“The American economy is broken, ruined by the greed and irresponsibility of fabulously wealthy corporate chieftains and their shabby acolytes and enablers in government,” writes Bob Herbert in the New York Times. He’s watching the Thanksgiving Day parade and thinking about all the kids in the crowd. “While Wall Street is handing out billions in bonuses, American families are struggling with joblessness, home foreclosures and rampant debt. . . . and children are taking a big hit — emotionally, psychologically and otherwise. . . . Millions of youngsters . . . are being buffeted by an economy that is eroding their quality of life, curtailing their educational opportunities and undermining their prospects for economic success as adults. That more attention is not being paid to this growing disaster is criminal. . . . The system remains grotesquely unfair, with the deck stacked against working people, even as we’re desperate to have them sustain the economy with nonstop consumer purchases. Keep in mind that at the start of the recession the collective wealth of the richest 1 percent of Americans was greater than that of the bottom 90 percent combined. The economic and political clout of that bottom 90 percent has only weakened since then. We still have a hideously dysfunctional public education system, one that has mastered the art of manufacturing dropouts and functional illiterates. . . . We still keep fighting tragic, futile, stupid wars, squandering lives and resources and creative energies that could be put to use right here at home, where the need for nation-building is beyond critical. The U.S. should be a paradise for young people. We need big changes in this country . . . if we’re going to give those smiling kids I saw on Thanksgiving Day the kind of society they deserve.”