New NDN White Paper: A Lost Decade for Everyday Americans

NDN President Simon Rosenberg just sent out this note alerting people to the release of a new paper from NDN:

In recent weeks, policymakers in Washington have begun to take a new look at the American economy and the increasing struggle of everyday people in this new era of globalization. 

To help inform this conversation, NDN will be releasing a series of targeted "white papers" over the next few months designed to highlight particularly significant aspects of this important debate.  

We proudly release the first in this series, A Lost Decade for Everyday Americans.  This new paper, written by Jake Berliner, Deputy Policy Director of NDN’s Globalization Initiative, makes the point that over the last ten years the typical American family has seen their incomes decline; and, that for many, economic hardship had come long before the recent recession began. 

Read the paper here on the NDN website.

Best regards,
Simon Rosenberg
President, NDN

From the introduction:

To ensure the success of the economic strategy the government adopts next year, it is imperative that the plan accounts for and explains the underlying economic weakness that affected everyday Americans in the years prior to the Great Recession. As this paper illustrates, this past decade in America has been a lost decade for ordinary Americans.

Marked by stagnating wages, declining median household income, rising living costs, abnormally slow job creation, and then capped by the destruction of many trillions of dollars in personal wealth held in housing and stocks, the decade has left most everyday Americans worse off than they were ten years ago. Too little of our national dialogue has focused on the intense struggle of everyday people prior to the Recession, yet understanding that struggle is critical to formulating an adequate response to this great economic challenge.

Read on.