Really going on out in milwaukee. And it was the fact that the manufacturing jobs were beginning to disappear at a faster and faster rate. So two talented team of producers, cathry hughes and tom kashoto, husband and wife, went out for us. We found these two families who seemed to be representative of what was happening to thousands of working families in milwaukee. They were losing their manufacturing jobs, the chief breadwinner was losing their manufacturing jobsment and they were struggling to find their way in the economy that was then beginning to radically change. And we came back to them three times in the 1990s. Did a fourth broadcast in 2001. And then this is the final broadcast we have done in following these two families for all these years. 21 years. And the theme is . The theme is that once upon a time there was nothing more american than the belief that if you work hard and try, and play by the rules, you will get aheadment you can make a decent living and make a Better Future for your children and yourself. Thats not true any more. These stories that you will see in the frontline documentary are being told across the country by millions of people in their daley experiences. They are struggling to keep out of poverty. Theyre struggling to keep out 6 poverty. Rose to keep out of poverty. And the aspiration was to be in the middle class so that they could have a better life for themselves and for their children. And for their children and they worked hard. Rose trying to escape poverty. After they lost their manufacturing jobs which paid 19, 20, it will 21 an hour, the best jobs, the breadwinners in both family kos get was 7 and 8 an hour. They kept trying to find better jobs, they did what they were told. They went back to retraining, they worked overtime, they worked any time. Each family took two jobsment and while they took those two jobs an were away from the homes, their family lives were being impacted by absentee parentism, by individual to be at school when they were needed. And what happened in milwaukee, of course, it is now symptomatic, inner milwaukee is symptomatic of what has happened to urban america. So the collapse of their own economic, Financial Base and the collapse of the economy around them produced a perfect storm for falling further and further away from the American Dream of stability, security, a pension in you old age. And today, 21 years later, they are still struggling. Theyre heroic, theyre courageous, theyve worked very hard, trying to prevent from falling into that poverty from which there is no escape. You know, there are 22 million americans in this country today who have no perm innocent jobs, who are looking for just perm innocent work. They cant fine them. It is, it is the saga of whats happened to the American Dream. It begs three questions. Number one, what do the consequences for america, if it loses its middle class. Well, we become what mat son warned against, an oligarchy of people at the very top and people at the very bottom and no stabilize never the center. If you lose the ability to hope, if you lose the belief that you can work hard and get ahead, then something goes out of the character. And sinews of your society. So wass ahead if we dont reverse this course is a totally two tier society with an enormous base at the bottom of poor people, barely making it on minimum wage and the 1 , the cliche of the 1 living very well. And in fact as you know over these last 30 years, the majority gains in the economy, productivity, has increased, have gone to the top. While wages, working wages for the kind of people youll see in our documentary have been stagnant. That used to be a temporary phenomenon. I grew up in the depression right ahead of you. And while we were hit hard by it, we were not knocked down by it forever. We felt that we would do better over time. We had a government that was speaking for us. I mean roosevelt had his faults and he had his flaws. But we felt he was on our side. These people dont fuel that any more. Part of the consequences of losing a middle class in response to your question is that people lose faith in their political process. They believe they have no representatives. They have no they have no politicians looking out for their interest. And thats the way these two families have. One of the most memorable scenes in it is at bill clintons inauguration in 2 in 1992, theyre watching it. And but they have been hit so hard and they have had so little response from their official sources, that theyre very, very skeptical. Ten years later theyre cynical. They do in the believe that government is responsivement and theyre right. Rose at a time in which economic gdp growth for the American Economy had gone very well under its eight years of the clinton administration. The fourth the economy grew. Rose and the disparity was widening. The paradox is that as you said, the 90s was a pros press time. We were am coulding out of the recession that helped bring george w. Bush down. The gross the gdp was growing but the percentage of the income of the National Income going to working people was then on the downward slide. And its been that way for the last ten years. Rose i want to look at the big pick pure picture. What you have done in this documentary, one africanamerican couple, one white couple, is put a face on what it means for American Families. Thats what you know. You know their stories and you know who they are and what they are and their faith. And you know their willingness to work hard. And you appreciate their questionsing about how come im here. This is not the america i believed in. I believed in an america that if you worked hard, everything would turn out okay. Whos at fault here . Ness is it the government . Is it globalization . Is it the system . Is it what . Well, of course the conventional experts will tell you it is globalizatio globalizationization, the mobility of financial, others will Say Technology brought about the real changes. Charlie, i thought this was the result in large part of engineered inequality. I think there were a series of political decisions made over the last 30 years, the chief one being the part of the owners of capital corporations and businesses deciding they were going to drive wages down. They were going to cut the percentage of they were going to cut the labor cost. And that theres been this almost crusade for the last 30 to 35 years to do that. It came about through factions in congress through the nlrb. In the efforts of the right wing, and the krptions to eliminate collective bargaining. Now theyre going after public employees. There has been a 30 Year Campaign to diminish the cost of labor. And thats hurt the people who are labourerers, who work for hourly and wages. There have been other things too. The legalized draft in congress in which, you know, campaign contributions. Rose money in politics. Money in politics means that those who can a afford it buy the rule these wabts. Their ability to rig the rules. There have been a number of decisions on taxes and you make more money with your money here. There have been a lot of political decisions. Youve read the book by two terrific political scientists. Rose barbara and barbara. No, jay could be hacker at yale that will come back to the two barbaras. Jake could be hacker at yale and paul perkins in berkeley, the title was winner take all politics. How the how washington helped the rip get richer at the expense of everybody else. And it walks you through, very documented, a series of decisions made in washington under both parties, by the way, that benefitted those at the top at the expense of those. Rose what is your confidence that you can turn this around . Its going to take a long time. But thats it must be done, charlie, because the existence of a permanent underclass of formerly middle class people with no future, the fact that so many young people today out of college, with College Degrees are having trouble finding a toehold f they dont i just read an urban Institute Study over the weekend about how 30 of how young people under the ages of 30 and down today are not doing better than their own then the generation just above them. You cant have this set in, you cant have it be a perm innocent reality without great cost to the belief in democracy. Rose numbers tell you there are more of them then there are rich people. Is it a failure of politics that politicians are saying im going to go for the 99 , not for the 1 , and ill win elections, or is it simply money and politics eliminates that for a possibility for electoral success . Its the logic of current reality, which is that you have to have a lot of money to get reelected. And as will you see good people go to congress and wind up spending four hours a day in the calling rooms off the capital grounds and theyre talking to the people who have money to give, you know, Something Like a third of the money given to the campaigns in 2012 came from 138,000 people. Thats a recent study by the sunshine by the Sun Foundation in washington. And so the politicians in turn are going to listen to the people who put up the the money, and that sets the agenda. But every politician, the president talks about macking the middle class a priority. Thats his rallying cry. Thats the mant ra. If you want to appeal to the massesment and we dont use that term any more, masses, working class any more. You use that language but rhetoric aside the reality of the policies, the reality of the programs is contrary to those aspirations. Lets take a look at some of the film i want to see clips and introduce the stanleys as well as the newmans. Here is Claude Stanley talking about retirement. Again, this film puts the face on one of the huge and biggest problems america faces, whats happening to its middle class. Once upon a time when people got your age and youre much younger than i am, youre almost 60. They started thinking seriously about retiring. But youre not. I cant do that. Because the reason is that you cant stay on a job long enough to retire. You know, every job i have i work seven years, okay, the place close undo. You work somewhere else for another five years, they lay youoff, they shut down. All the years i have been work, i could have retired right now. Rose if you had stayed at one job. Will not be able to see the retirement, you know, that he would hope for when he was working at al smith. Thats just not a reality. My heart goes out to that generation that was promised something from america, by america, that they would have a better life. An thats not the case any more. Rose stanley is his son. Hes the son without organized the three Sons Lawn Service back when they first had this fell on these hard times. Rose beyonthe fact that the jobs that theyre used to, what does it do to the family . It calls on the greatest resources they can muster to meet adversity, you will hear children in both families talk about watching their parents try to keep their houses from being foreclosed. And one of the most moving scenes in both families is when their houses are almost theyre almost losing their houses. One family does finally lose its house. The newmans, the white family in the documentary. It creates deep, a troubled mind on the young people watching. You wills see these Young Children hear their parents talk about money. The stanley boys and daughters talk about when they come home from school and they find a notice on the door of the house that if you dont pay your bill were going to turn out the lights. And you can see in each family the stresses and strains that befall the children when uncertainty is the other member of the family. When you dont have enough to actually eat well, another, of many moving scenes captured by kathy hughes and tom, the producers is when mrs. Newman, terry newman, marvelous mother and devoted wife has to go to the food pantry to find food. You know, there are 49 Million People in this country on food stamps. And many of them as we showed in our broadcast broadcast last week include a cop working in a small town in colorado, the town cut the budget and hes lost three of his troops, of his fellow policeman. Hes the seoul remaining policeman. His salary has been cut. He runs out of money for food by halfway through the month. A cowboy does two jobs, a cowboy at day and cleaning up the school at night. Hes on food stamps to feed his children. Rose another impact is the husband and wife are work at different times so they never see each other. And you can tell this in the consequences on the family. And as their need for security and for and for the presence of their parents increases, so does the deterioration of the neighborhood. In in and in both neighborhoods you see violence coming, bullying happening. And so this stability that you would associate normally with a middleclass family begins to deteriorate rapidly. And they have to work extra hard to try to hold the family together as you will see in the documentariment one family succeeds am the other doesnt. Rose one gets the divorce. Yes. Rose how do they see their predictments, their dilemma . In the beginning i think they bought that mantra of well, i must have done something wrong. Why did i go to work at this Manufacturing Company instead of the other. But as time has gone on, they begin to see that its part of the failure of collective responsibility. You know, as i said earlier, when i was growing up a child of the depression, i believed that the community was on my side. By the way, there were so many of us who were poor that we didnt notice the os ten daycious consumption and contrast of today. You believed as i said that for all the flaws, the roosevelt and truman administrations were doing what they could to help us. There was a sense of neighborliness and community that has also been affected adversely by the fleeing of jobs and by the deterioration of economic opportunities. And in the beginning they questioned what have i done wrong. Today they dont say it that way. They think that there is no social can be. Rose they think somethings wrong with the system. They dont knows whats wrong but they think something beyond their control has happened and that no matter how hard they try, how many jobs they get, how many hours a week they work, that theyre on their own. And that changes. Both of the fathers in these two families get sick during the course of our filming over the last 20 years. And just as they are about to save up a little money and maybe pay off the mortgage. Rose medical. Medical costs. The stanley family, he got very, tony newman became ill with pneumonia. It cost them their mortgage for several mondays. Mr. Stanley got sick as well, cost 30,000 that insurance didnt cover. And that is that put them in a deep, deep hole from which they still havent recovered. Rose misnewman is now looking for a place to stay that she can rent in a trailer park. The film starts out with tony and terry being engaged, getting married, buying a small house, really talking like any young couple. Rose the future belongs to us. The future belongs to us. Were going to spend our lives together. It ends up with her after a series of jobs. Shes a hardworking woman and very ingenuous and very open and dedicated to her whatever work shes doing. She has had a series of jobs, they just keep luring her further down into that hole. And so finally at the end shes looking for a trailer, as you say. Rose lots of books have been written about the middle class. So what do you think is different about this hour and a half film that we have seen on front line. You will stay with the family. Its like the film done in britain over 28 plus, you know, following the same people over 28 years. You get to see the process, not just the pain. You get to see what they go through. You get to see their courage. You get to see their depression. You get to see you get to live with them. Rose but its what i said, its the face, you get to see the face of what it means to be in this i is. Because you can read volumes. Until you see people that you can imagine you would know and like struggling with it. You can imagine yourself living that life. And experiencing what they are experiencing, yes. Thats what great novels do. And its what great movies do. And its what strong documentaries do. What do you hope this documentary does . Well, i hope it not only puts a face on whats happening to the middle class and people struggling to survive, i hope it puts a face on whats happened to america. We have lost our experience of collective responsibility. We have lost that sense of connection. We have lost, you know, our government is dysfunctional. Both parties are owned and operated by powerful nancial interests. Both parties essentially serve those financial interests. And the face of America Today is not the face on the posters that we saw in world war ii. Its not norman rockwell. Its not the sony optimism and belief in the cherished principleses that were taught as children. Its the staggering fear at the uncertainty. And the loss of hope that has fallen across the face of america, which is the face of ode working men and women. They are the strength of any economy. They dont buy what people produce, what good does it do to produce it. And if they continue to be separated from the top as is happening now, this is not going to be the country you and i believed in when you were growing up in North Carolina and i was growing up in texas it is not that country any more. You think the president will see this film . I have no idea. I have no but you would like for that. I would like for every member of congress to see this film. To be reminded of who their real constituents are. They are not those who can afford to cobute to their campaigns. Theyre not the lauers and lobbyists for the huge corporations that are doing better and better. Charlie, profits are at a record, while the share of the National Wealth going to workers is at a record low. Rose joe stiglitz has said the American Dream has become a myth. Yes, i think thats true. It is a truth thats out there thats possible. But its not a truth thats being experienced in reality. And that did my father, you know, never made over 100 a week in his life. I still have his last paycheck. He made it when he finally joined the union, the last nine years, seven years of his working life and i have the sticker, the stub of his last paycheck after taxes, 95 dollars and 75 cents, Something Like that. Bu