Left, courtesy of George Franz; right, photo by Kyoko Takenaka for the Investigative Reporting Workshop

George Franz as a child, left, and the couple today in their retirement home.

Profiles: George and Marge Franz

Saturday, December 24th, 2011

George Franz (born 1921) and Marge Franz (born 1922)

Chicago

George: My older brother, five years older, couldn’t find a job at 16. He got a job at Westinghouse, and was there for 44 years. He started at 26 cents an hour, and paid 14 cents in streetcar fare to get him a job. People did anything for a job.

They weren’t looking for high-paying jobs. They were looking for jobs that provided security. In my time, you’d advise your child to look for a job that would last a lifetime. Nobody was thinking about being an executive.

I don’t find what’s happening today to be a comparison.

Marge: I got the feeling that things were hard on everyone.

Interview by Michael Lawson

What Went Wrong

Donald Barlett and James Steele are revisiting America: What Went Wrong, their landmark 1991 newspaper series, in a new project with the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Over the next year, the project team will examine how four decades of public policy has shaped America's ongoing economic crisis.

Issues

Back Story

The authors talk about What Went Wrong

Donald Barlett and James Steele talk about the project, and why they decided to revisit a book they wrote two decades ago, in a series of video clips produced by the Workshop.

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We feature charts, maps, photos and other visualizations that reflect the state of the economy as part of our What Went Wrong project. This column chart shows the growing disparity between what individuals and corporations pay in taxes. In the 1950s, the difference was 22 percent. Recent figures show the difference is 62 percent.

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Read an Excerpt

The Betrayal of the American Dream on Google Books

Check out the first chapter of Barlett and Steele's 2012 book here.