more adult mouths to feed and more material needs, ought to get a larger monthly UBI than a single parent home. The contrary argument is that a two parent home typically has a higher income, but in this period of deindustrialization, that is not an infallible assumption. Furthermore, if the UBI is to be standardized, then employment should have nothing to do with it. It will not in Stockton. Most critically, a uniform higher UBI for two parent married homes may have the effect of encouraging that family to sustain both parents within the same household. While anything is possible, and we live in tensely divisive times, it is more than reasonable to argue that a two parent home should get a larger UBI check each month than a one parent home. The government is thereby demonstrating that it rewards committed families. Committed families provide for more secure and stable children, who become more successful students (Mulhere 2015). More guaranteed income for a two parent home may close what some scholars call “the marriage divide” (Wilcox and Wang 2017) between the bottom 80 and top 20 wage earners in the US. Working class Americans are less likely to own a home, and home ownership is an indicator of social stability. Married

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c­ ouples’ home ownership is also a common preventive for divorce, because it represents a shared economic stake in equity by a couple and a social stake as well in the two parent family unity (Wilcox and Wang 2017). A reliable basic income might encourage more couples who might otherwise be transient to sustain a consistent familial home together.

Investment This second tier of our platform is actually the most difficult part of coming up with a viable set of policies to bring economic life back to the middle class. It is the most elusive proposal. No social scientist or practitioner has yet figured out how to move past the accelerating automation inherent in the global economy and put Americans back to work. That relentless reality outweighs any concern with the continuous corporate search for cheaper labor (Smil 2013). This is an immediate structural issue. The two most traditional and expeditious means toward strengthening the middle class’ employment opportunities has been the recent populist positions of protectionist tariffs combined with lower corporate taxes. Experts report that, at least for now as they become implemented, these policies are not actually putting more Americans back to work or leaving more income in their pockets. The reason is simple for each. Tariffs act as a regressive tax against the moderate to low income population. A recent paper by leading economists found that “expenditures on traded goods are a higher share of income and non-housing consumption among lower income households” and tariffs serve as a regressive tax for those households, especially among women and single parent homes (Furman et al. 2017). Here again, we see an implicit recommendation that the two parent home gain support to combat the higher cost of goods as globalization recedes. There is no scholarly finding that tariffs on foreign goods now being implemented are suddenly leading toward the massive rehiring of industrial workers. A lowered corporate tax rate is also impacting American blue collar workers adversely. It has resulted in actually widening the income gap between rich and poor (Nallareddy et al. 2018). Investment due to lowered corporate taxes is going toward capital, not workers. In many cases, companies are not building plants or hiring new workers, but just moving intellectual property such as patents to locales with lower taxes (Holland 2018). Wages have remained stagnant while the capital income of those earning over $200,000 per year went up, because the affluent were able to

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reclassify their income to make the best use of the new cuts in tax rates, which reached 14 percent (Nallareddy et  al. 2018). Additionally, pay increases for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) keeps increasing, especially in a climate with more money left over from corporate tax cuts. It does not take much to figure out that many of those most hurt by the cutting of corporate taxes are single parents. Findings suggest that the most vulnerable populations among the moderate to low income non-college educated worker feeling the rise in income inequality following corporate tax rate cuts are minorities and women (Holland 2018). These standard protectionist policies are not trickling down to the American worker. The New York Times reports that now, a deeper malaise is setting in. Even in those factories that remain open, with some owners yet trying to keep their plants stateside and employ individuals coming from a manufacturing background, there is a widespread dropping out of laborers from jobs for which they have already been hired due to a kind of workforce depression. There is a fast rising “absenteeism” in factories because many workers feel that they are on the brink of being let go at any moment if they appear on the job. Rather than face that daily fear, they avoid the continuous possibility of termination at any minute by staying home. Hopelessness in one’s human potential is inherent in that behavior. It is socially and psychologically more comfortable not to show up than get a pink slip, after watching a comfortable and secure middle class lifestyle and wage slip away over a generation (Schwartz 2018). Employment is not only an economic necessity. It is a source of human dignity (Hodson 2001). Without work, or in a work environment that is demeaning, men and women lose their pride and feeling of being invested not only in their company mission, but in themselves. Imagine then a whole cohort of individuals who have, through structural circumstances such as those outlined so far in this book, had their dignity diminished. Meaningful labor can help to re-establish not only their economic hopefulness, but their confidence as well in their own humanity and equal stake in society. Since I have promised to suggest only what may be feasible in the realm of the doable, I make the following “pitch” not to government, but to the charitable foundations of the private sector. There, corporate governance and leadership from industry are, by reputation since they emerge from the business sector, supposed to be more malleable than our deadlocked partisan legislature and an executive branch that has already implemented, with little effect to date, its two main ideas of tariffs and lower corporate

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taxes as a hoped for stimulus to American middle class jobs creation. I take as examples the Gates and Ford philanthropic foundations in putting forth the following private sector prescription to American job loss. The upcoming proposal could apply to any substantial US charitable foundation lodged in the corporate sector, such as those from Silicon Valley firms. Both the Gates (2018) and Ford foundations (2018) have made a decision to place funds into “PRIs,” program related investments, which are capital infusion techniques to support companies working in the issue areas of concern to these foundations. Known more broadly as “impact investments,” this portfolio is mission-driven. Impact investors seek companies with a social purpose that provide significant social, economic, or resources, such as education technology or healthcare, in addition to financial dividends. There is a twofold benefit to this kind of investment. It offers capital to companies that are trying to do some good, while directly serving the issue of inequality addressed in this study by strengthening both start-ups and established corporate entities trying to close the equality gap through their products. While a handful of foundations such as Gates and Ford are devoting sizeable percentages of their funds to impact investing, much more could be done. A recent article noted, “There’s still no expectation or norm that a modern American foundation should tap more than five percent of its financial assets to advance its mission” (Callahan 2017). Most foundations make their largest funding allocations to educational organizations (Foundation Center 2014), and many diversify this portfolio with global investments instead of only keeping an American set of investments (https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/ Program-Related-Investments). Many charitable organizations, including the biggest such as Gates and Ford, expend funds on a host of assessment studies in their policy areas of interest and community coalition building in diverse sectors. Here I propose something more streamlined: redirect the majority of philanthropic funds toward the private sector. If this new arena of independent, private sector philanthropy expanded its institutional percentage of impact investments and placed those investments solely in the US, there is a stronger chance that more social equity will be redistributed throughout the population. This is not a question of radical organizational change. It is only an incremental matter of consolidating major charitable priorities toward an investment arena that is already active. Increases in the volume of philanthropic institutional investor equity in mission-driven American firms has three manifold and speedy positive consequences, more than assessment studies and reports or the labor and

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time intensive fieldwork it takes to build long-term community and civic alliances. Impact investing is also more clearly targeted and it is easier to capture its outcomes when compared to a set of varied philanthropic initiatives in a host of policy arenas containing different initiatives. First, a unified strategy to refocus major charitable foundation dollars into PRI impact investments incentivizes more companies to think about the social effects of their products. Second, it pours foundations’ resources into existing corporations that have the potential to create new jobs as they develop and grow. Third, this strategy sends a message to America’s most vulnerable that our financial elite, such as the Gates and Buffets of the US, are directly interested in creating jobs through direct investments in US companies that meet socially responsible criteria in both how these firms do business, in what products they make, and how they treat their workers. Just knowing that the top echelon of the US’s most affluent citizens care, and that they are thinking about trying to jumpstart the economy by investment in new products, has social value, which in turn, could lessen our current mistrust between the classes. There is significant social capital potential to ease class resentments if our largest charitable organizations invested in American companies seeking to make change through their goods and production processes. The somewhat surprising aspect of this recommendation is that, if these large foundations do shift resources toward impact investing, less funds will go toward their education initiatives, which right now is where the largest proportion of charitable foundation money goes (Foundation Center 2014, p. 6), with little impact that can be fully felt outside of anecdotal stories in foundation annual reports. No scholarly study has yet reported that US education has been even remotely improved due to the involvement of major philanthropic initiatives. One researcher put it most bluntly regarding educational reform since the 1950s, “Much has been attempted; little has been accomplished” (Davey 2012, p. 149). If America’s wealthiest foundations truly want to make a difference in the equality gap sooner rather than later, they should invest in American production. Whether unskilled or skilled with necessary training, more capital placed in US companies, especially those committed to fair treatment of laborers as part of their social responsibility and clearly intending to develop their production and distribution capabilities here in the US, means more working Americans who feel that they too have a meaningful place in the American economy and social framework. It is a more than reasonable projection to suggest that a stabilized workforce with more

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perceived opportunity will also support the strengthening of the American family unit. Inequality has demolished it (Austin et al. 2018; Reeves 2017). Providing some hope and evidence that the middle class can regain its socio-economic footing can reboot a commitment to the family unit. Most obviously, men will become more marriageable again. If there are more life chances, and jobs seem to be more available, perhaps even contraception would be more widely used to prevent unwed pregnancies by young women. Impact investing is where our philanthropic dollars can be best spent. It is already happening and therefore doable. The question remains, how much will our charitable foundations do? It is never easy to break old habits, especially for organizations with established bureaucracies and staff domains. I am hopeful that the private sector, which claims to be much more nimble than government, answers that question with a powerful act of affirmation to directly reinvest in America and her workforce.

Education It is ironic for me as a college professor dedicated to transmitting critical thinking to young people and research that, as I progress through these policy agenda items in their order of priority for the sake of reducing socio-economic inequality, I find myself conclusively convinced that education will not solve that problem in the short term. Of course, economically developed societies usually nurture strong educational systems, and not only in science and technology. For example, while Israel and the US may have the most research and development around high tech and biotech, they also have some of the world’s most renowned humanities and social science university faculties. Critical thinking is not only a transferable skill from discipline to discipline, but it often forms the frameworks for initiatives in the material sphere. In my own original discipline of public policy, it was the abstract work of political philosopher John Rawls that has framed the practical discussion since the early 1970s on how a contemporary democratic state can provide a social welfare system for equality of opportunity (Rawls 1971). Theory does matter, and the most successful democratic political economies are based on ideas stemming from the most advanced laboratories of human thought. But, right now, America just does not have the time to undergo major educational reform because of the political and bureaucratic morass it has become, whether for grade school or higher education. Even centrist social critic Reeves opens his seminal book on our topic in its very first page with an apocryphal tale

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taken from real politics in 2015 about the abject failure of what seemed at first suggestion a moderate legislative proposal for enabling college education for more Americans (p. 1). Reeves commented on this episode, “sensible policy is not always easy politics” (p. 2). Big charitable foundations may be doing noble work in the education arena, but the socio-economic crisis illuminated in Chap. 1 is so pressing that, as political philosopher Michael Walzer argues, when it comes to material survival, such as having enough food to eat at this very hour for scores of people in one’s local community, “justice-right-now” is the order of the day (2011). Walzer asks, “How then should we think about justice-­ over-­the-long-run? Relief and repair will create a world considerably more egalitarian than the world as it is today. That’s a good thing, in my view, though it is defensible first of all in negative terms, by reference to the terrible consequences of radical inequality” (2011, p. 46). While restructuring education is an eternal social good and worthy of timeless effort, timeliness demands that we forego its prioritizing in order to put food on the table of millions of jobless and underemployed Americans. As I opened with at the start of this study, the loss of the American middle class is a moral issue. Rampant inequality is a matter of social justice. In fact, there is no national issue greater right now, because it affects 80 percent of our country. The majority of Americans are struggling with urgent pain across race, ethnicity, religion, and gender—real physical and social pain that results in earlier deaths, substance abuse, poverty, loss of family, and incarceration (Austin et  al. 2018). As reported earlier, many Americans can’t bring themselves to even show up for work (Schwartz 2018). It is a national depression steeped in crawling hunger and loss. That’s why education has been taken off its pedestal in this hierarchical ladder of policy proposals that must, by moral necessity, speak to justice-right-now (Walzer 2011). I will go one step further. We live in a contemporary American culture that emphasizes free higher education, ideally for all (Davey 2012). Tuition free college without student debt has become a hallmark position of the populist socialist candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Octavio-Cortez, (https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-makecollege-tuition-free-and-debt-free/, https://ocasio2018.com/issues). It is true that “adults with no more than a high school diploma lost the most ground economically” (Pew 2015, p. 11). College does make a difference in earnings potential. But, just over a third of Americans have a college degree (Census 2017), and fewer high school graduates are actually going to college than before 2012 (Wong 2016). Why? Because, as the 2008 recession

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recedes, those students who might have tried to wait out the dip in the national economy by staying in school as long as possible are trying now to re-enter the job market in what they perceive as an overall better economy, and so, less students entering college is a positive sign of renewed faith in the economy by young people (Thompson 2013). What those raw statistics are really telling us is that college is not for everybody. I would argue that even if college were free, it would not attract all Americans. Perhaps the rate of college enrollment would bounce up a few points, but it seems hard to imagine that we would go as a nation from one third to almost all young Americans applying to college if not for tuition. If that were the case, the vast majority of Americans would already be graduating from publicly funded community colleges, but that is not happening. Community colleges were designed to offer college level ­education to all students who wanted it, in terms of low cost and open enrollment. So, they are as close to the idea of debt free college as one can get before arriving at a full four year Bachelor’s degree. Yet, well under 50 percent of community college attendees graduate. One expert concedes that, while cheaper college tuition might encourage more students to apply to college, that won’t be enough to stay through graduation (Kolodner 2015). Rather than impose my intuitive sensibilities on the material, I have tried to see where the evidence takes me. It has led me to the conclusion that, as a policy, the promotion of higher education should be dropped from our public conversation, whether in the specific form of lightening its financial burden, or as a general American policy goal, at least for the time being. This does not mean high schools should not encourage, on the district level, their students to be oriented toward application to college. Schools should of course teach students to prepare them to succeed in college if they attend. But, both government officials and the civic and private sectors do not need to continue to promote college as a vital piece of our democracy. Right now, it isn’t. The need for work is. Therefore, one policy we need to adopt is negative, meaning not doing something about a long held ideal. In this instance, that means the letting go of the consistent rhetoric from all political sides emphasizing the need for ways to make education better and more affordable. Let’s leave that for another day. Our policy on education is to drop it as an issue  for now. When the family has been reconstituted, a UBI is in place, and more jobs at secure livable wages are made available, we can return to the education debate, but only once we have re-established a more consensual society.

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I suggest here that we should also leave behind promotion of vocational school as part of the policy debate surrounding the accessibility of post-high school education. Conservative populists often counter leftist ones advocating for free college tuition by suggesting a widening of options and funding for “alternative vocational training” as part of a “de-­ emphasis on college” (Hallen 2018). We should scrap that as well. Some scholars might hope that we can imitate European policy on trade schools, such as the German example of state support of “world-class vocational training rather than universal access to college” (Davey 2012, p.  146). But, there is no political will or traction there either. Let’s use our resources in ways that can help job creation right away, rather than spin our wheels to no legislative or other realizable policy end.

Jobs While rewarding families with a UBI, socially responsible investments by mega foundations, and dropping the futile policy initiative of education reform, may all provide some manageable starting ideas for middle class revitalization, the demand to create jobs as soon as possible that seem stable and secure looms large as the test for any new set of policies to close the equality gap. When this research first began just a year ago, hope was placed in e-commerce warehousing exemplified by the inundation of Amazon into this real estate sector space. Commercial warehousing is a thriving real estate sector. There was a flurry of reports describing the conversion of defunct factories into thriving new online shopping storage and shipping facilities, sometimes even re-employing members of local families in the same factory buildings they once worked in when these structures were dedicated to manufacturing (Kitroeff 2017). Of course, these are not higher paying union jobs in the tradition of American manufacturing, but they seemed to provide steady employment for many men and women. More recent research within the year finds that this romance with the possibility of warehousing providing jobs in old factories is soon to end. It turns out that “Amazon Fulfillment Centers” do not actually create more local employment in the deindustrialized areas where they locate. They may in fact decrease employment. A “host county” gains about 30 percent more warehousing and storage jobs when Amazon opens locally, but “no new net jobs overall, and the jobs created in warehousing and storage are likely offset by job losses in other industries” (Jones and Zipperer 2018). In addi-

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tion, “state and local governments give away millions in tax abatements, credits, exemptions, and infrastructure assistance to lure Amazon warehouses but don’t get a commensurate ‘return’ on that investment” (Jones and Zipperer 2018). These factors arise because often locals leave other remaining low end retail or service sector jobs to apply at Amazon, or other businesses, perhaps a surviving Mom and Pop retail store, close when Amazon comes to town. Due to all the incentives given to Amazon by local governments, these municipalities never see any fiscal reward because of lost tax revenue. Recall municipal taxes fund service delivery, which gets no boost when Amazon comes to town. Residents remain in a jobs quandary and the rustbelt remains poorer in services than it ever was. E-commerce, thought just one and two years ago to be the saving grace of repurposing industrial spaces in declining middle class communities, has proven to be a bust. Cities give away too much, and their residents get too little. By last summer, Amazon was not attracting the crowds it had expected to its jobs days prior to the opening of new Fulfillment Centers. Jobs days promising employment offers on the spot used to attract 50,000 applicants for positions. Less than half that amount has been showing up (Morris 2017). Even considering the possibility that e-commerce jobs such as Amazon are helping re-employ some jobless middle class Americans, Smil reminds us that automation is relentless in its overrunning of human tasks (2013). Much of shipping is already automated. There is no reason to think that Amazon Fulfillment Centers will not become increasingly automated as time goes on. These jobs packaging and loading will not remain in human hands forever. How then can jobs that support a secure middle class lifestyle return? That really is the burning question. The answer is provided by a 2002 analysis about globalization. Urbanists Paul Kantor and H. V. Savitch recounted that successful global cities such as Paris strategically leveraged their assets to get the most out of the marketplace. This idea translates practically in the following basic premise: local governments have to be wary of giving away the store when negotiating with a company to locate in their municipality. Municipalities have more of a bargaining advantage than they often realize. Perhaps it is location near a transportation hub, or lower cost of real estate, or access to a potential pool of labor. Whatever the local assets might be, if mayors and governors across the US stopped giving unduly generous incentives to online retailers, perhaps this burgeoning industry would create more local wealth. Cities do not have to place themselves in a weaker position when dealing with a corporation.

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In addition to fewer incentives, municipal governments can become grantmakers to local businesses. They can extract from companies coming to town, such as Walmart or an Amazon shipping center, subsidies for limited periods of time to remaining smaller, non-big box stores to allow for an adjustment and sorting out of the jobs sectors between older, established businesses and newer ones, and to give time to those historic businesses to figure out how to transition into an e-commerce driven retail economy. In a global economy, place and agglomeration of secondary support industries have value. The US still has an advanced economy and reliable workforce. It operates within a stable, democratic regime. These variables matter. There is no reason why local governments cannot use them to their advantage when trying to balance old and new business retention. This policy is easy to implement. The federal government is not needed, and it can happen on an ad hoc basis as companies meet with local officials. Deals can be worked out, as they usually are when negotiations begin between the private sector and a municipality over such items as land. Kantor and Savitch make clear that city governments should never forget they have leverage (2002). Jobs can be made more secure, both in extant businesses and in e-commerce, if cities only remember that they are equally powerful actors in the ongoing dance between private industry and public partners in local government. The other immediate measure that can be taken to support jobs growth is admittedly harder than not offering incentives if a large business comes to town. That is to deregulate. Companies today must pass through a myriad of regulations on the local, state, and national levels. Compliance costs not only time, but money. Regulation is eating up business margins. It is critical to understand that regulation is a tax. The government coerces compliance through a firm’s requirement to “expend resources to produce the desired outcome” (Dunkelberg 2017, p.  1) The National Association of Manufacturers is even more direct. It stated in a 2014 report that the annual regulation compliance cost burden is typically 21 percent of payroll (National Association of Manufacturers, p. 2). Imagine how many more jobs could be available if regulations were cut. The obvious problem is that cutting regulation is extremely difficult on the federal level. Several presidents have attempted it since the Reagan administration, but it is a heated issue that costs political capital. I recommend here that constituencies most impacted by regulation advocate locally for deregulation. Municipal governments inspect businesses regularly and assess fines. These can be cut to allow for the growth of local

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industry. Companies can do more with their resources if they are not always in jeopardy of non-compliance. This is an incremental way to support area businesses.

Taxes Tax reform is a historic American issue. Whether one is for raising or lowering taxes, this policy issue is a central part of US policy discourse. Based on our discussion earlier in this chapter diagnosing the American middle class family in decline, yet central as a social institution to economic viability, I propose here that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) be increased. This only applies to low to moderate income families with incomes up to $54,884 (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2018, p. 1). The maximum credit for families with one child is $3400, while the maximum credit for families with three or more children is $6300 (Berube 2017). The average recipient of the EITC gets a benefit of just $2300 per year (Davey 2012, p. 167). Twenty nine states have also added their own EITC to the federal one. In the 2016 tax year, almost 26 million working families and individuals in every state received the EITC. Families “mostly use the EITC to pay for necessities, repair homes, maintain vehicles that are needed to commute to work, and in some cases, obtain additional education or training to boost their employability and earning power” (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2018, p. 1). Since this legislation already exists, has survived the Trump administration’s 2017 tax reform act, and has become widespread on the state level too, it is clearly a successful and popular piece of legislation. It has in fact been helpful in reducing poverty among 6.5 million Americans (Caines 2017, p. 1). Research indicates that it also strengthens families through incentivizing of increased employment among poor and low income families (Caines 2017, p.  1). All families, whether led by single or two parents, are equally eligible for the credit. However, the EITC phases out at higher income levels for married couples than for single individuals (Tax Policy Center 2016, p. 5). Given its bipartisan political and real world success as a policy, this is a program whose chance at expansion is feasible. The Pew Research Center cited earlier concluded that a middle class family of three in today’s economy could be one that earns up to $126,000 annually (Pew 2015, p. 2). Therefore, the EITC should also be applied to those in that maximal income range just above $100,000. This would allow for a real world adjustment to take into account cost of living increases, while not only

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incentivizing all but the most financially precarious working poor families. Among some more conservative economists, there are findings that the EITC de-incentivizes moderate income families from trying to earn above what the credit allows, thereby keeping families on the lowest rung of the middle class (Edwards and de Rugy 2015). That finding strengthens the argument to allow for an increase in this particular tax credit. As in the UBI, we are here again supporting families. This time, it is being done through indicating to families that working allows them a tax benefit, and marriage allows them an even higher one. If an increase in income ceiling for the EITC was replicated on the state level, families would be receiving even more money back from the government if they went to work and maintained a two parent home. This is a perfect complement to the UBI. While the UBI could potentially provide families with a sense of basic security, the EITC builds upon that stability by inspiring more effort at better employment, all the while engaged in a two parent home. As Sitaraman writes, “since the end of the 1970s [when deindustrialization became an evident trend], the central challenge for our republic has been how to ensure relative economic equality in a more inclusive country—how to guarantee the promise of a middle class life to everyone” (italics author’s own) (2017, p.  272). While the author there mentions region alongside other markers of identity such as gender, we take his words here to include, regardless of identity, exactly what he stated: that every American should feel as if he or she has access to a basic equality in terms of economic possibility. An expanded ceiling for the EITC would support this effort at a more economically inclusive society.

Housing The one area that I find difficult to consider as a practical possibility, but which I believe it is worthy to note, if only to perhaps reinforce its importance, is exclusionary zoning. Because the courts have upheld it on economic grounds  (Winkler 2017), meaning municipalities can prevent affordable housing and even less expensive, denser housing, from being built in their communities, I do not see how to change this policy except through a lengthy series of litigious actions in the federal court system. This does not at all serve our mandate from Walzer (2011) to pursue the most immediate, low hanging policy fruit we can in order to alleviate urgent material crisis as soon as is possible for the bulk of Americans. That work is challenging enough. However, Reeves’ point ought not be forgotten, if only to reinforce that the recent nationwide trend toward creating increased amounts of

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affordable housing is a worthwhile campaign. New York is in the midst of a massive effort to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over this decade (De Blasio 2014, p. 4). While there is political capital to be had for any elected official pushing that agenda through in an urban area with a large population of working poor, it also speaks to the times in which we live, when so many Americans have lost their place in the middle class they or their families once knew. Reeves points out that ultimately, because of the local nature of zoning boards, “most of the action” in changing exclusionary practices in this arena lie with “the state and metro levels” (2017, p. 139). At least that indicates that grassroots activism on the ground has a chance at making change. One does not have to wait to get an audience with a federal official while fighting the good fight in one’s own metropolis. There is room for long-term social change regarding creating inclusive, as opposed to exclusive, zoning requirements, but these are socially and political entrenched rules, so they will be hard to uproot. Other scholars agree with Reeves that class-based land use regulations are a way for those who have made it to the higher social and economic echelons to remain there, and keep others out. Economist Eric Zwick puts an interesting spin on the harmfulness of exclusionary zoning by going beyond what Reeves stated in terms of this kind of zoning essentially maintaining segregation, albeit today,  economically more than racially. Zwick posits that most of the labor to create new homes is done by non-­ tradeable blue collar workers. These are the middle class laborers who do the electrical, plumbing, and tile work. Less housing going up means not only less residents with comfortable shelter. It also means less work for cohorts of workers that come from families kept out of these fundamentally gated communities dotting the US (Zwick 2017, p. 3). It is worthwhile to keep exclusionary zoning in the front of our minds only as the next policy to address if suddenly we find ourselves successful on every other point. We therefore advocate here that, in areas  where affordable housing is already an established possibility with zoned areas to support it, such as in New York City, more of these kinds of homes get built.

Agenda Our policy agenda is clear as we conclude this chapter at the center of our work. The two parent family must come first, not because of any special bias, but because every reference, regardless of its particular ideological predilection, conveyed the finding that its loss of stability was symptomatic of middle class decline. Each aspect of our platform not only took families into

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account, but tried to find reasonable ways to resolve this issue. The UBI and EITC should provide more funds, thereby inspiring the formation of two parent homes and a search for consistent employment. Impact investing also means jobs creation, but it demonstrates something even deeper: that the wealthiest among us are willing to take a chance on the broader public welfare. We learned that education is too hard and long a battle to fight right now, when there are more urgent concerns at risk such as jobs, and when it came to jobs, we asked our cities to remember they have power when it comes to making a deal with a corporation coming to town. Our municipalities can create a framework that supports the American worker when negotiating the terms of an understanding with a large company like Amazon. Finally, we mentioned exclusionary zoning, not because that issue can be solved tomorrow, but because it serves as a final indicator at the end of this chapter as to just how divided our country is, and how far we have to go. The flipside of exclusionary zoning led us to realize that affordable housing initiatives should be dramatically pushed forward in municipalities already sympathetic to that effort. In list form, our policy agenda is the following, and it is framed by an overarching emphasis on strengthening two parent homes in our policy making and discourse: . A UBI for two parent homes 1 2. Increased ceilings for the EITC 3. Foundations should put the bulk of their resources into impact investments 4. Dropping education as a policy priority due to its intractability 5. Stronger protections for the middle class in deals between cities and companies 6. Deregulation 7. Postponing efforts to end exclusionary zoning due to socio-­ economic status because of the length of the battle right now, but supporting affordable housing initiatives in areas already zoned for this type of construction Signs of health for the republic are there, because each one of these proposals is based on existing policies that just require some expansion of their implementation in order to be effective.

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References Austin, B., Glaeser, E., & Summers, L. H. (2018). Saving the heartland: Place-­ based policies in 21st century America. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2018/03/3_austinetal.pdf Benner, C. (2018). Building a real sharing economy: Socializing the wealth produced by social knowledge. Berkeley: Haas Institute Research Report. Retrieved from https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/building-real-sharing-economy Benner, C., & Pugh, J. (2016). An introduction to Universal Basic Income. Berkeley, CA: Universal Income Project, Haas Institute. Retrieved from http://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pugh_benner_basic_ income_combined-v2.pdf Berube, A. (2017). Want to help the working class? Pay the EITC differently. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www. brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/06/28/want-to-help-the-workingclass-pay-the-eitc-differently/ Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (2018). How we work: Strategic investment fund. Retrieved from https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/ Quick-Links/Strategic-Investment-Fund Caines, R. (2017). 5 ways the EITC benefits families, communities, and the country. Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Retrieved from https://www.cbpp.org/blog/5-ways-the-eitc-benefits-families-communitiesand-the-country Callahan, D. (2017). When the Ford Foundation leads, do others follow? Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamdunkelberg/2017/04/04/the-insidious-cost-of-regulation/#fa175bf5c7b4 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2018). Policy basics: The earned income tax credit. Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Retrieved from https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-the-earnedincome-tax-credit Clark, C., Plachowski, T. J., Singh, R. Smith, A., & Walls, T. (2017). Policy by, with, and for all students: How to make public education work. Brown Center Chalkboard. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/04/28/ policy-by-with-and-for-all-students-how-to-make-public-education-work/ Crane, R. (2018, July 9). This California town will give a $500 stipend to residents. Atlanta: CNN Tech. Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/09/ technology/stockton-california-basic-income-experiment/index.html Davey, J. D. (2012). The shrinking American middle class: The social and cultural implications of growing inequality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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De Blasio, B. (2014). Housing New York: A five- borough ten- year plan. New York: The City of New York. Retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/housing/ assets/downloads/pdf/housing_plan.pdf Dunkelberg, W. (2017). The insidious cost of regulation. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamdunkelberg/2017/04/ 04/the-insidious-cost-of-regulation/#fa175bf5c7b4 Edwards, C., & de Rugy, V. (2015). Earned income tax credit: Small benefits, large costs. Tax and Budget Bulletin, No. 73. Washington, DC: The Cato Institute. Retrieved from https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/ earned-income-tax-credit-small-benefits-large-costs Fleener, J. (2016). Addressing educations’ [sic] most intractable problems: A case of failing schools. Emergence: Complexity and Organization. Last modified 5 Aug 2017. Edition 1. https://doi.org/10.emerg/10.17357.e0b582abc 618906c0d995c2557c77bc3 Ford Foundation. (2018). Financial investments. Retrieved from https://www. fordfoundation.org/work/mission-investments/financial-investments/ Foundation Center. (2014). Key facts: U.S. Foundations. New York: Foundation Center. Retrieved from http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/ research/keyfacts2014/pdfs/Key_Facts_on_US_Foundations_2014.pdf Furman, J., Russ, K., & Shambaugh, J.  (2017, January 12). U.S. tariffs are an arbitrary and regressive tax. VOX CEPR Policy Portal. Retrieved from https:// voxeu.org/article/us-tariffs-are-arbitrary-and-regressive-tax Hallen, J. (2018, August 10). How the right can make inequality a winning issue. National Review. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamdunkelberg/2017/04/04/the-insidious-cost-of-regulation/#fa175bf5c7b4 Haskins, R., & Greenberg, M. (2006, March). Welfare reform: Success or failure? Policy and Practice, 10–12. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ 0315welfare_haskins.pdf Hodson, R. (2001). Dignity at work. New York: Cambridge University Press. Holland, R. (2018, July 2). Corporate tax cuts don’t increase middle class incomes. Research and Ideas. Working Knowledge: Business Research for Business Leaders, Harvard Business School. Retrieved from https://hbswk.hbs.edu/ item/corporate-tax-cuts-don-t-increase-middle-class-incomes Hoynes, H., Page, M., & Stevens, A. (2006). Poverty in America: Trends and explanations. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1), 47–68. Retrieved from https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/089533006776526102 Jones, J., & Zipperer, N. (2018). Unfulfilled promises: Amazon fulfillment centers do not generate broad-based employment growth. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from https://www.epi.org/publication/unfulfilledpromises-amazon-warehouses-do-not-generate-broad-based-employmentgrowth/

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Kantor, P., & Savitch, H.  V. (2002). Cities in the international marketplace. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kitroeff, N. (2017, October 22). Where internet orders mean real jobs, and new life for communities. The New  York Times. Retrieved from https://www. nytimes.com/2017/10/22/business/economy/warehouse-jobs.html Kolodner, M. (2015, May 5). Why are graduation rates at Community Colleges so low? New York: The Hechinger Report. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/new-book-addresses-low-community-college-graduation-rates/ Morris, C. (2017, August 3). Amazon’s ‘jobs day’ was a bust. Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2017/08/03/amazon-jobs-day-a-bust/ Mulhere, K. (2015, February 25). The admissions challenges facing private colleges. Inside Higher Ed. Nallareddy, S., Rouen, E., & Serrato, J. C. S. (2018). Corporate tax cuts increase income inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School. Retrieved from https://www.epi.org/publication/unfulfilled-promises-amazon-warehousesdo-not-generate-broad-based-employment-growth/ National Association of Manufacturers. (2014). The cost of federal regulation to the U.S. economy, manufacturing and small business (executive summary). Greenbelt: National Association of Manufactures. Retrieved from http:// www.nam.org/Data-and-Reports/Cost-of-Federal-Regulations/FederalRegulation-Executive-Summary.pdf Ocasio-Cortez, A. (2018). Platform: Higher education/trade school for all. Retrieved from https://ocasio2018.com/issues Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. (2009). Aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) and temporary assistance to needy families (TANF). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from https://aspe.hhs.gov/aid-families-dependent-children-afdcand-temporary-assistance-needy-families-tanf-overview-0 Pew Research Center. (2015). The American middle class is losing ground. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/ Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, an imprint of Harvard University Press. Reeves, R.  V. (2017). Dream hoarders: How the American upper middle class is leaving everyone else in the dust, why that is a problem, and what to do about it. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Rothman, L. (2016, August 19). Why Bill Clinton signed the Welfare Reform bill, as explained in 1996. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/4446348/welfare-reform-20-years/ Samuel, L. R. (2014). The American middle class: A cultural history. New York: Routledge.

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Sanders, B. (2016). It’s time to make college tuition free and debt free. Retrieved from https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-freeand-debt-free/ Schwartz, N. D. (2018, August 12). Cold hearts on the furnace line. The New York Times, pp. B1–B6. Sitamaran, G. (2017). The crisis of the middle-class constitution. New York: Vintage Books. Smil, V. (2013). The rise and retreat of American manufacturing. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Tax Policy Center. (2016). Key elements of the U.S. tax system. Washington, DC: Urban Institute & Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-earned-income-tax-credit-eitc The Economist. (2006). Helping the poor: From welfare to workfare. The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/united-states/2006 /07/27/from-welfare-to-workfare Thompson, D. (2013, September 5). College enrollment plummeted in 2012, but for very good reasons. The economy is getting better. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/collegeenrollment-plummeted-in-2012-but-for-very-good-reasons/279389/ U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). Educational attainment in the United States: 2016. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/education-attainment/cps-detailed-tables.html Walzer, M. (2011). Achieving global and local justice. Dissent, 58(3), 42–48. Wilcox, W. B., Lerman, R. I., & Price, J. (2015). Strong families, prosperous states: Do healthy families affect the wealth of states? Washington, DC: The American Enterprise Institute. Wilcox, W. B., & Wang, W. (2017). The marriage divide: How and why working-­ class families are more fragile today. Washington, DC: The American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/ 09/The-Marriage-Divide.pdf Winkler, E. (2017, September 25). ‘Snob zoning’ is racial housing segregation by another name. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/25/snob-zoning-is-racial-housingsegregation-by-another-name/?utm_term=.1630bed9da2f Wong, A. (2016, January 11). Where are all the high-school grads going? The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/ 2016/01/where-are-all-the-high-school-grads-going/423285/ Zwick, E. (2017). How to create middle class jobs. Sixteen top academics offer ideas for bringing back opportunity. Chicago Booth Review. Retrieved from http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2017/article/how-create-middle-class-jobs

CHAPTER 3

The Politics of Growth

Abstract  This chapter offers a new way of framing American politics, emphasizing a political and economic set of terms that create a less divided, and ultimately more practical, approach toward solving the crisis of American middle class decline. Keywords  Populism • Democracy • Responsibility • Work • Security

Language This chapter is a reflection on the kind of words we need to use to recover American socio-economic equality. Here we will explore ways to find common ground once again in moving toward a polis in which each sector recognizes the worth of the other, so that, rather than exclusion, a feeling of inclusion is fostered without the divisive rhetoric that has become so prevalent in the culture. In these remaining pages we will ruminate on the social implications of a renewed vision of possibility for the middle class and what that means for all Americans. We’ve done the work of outlining the problem and some practical solutions for the near future. Now it is time to better understand the full implications of those solutions, not in the narrower sense of politics and economics, but in the wider sense of

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how Americans can learn to speak with each other again, no matter their class. After all, that indicator of socio-economic class between the declining middle and Reeves’ “dream hoarders” (2017) has become the wedge between the US electorate more than any other variable (Pew 2017). I recognize that this study’s stress on a two parent home may be surprising to many public policy experts who, like me, were trained to be purely behavioralist in our analyses, looking only at political behavior through a scientific lens testing for variation and outcomes. But, the consistency of findings on middle class decline compels the framework adapted here. It was already pinpointed over 20 years ago in the language of legislation by the Clinton administration to turn welfare into workfare. The traditional family’s breakdown is simultaneous with the social falling apart of the middle class. But, the word “family” is not enough to inspire an economic or even a civic attitudinal upturn. It is just a signifier of what we need to focus on when framing our public policy choices for economic rebound. There are two grander, less seemingly value-laden words than “family” that place the effort this book hopes to spearhead into a broader normative perspective. These are “growth” and “responsibility,” in that order of expression. Going forward we can speak of the initiatives proposed here, or others that may differ but tackle the same problem, within the rubric of a “politics of growth.” All economies rationally pursue growth, just as all people have aspirations. If we repeat the word “growth” as a source of policy, we suddenly find by that simple turn of language a shared innate human value across any population divides. Who would not want to improve upon their lot, or their children’s lot, in life? All policies therefore must be defended with projections that detail how all Americans will experience economic growth from their implementation. Populism is not in and of itself bad. There is a kind of democratic nobility in advocating for a widely felt position. Taken on its own terms, it is just one more form of thinking through policy solutions. But, it only becomes a unifying force when it offers a reciprocal and inclusive message of socio-economic growth bypassing the language of conspiracy and insecurity through protective, closed words such as “rigged,” used most famously and consistently by both of the two populist candidates in the most recent presidential election, one of whom is now our Chief Executive. A Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) grows the American middle class. As we outlined in the beginning of this book, a stable middle class means a more stable America, because the middle class has historically been the caretaker of our civic institutions

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(Kotkin 2014). It is no wonder that the civic lives of Americans, including the wealthy, have been emptied with the advent of deindustrialization. Impact investing seems to be an important instrument toward ­demonstrating a politics of growth in which the top 20 percent reach out to those who have fallen behind. Invest in the companies that make all our lives better and hire those who need work. There is no better living out of the reciprocity of a socially just policy agenda devoted to growth. But, while the idea of growth comes first substantively and rhetorically, it cannot really mean anything unless there is a fundamental sense of shared responsibility among all population sectors. I think that is what Rawls was indicating when he suggested that all citizens have to reflect upon their possible opportunities without taking into account the accidental circumstances of their birth, whether, for example, affluent or disadvantaged, man or woman, black or white (1971). That neat formula to devise the best kind of social and economic policy to offer equality of opportunity does something more than just neatly provide a reasonable argument for the realization of human potential. It implicitly informs us that we each, as individuals, have a responsibility toward each other because we are all actually the same. The accidents of birth by which we end up defining ourselves by oftentimes are not substantive. They are cosmetic. Our substantive identities are common simply because each stakeholder in society is part of the human family, whether one is poor and the other rich, as in the case study of this book dealing with middle class decline. A living out of the politics of growth determined by a shared human responsibility is a two pronged sword. While this book has placed the repair of the middle class in terms of policy making on governmental decisions, such as through a possible UBI or a slight change in tax policy, that cannot be the full story. Without a reciprocal responsibility on the part of the citizenry as partners in the earnest implementation of policy, the law has no chance at long-term practical success. Policy presumes its intention will be honestly received by its audience. This is vital. For instance, if a UBI is one day passed, as already is the case in Stockton, California, then the presumption by those involved in the policy making process is that the funds for which they advocated will be used by their recipients for necessities, to alleviate as much as possible that concern about basic needs, which is the purpose of this new local legislation. The lawmakers felt a responsibility to the citizenry, but the municipal residents who accept this upcoming monthly check have an obligation also to act responsibly as a form of human mutuality.

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More broadly put, the whole literature of American middle class decline, which this study now joins, looks at this issue through the lens of public policy making, just as I have done. Whether liberal or conservative, or as staunchly moderate as possible within our current political climate, the focus is on what government should or should not do. That is certainly a fair preoccupation, since macroeconomic policies do have measurable effects. Rawls, the quintessential postwar liberal political theorist, also thought about economic policy (1971). But, in truth, though it is more abstract and may be impossible to quantify, responsibility lies also with the citizenry to reflect upon its own condition and what it wants for itself. Within the context of this book, that would mean that middle class and poor Americans are just as responsible for figuring out a way out of their situation as the government is. To take the most difficult policy example of education, which I decided to formally abandon as an option, that does not mean that parents on the ground in communities need to drop it. They have every right to, and should, demand improvement from their schools. That is why taxes are paid—to subsidize public goods like educational institutions. While college may not be for everyone, there is no reason why middle class Americans cannot commit themselves to at least going more to vocational schools or Junior College. If I fall in the street and I can still walk, it is my job to try my best to stand up. I may ask for help from a passerby, and it is his or her responsibility to help me up, but it is also my task to try to stand on my own. That is the volition of humanness. If individual personhood is the ultimate form of being a property owner, then that ownership of my very person entails my own utter responsibility over each choice I make. As an observer of political behavior, I comment here that I see very little difference between those on the left and those on the right. Each hurls significant blame on the other side for their own socio-economic predicament (Hickson and Powell 2017). Abandonment of personal responsibility, which, if I follow through unflinchingly on the paragraph above, means the abdication of one’s personhood itself, has become an American tradition. But, that collective behavior has to end if the country is to replenish its middle class and grow. The nation cannot move forward if it is a population of adversarial groups that never see themselves as responsible for their own, and their fellow citizens’, growth within the republic. So, we are left with just two words describing a meaningful politics at the end of this agenda-setting project in service of the rebirth of the American middle class: growth and responsibility. A politics that takes full

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account of these concepts on the personal level of each citizen manifests itself socially in the form of a polis that speaks more honorably, more plainly, and more helpfully, across sectors, without ever compromising its ownership over its singular present and future. Each of the policies delineated here must be modeled within a scope of growth and responsibility. For example, the UBI for two parent homes proposed here is designed to support spouses and children having less daily worry in the affordability of essential goods, so that each member of the family, secure in that unit, can pursue a personal course of growth. That individual must also act responsibly or else the UBI becomes another mythologized welfare program. Individuals seeking growth come together in a society and a shared political and economic vocabulary starting with the word and concept of growth would likely become a substantively civil place in its use of language and action, because more expansive language that considers the human condition is being used. If that is achieved, then even intractable problems such as education and exclusionary zoning will be solved, because the collective strength of the government and people to overcome a labyrinth battle of bureaucratic maneuvers will have been recovered.

Tomorrow As we close out this work it is necessary to illuminate that the America before deindustrialization—that heady immediate postwar period when the US made cars for the world—is not our aim. Times have changed. Globalization, protectionism aside, is upon us as a fait accompli. The world is smaller and the production chain leading toward my personal purchase of an item in a store in my neighborhood is international by the time it reaches a local retail shelf. An aggressively competitive international marketplace borne of advanced technology and communications is now the global norm. Even a piece of clothing that may still be made in America might use fabric from Bangladesh. This is our world and no amount of tariffs or corporate tax cuts can completely uproot that norm. Revisionism isn’t the road to travel here. Taking steps backward toward an idealized past, which is a regrettable feature of much of populist rhetoric, does no practical good. It detracts from the full and current stake we have in our persons as individuals to pursue individual and civic growth. Any move away from that unabashedly human mission makes an implicit claim against personal responsibility over management of our futures. Our purpose is to see what is possible. If the agenda posited by this book is

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adapted, it will likely create more jobs. It will likely financially help chronically poor families. It will encourage the staying together of those families. It is not that this better socio-economic situation will suddenly mean steel and cars are produced for the world by America again. What it does mean is that, if our polis feels, and then acts, more secure, new modes of creativity will appear. No one has yet figured out how to completely replace factory jobs. Warehousing for e-commerce retail shopping seems like the poorest of substitutes. But, new patterns of economic development, new business ideas, new ways of channeling laid off labor experience, and new modes of transactions themselves will find their way into our political economy. There is much documentation showing how these systemic ruptures gave way each time to more inclusive economies. The classic case of that is when we went from a mercantile economy to an industrializing capitalist one. But, while small craftsmen and apprenticeships mostly left the economic scene, many of those workers, and those who also could not get into desired and sometimes prosperous trades, ended up in better circumstances, due to the growth of manufacturing industry. Today can be a time of responsible growth as well. We only need the practical tools to implement this possibility. A focus on the two parent family, a basic guaranteed UBI, a raised EITC, and other measures suggested here, such as the challenge put to our largest charitable foundations to increase the volume of their impact investments, are mechanisms toward rediscovery of the potential of a whole class of citizens whose place in society has slipped away. There is much work to be done, but if the basic path of this book’s trajectory is followed, the work can be successful. No one knows exactly how the new economy will eventually shake out in terms of where the most jobs will be, or what corrections there might be in global markets to set a more steady and predictable income scale for the next generation. But, we do have the power to incrementally refine already extant policies for the better, and we also have the ability to recapture our own humanity through family, through work, and through a politics of growth and responsibility, which ends in a more democratic society for all. Democracy here means not only equality of opportunity, but ultimately, of dignity. If we look at the narrative of the decline of the middle class, and the social challenges it has faced as it lost its economic footing, such as substance abuse, ill health, increased incarceration, and the withering of families, those are questions as well of the dignity of personhood—of our individual places in society and quotient of human potential available. These may seem like the most basic of ideas, but they are the essential features of a good society.

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The death, and then life, of the American middle class, restores the best of what it means to be human through its emphasis on family, work, and security, while reminding us all to speak graciously and act responsibly. The literature we have covered, from social critics to economists, is offering this same message through its varied research methods (Reeves 2017; Austin et al. 2018). Those studies have all told us the same story. Democracy has been damaged because its constituents have been displaced. This work that we have done here offers a pathway back toward making a place again in our political economy for those who have been on the losing end of the American economy since the loss of manufacturing. As stated at the outset, we are here not just involved with public policy analysis. We are doing the work of social justice in forging a more inclusive America.

Epilogue As I complete this project I can’t help but look directly at the news. I try hard to be as non-partisan as possible, because I am a social scientist, and because I believe reason trumps (no pun intended) ideological orthodoxy of any stripe. But, my daily newsfeed is disheartening. Not because of absurdist rhetoric coming from all corners of the political landscape, whether, for example, the left’s ongoing rallying cry of free college or the right’s fascination with trade war brinksmanship. I am not surprised by any of this. We live in a representative republic, so frustrated voters elect frustrating elected officials. But, the long scope of history is cyclical, and the systems within which we operate as citizens are part and parcel of the cultures we forge in our time and place (Polanyi 1944). Therefore, the responsibility is ours in terms of how we choose to fill up our democracy, in terms of the kind of words we use and the kind of legislation we advocate. If the reader does not agree with the proposals found herein, that is fine. I ask then that same reflective man or woman think through their own remedies and those remedies’ social repercussions. The wider the conversation and the more civil the discourse, the more growth and responsibility then become humanly available. For all my concern about the current state of American democracy due to middle class decline, I do not think that democracy is lost. I write that because of having written this book. Reviewing a wide literature before distilling it down to its basic components, I grew more contented realizing there are other thinkers working on the same issues from different angles.

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So long as there is work being done to solve this issue, and a conversation continues, there is yet a hopeful, less dismal future for democracy than the portrait currently painted by my daily newsfeed and by the academic and policy literature we covered in the first two chapters. In the end, there is not only possibility. There are solutions. From this kind of work, those answers will emerge, and the middle class, the bulwark of the republic, will rise again in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and civic institutions.

References Austin, B., Glaeser, E., & Summers, L. H. (2018). Saving the heartland: Place-­ based policies in 21st century America. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2018/03/3_austinetal.pdf Hickson III, M., & Powell, L. (2017). The political blame game in American democracy. Lanham: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. Kotkin, J. (2014). The new class conflict. Candor: Telos Press. Pew Research Center. (2017). The partisan divide on political values grows wider. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.peoplepress.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-evenwider/ Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, an imprint of Harvard University Press. Reeves, R.  V. (2017). Dream hoarders: How the American upper middle class is leaving everyone else in the dust, why that is a problem, and what to do about it. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Index

A Affordable housing, 21, 38–40 Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 24 Amazon, 34–36, 40 America, viii, ix, 3–5, 7, 9–16, 22, 25, 26, 29–31, 35–37, 46, 49, 51 Austin, Benjamin, viii, 1, 3, 5, 9, 12, 13, 15, 22, 23, 31, 32, 51 B Benefits, 12, 24, 29, 37, 38 Blue collar, 5, 6, 12, 13, 22, 24, 27, 39 C Charitable foundations, 28–32, 50 Civic institutions, 6, 46, 52 Class, vii–ix, 1–17, 22–31, 34, 35, 37–40, 45–48, 50–52 Clinton administration, 15, 24, 46 College, ix, 8, 9, 13, 14, 31–34, 48, 51

Convergence, 3 Corporate tax rate, 28 D Davey, Joseph Dillon, 5, 6, 9, 11, 22, 30, 32, 34, 37 Deindustrialization, 1, 22, 25, 26, 38, 47, 49 Democracy, ix, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10–12, 15, 17, 33, 50–52 Deregulation, 36, 40 Dignity, 28, 50 Divergence, 3 E Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), 12, 13, 37, 38, 40, 46, 50 Economics, vii–ix, 2–16, 22, 23, 25, 27–29, 37–39, 45–50 Education, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13–16, 25, 29–34, 37, 40, 48, 49 Employment, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 22–28, 34, 35, 38, 40

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INDEX

Equality of opportunity, 7, 10, 31, 47, 50 Exclusionary zoning, 4, 13, 14, 17, 38–40, 49 F Families, vii–ix, 4–9, 11, 12, 14–16, 21–27, 31–34, 37–39, 46, 47, 49–51 Ford Foundation, 29 G Gates Foundation, 29 Glaeser, Edward, 1, 3, 12, 13, 15 Globalization, ix, 16, 27, 35, 49 Growth, 22, 23, 36, 45–52 H Heartland, 5, 9 I Impact investing, 29–31, 40, 47, 50 Incarceration, 15, 23, 32, 50 Incentives, 15, 35, 36 J Joblessness, 1, 2, 15, 16 Jobs, vii, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 21–40, 48, 50 K Kantor, Paul, 35, 36 Kemp, Brian, 3–4 Kotkin, Joel, 6, 47

L Language, 2, 9, 15, 25, 26, 45–49 M Marriage, 8, 22–26, 38 O Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 3–4 P Pew Research Center, 2, 3, 5, 8, 37 Polanyi, Karl, 51 Political economy, ix, 3, 9, 12, 31, 50, 51 Politics, 6, 7, 15, 23, 25, 32, 45–52 Program related investments (PRI), 29, 30 Protectionism, 49 Public policy, 3, 4, 7, 21, 31, 46, 48, 51 Putnam, Robert D., 6, 9 R Rawls, John, 31, 47, 48 Reeves, Richard V., viii, 2, 4–11, 13–17, 22, 31, 32, 38, 39, 46, 51 Regulation, 16, 17, 36, 39 Responsibility, ix, 25, 30, 46–51 Rustbelt, viii, 1, 5, 9, 23, 35 S Sanders, Bernie, viii, 3, 4, 32 Savitch, Hank V., 35, 36 Security, viii, 4–6, 8–10, 23, 38, 51 Single parents, 9, 13, 14, 22–28 Sitaraman, Ganesh, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 38 Smil, Vaclav, 1, 2, 10, 15, 16, 22, 27, 35

 INDEX 

Social capital, 8, 30 Stability, viii, 5, 6, 10, 22, 23, 26, 38, 39 Stockton, California, 26, 47 Summers, Lawrence, 1, 3, 12, 13, 15 T Tariffs, 16, 27, 28, 49 Taxes, 8, 12, 16, 27–29, 35–38, 47–49 Temin, Peter, 3–5, 7, 9, 14–16 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program, 24 Trump, Donald, viii, 3, 4, 11, 37 Two parent homes, ix, 9, 23–27, 38, 40, 46, 49

U Universal Basic Income (UBI), 26, 33, 34, 38, 40, 46, 47, 49, 50 Upward mobility, 5, 8, 9, 13, 14, 23 V Vocational schools, 34, 48 W Walzer, Michael, 32, 38 Warehousing, 34, 50

55