The Betrayal Book

Twenty years after publication of their provocative "New York Times" bestseller "America: What Went Wrong", two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists return to investigate the lives and circumstances of the American middle class, and issue a powerful critique of the devastation that policies advocated by Washington and implemented by Wall Street have wrought. Twenty years ago, Donald Barlett and James Steele wrote a book-length series in the "Philadelphia Inquirer" that documented how lawmakers in Washington and dealmakers on Wall Street had made decisions that favored the privileged and powerful at the expense of everyone else. The book warned that policies on taxes, jobs, health care, pensions, trade and deregulation were driving down middle-class income and turning America into a two-class society. The series struck a chord across the nation, first as a nationally-syndicated newspaper series and then as a best-selling book. A generation later, these problems have worsened. Deregulation continues to be authorized by Washington and implemented by Wall Street, and differences in incomes and wealth across America are more extreme than at any time since the gilded Age of the 1800s. In 2007 there were 392,220 individuals and families who reported income of more than $1 million each. That was up sharply from 57,603 in 1989, when research on the first book, "America: What Went Wrong", was underway. More significant than the increase in numbers was how rich the rich became during this period. The cumulative adjusted gross income of these folks had soared from $151.5 billion in 1989 to $1.4 trillion in 2007. Just 15,956 of these people pocketed $35.3 million-each-in that one year. At the other end of the economic pile, during the same period the number of Americans living in poverty grew from 31.5 million to 37.3 million.Read More