Reinventing our economy to inspire a new middle class (Richard Longworth, Chicago Tribune)

"But they're no longer alone. Across the nation and especially in the old industrial cities of the Midwest, those "fundamental structural changes" are undercutting whole civilizations, both black and white. The cause is the same: deindustrialization, the collapse of heavy manufacturing, the disappearance of jobs, skilled and unskilled. And the results are the same: generational unemployment, school dropouts, broken homes, drugs, poverty, bad health."