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NAACP

The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.


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Land of the Free, Home of the Capitalism Didn’t Fail America. America Failed to Moderate Capitalism
Monopoly's mr. monopoly in a graffiti collage
Photo by Artur Ament on Unsplash

Land of the Free, Home of the Capitalism Didn’t Fail America. America Failed to Moderate Capitalism

The signs are everywhere. For many Americans, buying power has improved only modestly despite decades of economic growth. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. We have reached a level of wealth inequality last seen almost a hundred years ago. By many measures, our capitalist economy seems to have failed to deliver broadly shared prosperity.

However, the failure isn’t with the free market as an economic approach. Instead, it’s our failure to regulate and moderate the free market, or more accurately, that we have spent 40 years undermining or removing the regulations of the New Deal that made our economy work for more Americans.

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Woman putting savings in a white piggy bank.

America’s economy now rewards asset ownership over wages. A policy proposal: a $35,000 Birthright Account for every child, and how it could be funded.

Guido Mieth/Getty Images

The American Dream Needs a New Economic Operating System

It is, by now, not an exaggeration to state that the traditional American Dream—work hard, buy a house, raise a family, and retire securely—is failing. It was built for a labor-based economy in which steadily rising wages allowed ordinary families to accumulate wealth. But America has become an asset-based economy, and ownership of those assets is extraordinarily concentrated.

Since the 1980s, the returns from capital have far outpaced the returns from labor. Inflation-adjusted wages for ordinary workers have risen only modestly, while the real value of equities has multiplied many times over. Housing, education, healthcare and childcare costs have soared, employment has become less secure, and defined-benefit pensions have largely disappeared. Even two-income households with respectable jobs often struggle to buy a home, build savings and accumulate enough for retirement.

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Man wearing Trump hat watches Trump on TV

Trump’s 10-to-1 rule aims to cut red tape, but fewer regulations can mean weaker food safety, Head Start services, and checks on presidential power.

Wu Xiaoling/Xinhua via Getty Images

Trump’s 10-to-1 Rule Gives the Presidency Too Much Power

We only think about the plumbing in our homes when something goes wrong. The same is true for government bureaucracy. Rules, procedures, and bureaucrats operate largely out of sight, making sure food is safe, Social Security checks arrive, workplaces are safe, and children with disabilities receive the services promised to them by law. Yes, there is plenty of red tape in government, just as an old house can accumulate pipes that no longer serve much purpose. But ripping out pipes simply because there are too many of them is not much of a plumbing strategy. Yet the Trump administration has made the number of federal regulations it eliminates a measure of success. That raises a more important question: When does cutting bureaucracy stop making government more efficient and start making it less capable?

1. The Case for Cutting Red Tape

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