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The Secret Shame Of Middle-Class Americans By Neal Gabler

854 Words4 Pages

The article “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans” was featured on The Atlantic website. It was published in the May 2016 print issue of the magazines under the heading Business. The article was written by Neal Gabler. This 6,800-word article was written about the both the personal financial struggles of the author and general financial struggles of the American middle-class that are so often masked. According to the author, the article was inspired by a statistic published by the Federal Reserve Board: “47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all.” The author, Neal Gabler, says that he relates to their situation because he is in that 47 percent and understands that struggling financially is “source of shame, a daily humiliation” from which silence is the “only protection.” Apparently, economists typically use unemployment statistics and net worth to measure the financial …show more content…

Research indicates that though 60% of respondents said they had “suffered some sort of ‘economic shock’ in the past 12 months - a drop in income, a hospital visit, the loss of a spouse…,” only 38 percent had enough liquid savings to be able to cover it with money they saved.” Also, 55 percent of households didn’t have “enough liquid saving to replace a month’s worth of lost

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