Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It

by Richard V. Reeves

Overview

Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America.

In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else.

The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child.

Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it.

Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815734482
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/12/2018
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	206
Sales rank:	278,773
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.

Table of Contents

Contents:

Hoarding the Dream, Still

A Class Apart

Growing Gains

Inheriting Class

Marketing Merit

Opportunity Hoarding

Sharing the Dream

Check Our Privilege

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Editorial Reviews

“For decades, economists have worried about the western “poverty trap”. But as Reeves shows, the “wealth trap” is every bit as sticky. It is harder to fall out of wealth in the US than it is in almost any other western democracy, Britain included.”—FInancial Times

From the Publisher