12. The State of the Economy. Due Fri. Jan. 19th

Katherine Newman, a sociology professor at Princeton, has studied the plight of the Americans she terms the "missing class"--people who are not classified as poor but whose incomes are so low that they lead what she calls a "fragile existence." Her findings are the subject of the first student reading which I handed out in class. Proposals to address the needs of the "missing class" are itemized in the second reading. The inquiry activities that follow include suggestions for researching how the current presidential candidates would address the problem of low-income Americans.

Assignment: Go to a presidential candidate's website. Find out what proposals and/or programs, if any, does this candidate support that would benefit "the missing class"? Write a short response on what reasons are there to believe a particular proposal would work? What reasons are there that it would not?.