Ebook: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

A brilliant new reading of the economic crisis--and a plan for dealing with the challenge of its aftermath--by one of our most trenchant and informed experts. When the nation's economy foundered in 2008, blame was directed almost universally at Wall Street. But Robert B. Reich suggests a different reason for the meltdown, and for a perilous road ahead. He argues that the real problem is structural: it lies in the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top, and in a middle class that has had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living. Persuasively and straightforwardly, Reich reveals how precarious our situation still is. The last time in American history when wealth was so highly concentrated at the top--indeed, when the top 1 percent of the population was paid 23 percent of the nation's income--was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. Such a disparity leads to ever greater booms followed by ever deeper busts ...