Wade Rathke

The federal government may have failed the poor, argues organizer and ACORN founder Wade Rathke, but there is another way: wealth-building. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, and tax "relief" offer temporary, stop-gap fixes, but such programs don't address the systemic problems that keep people from building up the assets they need to create a stable life for themselves and their families. A real, workable plan to end poverty, Rathke argues, requires a two-pronged approach. First, we need to create wealth. Creating wealth through home ownership, and job acquisition and security, lengthens the distance between the poor house and the safe house. Second, we must also prevent the predatory attempts to reduce the relatively little wealth that many low and moderate-income families have. Such dual-track wealth-building approaches protect against the vicissitudes of income: temporary job loss, health issues, credit restrictions and more.