Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead Author: Tamara Draut Publisher: Doubleday ASIN: 0385515057

About This Book

Strapped offers an original perspective on the obstacles facing young adults under 35 as they try to build careers, buy homes and start families. As Tamara Draut explains, getting ahead is getting harder. A college degree is the new high school diploma - but it now costs a fortune to get that degree and students graduate with crippling debts. Good jobs are scarcer, thanks to stagnant wages and disappearing benefits. And, the cost of everything - starter homes, health coverage, child care - keeps going up and up. Budding families, even those with two incomes, struggle to pay the bills, while credit cards have become the new safety net. Young adults are starting out behind the financial eight ball - borrowing their way into adulthood and wondering what happened to the American Dream.

Is this the way things have to be? Not at all, argues Tamara Draut, Director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a national think-tank headquartered in New York City. Draut shows how the obstacle course bedeviling young adults didn't just happen - it was allowed to happen by a generation of leaders more interested in serving the interests of the wealthy than investing in the nation's future. Strapped outlines many thought-provoking ideas for a new America where every young person can go to college, buy a home, and start a family.