My former career bears witness the deliberate destruction of American manufacturing by "financial engineers" after 1975, starting with American Can deciding to become Primerica. If only Mr. Kuttner can gain traction outside NPR-world to get his accurate message to the talking heads who don't understand the serious damage inflicted by thirty years of MBAs on Wall Street and in consulting. Thank you for this start on the dialogue.

Oh yes being a "nouveau pauvre" myself I have seen this from both sides. I love the lack of concern (pretension) about "rank" and basic kindness I find among "working class" people and I get appalled at how I'm treated at the doctor's office, which is how the rest of the world always was.

I'm getting the distinct feeling that we're in a lot of trouble.

Good work, Mr. Kuttner. Keep talking it up.

I'm all for the mixed economy (middle-class Europeans I've known have a solidity, pleasantness, and low level of anxiety I generally see in America mostly in the children of the wealthy), but wasn't a great deal of the success of the post-war period's rooted in the rest of the world's either half-destroyed or mired in State Capitalism or both?