The Death and Life of the American Middle Class

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. What Happened to the American Middle Class?

   • Abraham Unger

   Pages 1-19

3. A Path Forward for Jobs Creation

   • Abraham Unger

   Pages 21-44

4. The Politics of Growth

   • Abraham Unger

   Pages 45-52

5. Back Matter

   Pages 53-55

   PDF

This book addresses what is perhaps the most salient issue in American politics today: the decline of the middle class. It is this single issue that drove the outlier presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to national prominence, and undergirded the electoral victory of Donald Trump. While there are other longer studies exploring in detail the structural forces, most prominently the loss of manufacturing in the US, that have caused the contraction of the middle class, none offer in shorter form practical policy solutions directly geared towards practitioners in government and the private sector. This work focuses specifically on combining both an academic analysis of the subject combined with detailed policy recommendations. These recommendations are designed to be implemented; they take into account the latest set of real world political variables such as actual current legislative and institutional agendas currently in play on the federal and local levels. 

• Job Creation
• American middle class
• Job creation policy
• middle class revitalization
• jobs sector
• US Economic policy
• us politics

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

  Abraham Unger

Abraham Unger is Associate Professor of Government and Director of Urban Programs at Wagner College, USA, and Senior Research Fellow at the Carey Institute for Government Reform. Dr. Unger combines public service and consulting in the arena of jobs creation and urban economic development with an academic career. He has served as a member of the Staten Island Borough President’s Strategic Policy Advisory Committee.

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