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How our false narratives about post-racism and meritocracy have been used to condone egregious economic outcomes--and what we can do to fix the system. Rather than merely laying blame at the feet of both conservatives and liberals for aiding and abetting an unjust system, Fuhrer charts a way forward. He supplements evidence from data with insights from community voices and outlines a system that provides more equal opportunity to accumulate both human and financial capital. His key areas of focus include universal access to high-quality early childhood education; more effective use of our community college system as a pathway to stable employment; restructuring key aspects of the low-wage workplace; providing affordable housing and transit links; supporting people of color by serving as mentors, coaches, and allies; and implementing Baby Bonds and Reparations programs to address the accumulated loss of wealth among Black people due to the legacy of enslavement and institutional discrimination. Fuhrer emphasizes embracing humility, research-based approaches, and community involvement as ways to improve economic opportunity.
List of contents
TOC:
A Note from Eastern Bank Foundation
Preface: A Mainstream Economist Discovers His Blind Spots
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Like Dives Before Lazarus
Part I: The Myth
1 Our National Economic Mythology
2 Public belief in The Myth: A survey of polling results
3 An Origin Story for The Myth
Part II: The Facts
4 How Broken Are We? The distribution of income
5 How Broken Are We? The distribution of wealth
6 How Broken Are We? The prevalence and characteristics of “low-quality” jobs
7 The Rest of the Story: Other Signs of Brokenness
Part III: The Facts versus The Myth: Individual Effort versus Luck; Saving the Deserving; Inevitability versus Choice
8 Evidence Against The Myth
9 This is Not the Only Way: International Comparisons.
Part IV: Broken By Design: How we have chosen to create and sustain our broken system
10 The History of Systems That Have Been Shaped By the Myth
Part V: The Wreckage
11 Losses Looking Backward
12 Losses Looking Forward
Part VI: What Are You Prepared to Do? The Way Forward
13 Changing the Narrative
14 How to Get There: A Program to Build Human and Financial Capital
15 The Other Half of the Battle: Implementation Matters
Conclusion
Notes
References
About the author
Jeff Fuhrer is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Foundation Fellow at the Eastern Bank Foundation. He was previously Executive Vice President and Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where he was also responsible for the bank’s diversity and inclusion functions.
