In a new book published this month, New York Times reporter Jim Tankersley set out to get to the bottom of the problems in the American economy. “The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of America’s Middle Class” traces the changes that have shaped Americans’ jobs and lives in the second half of the 20th century and recent decades, diagnosing what has gone wrong and how politicians have failed to offer solutions.
A primary target of the book is President Donald Trump’s vision of American society, in which immigrants supposedly compete for scarce jobs and white working-class men are tossed aside in favor of other groups. This perspective, Tankersley makes clear, does not match reality —even if the media erroneously lent it credibility. Workers are not actually pitted against each other in the American economy, and racial minorities and women have often suffered along with if not worse than white workers encountering hard times. Fixing what ails working Americans involves getting everyone to see that their interests are aligned, not in tension.
Tankersley also dismantles Trump’s frequent claims that he kept his 2016 campaign promises and built an economy that works for everyone prior the coronavirus, a central theme of the Republican National Convention. This just isn’t true, and the pandemic and economic crisis have revealed that devastating fissures in society remain pernicious sources of unjust inequality and disadvantage. Even before the crisis hit, Tankersley argues, we weren’t on a sustainable path to creating a secure and prosperous economy for everyone. Continue reading.