Creating an Opportunity Society

Creating an Opportunity Society
Author: Ron Haskins
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2009-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815703937

Americans believe economic opportunity is as fundamental a right as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. More concerned about a level playing field for all, they worry less about the growing income and wealth disparity in our country. Creating an Opportunity Society examines economic opportunity in the United States and explores how to create more of it, particularly for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill propose a concrete agenda for increasing opportunity that is cost effective, consistent with American values, and focuses on improving the lives of the young and the disadvantaged. They emphasize individual responsibility as an indispensable basis for successful policies and programs. The authors recommend a three-pronged approach to create more opportunity in America: • Increase education for children and youth at the preschool, K–12, and postsecondary levels • Encourage and support work among adults • Reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births while increasing the share of children reared by their married parents With concern for the federal deficit in mind, Haskins and Sawhill argue for reallocating existing resources, especially from the affluent elderly to disadvantaged children and their families. The authors are optimistic that a judicious use of the nation's resources can level the playing field and produce more opportunity for all. Creating an Opportunity Society offers the most complete summary available of the facts and the factors that contribute to economic opportunity. It looks at the poor, the middle class, and the rich, providing deep background data on how each group has fared in recent decades. Unfortunately, only the rich have made substantial progress, making this book a timely guide forward for anyone interested in what we can do as a society to improve the prospects for our less-advantaged families and fellow citizens.

A Nation of Opportunity

A Nation of Opportunity
Author: National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (U.S.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 112
Release: 1996
Genre: Americans
ISBN:

A Nation of Opportunity

A Nation of Opportunity
Author: DIANE Publishing Company
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 112
Release: 1996
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780788131806

The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution

The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution
Author: Joseph Fishkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 067498062X

A bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the Constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth. Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the Òrepublican form of governmentÓ the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it has almost nothing to say about this threat. But as Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath show in this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Fishkin and Forbath demonstrate that reformers, legislators, and even judges working in this Òdemocracy of opportunityÓ tradition understood that the Constitution imposes a duty on legislatures to thwart oligarchy and promote a broad distribution of wealth and political power. These ideas led Jacksonians to fight special economic privileges for the few, Populists to try to break up monopoly power, and Progressives to fight for the constitutional right to form a union. During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans argued in this tradition that racial equality required breaking up the oligarchy of slave power and distributing wealth and opportunity to former slaves and their descendants. President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers built their politics around this tradition, winning the fight against the Òeconomic royalistsÓ and Òindustrial despots.Ó But today, as we enter a new Gilded Age, this tradition in progressive American economic and political thought lies dormant. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution begins the work of recovering it and exploring its profound implications for our deeply unequal society and badly damaged democracy.

A Just and Generous Nation

A Just and Generous Nation
Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0465073964

In A Just and Generous Nation, the eminent historian Harold Holzer and the noted economist Norton Garfinkle present a groundbreaking new account of the beliefs that inspired our sixteenth president to go to war when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Rather than a commitment to eradicating slavery or a defense of the Union, they argue, Lincoln's guiding principle was the defense of equal economic opportunity. Lincoln firmly believed that the government's primary role was to ensure that all Americans had the opportunity to better their station in life. As president, he worked tirelessly to enshrine this ideal within the federal government. He funded railroads and canals, supported education, and, most importantly, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which opened the door for former slaves to join white Americans in striving for self-improvement. In our own age of unprecedented inequality, A Just and Generous Nation reestablishes Lincoln's legacy as the protector not just of personal freedom but of the American dream itself.

A Nation of Widening Opportunities

A Nation of Widening Opportunities
Author: Ellen D. Katz
Publisher: Michigan Publishing Services
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781607853688

On October 11, 2013, a diverse group of civil rights scholars met at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor to assess the interpretation, development, and administration of civil rights law in the five decades since President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. In the volume that follows, readers will find edited versions of the papers that these scholars presented, enriched by our lively discussions at and after the conference. We hope that the essays in this volume will contribute to the continuing debates regarding the civil rights project in the United States and the world.

The Dynamics of Opportunity in America

The Dynamics of Opportunity in America
Author: Irwin Kirsch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-03-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9783319798738

Across the country, our children are beginning life from very different starting points. Some have aspirations and believe they can be achieved. For too many others, aspirations are tempered, if not dashed, by the sobering realities of everyday life. These different starting points place children on distinctly different trajectories of growth and development, ultimately leading to vastly different adult outcomes. How did we get to a place where circumstances of birth have become so determinative? And what must we do, within communities and across our country, to better equalize opportunity for more Americans – both young and old? The editors of this volume contend that if, as a nation, we do nothing, then we will continue to drift apart, placing an unsustainable strain on the nation’s social fabric and the character of its democracy. Consequently, understanding the dynamics governing the distribution and transmission of opportunity – and transforming this understanding into policies and programs – is critical for not only the life outcomes of individual Americans and their children, but also the country as a whole. The goal of Educational Testing Service’s Opportunity in America initiative is to explore these powerful dynamics and to describe and convey them in a way that advances the national conversation about why we must take action – and how best to do so. This volume contains 14 chapters, including an epilogue, written by leaders from a range of fields including education, economics, demography, and political science. Collectively, they not only illuminate key aspects of the problem but also offer suggestions of what policies, programs, and changes in practices could begin to reverse the trends we are seeing. Written in an engaging style, this volume constitutes an essential foundation for informed discussion and strategic analysis.

Forgotten Americans

Forgotten Americans
Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300241062

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Dream Hoarders

Dream Hoarders
Author: Richard V. Reeves
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815735499

Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.