Traffic on Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

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Suddenly, everybody’s an economic reformer.

John McCain talks nonstop about hard times. Barack Obama’s knocking down walls to make “breathing room” for the middle class. The Bush administration is pouring public money into private American banks.

Out beyond Wall Street and Washington, it is not news that things are tough — and were tough before the meltdown of the last month.

How tough? We’ll ask.

This hour, we convene a national roundtable of ordinary Americans for their view of the economic moment, and the fix we’re in. We hope you’ll join the conversation.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Fort Myers, Florida, is Jean Ann Berg. She has been a certified nursing assistant for 28 years and works at a nursing home and rehabilitation center. A single mother, she’s a member of the Service Employees International Union in South Florida and is on leave from her job to work full-time for the union on election issues.

Joining us from Indianapolis, Indiana, is Deb Peters. A mother of two, she is head of Quality Environmental Professionals, a 32-person environmental consulting company. Her business has been hit by the rising price of gas and health care.

Joining us from Van Nuys, California, is Jay Ybarro. He’s a locksmith and owner of Veteran Lock & Key. A Gulf War veteran, he is a single father of two children.

Joining us from Nashua, New Hampshire, is Joe Iaquinta. He was in the mortgage industry for fifteen years, as a broker and office manager. Since that work dried up, he’s delivered newspapers and worked as a substitute teacher and a cook. He currently sells flooring. Last month he lost his house to foreclosure.

And from Washington, DC, we’re joined by Eric Toder, former director of the Office of Research at the Internal Revenue Service. He conducts research on tax policy and retirement policy at the Urban Institute and Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

A tip is left by a customer at Linda's Place Restaurant in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in June 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Once upon a time America was known for its post-war economic miracle. The dream of mass upward mobility became reality, and the middle class boomed.

It’s easy to forget that these days — with falling home prices, rising unemployment and growing financial insecurity. Yet the government tells us the economy is still growing. So why has that rising tide left so many boats behind? Why are wages flat with the biggest share of growth going only to the very rich?

This hour, On Point: We’re asking why the U.S. economy is failing the middle class.

-Anthony Brook, guest host

Guests:

Peter Temin, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-author, with Frank Levy, of the 2007 paper “Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America” — a history lesson about how the American Dream was built, and why it has stalled. It has received a lot of attention in policy circles. You can read a summary and discussion of the paper.

Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute and author of “The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture” (2007).

Steve Liesman, senior economics reporter for CNBC and former senior economics reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

Nan Mooney is thirtysomething, well-educated, the child of baby boomers who herself grew up with all the accoutrements of what was very recently thought to be a regular middle-class American life. Nothing fancy, but the full basics: a nice little home with steady income, housing, health insurance, and a summer vacation somewhere.

Now, Nan Mooney and millions of others of her generation have none of those.

And she’s not sure she ever will.

Her new book is “(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents.” And she’s mad.

This hour, On Point: Nan Mooney, and a generation, not keeping up.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Nan Mooney, author of the new book “(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class.”

Peter Gosselin, national economics correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and author of the forthcoming book “High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families.”