Economic Opportunity issues

Keeping the American Dream alive in the   21st Century means making sure families can still get ahead and join the middle class.

We know how the American Dream is supposed to work. A family of limited means works hard, plays fair, and lives frugally. Eventually, the family saves enough to buy a house or open a business. Within a generation or two, that family is firmly part of the middle class.

The deal should be the same today as it has been in the past: people who work hard and take responsibility should not be prevented from getting ahead by any barrier the public sector has the power to remove. So how can government help families meet today’s challenges? What is the 21st Century equivalent of the Homestead Act or the GI Bill?

We have to start by thinking differently, because the old approaches don’t work any more. On one hand, we can no longer pretend simply cutting taxes and shrinking government leads to prosperity, because that strategy leaves society powerless to help solve many of the problems families face today. On the other hand, we can no longer say it is enough to lift people above the poverty line, because there is a big difference between making a family a little less poor and actually helping it enter the middle class.

We should fight poverty, of course, because 10 percent of Colorado’s families – and almost 13 percent of Colorado’s children – still live below the federal poverty line. But at least twice as many of our families and children live in the economic no-man’s-land between the federal poverty line and actual self-sufficiency. We must address their challenges, too, by ensuring that hard work pays and that necessities like housing, child care and health care are affordable.

And we should make sure that, as low-income families continue to climb toward self-sufficiency, they also can begin to save and build assets, because that is how they will ultimately leave dependency behind for good, join the middle class and achieve the American Dream.

Take these links to read more:

Minimum wage | Self-sufficiency | Public assistance | Housing

Unemployment insurance | Predatory "payday" lending

Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) | Individual Development Accounts (IDAs)

Bell Policy Center 2004 annual report: Opportunity Lost: When Hard Work Isn't Enough for Colorado's Families

Quick links to:

The Bell's Cycle of Opportunity

The Self-Sufficiency Standard

Economic Opportunity Gateways
8. Earning a Decent Living and Building Wealth
9. A Financially Secure and Healthy Retirement

Bell experts
Rich Jones, Director of Policy and Research
Robin Baker, Senior Policy Analyst

Economic Opportunity links & resources

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What's New

Colorado's minimum wage rises to $7.02 per hour starting Jan. 1, 2008

From the Fort Collins Coloradoan:

Restaurauteurs fear impact of wage hike
by Pat Ferrier
Dec. 16, 2007

The increased pay rate has allowed those working at minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, said Rich Jones, director of policy and research at the Bell Policy Center in Denver.

From that standpoint, they are better off, he said. Those making just more than the minimum wage likely received a pay bump as employers sought to preserve pay differential between jobs, he said.

Read the whole story

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Earned Income Tax Credit effort is admirable
State Rep. John Kefalas' heart is in the right place even if the state budget isn't.
Kefalas wants to restore the earned income tax credit to help Colorado's working poor residents.

Editorial in the Fort Collins Coloradoan, June 19, 2007