Quotes
“Shows how millions of successful, hardworking Americans, often with the best of intentions, have helped build a society where birth matters more than brilliance. Impassioned, data-driven, and focused on practical solutions, Dream Hoarders is a fine cure for an age of stale, cynical politics.” Economist (London)
“Tackles one of the most urgent—inequality and how to solve it—and comes up with serious answers.” Guardian (London)
“Recently, scholars and social activists have set off alarm bells about the rising concentration of income among the top 1 percent. Richard Reeves urges us to turn our attention to a wider slice of affluent Americans—the top fifth—and the result is a devastating empirical portrait of damage done to ‘the bottom eighty.’ This captivating and stirring book is likely to make many of its readers uncomfortable.” Janet C. Gornick, professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality
“Dream Hoarders will shake you up, teach you a lot, and make you think much harder.” E. J. Dionne Jr., New York Times bestselling author
“An important new perspective on equality and mobility from one of America’s best-informed and most articulate commentators on that topic. Reeves provocatively turns the current policy debate upside down—not ‘how do we increase upward mobility?’ but ‘how do we increase downward mobility?’ Certain to enliven dinner party conversations among America’s upper-middle class elite—so if you are in that group, this book is a must-read.” Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University, author of Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
“We have met the enemy, and he is us: we who were smart enough to pick the right parents and now occupy the high ground in post-industrial America. Richard Reeves and I differ on specifics, but Dream Hoarders rightly gets to the heart of things: if we treasure America’s traditional civic culture and want to see it preserved for future generations, the upper middle class has to recognize how much responsibility it bears for the culture’s plight and act accordingly. He makes that case brilliantly.” Charles Murray, American Enterprise Institute