The game is rigged. It is deliberately, persistently, and aggressively rigged to help the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful. Whether mild-mannered men or crazy demagogues are pushing policy decisions, it matters what those decisions are and who they are designed to help.
MIDDLE-CLASS AND BROKE
A lot of people say the game isn’t rigged. Some very smart people who are fully committed to making this a better country sing the praises of the American economic system. And they have a lot of numbers to back them up. Yes, there was a dip around the time of the 2008 crash, but the big picture looks great. As a country, America keeps getting richer and richer and richer.
There are so many happy stories to tell:
Corporate profits are breaking new records.
Inflation has remained low for years.
The amount of wealth we produce every year is double what it was a generation ago.
Unemployment is down, and a lot of people thrown out of work after the financial crash now have jobs.
It’s gotten so good that even lavish Wall Street parties have ratcheted up. Citadel, a major hedge fund, had a good 2015. It celebrated with a party featuring Katy Perry (for a rumored $500,000) and another party starring Maroon 5 (also $500,000 or so) along with—my favorite touch—violinists suspended from the ceiling by cables. Maroon 5 and Katy Perry are hugely talented, and both have fought hard for progressive causes. If a billionaire wants to pay them and an army of violinists a fortune, they should all take the money. But good grief, a party where just the entertainment costs as much as it would take to feed a family of four for half a century? The next year, according to news reports, Citadel’s CEO was buying a new condo spanning three floors of a high-rise overlooking Central Park, a pad priced at a cool $200 million. This condo in the sky has about the same square footage as twelve typical American homes. And why shouldn’t he go for it? He had already set the records for the most expensive home purchases in Chicago and Miami, so obviously it was time to upgrade his New York digs.
Pop the champagne corks!
But before we clink our glasses and exchange air kisses, let’s slide past all those cheery headlines and swanky celebrations and take a close look at the reality that is lived by millions of American families. Even a quick glance is enough to cause whiplash. What we see are people who get up when it’s still dark outside, work all day, go on to a second job in the evening, and then fold a pile of laundry late at night so they can accomplish that one last thing before they fall into bed. We see men and women who work as hard as they possibly can and still fall behind a little more every month. We see lives that look nothing like those lived by billionaires in eighteen-thousand-square-foot condos, because these people don’t live in some fairy tale—they live in today’s reality.
NOT LONG AFTER I started writing this book, I talked with a woman I’ll call Gina. She is fifty—the same age my mother was when she headed off to Sears. Gina wanted to tell her story, but she asked for her name and some details about her life to be changed in the book so her neighbors and her employer wouldn’t recognize her, and I promised to do that.
Gina is full of nervous energy—quick bursts of laughter, quick flashes of anger. Short, compact, and sandy-haired, she’s the kind of woman who talks to people around her in the grocery store line and who knows every clerk by name. She’s a loyal friend and a proud American.
Gina grew up with four sisters. Her dad died when she was a teenager, and from then on her mom ran the family business, a local bar. Gina gives a throaty laugh as she claims that “her mother knew every single dirty joke” ever told.
Her story starts out well. Gina went to college and got a business degree. She met Darren and fell in love. They had both lived all over the country, and they decided to settle in a small town in North Carolina because it seemed like such a nice place to raise a family. Soon they had two boys, but for Gina and Darren, the grown-up, we-have-found-our-place-in-the-middle-class moment arrived when they bought their home. It was a tidy, almost-new mobile home, permanently set on a large lot with a long gravel driveway.
Gina speaks in a rush, wanting to make very clear the importance of this house—what it says about who she is and what she has accomplished. “I love the house,” Gina says. “We keep it immaculate. We live on the corner here. The whole world sees us.”
Gina had a good education, but when their two boys were small she decided to stay home with them. She volunteered at the boys’ school and took up scrapbooking, making little treasures out of bits of nothing. It was a good time for their family.
One of Gina’s artistic handiworks, a Christmas decoration.
Once both boys were in school, Gina headed off to work. She got a job as a sales rep for a big national company, making calls on retailers across a three-county area. Darren was doing well as a roofer. He owned a truck, Gina had a car, and by the late 2000s, they were bringing in about $70,000 a year.
Their income put Gina and Darren smack in the middle; they earned more than about half of all four-person families in America and less than about half—which is about as solidly middle-class as it gets. But even with a good, solid income, Gina and Darren were mostly stay-at-home people. They shopped at discount stores. An occasional meal out usually meant Denny’s or Chili’s. Most of all, Gina and Darren were careful people. They contributed to their 401(k), bought a few stocks, made extra payments on their mortgage, and put away some cash savings. They were a perfect picture of what it meant to be a member of a huge tribe: solid, middle-class America.
Today, Gina is still married to Darren, still living in the same house, still gluing buttons and bits of lace into her scrapbooks. Is she still middle-class? Her answer is short and bitter:
“I don’t think there is a middle class anymore. If there was a middle class, we wouldn’t need to go to a food pantry.”
Darren’s work as a roofer has been spotty, and he’s had trouble with his back and knees. Gina works at Walmart now, and that’s what keeps them going.
Their stocks and their savings are gone, used to fill in during the stretches when one or both of them were out of work. The small 401(k) has nearly disappeared. There was no money to help either of the boys pay for college, and now their sons are nearly grown men. Both work odd hours and live at home because neither one can afford a place of his own.
Gina’s car is now seventeen years old. She and Darren have talked about selling their home, but she says their mortgage is less than they’d pay in rent, and a mobile home like theirs—even though it’s on a big lot—doesn’t appreciate
