Private Affluence and Public Squalor: Social Injustice and Economic Misery in America

Are the values that Americans collectively hold destroying the American Dream? The answer to that question depends upon the answers to some very specific questions. What do we as citizens of the United States believe we owe to one another as citizens? What is the purpose of government? What is of the role of the private enterprise? What is the meaning of equal opportunity? To what extent should purely economic concerns be regulated in the public interest? The answers to these questions reveal our values and define the role that each of us chooses to play as a participant in our country's political and economic affairs. As the role of government in the economic life of the nation has become increasingly diminished, the effort to create a market economy that is unfettered by public oversight and regulation has emerged triumphant - to the detriment of the values that we should share as citizens.