The Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class

Renowned economist Jeff Faux explains why neither party's leaders have a plan to remedy America's unemployment, inequality, or long economic slide

America's political and economic elite spent so long making such terrible decisions that they caused the collapse of 2008. So how can they continue down the same road? The simple answer, that no in charge one wants to publicly acknowledge: because things are still pretty great for the people who run America. It was an accident of history, Jeff Faux explains, that after World War II the U.S. could afford a prosperous middle class, a dominant military, and a booming economic elite at the same time. For the past three decades, all three have been competing, with the middle class always losing. Soon the military will decline as well.

• The most plausible projections Faux explores foresee a future economy nearly devoid of production and exports, with the most profitable industries existing to solely to serve the wealthiest 1%
• The author's last book, The Global Class War, sold over 20,000 copies by correctly predicting the permanent decline of our debt-burdened middle class at the hands of our off-shoring executives, out of control financiers, and their friends in Washington
• Since his last book, Faux is repeatedly asked what either party will do to face these mounting crises. After looking over actual policies, proposed plans, non-partisan reports, and think tank papers, his astonishing conclusion: more of the same.

JEFF FAUX is the founding president of and a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. He's long written about the global economy for "The American Prospect" and "The Nation. "He is the author or coauthor of five books, including "The Global Class War."