Reacting to the Ford Foundation's recent decision to dedicate all their revenue to focus entirely on inequality, political and cultural critics penned an open letter pleading for them to target income immobility instead.

"A dynamic society where overall wealth is increasing and “have-nots” get opportunities to become “haves” is where human dreams are most often happily fulfilled. It’s when reduced opportunities to rise are combined with stalled overall economic growth that social resentments and divisions tend to become most inflamed.

Among most Americans, there remains a fair degree of economic mobility today. Our problem is found near the bottom of the income scale, where mobility is weak and people often get stuck. As Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution put it: “for low-income Americans…going from rags to riches in a generation is rare. Instead, if you are born poor, you are likely to stay that way.”"

-- Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, summer 2016 issue of Philanthropy magazine.