The Myth That Made Us

July 24, 2023
The belief that “success goes to those who work hard” and “failure goes to those who do not” obfuscates the difficulty of rising up the economic ladder in the U.S., according to this incisive study. Economist Fuhrer (editor of Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy) carefully deconstructs this myth and discusses discriminatory policies designed to disadvantage people of color, such as the exclusion of domestic and agricultural workers, who were disproportionately likely to be people of color, from New Deal minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. Profiles of people struggling to get by add nuance to statistics on the lack of upward mobility in the U.S., as when Fuhrer notes a study that found families in the lowest-earning quintile had only a 3% chance of making it to the highest over a 10 year span and tells the story of a mother of three who lives in a northern suburb of Boston and struggles to pay bills while undergoing cancer treatment. To create a more equitable economy, the author recommends “focusing on early childhood education, more effective use of our community college system, restructuring the workplace, providing much more affordable housing,... and instituting baby bonds and reparations.” The troubling interviews and statistics underscore the difficulty of “making it” in America, and the proposed solutions are pragmatic and well considered. Readers will be outraged by this scathing indictment of America’s failure to live up to its meritocratic ideals.

August 1, 2023
An expos� of the many barriers marginalized people face in gaining access to the so-called American dream. "We claim that we live in a land of opportunity, when in fact we have systematically denied opportunity for centuries," writes Fuhrer, a foundation fellow at the Eastern Bank Foundation. The myth of the title is less a single yarn than the tangled mass of threads that comprise systemic racism in economic life--though if it were to be reduced to a single falsehood, it's that each of us has the same opportunities to work and grow rich. It should be no surprise that the playing field is anything but level and that "the array of policies that were designed to build wealth for white families" is largely unavailable to anyone else. For individuals, the inequalities begin in childhood, with a huge differential in the accessibility of pediatric health care and educational and social support systems for early childhood development to minority and white populations. One of many hurdles, writes Fuhrer, is that the years of early childhood care tend to be the years of lowest earning, which means that the ability to borrow funds is constricted and the need for assistance greatest. A free-marketer fundamentalist may be shocked by Fuhrer's program of remedies. Apart from increasing access to day care programs, for example, he recommends installing "school-to-work educational programs" that would serve as pipelines by which individuals with the necessary skills are steered from community college or trade school to jobs, with the costs borne by taxpayers and industry alike. He also recommends raising the minimum wage and, to make that possible, giving large tax breaks to the small businesses that might otherwise be harmed by the cost burden. Following Fuhrer's tally sheet will surely make a libertarian blanch, but it's an interesting back-of-the-envelope exercise in balancing costs and return on investment. A thoughtful call for equality of economic opportunity, both provocative and, in the end, eminently practical.

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