A Fighting Chance

Months later, at a rally in April 2004, John Kerry spoke about the transformation of the American family and said The Two-Income Trap was “one of the best books that actually describes the transformation that has taken place in America.” For me, that was a “wow” moment. Kerry was the presumptive Democratic nominee. Maybe he would become president. Maybe he would put a big focus on rebuilding the middle class. Maybe.

But Kerry lost. Meanwhile, I never got a meeting with anyone from the Bush White House, not even an aide. After the election, the industry-supported bankruptcy bill was back again, and it kept moving right along in Congress. Campaign money rolled in. MBNA, the country’s biggest credit card lender, through its executives and PACs and “soft money” pledges, had been the single biggest contributor to President Bush’s first campaign, and in 2004 they stepped up to the plate again. And all over the country, middle-class families were still getting hammered.

Dr. Phil

Once The Two-Income Trap started to get some mainstream attention, I decided to take one more swing at sounding the alarm and trying to get the book’s ideas into wider circulation. When Dr. Phil McGraw agreed to have Amelia and me come on the show, I wasn’t sure what we’d be in for, but I thought I should give it a shot.

At the studio, people rushed about, talking, carrying clothes, calling out to aides. Amelia and I were tucked into a tiny room with a huge mirror and enough lights around the mirror to cover the landing strip at the Los Angeles airport. Someone came by to pronounce Amelia’s shirt “the wrong color” and thrust a new blouse into her hands with the command “Change!” She never got her original shirt back. We figure it’s probably still hanging in some wardrobe room somewhere.

About an hour later, a young woman knocked on the door and said urgently, “You’re up! You’re up! Let’s go! Let’s go!” She clapped her hands at us, and I wondered if she said everything in twos.

She brought us backstage, where it was freezing cold. I could hear loud music and an even louder announcer revving up the crowd. “Do you love it here? Do you?” someone shouted into the microphone.

A few minutes later, I joined the audience and took a seat in the front row next to Amelia. When Dr. Phil came onstage, I jumped to my feet and clapped wildly along with everyone else.

Dr. Phil interviewed a couple who had gotten in financial trouble and had tried to bail themselves out by cashing out their home equity. Eventually, Dr. Phil called my name and asked what I thought about their decision. Suddenly everyone shifted toward me, the camera bore down, and I knew this was it—the chance to say something useful to a big audience. My heart started banging in my chest and I felt blinded by the lights, but I already knew what I wanted to say. I said that taking out a second mortgage to pay a debt was like “playing roulette with your house” and that it was “the single worst move that homeowners can make.”

Dr. Phil pressed on. What about the push from the giant banks to get people to consolidate their bills through a second mortgage? I answered:

Dr. Phil, that’s how they make money. They make money by getting families like this to get into debt. They don’t make money unless you borrow more money. The whole idea is to tell you how smart, clever, and safe you’d be if you took your house and placed it on the roulette wheel.



A moment later, the camera swung back to the stage and the audience once again stared intently at Dr. Phil and the couple on the stage. I blinked.

As the show went on, I got to say a few more things, but the gist was the same. Although piling on debt might seem to be a solution to a family’s financial problems, too often it led to disaster.

As Amelia and I stood up at the end of the show, I couldn’t help smiling. I had been working on family economic issues for more than twenty years. Year in and year out, I’d been fighting as hard as I could—doing research, writing papers, giving interviews. I’d even tried to advise presidential candidates (or at least I’d tried to advise the advisors to presidential candidates). But by spending a few minutes talking to that family on Dr. Phil’s show—and to about six million other people who were looking on—I might have done more good than in an entire year as a professor. And although I was still fighting hard in the battles over bankruptcy laws in Washington, it was pretty clear that we were losing the war. Families were getting sucked down every day, and too many people in Washington were fighting on the side of the rich and powerful. But now I had just given the best advice I could to six million people. Maybe that was a better way to make a difference.

After the show, Dr. Phil sent someone to fetch me back to his office. Phil said he liked The Two-Income Trap, and he thought the argument was right: hardworking people really were getting hammered. I smiled. But the compliments about the book stopped after about five seconds. He didn’t quite come out and say it, but he made it clear that he thought the book was for policy wonks, and he doubted that it would do much to help regular people fix their financial problems. So much for my smile.

Then he gave me some advice: Write another book, and this time write it for people who can use it.

So I did.