Must-Read: Heather Boushey: The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline

Must-Read: Heather Boushey: The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline: “Peter Temin’s… The Vanishing Middle Class…. argues that the distribution of gains from economic growth today…

…make the United States look like a developing economy… the dual sector model developed in the 1950s by W. Arthur Lewis… how development and lack of development progress side by side. One sector… is the home of modern production, where development is limited only by the amount of capital. The other sector… suppl[ies] a vast surplus of labor…. Temin… argues that “the vanishing middle class has left behind a dual economy.” His dual sectors are finance, technology, and electronics… and low-skill work, akin to the subsistence sector, whose workers bear the brunt of the vagaries of globalization….

These developments play out along racial lines set by the nation’s history of slavery. The bridge between these two sides of the economy is education…. Temin’s top policy recommendation is universal access to high-quality preschool and greater financial support for public universities. His second recommendation is to reverse policies that repress poor folk of any race…. Alas, neither of these recommendations is potent enough to overcome the fundamental problems Temin identifies…