Tampering with the American Dream

Abstract

It was reported in a recent New York Times article that a sheetmetal worker at the TWA facility in Kansas City who lost his job during the 1991 recession was asked if he was happy that the Clinton Administration had delivered on its election promise to create jobs. (Over three million new jobs have been created since January 1993.) The man’s response was ‘Yeah! My wife and I have four of them’. The Times then noted that in 1993 this man’s family income was less than what he had earned when he worked for TWA despite the fact that he now worked full-time both as a school bus driver and for McDonald’s, while his wife restocked shelves in Toys ‘R Us as well as working in the same McDonald’s.

This paper was published in The New Leader, 11–25 April 1994.