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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Cheap, Race-Neutral Way to Close the Racial Wealth Gap
(The Atlantic) What if a single, cheap, easy-to-administer, and race-neutral policy could help close the countrys chasmic racial wealth gap in less than a generation?
Reader, it exists. It is called a baby-bond program. For something like $80 billion a yearroughly 2 percent of the annual federal budget, less than a tenth of the annual cost of Social Securitythe United States could not only end its most pernicious forms of poverty, reduce wealth inequality, improve social mobility, foster self-sufficiency among poor families, and increase family net worth en masse, but also put black and white families on more equal footing.
There is a strong moral case for doing that, and a strong economic case, too. The average white family is 10 times wealthier than the average black family. Black families with kids have a single penny in wealth for every dollar that white families with kids have. And white high-school dropouts have a higher net worth, on average, than black college graduates. Black individuals cannot close this gap on their own. Washington created the wealth gap. Washington needs to fix it.
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A little-known but elegant solution is waiting for implementation, a policy suggested by Thomas Paine in Agrarian Justice and rewritten for the modern era by Darrick Hamilton, who leads the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, and Sandy Darity, the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Baby bonds are simple. The government would create investment accounts for infants, giving babies born to poor families large seed grants and babies born to rich families small ones. The money would grow, and kids would gain access to it when they reached adulthood, to use for school, a down payment, or a start-up. (Read More)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/close-racial-wealth-gap-baby-bonds/613525/
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,432 posts)In our new report, White Supremacy is the Pre-existing Condition, we found that the concentration of wealth has surged during the pandemic, further exacerbating an already extreme racial wealth divide.
(snip)
First, there are the emergency measures that can be enacted now, in the midst of the pandemic:
Improved racial data collection as part of emergency audits
Racial equity audits of crisis relief and recovery policies
Income support that expands to guaranteed income
Postal banking
Medicare for all
Expanding inclusive housing and ownership
Federal jobs guarantee with living wage
Baby bonds [as mentioned]
FM123
(10,054 posts)Maybe you could start a thread with it, it's still pretty recent article.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,895 posts)with a certain degree of wealth.
The real resistance will come from the white middle class. They will feel like they are losing big time.
What we also need is free or very low cost public college. And of course some version of universal health care.
My hope is that this entire CoronaVirus thing will move us to all of those.
FM123
(10,054 posts)from the rest of the article:
Eliminating student debt, ending mass incarceration, rationalizing the countrys system of health insurance, stopping covert redlining, ending poverty as measured by incomeall of those are necessary elements of racial justice, and would be complementary policies to help make the countrys wealth distribution more equitable.
pecosbob
(7,543 posts)This would require child-proofing our government I believe.
Re-reading your words, I am thinking that what you just said should be an election slogan:
It's difficult to make progress toward land and safety when the GOP keeps overturning the life-boat