Access Issue

Who has access to prosperity? And can Washington help?

Welcome to the Access Issue.

By STEPHEN HEUSER and MAURA REYNOLDS

The bedrock idea supporting the American social contract is a belief in equal opportunity—that every citizen starts life with an equal chance for happiness and success. But increasingly, opportunity in America depends on where you live.

The United States has always had richer communities and poorer communities, but for much of its history, all boats rose together, and the differences between one place and another were diminishing. No longer. Starting around 1980, economic growth began to concentrate more in some communities than in others, and even whole regions began to diverge. Over the next four decades, it was the wealthy places that saw virtually all increases in household income, new jobs and new businesses. Many of the others saw no growth at all.

Today, the geography of opportunity in America has become woefully uneven, and those disparities are a big part of what’s driving the current period of social unease and political discord.

In this issue of The Agenda—the second installment of our “Future of Prosperity” series—we tackle the question of how to make sure all Americans have access to the kind of good jobs, affordable housing and reliable transportation that are the building blocks of economic mobility and financial security. The picture is a vivid one, as you can see in our graphic guide to America’s growing inequality. The policy equation involves three factors that aren’t always in alignment: good jobs, affordable housing and reliable transportation to connect them.

To come up with solutions that both Republicans and Democrats can embrace, The Agenda convened a working group of 14 top-level thinkers, decision-makers and experts from around the country. The discussion, held under Chatham House rules to promote candor, identified several tools federal policymakers can use to promote opportunity in places that need it—everything from credential reform to benefits portability to fixing the sewers. Read about those and more in our eight-page working group report, “The Geography of Opportunity,” which we’re also publishing as a downloadable PDF.

We assigned reporters to dive into several factors in the opportunity equation. POLITICO transportation reporter Tanya Snyder explored the transit landscape of one of America’s most iconic and most troubled cities, New Orleans, riding buses and hopping streetcars to report on how federal aid fell short as the city rebuilt from Katrina—and how a new mayor is trying a fresh, jobs-focused approach. POLITICO’s Lorraine Woellert finds that house-buying is an arena becoming more and more tilted toward the “haves,” a challenge that hits young adults particularly hard. And policy writer Danny Vinik uncovers a shortcoming of the Opportunity Zones law, a promising new policy intended to help lift up distressed areas, but with a major hole that may prevent us from ever knowing if it works. And POLITICO housing reporter Katy O’Donnell finds six ways that federal policymakers can help make housing more affordable for middle-class Americans.

Finally, we offer two groundbreaking sets of ideas from policy thinkers for helping Americans get ahead and build wealth. In the first, researchers Joseph Blasi and Maureen Conway explore the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality and provide three out-of-the-box policy solutions for how Washington can help more Americans build the kind of financial assets that provide true economic stability. And Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute argues that the best way to help low-income or nonworking Americans get out of poverty may be for the federal government to subsidize their wages—a policy that would also improve the economies of disadvantaged communities.