When he was in his early twenties, Garofalo had watched his mother and stepfather, who lived in Arizona, fall out of the middle class. First, his stepfather was laid off from his job as a managing systems engineer at a computer company that was failing—escorted out of the building after eleven years of employment. His parents started a small import business that failed. To keep their house, they had to commute an hour to jobs that paid less than what Garofalo was making, waiting on tables in Scottsdale. “My stepfather is one of the most principled people I know,” he said. “It was such a clear death of the American Dream—there’s no safety net. You worked all your life and are a good person and it doesn’t matter. You’re really prone to getting fucked. These aren’t people on the fringe. We’re not even near the bottom.
– excerpt from The New Yorker story “All the angry people”.
