Fighting for the American Dream

Explores the decades-long erosion of the American Dream from the author's perspective: a working-class kid who became a celebrated economist dedicated to advancing the interests of struggling workers, only to get caught in the same currents of job insecurity and downward mobility as the people he aimed to defend.

Worker insecurity, increasing inequality, and downward mobility in our current era contrast sharply with expanding prosperity and opportunity in the first three decades after World War II. What happened? And what can we do to revitalize the American Dream, reduce worker precarity, and foster broadly shared prosperity?

In this historical account of a protracted and expanding national crisis, intertwined with a personal story about growing up in a work-obsessed family and pursuing a career devoted to addressing that crisis, Charles J. Whalen grapples with the social forces that sever the link between hard work and employment success. He exposes the obstacles that mar the path of many people seeking job opportunities and traces the fading of the American Dream, ultimately encouraging readers to take a fresh look at the current economic situation and championing a more constructive set of public policies to shape the future.