Pinched (26 page)

1.
But some of the entries
Andrew Sullivan, “The View from Your Recession,”
Daily Dish
(blog),
Atlantic
, May 13, 2009,
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/the-vi.html
.

2.
Another writer noted
March 17, 2009,
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/the-view-fro-45.html
; January 18, 2010,
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/the-vi.html
, supplemented by conversation with author.

3.
Among others writing in
March 4, 2009,
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/the-view-fro-11.html
; February 28, 2009,
http://www.andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/the-view-fro-38.html
; March 3, 2009,
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/the-view-from-4.html
.

4.
One unmistakable pattern
April 6, 2009,
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/the-view-from-your-recession-2.html
.

5.
In March 2011, the unemployment rate
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, e-mail message to author, April 2011. Findings are based on the Current Population Survey.

6.
job postings in February 2011
Juju.com
, “Job Search Difficulty Index,” February 2011,
http://www.job-search-engine.com/press/Juju-Releases-Job-Search-Difficulty-Index-for-Major-Cities-February-2011
.

7.
wages were essentially flat
Edward Glaeser, “The Information Economy Powers Wage Increases,”
Economix
(blog),
New York Times
, October 26, 2010,
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/the-information-economy-powers-wage-increases/
.

8.
A 2010 Pew Research Center study
Social & Demographic Trends Project, “How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America,” Pew Research Center (June 30, 2010), 34.

9.
The recession has even proved
Anna Turner, “Jobs Crisis Fact Sheet,” Economic Policy Institute, 2010; Hanna Rosin, “The End of Men,”
Atlantic
, July/August 2010,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/
.

10.
men have reported
Social & Demographic Trends Project, “How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America,” 59.

11.
“The Great Recession has quantitatively”
David Autor, “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market: Implications for Employment and Earnings,” Center for American Progress and Hamilton Project, April 2010, 2–9.

12.
“Technology has changed the game”
Jack Welch quoted in Fareed Zakaria, “How to Restore the American Dream,”
Time
, October 21, 2010,
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/
0,8599,2026776,00.html#ixzz161WL283S
.

13.
the total number of people
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment, Hours, and Earnings From the Current Employment Statistics Survey (National),” 2011.

14.
the United States was the second-largest
CIA World Factbook staff, e-mail message to author, January 5, 2011.

15.
Alan Blinder estimated
Alan Blinder, “How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?” (working paper 142, Center for Economic Policy Studies, Princeton University, March 2007).

16.
job losses hit America
International Monetary Fund and International Labor Organization, “The Challenges of Growth, Employment and Social Cohesion,” September 2010, 7, 44.

17.
it has come back down
International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, October 2010,
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/02/weodata/index.aspx

18.
“I think [a middle-class life]”
Michael Luo, “Months After Plant Closed, Many Still Struggling,”
New York Times
, February 9, 2009.

19.
more than half
of the nation’s
Analysis by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty in “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
118, no. 1 (2003): 1–39, updated at
http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~saez/
; updated tables and figures, “Table A6: Top Fractiles Income Levels
(Including Capital Gains) in the United States,” July 2010,
http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~saez/
.

20.
the rise of the super-elite
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2002 High School Graduates,” June 25, 2003.

21.
incomes for college graduates
David Leonhardt, “Education Still Pays,”
Economy
(blog),
New York Times
, January 20, 2011,
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/education-still-pays/
.

22.
college graduates make up
U.S. Census Bureau, “2005–2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: Educational Attainment,” 2010.

23.
family income
U.S. Census Bureau, “Percent Distribution of Families, by Selected Characteristics Within Income Quintile and Top 5 Percent in 2009,”
Current Population Survey 2010: Annual Social and Economic Supplement
, 2010.

24.
The share of the male population
Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, “The Problem with Men: A Look at Long-Term Employment Trends,”
Up Front
(blog), Brookings Institution, December 2, 2010,
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/1203_jobs_greenstone_looney.aspx
.

25.
for every two men
Rosin, “The End of Men.”

26.
women earned more
Paul Wiseman, “Young, Single, Childless Women Out-Earn Male Counterparts,”
USA Today
, September 2, 2010.

27.
It’s the opposite trend
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “International Comparisons of Annual Labor Force Statistics, Adjusted to U.S. Concepts, 10 Countries, 1970–2009: Table 2-11. Employment-Population Ratios for Men,”
http://www.bls.gov/fls/flscomparelf/employment.htm#table2_11
.

28.
more than 18 percent of men
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics From the Current Population Survey: Employment-Population Ratio—Men,” 2011.

29.
the urban theorist Richard Florida
Richard Florida, “Where the Brains Are,”
Atlantic
, October 2006,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/10/where-the-brains-are/5202/
.

30.
A 2010 Brookings Institution report
Brookings Institution, “The State of Metropolitan America,” May 2009, 107–8, 135.

31.
roughly as many college graduates
Aaron Renn, “College Degree Density Revisited,”
The Urbanophile
(blog), December 5, 2010,
http://www.urbanophile.com/2010/12/05/college-degree-density-revisited/
.

32.
Powerful economic forces
Bill Bishop,
The Big Sort
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 130–35.

33.
“superstar cities”
Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai, “Superstar Cities” (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 12355, July 2006).

34.
The housing bust has revealed
James R. Follain, “A Study of Real Estate Markets in Declining Cities,” Research Institute for Housing America, December 2010.

35.
In a Brookings Institution
“Bachelor’s degree attainment, age 25 and over,” State of Metropolitan America Indicator Map, Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/metro/StateOfMetroAmerica/Map.aspx#/?subject=4&ind=30&dist=1_0&data=Percent&year=
2009&geo=metro&zoom=0&x=0&y=0
.

1.
“the public features”
Alexander Keyssar,
Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 57.

2.
Deflation was a fixture
Benjamin Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
(New York: Knopf, 2005), 116.

3.
the availability of jobs
Robert Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 360. 43
Income inequality was
Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
, 112.

4.
Charles Spaur estimated
Putnam,
Bowling Alone
, 370.

5.
perhaps half of America’s families
Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
, 117–18.

6.
Unemployment became
Keyssar,
Out of Work
, 9, 23–31.

7.
Some of these critics … Atlantic Monthly
December 1878, quoted in ibid., 19.

8.
To feed themselves
Ibid., 162.

9.
unemployment stood
Ibid., 308–11.

10.
job loss was hardest
Ibid., 95–96.

11.
“My oldest girl”
Ibid., 173–74.

12.
a group of white nativists
Putnam,
Bowling Alone
, 375; Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
, 126.

13.
one person was lynched
Putnam,
Bowling Alone
, 375.

14.
“perfect cultural seedbed”
Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
, 12.

15.
Like other forms
Ibid., 121–26.

16.
In nearly every aspect
Ibid., 124.

17.
“There is scarcely”
Keyssar,
Out of Work
, 76.

18.
The United States emerged
Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
, 140–41.

19.
the nation’s real output
Robert McElvaine,
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941
(New York: Times Books, 1984), 75, 320.

20.
the 1920s stand out
Friedman,
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
, 147.

21.
Farmers still made up
McElvaine,
The Great Depression
, 11, 36.

22.
In America’s towns
Ron Chernow,
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), 302.

23.
disposable per capita income
McElvaine,
The Great Depression
, 38–39.

24.
willingness of ordinary people
Ibid., 40–41.

25.
Robert McElvaine wrote
Ibid., 42.

26.
In Florida
Ibid.

27.
The real-estate mania
Robert Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd,
Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1937), 190–91.

28.
Residential construction imploded
Ibid., 190–93.

29.
The economic conditions
Benjamin Schwarz, “Life In (and After) Our Great Recession,”
Atlantic
, October 2009,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/life-in-and-after-our-great-recession/7651/
.

30.
In her classic sociology
Mirra Komarovsky,
The Unemployed Man and His Family
(1940; repr., Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2004), esp. 23, 41.

31.
the stories paint a picture
Komarovsky,
The Unemployed Man
, esp. 43, 94, 112.

32.
most people kept their jobs
Lynd and Lynd,
Middletown
, 202. 52
“In its relation to”
Ibid., 443.

33.
Trust among strangers
Ibid., 427–28.

34.
Disillusionment among
Ibid., 482–84.

35.
The Lynds interviewed
Ibid., 485.

36.
pronounced diffidence
Glen Elder,
Children of the Great Depression
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

37.
the period’s adolescents
McElvaine,
The Great Depression
, 185.

38.
That’s in fact
Elder,
Children of the Great Depression
.

39.
extremism and rancor
McElvaine,
The Great Depression
, 187.

40.
Father Charles Coughlin
Ibid., 238–40.

41.
John Maynard Keynes wrote
John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (1930), published in
Essays in Persuasion
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963), 358–373.

42.
“more than Watergate”
Edward Berkowitz,
Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 53.

43.
The seventies saw
Ibid., 55, 67.

44.
A third recession
For additional historical context, see Kevin Quealy, Gregory Roth, and R. M. Schneiderman, “How the Government Dealt with Past Recessions,”
New York Times
, January 26, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/26/
business/economy/20090126-recessions-graphic.html
.

45.
“hopeful legacy began”
Berkowitz,
Something Happened
, 4.

46.
Legal challenges
Bruce Schulman,
The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics
(New York: The Free Press, 2001; Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2002), 58, 70. Citations refer to the Da Capo edition.

47.
In previous decades
Ibid., 80.

48.
Women entered the workforce
Berkowitz,
Something Happened
, 68, 144.

49.
This revolution
Schulman,
The Seventies
, 68.

50.
The young adults
See, for example, ibid., xii.

51.
unemployment never neared
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey: Unemployment Rate,” 2011.

52.
Theodore White wrote
Theodore White quoted in Joseph Nocera,
A Piece of the Action
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 178.

53.
houses, or at least those
Ibid., 188–89.

54.
All of these developments
Ibid., 193.

55.
Newsweek
dubbed
Jerry Adler, “The Year of the Yuppie,”
Newsweek
, December 31, 1984.

56.
Recent academic research
See, for example, the work of David Moss (Harvard) and Robert Frank (Cornell), summarized in Nicholas Kristof, “Our Banana Republic,”
New York Times
, November 6, 2010; and Louise Story, “Income Inequality and Financial Crisis,”
New York Times
, August 21, 2010.