Download or read book Creating an Opportunity Society written by Ron Haskins and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Nation of Opportunity written by National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (U.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Just and Generous Nation written by Harold Holzer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Nation of Opportunity written by DIANE Publishing Company and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Nation of Opportunity written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Anti Oligarchy Constitution written by Joseph Fishkin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Geography of Opportunity written by Xavier de Souza Briggs and published by James A. Johnson Metro Series. This book was released on 2005 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A multidisciplinary examination of the social and economic changes resulting from increased diversity and their implications for economic opportunity and growth given persistent patterns of segregation by race and class, offering both public policy and private initiatives that would respond to those challenges"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Dynamics of Opportunity in America written by Irwin Kirsch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Nation of Widening Opportunities written by Ellen D. Katz and published by Michigan Publishing Services. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Our Kids written by Robert D. Putnam and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--
Download or read book The Forgotten Americans written by Isabel Sawhill and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Although many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and the 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.
Download or read book Dream Hoarders written by Richard V. Reeves and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Nation by Design written by Aristide R. ZOLBERG and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the national mythology, the United States has long opened its doors to people from across the globe, providing a port in a storm and opportunity for any who seek it. Yet the history of immigration to the United States is far different. Even before the xenophobic reaction against European and Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, social and economic interest groups worked to manipulate immigration policy to serve their needs. In A Nation by Design, Aristide Zolberg explores American immigration policy from the colonial period to the present, discussing how it has been used as a tool of nation building. A Nation by Design argues that the engineering of immigration policy has been prevalent since early American history. However, it has gone largely unnoticed since it took place primarily on the local and state levels, owing to constitutional limits on federal power during the slavery era. Zolberg profiles the vacillating currents of opinion on immigration throughout American history, examining separately the roles played by business interests, labor unions, ethnic lobbies, and nativist ideologues in shaping policy. He then examines how three different types of migration--legal migration, illegal migration to fill low-wage jobs, and asylum-seeking--are shaping contemporary arguments over immigration to the United States. A Nation by Design is a thorough, authoritative account of American immigration history and the political and social factors that brought it about. With rich detail and impeccable scholarship, Zolberg's book shows how America has struggled to shape the immigration process to construct the kind of population it desires.
Download or read book The Opportunity Trap written by Pallavi Banerjee and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America's Book Award on Asian America Honorable Mention, 2024 Social Science Category Book Awards, given by the Association for Asian American Studies Honorable Mention, 2022 Betty and McClung Lee Book Award, given by the Association for Humanist Sociology Unravels how US visa laws fail Indian professional workers and their legally dependent spouses and families The Opportunity Trap is the first book to look at the impact of the H-4 dependent visa programs on women and men visa holders in Indian families in America. Comparing two distinct groups of Indian immigrant families —families of male high-tech workers and female nurses—Pallavi Banerjee reveals how visa policies that are legally gender and race neutral in fact have gendered and racialized ramifications for visa holders and their spouses. Drawing on interviews with fifty-five Indian couples, Banerjee highlights the experiences of high-skilled immigrants as they struggle to cope with visa laws, which forbid their spouses from working paid jobs. She examines how these unfair restrictions destabilize—if not completely dismantle—families, who often break under this marital, financial, and emotional stress. Banerjee shows us, through the eyes of immigrants themselves, how the visa process strips them of their rights, forcing them to depend on their spouses and the government in fundamentally challenging ways. The Opportunity Trap provides a critical look at our visa system, underscoring how it fails immigrant families.
Download or read book A Nation for All written by Alejandro de la Fuente and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After thirty years of anticolonial struggle against Spain and four years of military occupation by the United States, Cuba formally became an independent republic in 1902. The nationalist coalition that fought for Cuba's freedom, a movement in which blacks and mulattoes were well represented, had envisioned an egalitarian and inclusive country--a nation for all, as Jose Marti described it. But did the Cuban republic, and later the Cuban revolution, live up to these expectations? Tracing the formation and reformulation of nationalist ideologies, government policies, and different forms of social and political mobilization in republican and postrevolutionary Cuba, Alejandro de la Fuente explores the opportunities and limitations that Afro-Cubans experienced in such areas as job access, education, and political representation. Challenging assumptions of both underlying racism and racial democracy, he contends that racism and antiracism coexisted within Cuban nationalism and, in turn, Cuban society. This coexistence has persisted to this day, despite significant efforts by the revolutionary government to improve the lot of the poor and build a nation that was truly for all.
Download or read book My Underground American Dream written by Julissa Arce and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Bestseller! What does an undocumented immigrant look like? What kind of family must she come from? How could she get into this country? What is the true price she must pay to remain in the United States? JULISSA ARCE knows firsthand that the most common, preconceived answers to those questions are sometimes far too simple-and often just plain wrong. On the surface, Arce's story reads like a how-to manual for achieving the American dream: growing up in an apartment on the outskirts of San Antonio, she worked tirelessly, achieved academic excellence, and landed a coveted job on Wall Street, complete with a six-figure salary. The level of professional and financial success that she achieved was the very definition of the American dream. But in this brave new memoir, Arce digs deep to reveal the physical, financial, and emotional costs of the stunning secret that she, like many other high-achieving, successful individuals in the United States, had been forced to keep not only from her bosses, but even from her closest friends. From the time she was brought to this country by her hardworking parents as a child, Arce-the scholarship winner, the honors college graduate, the young woman who climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs-had secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant. In this surprising, at times heart-wrenching, but always inspirational personal story of struggle, grief, and ultimate redemption, Arce takes readers deep into the little-understood world of a generation of undocumented immigrants in the United States today- people who live next door, sit in your classrooms, work in the same office, and may very well be your boss. By opening up about the story of her successes, her heartbreaks, and her long-fought journey to emerge from the shadows and become an American citizen, Arce shows us the true cost of achieving the American dream-from the perspective of a woman who had to scale unseen and unimaginable walls to get there.
Download or read book A Nation of Immigrants written by John Fitzgerald Kennedy and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1964 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the struggles of successive waves of immigrants who came to America and includes the President's plea for a complete revision of our immigration law. The late President expounds the need for an enlargement of our narrow immigration laws. His book expresses an ideal defined by Washington in the first years of the Republic: that America should always be a "propitious asylum for the unfortunates of other countries."
