According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, "American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living." Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.
To make ends meet, working families have been forced to rely more on credit for basic household necessities. According to a recent study by Demos, from 1989 to 2001 credit card debt in the U.S. nearly tripled, from $238 billion to $692 billion. Add into this equation the lack of affordable housing in almost every region in the country, and an ideal environment was created for predatory mortgage lenders to take advantage of vulnerable working families.
Members of the House Government Operations Committee were like pinballs last week, ricocheting between two walls as they worked to set campaign
contribution limits.
America's way of providing health care is failing, too, Cohn writes, and its problems also won't go away on their own. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Mary Carmichael about how to cure an ailing system.
The people who get clobbered the most are still the working poor and the lower middle class. But the big change we're seeing now is that vulnerability is expanding up into the middle class more than before.
