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AMA: I’m Jeff Fuhrer, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Foundation Fellow at the Eastern Bank Foundation. I worked for nearly four decades in the Federal Reserve System as director of research, executive VP, and senior policy advisor–here’s proof it’s me. I recently published The Myth that Made Us: How False Beliefs about Racism and Meritocracy Broke Our Economy (and How to Fix It). In it, I document how we have used the myths of the self-made man, post-racism, the profit-maximizing firm, and free markets to excuse gross inequities that shape and sustain an economic system now characterized by high levels of income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic insecurity. Such narratives have also resulted in a wildly distorted conception of the poor. My book challenges these beliefs and offers a positive vision for a capitalist system that offers marginalized people and groups more opportunities and yields more egalitarian results.

A couple of bullet points about what I discuss in the book:

- Narrative change is required, and it’s not easy. But we’ve done it before!

- Providing equitable opportunity is NOT a zero-sum game. It improves the economy for everyone.

- Capitalism per se is not the problem. But our “brand” of capitalism is. We need to change it.

- This book is not primarily about politics. It’s about economic and human potential, and our mandate is to realize it for everyone.

That's a brief introduction. Please feel free to ask me anything, including examples of how policy has been shaped by these narratives; the role of the private sector in co-creating our broken economic system; the sources of these narratives in our national history; adherence to the narratives by political affiliation; the change in workers’ power and voice over the decades; and how to pay for key initiatives that rebuild opportunity more equally (early childhood education, community college career pathways, wage support, wealth equalization).

You can get the hardcover of The Myth that Made Us through your local bookstore or wherever books are sold!