Summary
For Americans stuck on the bottom fifth or so of rungs on the economic ladder, opportunity is declining, social mobility is on the demise, real wages have either stagnated or fallen over the past 30 years, and economic security has all but vanished as access has dwindled to affordable health care, quality education at reasonable prices for their children, and predictable pensions. [...] figures, along with the working conditions documented by Gabriel Thompson, point to the creation of new indentured classes in America- people working to pay debts (to banks, to credit-card and payday-loan companies, to human smugglers, to employment-placement agencies) rather than to advance their family's well-being.
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Extract
Today's Other America
BOOKS
WORKING IN THE SHADOWS: A YEAR OF DOING THE JOBS (MOST) AMERICANS WON'T DO BY GABRIEL THOMPSON, Nation Books, 298 pages, $24.95AMERICAN DREAM DYING.' THE CHANGING ECONOMIC LOT OF THE LEAST ADVANTAGED BY PETER D. MCCLELLAND AND PETER H. TOBIN Rowman & Littlefield, 127 pages, $32.95Weeks into a year-long project working the dirty, exhausting, repetitive jobs disproportionately done by undocumented immigrants, Brooklyn-based writer and a...See the full content of this document
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