Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--and Those Fighting to Reverse It

protected versus the unprotected. Enhancing the common good versus maximizing and protecting the elite winners’ winnings.

Shareholder democracy turned out to be a threat to actual democracy.

That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s: The

A landmark suit brought by consumer rights activist Ralph Nader gave corporations that owned drugstores a First Amendment right to inform consumers by advertising their prices. However, it morphed into a corporate free speech movement that produced one court decision after another allowing unlimited corporate money to overwhelm democratic elections

Despite spending more on health care and K–12 education per capita than any other developed country, health care outcomes and student achievement also rank in the middle or worse internationally. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy among its peer countries, and among the thirty-five OECD countries American chil

At the time, about 8 percent of Amherst students were in the low- and lower-middle-class income categories that qualified them for federal aid under the Pell Grant program or similar programs, even though about half of American families fell into that income category.

Income inequality has snowballed. Adjusted for inflation, middle-class wages have been nearly frozen for the last four decades, and discretionary income has declined if escalating out-of-pocket health care costs and insurance premiums are counted. Yet earnings by the top one percent have nearly tripled.

The world’s richest country continues to have the highest poverty rate among the thirty-five nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), except for Mexico. (It is tied in second to last place with Israel, Chile, and Turkey.)

decline during the Great Recession it has remained at about that level.