TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 The Big Squeeze
•Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?
•Econ-Noir
•All Is Not As It Appears: Measuring Economic Outcomes
•Whatever Happened to the Cleavers?
•The Health Care Squeeze
•The Medical Industrial Complex 
•Health Care Reform 
•Poverty Amid Plenty: The Whats 
•Poverty Amid Plenty: The Whys 
•Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? 
•The ABCs of Worker Pay 
•What’s So Bad About Inequality? 
•All Education, All the Time

2 Don’t Know Much About GDP
•Gross Domestic Product
•Unemployment: Wall Street vs. Main Street
•Underemployment
•Making Better Doughnuts
•Inflation
•What’s a Recession?
•Blowing Bubbles
•The Night of the Living Wage (and Other Scary Stories)
•Your Textbook Got It Wrong

3 Political Economy 202
•Social Insecurity
•Economists in Chief
•The Fed
•The Budget Deficit (Part 1)
•The Budget Deficit (Part 2, in Which a Nobelist Agrees with Me)
•The Economy and the Military
•Guns or Butter
•A New WPA? 
•“Please Remain on the Line”

4 The World Ain’t Flat As All That
•What’s Right and Wrong About Globalization?
•Outsourcing
•The Conscience of a Shopper
•World Trade
•Globalization and Greed
•How the Capitalists Killed Capitalism
•Undocumented Workers
•The Not-So-Great Immigration Debate
•What’s So Bad About a Labor Shortage?
•The Mighty Dollar
•Can Economists Save the Planet?

5 The Reconnection Agenda
•Easing the Squeeze 
•Health Care
•Immigration 
•Education
•Globalization 
•What’s Left?

Conclusion: The Lesson of the Rink

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author