George Packer Quotes
As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.
Packer, George. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, p. 41.
This principle has been referred to as The Great Gatsby Curve. See {630975}.
After the Meltdown of 2008 at the end of the George W. Bush administration, the Great Recession shut many of the traditional American opportunities, and even in 2013 when this quotation was written opportunities for the poor were much fewer than at most other times in American history.
At the time of this quotation, the nation had gone through more than 3 decades of enormous increase in prosperity for the wealthy, and modest gains for the highly skilled, technically trained workers. However, correcting for inflation, average salaries did not increase at all. The middle class was particularly hard hit. Only 20 percent of the population benefitted from the growth at all; however, the 1 percent had rarely prospered more. Kenworthy’s principle did not apply for this period of American history.
George Packer is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker and The Atlantic about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of America from 1978 to 2012. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His latest book Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century was released in May 2019.
