November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Reimagining the American Dream

(Page 2 of 2)

May - June 2008
by Nan Mooney, from the book (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents 
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When we read about the middle-class squeeze, we tend to think blue collar—the machinist who used to make $25 an hour now making $15, the vocationally trained worker whose job just got cut. But what about the social worker who makes $30,000 a year, the environmental scientist who makes $40,000, the college professor who makes $50,000? The rules of the game have changed. The educated professional middle-class experience no longer guarantees two cars in every driveway, or even the driveway itself.

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This is an excerpt by journalist Nan Mooney, the award-winning author of I Can’t Believe She Did That: Why Women Betray Other Women at Work and My Racing Heart: The Passionate World of Thoroughbreds and the Track. She lives in Seattle. This essay is excerpted from her book (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class. Copyright © 2008 by Nan Mooney. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press; www.beacon.org.

A more complete version of the article is available in the print edition of Utne Reader’s May-June issue.

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