How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class - Hardcover

Bryant, John Hope

 
9781626560321: How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1626560323 ISBN 13: 9781626560321
Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

A successful entrepreneur and nonprofit founder shares his plan of action to help the American economy by assisting America’s poor.

John Hope Bryant, successful self-made businessman and founder of the nonprofit Operation HOPE, says business and political leaders are ignoring the one force that could truly re-energize the stalled American economy: the poor. If we give poor communities the right tools, policies, and inspiration, he argues, they will be able to lift themselves up into the middle class and become a new generation of customers and entrepreneurs.

Raised in poverty-stricken, gang-infested South Central Los Angeles, Bryant saw firsthand how our institutions have abandoned the poor. He details how business loans, home loans, and financial investments have vanished from their communities. After decades of deprivation, the poor lack bank accounts, decent credit scores, and any real firsthand experience of how a healthy free enterprise system functions.

Bryant radically redefines the meaning of poverty and wealth. (It’s not just a question of finances; it’s values too.) He exposes why attempts to aid the poor so far have fallen short and offers a way forward: the HOPE Plan, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.

Fully seventy percent of the American economy is driven by consumer spending, but more and more people have too much month at the end of their money. John Hope Bryant aspires to “expand the philosophy of free enterprise to include all of God's children” and create a thriving economy that works not just for the one percent or even the ninety-nine percent but for the one hundred percent. This is a free enterprise approach to solving the problem of poverty and raising up a new America.

“Economic immobility is the defining issue of America in the twenty-first century. John Hope Bryant makes an engaging case for why we must make our economy work for everyone. How the Poor Can Save Capitalism is a must-read for business leaders, policymakers, and community leaders who want to make the American Dream a reality for all our children.” —Ben Jealous, former CEO, NAACP

“John and I want the same things. And the goals of this book are the same goals of my Rebuild the Dream campaign. He has provided the road map to economic recovery for this country at a time when economic inequality is at its peak. I, for one, will be following the steps laid out in the HOPE Plan.” —Van Jones, former Presidential Advisor to Barack Obama and current host of CNN’s Crossfire

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Hope Bryant is an entrepreneur, author, and advisor and one of the nation’s most recognized empowerment leaders. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies. Recognized as one of Time magazine’s “50 for the Future” leaders, Bryant is the author of Love Leadership and is the only African-American bestselling business author. He served as chairman of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, Subcommittee on the Underserved and Community Empowerment, and was appointed by President Obama in 2014 as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans. He is also cofounder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the United States.

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CHAPTER ONE

Separate, Unequal America
I am aiming to turn upside down some “truths” about the economy, jobs, where wealth comes from, and who stands to gain the most if we tap the armies of ignored and “inconvenient” poor and working poor who are presently left on the sidelines. We have some big problems and challenges to address, but despite what we might hear on the evening news, the United States remains the largest economy in the world, at approximately $16 trillion in annual gross domestic product.1 Our best years are not behind us. We have enormous human resources of wealth creation and opportunity just waiting to be unleashed.

The future of our economic story fully depends on overturning these powerful myths about how the economy works for the rich, the poor, the middle class, and everyone in between. We are all called to leave our comfortable assumptions and to arrest the crumbling of the American dream that built this country in the first place.

For instance, consumers—not businesses or governments—power the bulk of our massive economy, with fully 70 percent of the economy dependent on consumer spending.2 This means that you and I are driving the largest economy in the world, by purchasing everything from iced cappuccinos to ice shovels, from gas to put in our cars to the cars themselves. Sustained economic growth and the fortunes of the other 30 percent of the economy represented by businesses and governments, therefore, depends on the economic vibrancy of ordinary consumers, most of whom are not wealthy.

Even so, these ordinary Americans are much more reliable spenders than the wealthy; the bottom 80 percent of the American workforce spends 90 percent of its income, whereas the wealthiest 1 percent spends only 49 percent.3 The average American cannot afford not to spend the bulk of his or her paycheck on the basic necessities of living, but the rich simply make too much to spend it all. Ordinary Americans are the coal that feeds our economic locomotive, and if Wall Street, banks, and large corporations are going to make their numbers and increase their wealth, they need this segment of the economy to become more economically strong and stable. This invariably means expanding opportunity through well-paying jobs and small businesses, along with financial inclusion and know-how.

But the “bottom” 80 percent of consumers, the backbone of the economy, owns only 11 percent of the nation’s money.4 We’re now building the consumer-driven 70 percent of our economic growth on the backs of those who have only a 7 percent stake in the system, and as many as ten million of these consumer households don’t even have a bank account.5 When the poor, the underserved, and the struggling middle class start feeling uneasy about the future, or when they are out of work or out of money, they stop spending on consumer products. And when they stop doing this, everything else stops as well.

The people driving our economy get little regard, less respect, and almost no consideration for doing so. Although the system works well for some, it is leaving many behind, and as a result it is understandably coming to an end.

What might happen if we instead place faith and confidence in and support those who can actually lift our economy—who already do, through their consumer spending alone? Just imagine if we viewed the poor as something other than a tool to be used, taken advantage of, and taken for granted. What if we actually valued the poor? After all, the rich need the poor, if for no other reason than to remain rich themselves.

Helping the Poor to Transform America
We must value the poor and, through them, transform America. As Dr. King said in his 1964 Nobel lecture, “No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’” Dr. King was referring to Matthew 25:40, where Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” I believe Dr. King was both morally correct and economically profound.

We don’t have to settle for capitalism the way we have it, or the way it’s been. We can refashion and reimagine capitalism as we would have it, and then do something other than complain about it. We can finally make free enterprise and capitalism actually work for the poor, the struggling classes, and the least of God’s children. The world has never tried it at scale, but this is precisely my plan. In this plan, everyone gets a role to play, not just the president and other elected officials, big business, or big banks. This is our country, our world, and our communities, and if change is to come, we must drive that change.

Reimagining the Poor
So the first myth that we need to overturn is the idea that poor people are somehow not relevant to our economic growth. The second myth is that the poor somehow did this to themselves—that they are all bums and deserve to be poor because they’re lazy, have bad habits, or possess a horrible work ethic. Our logic then follows: “Why should I help someone who deserves what they got?” That would make perfect sense, if it were true.

Even I used to think this way. Growing up black in the inner city, in a diverse neighborhood of striving and struggling families, attending public school, I had to find a way to deal with all the dynamics that came my way on a daily basis, to deal with difficult people, and to negotiate myself out of almost any tough situation. I was never the biggest kid, or the toughest, and, unlike the rich of this nation, I could not build the equivalent of a gate around my existence, so I had to try to be the smartest kid. One of the ways I dealt with what I saw, then, was through rationalization. I thought I understood poverty. I convinced myself that the poor people I saw were all bums and I had a dozen reasons to be against them. I now know I was wrong, and I also know that to rationalize is to tell rational lies. I was only fooling myself. And this is the worst deceit.

What I didn’t understand was all the external factors that helped me to avoid becoming one of “them.” I had a mother who told me she loved me and a father who was the role model I needed to see in business. I had a banker come into my classroom when I was nine years old and unpack the mysterious world of free enterprise and capitalism, explaining to me the “language of money,” financial literacy. I was so totally focused on dreams and was so hopeful about my future that I seldom noticed the actual causes of all the drama and mayhem that surrounded me on a daily basis—lack of financial literacy, lack of access to banking and credit, lack of real estate ownership, lack of role models and opportunity. Lack of self-esteem.

I didn’t get out because I was the brightest or most talented kid on my block. I knew plenty of brighter, more talented kids who ended up on an economic dead end or even just plain dead. I got out and did well because of the hope factor that surrounded and encompassed my life. But when this magic doesn’t happen in a kid’s life, and when the factors that actually drain opportunity happen often enough, then kids begin to lose hope. And the most dangerous person in the world is a person with no hope.

When enough people are deprived of hope often enough and for long enough periods of time, then a community’s culture itself gets hijacked. Hijacked by thugs and thug culture. Hijacked by all the elements and the operators who seize on and even live on that loss of hope. Over time, people, cultures, and communities respond internally to how they are treated externally. Tell someone they aren’t valuable or important and, in...

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Verlag
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1626560323
ISBN 13 
9781626560321
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
176
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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