What the Heck Happened to the USA‪?‬

While the economy seems robust in 2018, there are troubling, systemic problems in the US. Unsustainable debt, shrinking middle class, stagnant wages, possible bubbles in stock market and housing (again!), widening inequality, exploding healthcare cost, deep political division, social anxiety, dwindling global power, perpetual wars etc. are all colossal problems that cannot be swept under the rug with wishful thinking.

Half of all American children live in households that receive welfare -- "means-tested assistance from the government; and the Top 1% of Americans earn 26 times as much as the other 99% combined. These are serious economic issues that affect the future of the country.

The middle class and lower-income Americans enjoyed an astonishing growth in income and wealth from 1945 to 1975. Since then, real wages have been stagnant for the last 40 years. And this phenomenon was not an accident – it was methodically engineered and gradually implemented.

How did we get here and what's the solution? There are distinct narratives on the left and the right, both captives of ideological echo chambers. The answer is more complex and nuanced; and it will make conservatives, liberals and libertarians alike uncomfortable.

Much of this book is in the form of conversations between various characters of distinct political ideologies -- traditional conservative, Trump supporter, mainstream democrat, socialist, libertarian and an independent. There are also hundreds of links to reputable sources and plenty of charts. Concepts of economics are simplified and made easy for anyone to understand.

Staying away from simplistic slogans and emotional attacks, this book presents rational, thoughtful and illuminating discussions of the crisis that America faces now and in the near future. And each discussion and conversation is structured in a way to elucidate both the problems and the solutions.