Mechele Dickerson

This is an iHeart Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I'm glad to be here.

The first thing I did is I thought about how is it that we have a middle class?

And this is a point that you just made in the introduction.

We have a middle class because political leaders decided we needed to have a middle class.

Now, part of it was in response to the Depression.

But after the Depression and World War I, World War II,

Political leaders said, you know what?

It's not a bad thing to have a middle class.

They do good things for the U.S.

economy.

And also as political leaders, we need to do good things for lower and middle income folks who are looking to achieve the American dream, to have upward mobility.

So I landed on the middle class New Deal.

because we created the middle class roughly as part of the first New Deal and political leaders need to stop.

And I agree with the way that you framed this.

This is not a left or a right or a Democrat or a Republican book.

This is a book for all political leaders to make a decision.

Do we care about the middle class in this country or not?

Did I summarize your argument fairly?