Growing the Economy from the Bottom Up is America’s Best Bet

America is held at a crossroads. We can try to get our way out of an imminent budget crisis – services reduction services, tightening belts and walls approaching the American dream.

Or we can choose a different path: one of expansion, inclusion and opportunity. I call this approach “raising the third”, a national strategy to economically empower the third at least Americans in all breeds and horizons, urban and rural – turning them in stakeholders, owners and new capitalists in the promise of this country.

For decades, America has developed by building itself from the middle and from the top to the bottom. But the environment shrinks, and the summit has become too narrow base to support the weight of our shared aspirations. Meanwhile, around 70% of our population lives the pay check at the pay check or worse, and if you can believe it, around 50% of those who earn $ 100,000 per year, and even a third of those who earn up to $ 250,000 per year. And for those who are at the bottom, it is largely, I found, not because they are lazy, or lack talent or dynamism, but because they do not have access to capital, opportunity and belief.

Imagine what’s going on if we reverse this. If we take the 100 million Americans who are too often counted and allowing them to create companies, have houses, increase their credit dimensions, invest in education and participate in the market as producers, not only consumers. Do not close the American Department of Education – Give yourself a new radical mission of training at the third background of America for AI, technology, skills based on skills and age of information from the future. And this new economic growth could help increase the GDP of low -low asset by 2% to 3% per year, to rule out the budgetary crisis, to lower the deficit and to grow in America as well.

After the Second World War, America did not withdraw, it spread. The GI bill sent millions to university and the middle class. Infrastructure projects such as the connected interstate motorway system the communities and the connected trade. Even Moshot has poured billions in high -tech research and development that have given birth to entire industries. We grew up in leadership. We did not fear the investment, we have adopted it.

But this prosperity was not shared. Black and brown Americans were largely excluded from many of these opportunities, and white Americans in poor rural areas were left by globalization. Consequently, we have built an economy on an incomplete basis.

If the third of the lower Americans were included in the dominant economic current – with a credit score of 700 or more, with access to a capital premium, and with a chance to own something – would unlock billions of dollars in unexploited GDP. It is not a redistribution plan. It is an inclusion plan.

At Operation Hope, we have seen what is happening when you invest in people’s well-being. We have helped increase credit dimensions, start businesses and launch careers. When people believe that the system works for them, they intensify their place, not behind. They buy houses. They create jobs. They build wealth for the next generation. They stop surviving and start to prosper. Step by step, the lights start again to reproduce in cities and cities in difficulty across America.

Some political decision -makers argue that American debt is too high to invest in daring economic strategies. But the debt is only dangerous if it does not lead to growth. As I have already discussed, there is a big difference between good debt and bad debt. Between the stupid debt which finances the depreciation of anything and the intelligent investments that raise the roof and have the potential for appreciation. When you invest in people – in their education, in their small business, in their financial literacy – you get a return. The good type of debt is a bridge towards prosperity.