Reclaiming the American Dream: Proven Solutions for Creating Economic Opportunity for All - Softcover

Everyone has their vision of the American Dream and if the United States is to realize that dream, it needs surefire ways to bring the best ideas to scale. This is the ultimate value of Ben Hecht's book. He identifies with clarity and force recipes for successful approaches that we know work. Ben's compelling and optimistic case studies show that committing to embracing evidence-based solutions and taking them to scale is the best way of ensure equity, inclusion, and a better life for all. This text is a gift to America.--Nancy L. Zimpher, Chancellor, The State University of New York Knocking down barriers to the American Dream is the best thing we can do to build a stronger country and a more just society. Doing it requires a dedicated national effort and, as Ben shows, it can be led from the ground up.--Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and former mayor of New York City Ben Hecht's captivating book clearly lays out a series of powerful and achievable cures for our nation's ills. He has identified smart, sound strategies that if adopted everywhere would make a difference to millions of Americans, right now. Our challenge is clear.--Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation Ben Hecht's understanding that wealth and job creation can emanate from a start-up economy that focuses on challenged cities and enfranchises women and people of color is one of the many insights in this important book. He is able to explain the underpinnings of our increasing inequality and the most innovative approaches to addressing the dislocations caused by our changing economy with authority and a sense of hopefulness that our public discourse sorely needs.--Don Katz, Founder and CEO, Audible Ben Hecht has exposed one of America's greatest secrets: we already have proven solutions to many of our greatest problems. We just need them to be adopted everywhere. This book is the blueprint we all need to do that.--Michael A. Nutter, former mayor of Philadelphia

A blueprint for community-based solutions to economic inequality in America. Contrary to popular belief-and despite widespread pessimism that the American Dream is a dying concept-solutions that can remake the United States into the land of economic opportunity for all already exist. Over the past ten years, Ben Hecht has watched leaders in local communities, fed up with the political paralysis in Washington, D.C., and unable to ignore growing disparities in their own backyards, experiment with new ways of solving old problems. The twelve strategies highlighted in this book emerged from that experimentation. Taken together, they outline a blueprint for a new way of working that will rekindle the promise of America everywhere: better education, increased income and wealth, expanded access to opportunity, and more. These strategies are not academic theories or one-offs only possible in wealthy, coastal cities. Each strategy has been proven to get results time and time again-many of them, in fact, in hundreds of urban and rural communities. Each chapter highlights the stories of the real people who are making change happen. In rural Southwest Texas, Luis Silos recently graduated from high school having earned both a high school diploma and an associate's degree, at no cost. He joins tens of thousands of students across twenty-eight states who have benefited from similar efforts. In St. Paul, Minneapolis, a down-payment assistance and flexible mortgage program enabled Jon Li to not only achieve his dream of homeownership but to generate enough income and wealth to launch his own business that supports sixty workers. More than 50,000 Americans in forty-eight states have had similar success, building more than $20,000 in equity, on average, in the process. Every one of these proposed solutions can be implemented without any changes in laws or regulations. The barriers to implementation are simply resistance on the part of individuals to change their own behaviors. Each of us-whether as an elected leader, engaged resident, corporate CEO, philanthropist, or investor-can act right now to take the future into our own hands and help to level the playing field for struggling Americans, everywhere. Above all, this book provides optimism at a time when so many Americans fear for the economic future of their families and the nation.