Elizabeth Warren, Harvard professor and currently Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, writes today in the Huffington Post about another war facing not just President Obama, but all of us, what Warren calls America without a Middle Class.
She asks if we can imagine an America without a strong middle class, and if so, would it still be America as we know it?
Dr. Warren then details the sobering facts...one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families cannot make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure, and one in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy each month. She goes on to discuss the $5 tillion lost from pension funds and savings. Ten million families may be forced to live on the streets.
This crisis didn't suddenly appear, it has been growing for at least a generation. Middle class jobs have been moving overseas for many years and the plain fact is that most of these jobs are not coming back as America has declined as a manufacturing economy and has become a technological and service society.
China is rising. A billion people overseas are joining a new middle class. Our solution is to work with this new middle class, not deny or resist it. It is here and growing. We have always excelled in innovation and development, and new ways of thinking and producing are the demands facing our future. We have simply got to continue to be the best in technology and science.
This has tremendous implications for education in preparing our young people for the future.
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