Resource Category: Solutions

As part of its Financial Security Program, the Aspen Institute has proposed a new goal for mobilizing action to increase wealth-building and economic security for all Americans. The goal states: “By 2050, we must increase by ten-fold the wealth of households of color and those in the bottom half of the wealth distribution in the United States.” Using that goal as a jumping off point, The New Wealth Agenda details action steps within eight objectives to achieve this goal, such as supporting baseline financial security, increasing retirement assets, resolving debt issues, and creating wealth-building career pathways.

As a universal, race-conscious program, Baby Bonds present an opportunity to establish economic security as a birth right for all Americans. Baby Bonds programs, like Senator Cory Booker’s Opportunity Accounts proposal, are a wealth building program that provides accounts funded by the federal government to every infant at birth. Typically, they are means-tested to determine the amount of seed money the government puts in each family’s account and Booker’s Opportunity Accounts policy adds restrictions on use of funds and age at which the funds can be accessed.

This book from French scholar Thomas Piketty repackages some of his more dense, academic research into a book that is accessible for general audiences.

While Piketty is known for his work ringing the alarm about the inequality-enhancing effects of free market capitalism, this book argues that over the longer-sweep of history, most nations have actually made some progress in advancing economic equality over the past 100-200 years. Some unwinding of inequality came through unfortunate circumstances like war and national disaster, but much of it came through effective social and political movements, dismantling colonialism, passing progressive tax reform, and building social welfare states.