Monday, June 15, 2009

IN the world's only superpower, in the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen, in this beacon of democracy, in this bastion of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Barbara Ehrenreich writes that "the outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility — the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times. This demographic, the working poor, have already been living in an economic depression of their own. From their point of view “the economy,” as a shared condition, is a fiction."