Jim Tankersley on the State of the Middle Class and How to Boost Economic Growth

Published: Aug. 24, 2020, 4:30 a.m.

Jim Tankersley is a tax and economics reporter for the New York Times and has written a new book on the middle class titled, *The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of the American Middle Class.* Jim joins Macro Musings to talk about this book, and the state of the middle class in the US. David and Jim also discuss the history and golden era of the middle class as well as the steps policymakers can take to ensure we return to a path of robust economic growth.

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Transcript for the episode can be found here.

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Jim\u2019s Twitter: @jimtankersley

Jim\u2019s New York Times archive: https://www.nytimes.com/by/jim-tankersley

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Related Links:

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*The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of the American Middle Class* by Jim Tankersley

https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/jim-tankersley/the-riches-of-this-land/9781541767836/

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*The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth* by Chang-Tai Hsieh, Erik Hurst, Charles Jones, and Peter Klenow

https://www.nber.org/papers/w18693

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*Populism in Place: The Economic Geography of the Globalization Backlash* by J. Lawrence Broz, Jeffry Freiden, and Stephen Weymouth

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3501263

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*Testing the \u2018China Shock\u2019: Was Normalizing Trade with China a Mistake?* by Scott Lincicome

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/testing-china-shock-was-normalizing-trade-china-mistake

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*The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade* by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson

https://economics.mit.edu/files/12751

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*The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream* by Tyler Cowen

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250108708

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David\u2019s Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

David\u2019s blog: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/