Content
The book opens by retelling a story of how in January 2015, then President Barack Obama had tried to reform a George W. Bush era tax plan that sent almost 90% of its benefit to the upper middle class. This was the college 529 plans. Reeves explains that the reform proposed by President Obama was, "...sensible, simple, and progressive. Remove the tax benefits from 529 college savings plans, which disproportionately help affluent families, and use the money to help fund a broader, fairer system of tax credits...", but that once proposed by the president, "As soon as the administration unveiled the plan, Democrats started to quietly mobilize against it." Reeves explains further the problem by stating, "Those of you who don't follow tax history closely may not recall that it was George W. Bush who, in 2001, gave us the chance to grow capital tax free in 529 plans. (When Republicans proposed it during Bill Clinton's second term, he promptly vetoed it.) Look how a regressive, Bush-era tax cut can become so precious to the upper middle class, including its most liberal members."
A major focus of Dream Hoarders is to argue that it is not the upper class alone that is worthy of criticism, though he does believe that the top 1% are still very much a problem and worthy of criticism, but rather that it is really the upper middle class that is best positioned to make the political changes needed to help all members of society, especially the bottom 80%. One reason that he argues in favor of change originating from the top 20% is because over half of the wealth of Americans is held in the hands of the top 20%, even if 37% is held in the hands of the top 1%, but the largest share of active voters, and donors to political campaigns comes from this top quintile, not the 1%. In other words, the top 1% may be wealthy, but they are not numerous, whereas the top quintile has wealth, power, numbers of voters, as well as nearly all members of the media reporting on issues of economic and income inequality are part of the upper middle class and thereby face a conflict of interest in reporting against their self-interest. Reeves also explains:
Right now, there is something of a culture of entitlement among America's upper middle class. Partly this is because of a natural tendency to compare ourselves to those even better off than us. This is the "we are the 99 percent" problem. But it is also because we feel entitled to our position since it results from our own merit: our education, brains, and hard work.
Reeves argues that focusing on the top 1% of Americans is a mistake, [8] saying that by scapegoating this tiny group, the upper middle class in the US has been able to "...convince ourselves we are in the same boat as the rest of America", [9] and that this distracts from solving the real problems facing Americans or producing tangible solutions. One issue that Reeves points out as well is that most of the media that would report on the problem essentially are compromised by a conflict of interest, since most members of the media are currently in the top 20% by various economic qualitative measures including income and education.
The book also points to hypocrisies amongst some activists, such as with the Occupy protestors from 2011, "...more than a third of the demonstrators on the May Day 'Occupy' march in 2011 had annual earnings of more than $100,000."
Reeves says of the American dream specifically:
The American dream is not about superwealth or celebrity. The American dream is of a decent home in a pleasant neighborhood, good schools for our kids, a steadily rising income, and enough money put aside for an enjoyable retirement. It is about sustaining a strong family and seeing your children off to a good college. It has become a staple of politicians to declare the American dream dying or dead. But it is not dead. It is alive and well; but is being hoarded by those of us in the upper middle class. The question is: Will we share it?
Reeves goes to great pains to explain that he includes himself in this overall criticism of the upper middle class, thus the usage of the word "we" in the "Will we share it?", Reeves explains:
You may have noticed that I am often using the term 'we' to describe the upper middle class rather than 'they.' As a Brookings senior fellow and a resident of an affluent neighborhood in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside DC, I am, after all, writing about my own class. This is not one of those books about inequality that is about other people—either the super-rich of the struggling poor. This is a book about me and, likely, you, too.
Towards the end of the book, in chapter 7, Reeves lays out his 7-point-plan to help finally solve the issues that he outlines earlier in the book.
These 7 points are:
- Reduce unintended pregnancies through better contraception - Reeves says, "Contraceptive use in the United States is antiquated. There are now highly effective, convenient forms of contraception available, known in wonky circles as LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives), but only a minority uses them. To say these methods are better than condoms or the pill is like saying that modern anesthetic is better than whiskey."
- Increase home visiting to improve parenting - Reeves says, "Home visiting programs are a good place to start. These are centered on visits from parent educators, social workers, or registered nurses to families with pregnant mothers and babies in the home."
- Get better teachers for unlucky kids - Reeves says, "The amount of money a school spends is not in any case a very good predictor of institutional performance. Nor is class size. What clearly does count is teacher quality. A good teacher, measured on a value-added (VA) basis, boosts college going and college quality as well as lifetime earnings, according to a study by Raj Chetty."
- Fund college fairly - Reeves says, "Free college is a terrible idea; in practice it would be yet another boondoggle for the upper middle class... [Instead] a federally administered system, run cheaply and easily through the IRS, [could] base repayment levels on income... While we're at it, the financial aid application process could be dramatically simplified too."
- Curb exclusionary zoning - Reeves says, "A particular problem is the inappropriate or onerous restrictions placed on housing development in many parts of the country. These deepen the wealth divide, worsen economic segregation, and contribute to inequalities in schooling. NIMBYism is opportunity hoarding... Two separate bills in the Massachusetts state legislature would have required towns to create more multifamily zoning districts (both died in the session that ended in July 2016)."
- End legacy admissions - Reeves says, "...there is one step toward more equal opportunity that could be simple and immediate: ending legacy preferences in college admissions... legacy admissions...are both antimeritocratic and antiequality. Legacy admissions are an embarrassment for a nation that prides itself on being a meritocracy."
- Open up internships - Reeves says, "Legally, a simple but important step would be to increase the regulatory oversight of internships, to prevent abuse and to ensure that minimum wage and fair employment laws are properly enforced."
In closing, Reeves emphasizes that it will largely be up to the upper middle class to make the changes come about, he says:
As a class, we are a powerful bunch. For one thing, we are assiduous voters, with a turnout rate of almost 80 percent. But we are influential outside the polling station. The most potent form of power, according to Bertrand Russell, is "power over opinion." This is a kind of power we understand. Pretty much every position in the influencing business is in fact filled by a member of the upper middle class: journalism, academia, research, science, advertising, polling, publishing, the media (old and new), and the arts are, almost by definition, upper middle-class strongholds. But upper middle-class power tends to be deployed to protect our own position and status, regardless of considerations of fairness. Having convinced ourselves of our own merit, we have become—and there is no nice way to say this—kind of selfish. Not in the way we conduct ourselves in the thick of everyday life with our neighbors or colleagues, but selfish in terms of the bigger picture: the way we treat tax breaks as an entitlement and the way we exclude others from opportunity to serve our own ends.
