It also has been challenged by the demands of an extended life span and new relationships of care and support within families and across generations. The boundary between those who were once on welfare and those who are the working poor has been blurred, so that the traditional division between each is increasingly irrelevant. What they do share in common, however, is the need to be part of the opportunity structure of state and federal policies for investment that have been largely responsible for building a strong middle class in the nation. This emerging framework represents an investment in building capacity among American households to achieve economic security and well-being. At their core, asset policies will enable individuals to acquire and renew the skills required for good-paying job, own a home, start a business or new career, weather the storms of personal or family crises, and live comfortably in retirement.
Current policy promotes asset development, but primarily for the more affluent.
Those who enjoy a more comfortable and vastly different life style are enabled to do so in large measure because they are the beneficiaries of government largesse through policies that helped them accumulate assets. The Homestead Act and the GI Bill, for example, were for their respective eras the means to create a larger, more secure middle class. Today, pre-tax retirement accounts help families build for the future, and home mortgage deductions enable acquisition of the largest tangible asset available to most, a home, through a direct governmental subsidy to homeowners. Similar subsidies sustain a system of college and workplace education and training that have helped them improve their workplace skills in order to move up the economic ladder. So broad and commonplace are these governmental investments that many Americans view them with an expectation, if not as an entitlement.