5785 Results for “monedas en FC 26 Visité Buyfc26coins.com. Simplicidad y velocidad. Así me gustan las cosas..kxXe”
-
Article
The Tyranny of the Top Five Journals
Oct 2, 2018
Getting published in a top five economics journal is a near-requirement for tenure. But it’s a poor measure of research quality within a system that punishes creativity.
-
Article
Our Banking System is a Giant House of Cards
Apr 21, 2015
It Could Fall On You.
-
Webinars and Events
The Future of Work | What's at Stake?
Webinarmoderated by Steve Clemons with James Manyika and Michael Spence
Sep 22, 2020
Advancements in automation and artificial intelligence are quickly reaching tipping points, yet our policies, institutions and mindsets are woefully outdated. What will work look like in the future, and how do we secure a future that works for all?
-
Webinars and Events
LEPC II: Law, Policy, and Institutional Change
ConferenceHosted by Law, Economics and Policy Conference (LEPC)
Dec 4–6, 2017
Organized by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in collaboration with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), New York, the aim of LEPC 2017 is to bring together legal, economic and public policy thinkers to consider a variety of real world issues in India in a holistic manner.
-
Article
Is Silicon Valley Nudging Us Towards an Authoritarian Future?
Jul 29, 2020
Margaret Heffernan’s new book “Uncharted” warns against giving up the power to shape our destiny to gurus and gadgets promising false certainty.
-
Article
Mainstream Economists Have Been Using a Misleading Inflation Model for 60 Years
Feb 8, 2021
Comment on Paul Krugman’s recent observations on US inflation
-
Article
America’s Failures of Representation and Prospects for Democracy
Jan 6, 2017
A concentration of wealth and power that created a twin crisis of representation — in politics, and in expertise — set the stage for Donald Trump’s election victory, and has put America’s founding principles at risk
-
Research Program
Knightian Uncertainty Economics (KUE)
Rethinking the role of markets and government policy in light of our inherently limited ability to foresee economic and social outcomes
-
Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe Knightian Uncertainty Hypothesis: Unforeseeable Change and Muth’s Consistency Constraint in Modeling Aggregate Outcomes
Mar 2019
This paper introduces the Knightian Uncertainty Hypothesis (KUH), a new approach to macroeconomics and finance theory.
-
Article
AI is Forcing Us to Rethink Economics
Aug 9, 2019
INET’s grantees and Commission on Global Economic Transformation are looking at artificial intelligence and society.
-
Article
The Retreat from Hyper-Globalization
Dec 1, 2016
Flows of goods and services, people and capital have overwhelmed the ability of political processes to accommodate them
-
Article
Developing Asia Needs a New Economic Paradigm
Aug 13, 2019
Inadequate demand and climate change require a global green new deal
-
Article
Europe’s Gas Roller Coaster
May 13, 2025
A new INET Working Paper by Yaroslav Melekh, James Dixon, Katrina Salmon, and Michael Grubb, interrogates the contradictions between fossil lock-in through LNG import capacity and overcontracting, and policy-driven demand reduction. Here is a summary of the paper’s main findings.
-
Article
History of applied economics: now what?
Apr 17, 2013
There is a “tendency to neglect applied economics in writing the history of economic thought,” Roger Backhouse and Jeff Biddle remarked in 2000. They then followed the “applied” trail back into the XIXth and early XXth centuries, at a time the scope and nature of economics were debatted by continental and especially British political economists
-
Article
Reproducibility Crisis Reaches All Randomised Controlled Trials
Jul 9, 2018
The social and medical sciences depend on randomised control trials – though they face more assumptions and biases than commonly thought.
-
Article
How Academic Conformity Punishes Women—and Restricts the Diversity of Economic Ideas
Dec 14, 2017
Skewed measures of “research output” hold back women who think differently or study smaller subfields in economics—and it’s harming the discipline as a whole
-
YSI Event
YSI Conference on Debt Sustainability
YSI
ConferenceApr 28–30, 2023
Discussions on the key conceptual and policy themes for sovereign debt sustainability with a view to proposing possible policy reforms.
-
Article
Methodology, Systemic Risk, and the Economics Profession
Jul 22, 2013
Changing the incentives for how economists determine both the content of the subject and their approach to scientific research could increase the range of thinking in the profession
-
News
Europe’s Real Deficit Is Trust
Sep 12, 2012
While Europe faces the specter of overwhelming debt, another deficit lies at the heart of the inability to find a solution: a deficit of trust.
-
Article
Charles Babbage and the History of Innovative Thinking
Apr 7, 2014
The forthcoming Institute for New Economic Thinking conference will focus on innovation and its impact on economics and society. When we think about innovation we tend to imagine the future. But as with so many subjects in economics, it’s also useful to examine the past.
-
Article
Can Democracy Survive Aggressive Global Capitalism?
Mar 6, 2015
Rana Dasgupta shares his view of the contradictions and tensions of India’s economic and political scenes.
-
Article
Oil Prices, Oil Profits, Speculation, and Inflation
Jun 26, 2023
The role of speculation in the crude oil market in the increase in the WTI crude oil price.
-
Article
INET at the Trento Economics Festival
May 30, 2019
A collection of our research on populism, globalization and nationalism
-
News
Rohinton Medhora Appointed INET Board Chair
Oct 4, 2022
Medhora has served on INET’s Board since 2012 and is a distinguished fellow and former president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
-
Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesChina’s Development Path: Government, Business, and Globalization in an Innovating Economy
Aug 2022
China’s successful technological development path stands in contrast to the corporate financialization model in the United States
-
Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesWhen Credit Bites Back: Leverage, Business Cycles and Crises
Oct 2015
This paper studies the role of credit in the business cycle, with a focus on private credit overhang.
-
Article
U.S. Borrowers Still Pay More Than What’s Fair
Apr 19, 2019
Low interest rate policy can only do so much to bring the relief to American borrowers that they deserve: past monetary policies, credit market regulations and stagnant labor productivity growth all get in the way. Interest rate policy activism is part of the problem, not the solution.
-
Article
Global Value Chains and Income Distribution Profiles: A World Survey
Feb 6, 2023
How can we quantify the wage share implied by varying degrees and types of participation to Global Value Chains?
-
Webinars and Events
Shadow Banking and Alternative Finance in China
WorkshopMay 27, 2016
The recent growth in the scale and different forms of shadow banking and alternative finance mechanisms in China poses many questions of understanding, from its sustainability; different forms of credit growth; to the role of local government financing, and; the tensions between financial reform policy and practice.
-
Site Pages
Navigation
-
Article
The Financial Crisis of 2023: Protecting Big Finance, Coming and Going
Mar 27, 2023
There needs to be a safe place for businesses to place their reserves and working capital
-
Article
Paper: Fragility and Resilience in Green Development in Africa: Intersections and Trade-offs
Mar 17, 2022
Fragility and Resilience in Green Development in Africa: Intersections and Trade-offs
-
Article
What Is Technology? Enabler, Accelerator, or Displacer?
Oct 2, 2020
Technology has coevolved with human societies and played critical roles in past social and economic transformations. From the invention of steam engines to the use of electricity, technological changes were responsible for boosting productivity gains and increasing standards of living. But what really is technology? Is it an external force outside our control, or do we have a say in its direction, development, and deployment? These questions were undoubtedly made more urgent with the rapid advancement in digital technologies of late.
-
Article
How We Can Avoid Climate Catastrophe
Nov 21, 2018
A new report shows an economically viable path to net-zero CO2 emissions in key industries by 2060
-
YSI Event
Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought
YSI Workshop @ ESHET 2018
YSI
WorkshopJun 6, 2018
The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought on 6 June in Madrid, Spain, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference
-
YSI Event
Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought
YSI Workshop @ ESHET 2018
YSI
WorkshopMay 17, 2017–Jun 6, 2018
The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought on 6 June in Madrid, Spain, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference.
-
Article
The Coming China Crisis
Mar 18, 2015
Rapid private-debt growth threw Japan into crisis in 1991 and did the same to the United States and Europe in 2008. China may be next.
-
Article
OSHA in the 21st Century: Real Protection for America’s Workers
Jun 25, 2020
The Occupational Safety Health Administration was created 50 years ago. Today, it’s in dire straits, say OSHA’s leaders during the Obama administration
-
Article
After Poland’s Elections: Democracy and Keynesianism?
Oct 16, 2023
In accepting mass unemployment, post-communist governments and the democratic parties that constituted them removed the economic foundation for Poland’s democracy.
-
Video
Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crisis
Feb 16, 2016
Exploring the genesis of an important work, one that critiques mainstream neoclassical economics and offers an alternative framework for understanding modern economies.
-
YSI Event
The Crisis of Globalisation
21st FMM Conference
YSI
ConferenceNov 9–11, 2017
The 21 FMM conference of the The Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) will take place in Berlin on 9-11 November 2017.
-
Webinars and Events
Climate Risk and Response in a Post-Pandemic World
Webinarwith Dr. Jonathan Woetzel and Dr. Mekala Krishnan
Aug 13, 2020
Global carbon emissions could fall by an estimated 5.5% in 2020 as a result of declining industrial production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if the change is not systemic these effects may be fleeting, and the changing climate could put hundreds of millions of lives, trillions of dollars of economic activity, and the world’s physical and natural capital at risk.
-
Article
In which MIT decided to teach micro first so as to make economics more relevant
Dec 4, 2013
I’ve already blogged on how undergraduate education evolved at MIT in the postwar era here and here, but since Mike Konczal and Paul Krugman make the case that, to bring introductory economics closer to the real world, macro should be taught before micro as Samuelson did in the first 13 editions of his Economics textbook, it may be worth returning to it.
-
Article
Sexual Harassment and Wages: The Paradox of Power
Jun 2, 2023
The wage effect of hostile working conditions, mainly in terms of sexual harassment risk in the workplace, should be considered and monitored as a first critical step in making women less vulnerable at work and increasing their bargaining power.
-
Article
Alexander Hamilton’s Assault on Working People, Enslaved and Free
Sep 1, 2024
A new book, The Hamilton Scheme, explores a very different founder than the one we’ve come to think we know.
-
Article
History as Personal Expression — a personal note
Apr 22, 2015
Economists and historians of economics have constructed different (and sometimes conflicting) narratives about the past of their field. In fact what is history for economists may not be what is history for historians. To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the Economic Journal invited renowned economists to discuss important contributions published in the past by the journal and the works on similar topics by historians of economics are absent from these accounts. History of economics here seems to have the weight of a JEL descriptor attached to an invited contribution, which we ought to agree that it is not much.
-
Article
Inequality or Living Standards: Which Matters More?
Apr 9, 2015
-
Webinars and Events
International Conference on Social Identities, Institutions, and Economic Development in South Asia
ConferenceAzim Premji University Bhopal - INET - YSI Conference
Jan 17–18, 2025
The Economics Group at Azim Premji University, Bhopal, India, in collaboration with the Institute for New Economic Thinking and its Young Scholars Initiative (INET-YSI), is pleased to announce an international conference aimed at exploring the intricate relationships between social identities, institutions, and economic development in South Asia.
-
Article
Private Equity Buyouts in Healthcare: Who Wins, Who Loses?
Mar 25, 2020
As we face a coronavirus-induced health and economic crisis of uncertain duration, policy makers should be particularly concerned about private equity’s heightened use of debt to buy out healthcare providers and take them private, with no regulatory oversight.
-
Article
Why “Green Growth” Is an Illusion
Dec 5, 2018
Wishful thinking and tinkering won’t cut it. Nothing short of a mass mobilization for deep de-carbonization across the global economy can avert the looming climate catastrophe.
-
Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesProfits, Innovation and Financialization in the Insulin Industry
Apr 2020
This paper considers the relationship between profits realized from higher insulin list prices, pharmaceutical innovation, and the financial structures of the three dominant insulin manufacturing companies, which set list prices.
-
Article
Epidemic of Despair Could Haunt America Long After COVID
Feb 3, 2021
Researchers worry the pandemic may have severe after-effects, with deaths of despair impacting more distressed and newly-vulnerable populations
-
News
INET Announces Program on Knightian Uncertainity Economics
Mar 4, 2019
Rethinking the role of markets and government policy in light of our inherently limited ability to foresee economic and social outcomes
-
Article
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly About the Fed’s New Credit Allocation Policy
Jun 30, 2020
The Fed is taking an aggressive approach to put out the economic fires of the pandemic. But it needs to allow for flexibility as some business models irreparably change.
-
Article
What the Economy Is Really For — And Why Tariffs Miss the Point
Apr 24, 2025
The money to support well-paid American jobs exists—it’s just being hoarded at the top. Economist William Lazonick argues that this is not just unfair; it’s a failure of the whole economic system.
-
News
INET Welcomes Two Governing Board Members
Aug 7, 2018
Arminio Fraga and Richard Vague bring their economic expertise to INET
-
Article
Thomas Scheiding: A history of scholarly communication in economics
Feb 10, 2014
We invited Thomas Scheiding from Cardinal Stritch University to review what we know about the scholarly communication process in economics. Tom has written forcefully on the history and economics of economic literature (see for instance, his 2009 JEM article). His latest is a study of the scholarly communication process in physics (an article in Studies).
-
Article
Sleepwalking with Heiner
Aug 3, 2012
A Response to Heiner Flassbeck’s questions about the Institute’s Council on the Euro Crisis
-
Article
State Capacity and Demand for Identity: Evidence from Political Instability in Mali
Jun 26, 2019
Frequent civil conflicts in African countries may erode national identity, thus highlighting a reason why civil conflict is costly for growth and development
-
Article
A rejoinder to Michael Grubb, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Igor Bashmakov and Richard Wood
Jul 26, 2016
We are grateful to Michael Grubb, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Igor Bashmakov, and Richard Wood for their interesting, empirically rich and structurally insightful commentary on our paper on the production-based and the consumption-based Carbon Kuznets Curve (CKC).
-
Article
Inequality – It’s Bad…And It’s About to Get Way Worse
Sep 12, 2013
What’s behind rapidly worsening inequality in the United States?
-
Grant
Years granted: 2015Collective and Cumulative Careers: Foundations for Sustainable Prosperity
This research project posits that increasing income concentration and erosion of the middle class are interrelated results of a change in the dominant corporate resource-allocation regime from “retain-and-reinvest” to “downsize-and-distribute,” manifested by massive distributions to shareholders and the disappearance of “collective and cumulative” careers.
-
Grant
Years granted: 2015Managing Shadow Money
This research project explores the process of modern (shadow) money creation in hierarchical and interconnected monetary systems. In theorizing the dynamic instability of shadow money, it provides a comparative account of the structural and institutional specifics of shadow money in the US, Eurozone and China, and the policy challenges thereof.
-
News
The Future of Greece and the Euro Zone Event, January 24th
Jan 16, 2013
On January 24 2013, the Workers’ Rights Student Coalition at Columbia Law School will host an INET-sponsored evening with top political leadership from SYRIZA, Greece’s dominant opposition party and anticipated next government, to discuss the challenges facing Greece and the euro zone and SYRIZA’s plans for reform.
-
Webinars and Events
Debt Talks Episode 3 | How Bad Can It Still Get? Credit Risks, Debt Overhang, and the COVID-19 Recession
WebinarClick to Register | moderated by Moritz Schularick with Megan Greene, Anatole Koletsky and Yueran Ma
Hosted by Private Debt
Oct 20, 2020
What is the current situation in credit markets? Will an overhang of debt on corporate balance sheets slow down the recovery from the COVID recession and be a drag on investment going forward? Does the COVID recession still have the potential to turn into a broader financial meltdown?
-
Video
Unequal Cities
Apr 17, 2024
Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States
-
Working Paper
Working PaperHistorical American Political Finance Data at the National Archives: A Preface to the INET Edition
Sep 2025
INET’s new data archive of historical political finance records at the National Archives marks a major step toward filling this factual void. This INET Working Paper outlines what users need to know to navigate the archive effectively and locate the data they require.
-
Working Paper
Grantee paperFinancial Crises, Political Constraints, and Policy Responses
Aug 2014
We analyze the political environment in the wake of financial crises and try to infer its implications on decision making and economic policies.
-
Article
CIGI Celebrates 20 Years of Research and Expert Analysis
Jul 30, 2021
In 2021, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) celebrates 20 years of contributing research and expert analysis to global policy making.
-
Article
A New Approach for Estimating Firm-Level Cyber-Risk Exposure
May 22, 2023
Using computational linguistics to estimate firm-level cyber risk exposure based on quarterly earnings conference calls.
-
Article
Fatima Denton: Governments must accelerate a plan for a diversified economy, an exit from fossil fuels, and shift towards a green transition
Jun 10, 2020
An interview with Dr Fatima Denton, Director of the United Nations University – Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa
-
Article
Why Does Economics Reject New Thinking?
Jul 29, 2016
On George Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons”
-
Article
Kapital for the Twenty-First Century?
Mar 30, 2014
What is “capital”? To Karl Marx, it was a social, political, and legal category—the means of control of the means of production by the dominant class. Capital could be money, it could be machines; it could be fixed and it could be variable. But the essence of capital was neither physical nor financial. It was the power that capital gave to capitalists, namely the authority to make decisions and to extract surplus from the worker.
-
Working Paper
CommentaryMarketization and Financialization
Apr 2017
How the U.S. New Economy Business Model Has Devalued Science and Engineering PhDs
-
Webinars and Events
Pandemic Relief Efforts
Webinarwith Joseph Stiglitz - 12pm EDT / 9am PDT
May 14, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust us into a new reality, and any course we set now will have huge and lasting repercussions on public health and the economy.
-
Webinars and Events
Money, Politics, and Social Conflict in the Age of COVID & YSI Discussion
Webinarwith Thomas Ferguson - 12pm ET / 9am PT
Jun 4, 2020
Every country has had a different policy response to the crisis; and within countries different political parties have championed various approaches. How has COVID-19 affected politics and social life in developed western countries?
-
News
Interlinkages and Systemic Risk: Institute-sponsored Conference in Italy on July 4-5
Jul 2, 2013
The Institute have organized a Workshop on “Interlinkages and Systemic Risk” in Ancona, Italy that will take place on July 4th and 5th.
-
Site Pages
Voice & Tone
-
Working Paper
Working paperSocial Structure, Markets and Inequality
Feb 2015
The interaction between social structure and markets remains a central theme in the social sciences. In some instances, markets can build on and enhance social networks’ economic role; in other contexts, markets appear to be in direct competition with social networks. The impact of markets on inequality and welfare is also varying: while markets can sometimes offer valuable outside options to marginalised individuals, in other situations only well connected and better off individuals can benefit from them.
-
Research Program
Secular Stagnation
Are Falling Interest Rates and Slower Growth the “New Normal”?
-
Article
Rethinking Social Progress in the 21st Century
Aug 14, 2018
A new report examines the path to global social progress. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers
-
Article
Experts on Trial: Introduction
Mar 3, 2017
Widespread criticism of elites and their ‘experts ’ raises questions about how economists should perceive their role, and what role societies should give them. We invited four scholars to start an online conversation by sharing their perspectives
-
Working Paper
SymposiumExperts on Trial: A Symposium
Mar 2017
Widespread criticism of elites and their ‘experts ’ raises questions about how economists should perceive their role, and what role societies should give them. We invited four scholars to start an online conversation by sharing their perspectives
-
Article
Why is Economics Still Largely a White Male Preserve?
Nov 17, 2016
How economics underperforms in diversity, and some potential remedies
-
Article
[PART 2] U.S. Current Account Deficits and German Surpluses: The Role of Income Distribution in Global Imbalances
Nov 6, 2013
In our two papers, we analyze how changes in personal and functional (wages versus profits) income distribution interact to produce different macroeconomic outcomes in different countries. On the basis of a stock-flow consistent model calibrated for the United States, Germany, and China, simulations suggest that a substantial part of the increase in household debt and the decrease in the current account in the United States since the early 1980s can be explained by the interplay of rising (top-end) household income inequality and certain institutions (e.g. easy access to credit, privately financed education and health care systems).
-
Article
Experts on Inflation: Prognosis, Political Fallout and Who’s Really to Blame
Nov 18, 2021
Economists Claudia Sahm, Servaas Storm, and Pia Malaney share their views on the problem that has everyone freaking out. Here’s what it all means for your pocketbook – and your democracy.
-
Article
Economic Consequences of the U.S. Convict Labor System
Mar 7, 2019
US counties with prison labor often have lower wage and employment growth
-
Article
Warning: COVID-Fueled Mental Health Crisis Will Be a Costly Second Pandemic
Nov 30, 2021
It’s time to prioritize mental well-being to avoid far-reaching economic and social consequences.
-
Article
Are American Colleges and Universities the Next Covid Casualties?
Jul 22, 2020
Colleges and universities need to be saved, not only from financial ruin, but also, all too often, from themselves.
-
Article
Heckman Study: Investment in Early Childhood Education Yields Substantial Gains for the Economy
Dec 12, 2016
New research by Nobel Laureate and Institute for New Economic Thinking Advisory Board member James Heckman finds strong economic gains from birth-to-five education programs
-
Working Paper
ReportTechnological Disruption in the Global Economy
Apr 2019
A report of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation’s subcommittee on Inequality, Technology, and the Future of Work
-
Webinars and Events
Debt Talks Episode 2 | Debt, Wealth, and Racial Inequalities
Webinarmoderated by Moritz Schularick with Mehrsa Baradaran, Ashley C. Harrington, Darrick Hamilton and Louise Seamster
Hosted by Private Debt
Sep 15, 2020
Racial inequalities of wealth and income are pervasive. This episode of Debt Talks will feature a conversation with four prominent experts on the persistence of racial inequalities of wealth and income and the role of financial markets in shaping them.
-
YSI Event
Still Swimming Against the Tide?
40 Years of Thinking on Trade and Development
YSI
WorkshopAug 1–7, 2021
The 4th UNCTAD YSI Summer School celebrates the approach and legacy of UNCTAD’s annual Trade and Development Report (TDR). The school will bring together UNCTAD experts, academics, diplomats, and young scholars from across the globe for lively and stimulating intellectual debates.
-
Article
Can “It” Happen Again? Defining the Battlefield for a Theoretical Revolution in Economics
Feb 27, 2017
As part of our “Experts on Trial Series”, Antonella Palumbo argues for stripping away ‘scientific’ shibboleths that mask social and political choices
-
Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesHow Much Can the U.S. Congress Resist Political Money? A Quantitative Assessment
Apr 2020
The links between campaign contributions from the financial sector and switches to a pro-bank vote were direct and substantial
-
Article
Why a V-Shaped Recession Is a Pipe Dream
Jun 8, 2020
Regardless of what Trump says, the economic pain of the pandemic isn’t going anywhere
-
Article
7 Truths About Trump’s Tariffs — And the High-Stakes Future They Shape
Apr 12, 2025
Top money-and-politics expert Thomas Ferguson breaks down the real drivers of Trump’s aggressive tariff agenda, from big crypto plans to a new world order emerging.
-
Article
Our Economic System is Making Us Mentally Ill
Mar 18, 2022
The neoliberal economy was supposed to bring about a utopian world order. Instead, it gave us crippling psychological stress and social breakdown. How can we ever recover?
-
Webinars and Events
3rd Meeting of Young Minds in Frontiers of Economics
ConferenceApr 9–11, 2026
Following a successful inaugural Meeting of Young Minds in 2024 and 2025, the Third annual Meeting of Young Minds on April 09 2026 to April 11 2026 is geared to be an exciting and engaging gathering of future leaders in the field of economics.
-
Article
Distributional and Macroeconomic Effects of Trump 2.0
May 5, 2025
The most likely outcome of the second Trump administration is a recession and an exacerbation of inequalities, and a further degradation of the living standards of working and middle-class Americans.