The New Middle Class Creating Wages Wealth and Opportunity in the 21st Century eBook Steve Gunderson
Download As PDF : The New Middle Class Creating Wages Wealth and Opportunity in the 21st Century eBook Steve Gunderson 
Former U.S. congressman Steve Gunderson grew up in a tightly knit middle-class family in a community where people cherished values, civic duty, and the American Dream. But these communities all across America have moved from an age of progress to an era of survival as they seek to navigate new economic challenges. Today, many fear the disappearance of the middle class, and wonder whether they will provide a better life for their kids and grandkids.
In The New Middle Class, Gunderson explores the factors that caused the decline of America’s economic center and how we can build a middle class that is equipped for the realities of a twenty-first-century global economy. If we believe that a viable middle class is a critical part of a market-based democracy, this mission is of critical importance.
Gunderson’s blueprint begins with a public and private sector commitment to substantial economic growth and investment in education. Calling for a new Middle Class Compact, he argues that the best core values of both political parties can enable Americans of all backgrounds to achieve real jobs and decent incomes. Higher incomes in turn lead to financial security—the true definition of wealth and the hallmark of a strong middle class.
The challenge before this deeply divided nation is a big one, but The New Middle Class maps out the road ahead with abundant insight and optimism. There is no doubt that we can extend to future generations the opportunities, values, and benefits of the American Dream.
The New Middle Class Creating Wages Wealth and Opportunity in the 21st Century eBook Steve Gunderson
Steve Gunderson's new book identifies a key to recreating America's middle class--post secondary education. Education provides the essential bridge for professional and economic growth. As a college instructor, I have taught both traditional and non traditional students. Public and private sector partnerships are necessary for expanding education opportunities. There is a perception that the government must do it all and that model simply doesn't work today. Private academic endeavors like Khan Academy have been extremely successful in helping students of all ages and backgrounds learn through the comfort of their own homes using technology and it is available for free. For profit universities also fulfill a need non traditional students have and paved the way for many of today's online and blended educational models which public and private universities embrace. The rapidly changing global economy requires that Americans be technologically savvy and that creates another need for life-long learning. --Janet HinzProduct details
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The New Middle Class Creating Wages Wealth and Opportunity in the 21st Century eBook Steve Gunderson Reviews
Former Wisconsin congressman describes the current fate of the American Middle Class if we continue the status quo of business as normal, all messed up. He writes through the lens of his own Middle Class experience, growing up in Pleasantville, Wisconsin, with a rural population less than a thousand. His grandfather was a farmer, and his father a car dealer. While he was in his twenties, he served in the Wisconsin State Assembly, followed by eight terms in the US House of Representatives. As the former president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, Steve Gunderson is the current president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities. All of this provides this author with a wealth of information about the Middle Class, adding to the credibility of his book.
So, what does the author have to say about this Middle Class and what we can do to save it? Without a Middle Class, Americans lose significant opportunities to improve their quality of life, risk holding its democracy together, and the strength of America declines. Sadly, much has happened in the last several decades that have negatively impacted the stability of this group of Americans. Retirement stability began disappearing when both private and public companies moved from offering its employees retirement benefit plans (ie pensions) to retirement contribution plans (ie 401k), along with increased longevity that continues to drain resources from retirement plans, such as Social Security. The wealth of the Middle Class also eroded away when the housing market began to crumble in 2007, resulting in millions of homes in foreclosure. Low-skilled high-paid manufacturing jobs relocated overseas during the past few decades, putting many Middle Class people out of work.
To reverse the trend, the author presents us with several difficult tasks, all of them difficult because of the polarity of Americans as represented by an ineffective Government that is unable to make decisions. Some of these tasks include improving the education opportunities for all Americans, rebuilding American manufacturing advantage, stabilizing retirement plans, solving home ownership crisis, and eliminating Government deficient spending.
A very good read for anyone wanting to understand the economic mess America is experiencing, while learning about several ways to resolve this mess.
The dismembering of the middle class in America is a seismic shift in society. It has gigantic, unforeseeable effects for the country above and beyond the ones we know today. This subject gets a lot of exposure, and someone whose expertise and authority I looked forward to was Gunderson's.
Unfortunately, the first four chapters consist of 100 pages of all statistics you already know, gathered in one place, that don't add to your knowledge or perspective. There are no revelations, no new insights, no new interpretations, no new conclusions.
Gunderson loves throwing out all manner of data, without any context. For example, the CBO reports "for the top 1% of the population with the highest incomes, after-tax household income grew by 275%." That's impressive, I guess. But so what? It's the quality of that increase that counts. And it's coming not from producing valuable goods and services that have ancillary benefits to the economy (like employment), but from financial deals that don't benefit the USA. The result is that only 61% of Americans over 20 have a job. But Gunderson doesn't go there. He says income inequality has no effect on the middle class.
It gets sillier. He concludes the stats chapters with absurd claims like "Neither (political) party created the middle class nor caused its demise." That's of course because Gunderson is a Beltway politician. It is precisely their dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act for their donors' benefit that led to the bubble, the recession, layoffs, overwhelming debt and the destruction of life savings. It is precisely this proud blindness to what's directly in front of them (and to what they themselves have done) that prevents our leadership from moving the country - anywhere. This one statement of his is far more revealing than anything else in the book. It encapsulates why the USA is declining, in ten simple words.
Finally, Gunderson gets into education, his real passion. "Do some simple math," he says. If a child that currently benefits from $1000-$1500 a year of education investment from his family received just another $1000 a year, what sort of difference will that make for that child's lifetime income? Unfortunately, that child will be saddled with $30-$80 thousand dollars in debt by graduation, starting out in a very deep hole none of his forebears had to deal with (and no job either). And unless that child has the means to spend three thousand a month for a few more years while enduring an unpaid internship, that well-paid career will never even get started. So yes, income inequality is directly related to the disappearance of the middle class. Americans today are actually looking at skipping university, because low-paid jobs are the only future they see. But Gunderson doesn't go there.
He then reiterates for some reason, that growing income inequality does not result in the disappearance of the middle class. Yes it does. In ways all his superficial stats don't show. If top management pays itself 50% of the income of the company, there's that much less for the rest of the workforce. It's why more Walmart employees are on food stamps than at any other company. But his stats don't show that. If Apple is sitting on 140 billion dollars in cash, largely offshore, that's $140B that's not being invested in new startups (employment) in the USA. Meanwhile thousands of Apple store employees don't make a living wage. How many times have we seen private equity funds buy a company and strip it down for resale? They hire expensive management and load up the company with new debt. Management and the investors pocket the money from the debt, and the remaining employees are lucky to get any kind of paycheck. So of course there's a connection between income inequality and the disappearance of the middle class. The top 1% is very busy sucking the air out of the room. But Gunderson doesn't go there.
So it's not income inequality and it's not the politicians. Instead, Gunderson claims it is the "curbing of upward mobility" that is the villain in this drama. And upward mobility is his code for higher education. That simple.
The second half of the book finally gets us into at least some discussion. Thankfully, Gunderson gets right to his ideas for the future (on page 108). He has three broad areas
1. Create a system for lifelong learning by engaging public sector/private sector partnerships.
2. Create a growth economy in the United States, enabling most Americans to work, succeed and build a future.
3. Create a new era of income security for individuals and families.
Of course, there can be no argument with any of this. It is hardly the first time someone has pointed out that governmental investment in higher education pays off in higher income taxes for life. Sadly, until and unless Congress' mandate is changed to solving structural problems from its current protecting party interests, the program doesn't stand a chance.
There follows a long paean to private sector colleges. By sheer coincidence, Gunderson is president of the association of private sector colleges. There is no discussion of solutions to get kids mentally into higher ed, nor any discussion of the voucher and homeschool movements whereby parents seek to keep their kids out of the system. This is why. It's about for profit higher education.
He ends with some inspiring stories of individuals overcoming adversity, and a third repetition of his own family's story of a side job repairing motors turning into a Chevrolet dealership in western Wisconsin. But no path to restore the middle class in today's acidic environment. There is no New Middle Class that I could find.
Steve Gunderson's new book identifies a key to recreating America's middle class--post secondary education. Education provides the essential bridge for professional and economic growth. As a college instructor, I have taught both traditional and non traditional students. Public and private sector partnerships are necessary for expanding education opportunities. There is a perception that the government must do it all and that model simply doesn't work today. Private academic endeavors like Khan Academy have been extremely successful in helping students of all ages and backgrounds learn through the comfort of their own homes using technology and it is available for free. For profit universities also fulfill a need non traditional students have and paved the way for many of today's online and blended educational models which public and private universities embrace. The rapidly changing global economy requires that Americans be technologically savvy and that creates another need for life-long learning. --Janet Hinz
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