ABSTRACT
Economic concentration, deindustrialization, and state policies that favor the interests of the economically powerful have been detrimental for tens of millions of people in the United States. Underemployment, poverty, hunger, and homelessness have increased steadily over the past two decades. e majority teeter precariously, just a paycheck or two from bankruptcy, under enormous household debt. For example, in the early 1950s the average household debt as a percentage of aer-tax income was approximately 33 percent. By 1997 it had climbed to almost 95 percent.1 Not surprisingly, personal bankruptcies in the United States kept pace. Today, tens of thousands of U.S. households are kept aoat nancially with the use of highinterest credit cards.2 Concomitantly, in 1997, 16.1 percent of people in the United States, amounting to 43.4 million people, had no health insurance for the entire year.3
