America’s Dual Economy: Why the Middle Class Is Vanishing
A collection of INET research and articles on how and why the middle class has been shrinking and how this leads to a “dual economy”
"Build Back Better" Needs an Agenda for Upward Mobility
How the dream of a middle class existence collapsed, first for Blacks, then for more and more white American workers and what the Biden administration could do to retrieve the situation.
Covid-19 Hits the Dual Economy
The Hidden Decline in Human Capital—and the Danger Ahead
U.S. GDP accounting underestimates intangible capital, overstates financial capital, and is all but oblivious to the the erosion of human and social capital. A serious growth slowdown is coming.
Market Power, Low Productivity, and Lagging Wages: The Real Drivers
To understand labor productivity—and growing inequality—you have to look at the “dual economy”
The New Normal
The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class
How rationalization, marketization, and globalization characterize the U.S. economy during the past 50 years, and how the behavior of companies and fate of American workers have changed during this process.
Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games: Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential Election
The U.S. presidential election of 2016 featured frontal challenges to the political establishments of both parties and perhaps the most shocking election upset in American history.
Is Wall Street Doing its Job?
Labor in the Twenty-First Century: The Top 0.1% and the Disappearing Middle-Class
The ongoing explosion of the incomes of the richest households and the erosion of middle-class employment opportunities for most of the rest have become integrally related in the now-normal operation of the U.S. economy.
Reversing Dual Economies?
Inequality, Financialization, and the Growth of Household Debt in the U.S., 1989-2007
Household indebtedness in the United States grew dramatically during the decades leading up to the financial crisis.
The Panama Papers: A Tropical Tip of the Hidden Wealth Iceberg
When billionaires pay less, we all pay more.
Wealth Inequality in the US and Beyond
It’s no secret that wealth inequality has grown, both in the US and abroad over the past several decades. What has been particularly notable about the work of Emmanuel Saez is the quantification of that inequality.