Restoring Equal Opportunity To The Top Of The Government’s Agenda

What My New Book, Abandoned, Is All About

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Since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the United States has struggled to acknowledge the demands of a society where all people are “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” For much of that history, equal opportunity for all has been a beacon calling us forward.

By the late 19th century, the United States had become the richest nation on Earth, particularly when compared to aristocratic and dictatorial societies abroad. This ascent was largely driven by efforts to enhance each citizen’s human, real, and financial “wealth” through education, land, housing, workplace skills, and entrepreneurship. The democratic sharing of wealth, along with the decision-making power it provided, boosted the creativity and productivity of the nation, benefiting not just individuals but society as a whole. While there were many mistakes and inequities, the overall trajectory of inclusive wealth accumulation offered hope that we were on the right path.

That hope has faded in recent decades. Historians and social scientists do not agree on dates or causes, but data on the growing inequality of wealth and market income tell much of the story. Stagnant wage growth for much of the working class increases the number of people disaffected from society and compounds suffering from diseases of despair, such as opioid addiction and suicide. Young people face a significant decline in upward mobility relative to their parents and in their share of national wealth. Black people have experienced the first period since the end of the Civil War, including the Jim Crow era, where their already low financial wealth has not grown relative to that of whites. These trends are new and markedly different from most of our history.

Even more ominously, our government has scheduled them to continue permanently, albeit impossibly, into the future. They already pose a real threat to our democracy, and, if unchecked, will continue to manifest in unexpected ways well beyond dysfunctional government.

These developments feed an increasing disillusionment that seriously threatens our sense of equity and our very governability. For too many, their dignity and identity, not just their finances, are under severe threat.

My book, Abandoned, addresses this menace. However, we must first accurately define its causes. This is a challenge, given a political and media landscape that promotes a bipolar view of the world. Each pole employs its own alternative facts and a blaming narrative, which discourages any sense of shared understanding, let alone responsibility, among citizens. It’s also a challenge to expand public attention beyond our troubled time to the longer history of how we got here. For instance, even the budget-busting bill enacted in July 2025 is only the latest in a decades-long series.

We must recognize the real issues threatening our democracy and our government’s role in perpetuating them, and take action accordingly. It's about looking beyond entrenched ideologies, failed theories, and the endless movement along familiar paths that, despite their past merit, make no sense by either conservative or progressive standards.

Most of us recognize that the numbers presented by our politicians do not add up, but we must now insist on confronting reality if we are to determine a better path for all Americans. Doing so requires recognizing and then addressing the following connections:

• Our inability to address our fiscal mess has resulted in unprecedented levels of wealth inequality, not merely debt.

• In playing Santa Claus, both parties have avoided the difficult choices that could help us improve.

• The debate over the growth of income inequality has become muddled: an increase in government income transfers obscures the extraordinary growth in wage inequality and other market incomes. In other words, government transfers do not equality make.

• From Reagan to Trump to Biden and back to Trump, federal government spending, tax, and lending policies have primarily fostered wealth for the wealthy and consumption for the masses, while failing to promote wealth ownership, including expertise or human capital, for all.

• Student debt, unsustainable growth in health costs, declines in the relative wealth of working families, government budget shortfalls, and numerous other factors weave together as threads of the same tapestry.

• Growing wealth inequality and an increasingly dependent and restless population are intimately intertwined.

• The big losers, including the working class, the young, and Black and Hispanic individuals who occupy large shares of the working class, are driven by purveyors of falsehoods into political opposition, despite sharing the same sense of abandonment by our government.

• None of the ongoing efforts at industrial policy, tariffs, immigration policy, or, worse yet, “retribution” has significantly aided these neglected populations, and most have caused harm.

Real, inflation-adjusted, federal domestic spending per person is now more than 2.5 times what it was in 1980, while total government spending and tax subsidies at all levels exceed $90,000 per household. Much of my book demonstrates how we can achieve significantly better outcomes with the growing public and private resources produced by a growing economy. One prerequisite is that we move away from our current unsustainable, inefficient, and inequitable path.

Real federal domestic spending per person is now more than 2.5 times what it was in 1980, while total government spending and tax subsidies at all levels exceed $90,000 per household.

Neither political party believes it can acknowledge how, together, they have made too many poorly targeted promises for low taxes and high spending growth. Reform requires both restoring fiscal democracy, thereby allowing choices to be made once again for the long-term future, and then dedicating a significant share of new resources toward more inclusive wealth ownership and equal opportunity for all.