How the Poor Can Save Capitalism

I strongly recommend:  How the  Poor Can Save Capitalism a book by John Hope Bryant. The nature of the book means that he could have said:  and vice-versa.  At 150 pages it is a quick read and very interesting.

I believe that the disparity of incomes is a serious and growing problem.  It is inextricably bound up with race, but not entirely a problem of race.  I like what he does in that Bryant accepts both of these aspects of the problem.  As many have noted before, there are more poor whites than blacks in America.  A main theme is that if the only role models you have are sports stars, movie stars and drug dealers, then your prospects are not very good.

He rejects both:  the mantra that the poor just need to change their culture

and 

the theme that the poor only need for the rich to give them more money.

He notes that the poor do not know how to deal with finance and how that drags them down from the outset.

He says that the poor need self-confidence, role models, and opportunity. He proposes private and public initiatives to deal with this - hitting first on financial literacy as a root cause of the problem.  For more on this see: operation hope

With the support of a number of bankers for his capitalistic approach (which gives him credibility on the right) and Bill Clinton and Andrew Young (who give him credibility on the left) he represents an attempt to solve a problem by reaching across the great divide.

Even the effort is refreshing.