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December 5, 2007
Economic anxiety
Bob Reich has a simple answer to the question of why rising economic anxiety -- It's the Economy, Stupid -- But Not Just the Slowdown:
The real reason is middle-class families have exhausted the coping mechanisms they've used for over three decades to get by on median wages that are barely higher than they were in 1970, adjusted for inflation.
The first was the two-earner household as more women moved into the labor market. The second was working longer hours. The third was the ATM machine known as rising home equity. Having gone through these three ways of maintaining family income that masked the effects of stagnate wages, the real economic question is what to do next. How to we get wages back on the growth track that created the great American middle-class? And how do we do it in the face of the new circumstances of the global I-Cubed Economy?
Unfortunately, the answers to those questions are few and far between. Pabulum, nostrums, nostalgia and rhetoric is in great supply. But real answers are rare.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at December 5, 2007 11:59 AM
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