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More by Tamara Draut

The New Frugality: No Passing Fad

New York Times Room for Debate | March 10, 2009

The Fix We're In: Tamara Draut on "The Deregulatory Impulse"

CW Unbound | October 21, 2008

Live Blogging (Sort of) Hearing on Students and Credit Card Debt

Daily Kos | June 28, 2008

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Up to Our Eyeballs
How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies are Drowning Americans in Debt

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Strapped
Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead

December 14, 2006

White-Collar Workers Unite

In These Times

By Adam Doster

The result was some seed money from the SEIU and a plan to build a grassroots, membership-based organization with local chapters, modeled vaguely on the AARP. In addition to Mike Dolan of the SEIU, a number of business and policy people have joined the UP board as members and advisors, including Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute and author and Demos director Tamara Draut. At $36.50 a year for members, UP hopes to be self-funding.

UP's mission is simple: "to protect and preserve the American middle class, now under attack from so many directions." Specifically, the group is organizing two related yet disparate types of workers: recent college graduates and middle-aged workforce veterans. "It is important to align the two groups [of workers]," says Tamara Draut, a UP Advisory Board member and the author of Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead. "Pitting the generations against each other like we often do isn't an effective way to organize, given that many things would benefit both groups."

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