Screwed The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class - Plot & Excerpts
Thirty or more people were sitting on blankets and lawn chairs under a big oak tree in a semicircle around a middle-aged, suit-wearing woman with a flip chart. Those in the circle wore mostly casual clothes, and the average age seemed to be midforties, although there were a few as young as midtwenties and a few who looked to be in their sixties. Two men in the group—both in their fifties, by appearance—had gone to the trouble of dressing in business suits, although they looked painfully uncomfortable sitting on their lawn chairs in the open park. As I walked by, I heard the woman extolling the virtues of "cheerfulness" and rhetorically asking her students, "Would you want to hire you?" Welcome to the world of those who have fallen out of America's white-collar middle class and are tapping their IRAs, 401(k)s, and overextended credit cards to pay for workshops like this one to figure out how they can get decent-paying jobs to replace the ones they've lost. The seminar I heard might help a few of these people—I hope it did—but it won't help America get back on track.
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