Is our economy delivering on the promise that our children will have a good chance of doing better than their parents did?
If our economy isn’t producing all three—widely shared opportunity, more security, and a better future—then something is badly broken. And there’s a lot of evidence that our country’s current economy is failing on all three counts.
But to do something about this, we have to believe that we can act and that our actions will make a difference.
After emerging from the Great Depression and World War II, most Americans believed that together we were stronger. Succeeding generations of Americans have been confident that together we can do anything. Together we eradicated polio. Together we cared for our elderly, raced to the moon, and promised our kids a life that would be brighter than our own. Together we expanded access to voting, declared war on poverty, and dreamed that a world of truly equal opportunity was within reach. Yes, there was racism and sexism and too many forms of bigotry. Yes, we argued with each other, and yes, government was never perfect. But government was our way of working together to build more opportunity for each succeeding generation.
Now the changing economics of America have assaulted our collective security. And this persistent economic insecurity has done more than make life much harder for millions of Americans. It has also undermined our collective confidence in what we can achieve and left millions of people frustrated and angry.
“Everyone should be able to do their job, work hard, come home, and be happy,” Gina says. “I don’t want to be rolling in the dough. I just want to be happy. I don’t want to worry about what I’ll do if my husband dies, or if I have to go in the hospital again.”
But Gina does worry. She worries about herself and Darren and their two sons. She worries about this country and where it is headed.
Gina’s future looks darker than she ever imagined it would, but the numbers tell a discouraging story, too.
More than half of Americans believe that when today’s kids grow up, they will be worse off than their parents.
More than half of people under sixty-five believe that Social Security will completely disappear before they retire.
In 2016, 72 percent of voters believed that “the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.”
People have not only begun to doubt themselves as they look ahead; they have begun to doubt what we can do together to build a future.
And here’s the scary part: they are right to doubt. They are right because none of this happened as a result of some immutable law of physics. After generations of work and sacrifice, after building an ever-stronger middle class, millions of families didn’t start to stumble because of gravity. No, the forces that aligned against hardworking people are far more deliberate and far more dangerous. And instead of trying to fix the problem, many leaders in government now seem intent on either standing by while our middle class becomes ever less secure, or pushing policies that will make the situation even worse.
I supported President Obama. I spent a year working as an assistant to the president, and I applaud much of what he accomplished during his tenure. He expanded health care and strengthened regulations over Wall Street. He supported the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (for which I will always be doubly grateful, because I worked so hard to get the agency established). He also made this planet safer, signed a historic climate deal, and negotiated to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran.
But there were times when President Obama and I parted company, and one of them was in the summer of 2016. He gave a commencement speech in which he talked about the influence of the rich and powerful over government. “Big money in politics is a huge problem,” he admitted. And then he put a happy face on it: “But the system isn’t as rigged as you think.”
No, President Obama, the system is as rigged as we think.
In fact, it’s worse than most Americans realize.
Here’s the truth: we can’t keep gazing happily at the face of cheery economic reports; we’ve got to dive into the reality of what’s happening underneath the surface. Tens of millions of people across the United States understand that this country no longer works for them, and they are angry about it. And unless our government provides real solutions to their problems, their anger will only increase.
Donald Trump understood their anger. He connected with people when he channeled that anger during his campaign, but his plans will make the problems faced by working families worse. I am absolutely certain that even his most die-hard supporters will be deeply unhappy with a lot of what President Trump actually does. He likes to talk about forgotten working people, but he opposes raising the minimum wage, plans to propose the largest tax cut in history for the rich, and promises to get rid of the rules that hold Wall Street accountable. That is not populism. That is trickle-down economics on steroids. After vowing to “drain the swamp” and fight for the little guy, Trump turned the keys to our government over to a group of Wall Street insiders, billionaires, and CEOs who have a long history of looking out only for themselves and others just like them. This isn’t the way to strengthen opportunity in America—it’s the way to help the rich to get richer and shove everyone else out of the way.
We Americans cling fiercely to our optimistic belief that hard work wins out, but the facts tell a different story. Today an American child has a smaller chance of climbing the economic ladder than a child does in Canada or most of Europe. The chances that young children will do better than their parents have been cut nearly in half over the last generation. More than ever before, millions of kids aren’t getting a fighting chance to move ahead; poor kids stay poor while rich kids get even richer. That’s the ultimate rigged game.
“There’s no middle class anymore—there are the haves and the have-nots,” Gina says with a heavy voice. “This is the world we’re leaving to our kids. What’s going to happen after I die? What’s going to happen to my kids?”
Stagnant wages, rising student loan debt, seniors who can’t retire: the warning signs everywhere show us that distress is wide and deep in America. And the new reality of uncertain hours and insecure income that underlies those numbers should sound an even louder alarm. These are the signposts of a redefined America, an America in which the country generates more and more wealth while an ever-growing majority has no chance to share in the bounty they work to produce.
The time for happy talk is over, and simply promising to “Make America Great Again” won’t do the trick. It’s time to get serious about understanding what has gone wrong and working out a plan to fix it. It’s time for a hard look into how we once built a strong and vibrant middle class, how we lost our way, and how we will fight our way forward.
Most of all, it’s time for some deep-down optimism, the kind that says, Yeah, our middle class is on the ropes, but we have the strength and the determination to build an America that works—not just for some of us, but for all of us.
