Natalie Foster

Economic activist Natalie Foster will visit cozy Leopold’s to discuss her new book, The Guarantee: The Fight For America's Next Economy, which imagines a future in which the government actually takes care of such pesky needs as housing, health care, college education, “dignified work,” child and elder care and a lot of other stuff that currently is not happening. She’ll be in conversation with Madison’s own Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Hey Ben, shouldn’t you be out mobilizing apathetic voters or something?

media release: Join us at Leopold's for conversations with Ben Wikler, politician and chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and Natalie Foster, author of The Guarantee: The Fight For America's Next Economy. Books will be available for purchase and signing for this event, no RSVP required.

The Guarantee asks us to imagine an America where housing, health care, a college education, dignified work, family care, an inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable by all but guaranteed, by our government, for everyone.

But isn’t this pie-in-the-sky thinking? Not by a long shot, as this provocative new book reveals. As it stands, our current economic system is chock full of government-backed guarantees, from bailouts to bankruptcy protection, to keep the private sector in business. So why can’t the same be true for the rest of us?

Author Natalie Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, has had a front-row seat to the dramatic leaps forward in government guarantees over the past decade, from student debt relief to the child tax credit expansion. Her brilliantly sketched vision for a new American Guarantee is rooted in real life experiences, collaborations with some of today’s most important activists and visionaries, and a concrete sense of the policies that are possible—and ready to implement—in twenty-first-century America.

The Guarantee is the rare book that will shift the terms of debate, moving us from the expired and defunct assumptions of no-guardrails capitalism to a nation that works for all of its people.

Natalie Foster is a leading architect of the movement to build an inclusive and resilient economy that works for all. She is the president and co-founder of Economic Security Project and an Aspen Institute Fellow who speaks regularly on economic security, the future of work and the new political economy. Natalie previously served as Digital Director for President Obama’s Organizing for America. The Guarantee is her first book.