On this edition of Your Call, Professor Mechele Dickerson discusses her new book, The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream.
She argues that the middle class has been eroded over the past 40 years by changes to education, labor, housing, and consumer-credit policy, with the impact hitting people of color and those without college degrees the hardest.
Professor Dickerson writes: “Political leaders who profess support for the middle class but feign ignorance about why it is struggling are being disingenuous. Political leaders know that we have not always had a middle class in this country, and they know that the middle class did not develop spontaneously or organically. They also know what it will take to restore the middle class, because they know that the only reason the United States has a middle class is that their predecessors made bold political decisions almost one hundred years ago. America’s middle class is shrinking and struggling not because political leaders do not know how to act. It is struggling because politicians refuse to act.”
What will it take to restore upward mobility and rebuild the middle class?
Guest:
Mechele Dickerson, Chair in Bankruptcy Law and Practice and Professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, author of Homeownership and America’s Financial Underclass and The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream, and elected member of the American Law Institute and the American College of Bankruptcy
Resources:
The New York Times: Voters See a Middle-Class Lifestyle as Drifting Out of Reach, Poll Finds
The Washington Post: Most Americans say they can only afford the basics, poll finds
Urban Institute: How the Affordability Crisis Threatens the Financial Security of Black Middle-Class Children
Brookings: In every corner of the country, the middle class struggles with affordability
