Reclaiming the American dream : proven solutions for creating economic opportunity for all / Ben Hecht.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Enabling Opportunity Through Education. Enable high school students to earn free college degrees
Graduate all enrolled college students
Build a path to a degree for workers on the job
Fix the education system, cradle to career
Increasing Income Through Jobs. Support people who will start and grow companies
Use all of the assets of place
Increasing Wealth Through Homeownership. Expand access to homeownership
Creating Opportunity Through Access. Harness the benefits of shared-use mobility
Bring affordable high-speed Internet access to everyone
Strengthening the Civic Fabric and Our Commitment to the Greater Good. Foster the effectiveness of government
Deepen individual engagement in government and community
Enable the long view

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.