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Is Social Security really going bust, and what does that mean to me? If I hire an immigrant, am I hurting a native-born worker? Why does the stock market go up when employment declines? Should I give that homeless guy a buck? What's a "living wage"? How much can presidents really affect economic outcomes? What does the Federal Reserve Bank really do? And when the pundits say the economy's doing so well, why do I still feel so squeezed? If you'd like some straight answers, premier economist Jared Bernstein is here to help. In Crunch he responds to dozens of questions he has fielded from working Americans, questions that directly relate to the bottom-line, dollars-and-cents concerns of real people. Chances are if there's a stumper you've always wanted to ask an economist, it's solved in this book. Bernstein is fed up with "Darth Vaders with PhDs" who use their supposed expertise to intimidate average citizens and turn economics into a tool for the rich and powerful. In the pages of Crunch, Bernstein lays bare the dark secret of economics: it's not an objective scientific discipline. It's a set of decisions about the best way to organize our society to produce and distribute resources and opportunities. And we all can, and must, participate in these decisions. "America is a democracy," he writes. "And in a democracy all of us, not just the elites and their scholarly shock troops, get to weigh in on biggies like this." Our economy will be only as fair as we can make it. In this lively and irreverent tour through everyday economic mysteries, Bernstein helps us decode economic "analysis," navigate through murky ethical quandaries, and make sound economic decisions that reflect our deepest aspirations for ourselves, our families, and our country.

As the new century unfolds, we face a host of economic and social challenges--jobs lost to "off shoring," a huge and growing number of Americans without health insurance coverage, an expanding gap between rich and poor, stagnant wages, decaying public schools, and many others. These are difficult and complex problems, but our government's strategy for dealing with them has been essentially not to deal with them at all. Over and over, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we're told that we're on our own--"Here's a tax cut and a private account; now go fend for yourself."As Jared Bernstein points out, this approach doesn't make any sense as a strategy for solving the enormous systemic problems we face. It's just a way of shifting economic risk from those most able to bear it--the government and the nation's corporations--to those least able: individuals and families. The result has been greater wealth for the top 1% of Americans and stagnant living standards and increasing insecurity for the vast majority.In All Together Now, Bernstein outlines a new strategy, one that applauds individual initiative but recognizes that the problems we face as a nation can be solved only if we take a more collaborative approach. The message is simple: we're all in this together.Bernstein draws on recent and historic events to explore how the proponents of what he dubs the YOYO (you're-on-your-own) approach have sold the idea, exposing the fallacies and ulterior motives in their arguments as well as the disasterous consequences of their policies. More importantly, he details practical WITT (we're-in-this-together) initiatives in specific areas like globalization, health care, and employment that could improve the lives of millions of Americans without increasing overall national spending. And he offers advice on how to overcome objections to the WITT agenda and bring

Former Obama adviser Jared Bernstein argues that the biggest economic challenge facing the winner of this year's presidential election will be addressing deep structural problems in the US economy.

Argues that welfare reform, the current version being centered around a two-year time limit on welfare rolls, is the wrong attack on what is incorrectly perceived as a big problem (welfare is less than 1% of federal spending). Until the US economy, particularly its wage scale, improves substantially, the entry-level job will continue to provide less real income/services for a mother with children than welfare does. If trade, tax, & labor policies were reformed, it would then be possible to achieve realistic welfare reform. S. Race

There are many policies that can reduce inequality, but there is none as straight-forward conceptually and as difficult politically as full employment. The basic point is simple: at low rates of unemployment, the demand for labor allows workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution to achieve gains in hourly wages, annual hours of work, and thus income.