A Few Good Essays

The essays below are part of a symposium by The Nation and the New America Foundation. The article at the very bottom is the Symposium introduction.

Robert Reich, "Unjust Spoils"
Dean Baker, "The Right Prescription for an Ailing Economy"
Katherine Newman and David Pedulla, "An Unequal-Opportunity Recession"
Orlando Patterson, "For African-Americans, A Virtual Depression—Why?"
Jeff Madrick, "American Incomes: Soaring or Static"
Matt Yglesias, "A Great Time to Be Alive?"

The Nation, June 30, 2010
Inequality in America

"After 30-Year Run, Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall." So declared a headline in the New York Times in August 2009, documenting the declining number of Americans with a net worth of $30 million and predicting that the Great Recession would reduce the staggering level of inequality in the United States. As our symposium suggests, the truly sobering news lies elsewhere. It is not multimillionaires who have been hit hardest in the recent economic downturn. As Katherine Newman and David Pedulla show, it's African-Americans, low-skilled workers and a generation of young people at risk of being permanently scarred. The downwardly mobile Americans who should most concern us are not traders on Wall Street, which managed to pay its employees $145 billion in 2009. They are the children of black middle-class parents who, as Orlando Patterson notes, are losing ground in a nation where segregation in housing and education is once again on the rise.

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