Our Fair Share: How One Small Change Can Create a More Equitable American Economy

America's economy does not currently live up to our country's core values.

We are a nation founded on the ideals of coming together across differences to forge a common future. Yet over the past fifty years, our economy has been pulling us apart at unprecedented rates. By allowing top income earners and the wealthiest Americans to hoard wealth like almost never before, we belie what makes our country great. This is a threat to our well-being, our democracy, and our values.

Brian C. Johnson combines accessible scholarship on wealth and income inequality in America with deeply personal accounts of six Americans of diverse backgrounds who are each wrestling with what it means to survive and thrive in this new economic world. In so doing, he offers a solution that is as visionary as it is practical. Dubbed the Citizen Dividend, this revolutionary model assumes that economic growth is built off of the wealth we have created together as a country, and together we all reap its benefits. In Our Fair Share, Johnson lays the groundwork for implementing this solution, detailing what the Citizen Dividend is, offering examples of similar existing models, outlining the benefits of such systems, tackling some of the common concerns that arise, and offering a path toward making it a reality.

Ultimately, Our Fair Share calls on each of us to claim what is uniquely American, building a common future that embraces and celebrates our differences. This is our revolutionary inheritance. May we all benefit from it.

Brian C. Johnson has served in education and advocacy, community organizing, and political activism at local and national levels for two decades, dedicated to the American promise of fairness for all. He's been featured on CNN and in The Washington Post, USA Today, and The New York Times. Johnson currently serves as the CEO of Equality Illinois, one of the nation's most successful LGBTQ civil rights organizations. He lives with his husband and their daughter in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.