In the story of the American Dream, the moral is that with hard work, making a comeback or reinventing yourself is possible. Inherent in that moral is the viability of second chances. Real life for the long-term unemployed in America tells a different story, say Rachel Black and Aleta Sprague in this conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter (and in New America’s Big Ideas series on CNN). Black and Sprague report that for America to have a real second-chance economy, we must make policy changes that will remove barriers for dreamers of the American Dream to re-enter our economy.