The Vanishing Middle Class

Abstract

This book analyses the American economy in the twenty-first century as a dual economy in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis. Adapting the subsistence and capitalist sectors characterized by Lewis, the American dual economy contains a low-wage sector and a FTE (Finance, Technology, and Electronics) sector. The transition from the low-wage to the FTE sector is through education, which is becoming increasingly difficult for members of the low-wage sector because the FTE sector largely abandoned the American tradition of quality public schools and universities. Policy debates about public education and other policies that serve the low-wage sector often characterize members of the low-wage sector as black even though the low-wage sector is largely white. The model of a modern dual economy and the American history of race relations explain difficulties in both current politics and governmental actions in criminal justice, education, infrastructure and household debts.