WASHINGTON (PAI)--Your job is endangered. Your pension is gone. Your health care costs are rising out of sight. And the economy's in the tank. Ever wonder why? Veteran organizer Stewart Acuff and economist Richard Levins provide you with an easy-to-read explanation, stitching all those ills together -- and suggesting what to do about them.Their new book, Getting America Back To Work, due out in early April, lays out in kitchen-table English how the nation's wealthy accumulated power and brought the economy to its knees and brought the middle class to the verge of poverty. "We must begin by recognizing that our economic problems are the result of intentional, sustained, strategic public policy (their emphasis)," Acuff and Levins write. It's "bad public policy cooked up by the Financial Elite and their henchmen."

"The good news is in a democracy people can change public policy. That's what this book is about -- how we change public policy to get people back to productive work and get America's economy working for working families," they declare. Meanwhile, Acuff and Levins warn: "Money talks....Every time you get whacked with an overdraft fee, gouged by a credit card, taken at the gas pump, or bankrupted by a medical bill, you give the Financial Elite money that will be used against you." Acuff and Levins trace the problems all back to the huge disparities of wealth now in the U.S. -- eerie parallels to the wealth inequality that existed before the Great Depression. With that wealth, they said, comes power. And that financial power wants to preserve that great economy for them and the lousy status quo for the rest of us.

The book discusses a maze of economic problems, from declining incomes to disappearing jobs, to vanished pensions to the (very slight) imbalance in Social Security over the next 75 years, and more. They're all linked together by the power of the Financial Elite. None will be fixed unless the system is changed, the authors add.

Stewart Acuff and Richard A. Levins have produced a well-written narrative of how we have gotten into the economic mess we're in and a road map to the way out. A work that is concise, accessible, and moves folks to action.
Ed Sabol, Senior Director-Organizing, Communication Workers of America

Getting America Back to Work lays out the dangerous depth of income and power inequality in America, what that inequality has done to our economy, and the common sense solutions that will turn things around.
Leo Gerard, President, United Steel Workers

Getting America Back to Work is an accessible critique of 40 years of neo-Liberal economic policies that have devastated our manufacturing base, created huge disparities between rich and poor, and caused a massive economic downturn that has left so many of us jobless and penniless. They remind us that the answer lies in an educated and mobilized populace demanding justice in every public sphere-- in the workplace, on Main Street, on Wall Street, and in government.
Kenneth Zinn, Director of Strategic Campaigns, National Nurses United

Stewart Acuff has done it again! In this short publication, he has laid out the arguments against free-trade, bank bailouts, risky tax schemes and how to really fix the main broken components of the U.S. economy. Whether writing in the world of online bloggers, speaking to thousands of trade-unionists, taking on the right-wing pundits on FOX news or through writings like this superb easy-to-read book, Stewart Acuff never seems to disappoint! It's time to take back our economy and now, with Getting America Back to Work, we have our own GPS system to get us there.
Tim Waters, United Steelworkers, Director of Rapid Response