Some supporters argue that there’s little more he can do: Republican intransigence and a public weary of government spending will not allow it. But the problem has become so acute - for the country and its leader - that Obama has felt compelled to address the nation about it tonight.
One way to convey the problem’s sheer urgency and jar his audience to attention would be to ditch the hopeful platitudes and deliver an unvarnished lesson on how the failure to address the aftereffects of a severe economic shock like the one we’ve endured can permanently weaken a country and it citizens. An invaluable resource is a new book by journalist Don Peck, “Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It.’’
Peck’s book offers a bracing alternative history of the recession and its implications from that laid out in presidential speeches to date - it’s what Obama might say if he were to cut loose from the politesse and sunny outlook required of those in the Oval Office.
“Pinched’’ carries three major messages. The first is that the Great Recession is no temporary setback, but a sweeping force that is accelerating and intensifying deep economic shifts already underway.
Income inequality is widening. The nonprofessional middle class is thinning out. Industries like construction and manufacturing are declining, and in the process blighting whole cities and regions that depended on them. Many of these changes won’t be reversed when the economy recovers, and that will have national consequences. Peck writes, “[Recessions] allow us to see, with rare and brutal clarity, exactly where a society is heading - and what sorts of people and places it is leaving behind.’’
The alarming scope of these dislocations, and the cultural and societal damage that will follow them, forms the second part of Peck’s message. An entire class of less-educated, blue-collar men, concentrated in dying industries and ill-suited to growing ones, is in danger of falling out of the workforce altogether. Beyond the loss of human capital and earning potential, this will set off surges in divorce, alcoholism, depression, and domestic violence.
