Who has a grand scheme for addressing inequality in America?

from TomPaine.com:


The Vision Thing
Alan Jenkins, TomPaine.com
November 07, 2007


Alan Jenkins is Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research, and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Brian D. Smedley, of "All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time."


One year from now, our country will choose a new president. And while the candidates have debated extensively on individual issues like health care, the war, the economy, and the environment, they have offered far less in terms of a positive, overarching vision for our country that both addresses and transcends individual issues.

While candidates' positions on the issues of the day are crucially important, it's equally important to take their measure on what George H. W. Bush called "the vision thing": the clarity of ideals, values, and principles that inspire and shape a president's approach to a broad range of issues, including ones that no one could have anticipated on the day he or she was elected.

A new book by The Opportunity Agenda offers such a vision on the domestic front; one to which we hope the presidential contenders of both parties will respond. Not surprisingly, that vision centers on opportunity, the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. In the book "All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time," a dozen leading thinkers paint a picture of what opportunity means in our society, where we are falling short, and what must be done to instigate opportunity for all. Their vision bridges myriad issues—education, employment, housing, criminal justice, immigration, health care, human rights—and disciplines—public health, economics, criminology, law, sociology, psychology, education, social work. The authors provide a clear and hopeful path to the future, a wake-up call to our nation's current and future leaders, and concrete solutions that promise to carry us forward.

As I've written before in this column, opportunity is not just a set of national conditions, but a body of national values: economic security, mobility, a voice in decisions that affect us, a chance to start over after missteps or misfortune, and a shared sense of responsibility for each other-as members of a common society. Analyzing their own and others' research through the lens of those values, the authors of All Things Being Equal warn that opportunity is increasingly at risk for all Americans and, therefore, for our country as a whole. They find that many communities are facing multiple barriers to opportunity that cannot be overcome through personal effort alone. But, most importantly, they find that we have it in our power as a country to turn those trends around.

A chapter by economist Jared Bernstein reveals that intergenerational economic mobility-American families' ability to improve their economic condition over time-is hamstrung in our country. Bernstein finds, for example, that it would take a poor family of four with two children approximately nine to ten generations-over two hundred years-to achieve the income of middle-income four-member families. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/11/07/the_vision_thing.php