ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines critically the economic, political, and social forces shaping America's middle class. It provides case studies from the contemporary middle class, using composite scenarios created from the economic trends of the past forty years. The book reviews the relationship between elites and workers in pre-industrial economic systems, not as a comprehensive overview of the history of agrarian class relationships but as a way of showing that we've seen this before. The book explores the consequences of the cycle of stagnant wages, rising debts, high taxes, and political disenfranchisement. It outlines the major macroeconomic theories that have shaped public policy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and documents the stagnation of incomes for the middle class and the rise in available credit that occurred at precisely the same time.
