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Reforming the U.S. tax code to help low-income Americans build wealth and savings while reducing wealth concentration at the top would go a long way toward narrowing an "ever-growing gap" between white households and households of color, according to a new study released this week.
The report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), entitled The Ever-Growing Gap: Failing to Address the Status Quo Will Drive the Racial Wealth Divide for Centuries to Come(pdf), reveals a stark and widening chasm that--absent significant reforms to large-scale public policies--will only continue to grow.
Specifically, it finds that:
"In short," Emanuel Nieves and Josh Hoxie (of CFED and IPS, respectively) write in a blog post on Tuesday, "wealth is concentrated in very few hands. And those hands are mostly white."
Given, as the report puts it, "the essential role that wealth plays in achieving financial security and opportunity" as well as changing demographics in the U.S., this divide represents an urgent dilemma to be solved.
"This growing wealth divide is no accident. Rather, it is the natural result of public policies past and present that have either been purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to widen the economic chasm between white households and households of color and between the wealthy and everyone else."
--The Ever-Growing Gap"The racial wealth divide is how the past shows up in the present," Chuck Collins, director of IPS's Program on Inequality and the Common Good, told The Nation. "We have a deep legacy of wealth inequality that undermines the whole idea that we have a meritocracy--that there's an equal playing field."
Indeed, the report reads: "This growing wealth divide is no accident. Rather, it is the natural result of public policies past and present that have either been purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to widen the economic chasm between white households and households of color and between the wealthy and everyone else. In the absence of significant reforms, the racial wealth divide--and overall wealth inequality--are on track to become even wider in the future."
Among those reforms, as proposed in the new analysis:
On the other end of the spectrum, to address "the destabilization caused by concentrated wealth and power," the report recommends:
"Federal policymakers have a clear choice to make," said Collins. "They can allow this pattern to continue and set our country on a road to economic devastation, or they can stop facilitating the wealth divide and start expanding opportunities to boost wealth for all families, especially households of color."
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
Reforming the U.S. tax code to help low-income Americans build wealth and savings while reducing wealth concentration at the top would go a long way toward narrowing an "ever-growing gap" between white households and households of color, according to a new study released this week.
The report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), entitled The Ever-Growing Gap: Failing to Address the Status Quo Will Drive the Racial Wealth Divide for Centuries to Come(pdf), reveals a stark and widening chasm that--absent significant reforms to large-scale public policies--will only continue to grow.
Specifically, it finds that:
"In short," Emanuel Nieves and Josh Hoxie (of CFED and IPS, respectively) write in a blog post on Tuesday, "wealth is concentrated in very few hands. And those hands are mostly white."
Given, as the report puts it, "the essential role that wealth plays in achieving financial security and opportunity" as well as changing demographics in the U.S., this divide represents an urgent dilemma to be solved.
"This growing wealth divide is no accident. Rather, it is the natural result of public policies past and present that have either been purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to widen the economic chasm between white households and households of color and between the wealthy and everyone else."
--The Ever-Growing Gap"The racial wealth divide is how the past shows up in the present," Chuck Collins, director of IPS's Program on Inequality and the Common Good, told The Nation. "We have a deep legacy of wealth inequality that undermines the whole idea that we have a meritocracy--that there's an equal playing field."
Indeed, the report reads: "This growing wealth divide is no accident. Rather, it is the natural result of public policies past and present that have either been purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to widen the economic chasm between white households and households of color and between the wealthy and everyone else. In the absence of significant reforms, the racial wealth divide--and overall wealth inequality--are on track to become even wider in the future."
Among those reforms, as proposed in the new analysis:
On the other end of the spectrum, to address "the destabilization caused by concentrated wealth and power," the report recommends:
"Federal policymakers have a clear choice to make," said Collins. "They can allow this pattern to continue and set our country on a road to economic devastation, or they can stop facilitating the wealth divide and start expanding opportunities to boost wealth for all families, especially households of color."
Reforming the U.S. tax code to help low-income Americans build wealth and savings while reducing wealth concentration at the top would go a long way toward narrowing an "ever-growing gap" between white households and households of color, according to a new study released this week.
The report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), entitled The Ever-Growing Gap: Failing to Address the Status Quo Will Drive the Racial Wealth Divide for Centuries to Come(pdf), reveals a stark and widening chasm that--absent significant reforms to large-scale public policies--will only continue to grow.
Specifically, it finds that:
"In short," Emanuel Nieves and Josh Hoxie (of CFED and IPS, respectively) write in a blog post on Tuesday, "wealth is concentrated in very few hands. And those hands are mostly white."
Given, as the report puts it, "the essential role that wealth plays in achieving financial security and opportunity" as well as changing demographics in the U.S., this divide represents an urgent dilemma to be solved.
"This growing wealth divide is no accident. Rather, it is the natural result of public policies past and present that have either been purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to widen the economic chasm between white households and households of color and between the wealthy and everyone else."
--The Ever-Growing Gap"The racial wealth divide is how the past shows up in the present," Chuck Collins, director of IPS's Program on Inequality and the Common Good, told The Nation. "We have a deep legacy of wealth inequality that undermines the whole idea that we have a meritocracy--that there's an equal playing field."
Indeed, the report reads: "This growing wealth divide is no accident. Rather, it is the natural result of public policies past and present that have either been purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to widen the economic chasm between white households and households of color and between the wealthy and everyone else. In the absence of significant reforms, the racial wealth divide--and overall wealth inequality--are on track to become even wider in the future."
Among those reforms, as proposed in the new analysis:
On the other end of the spectrum, to address "the destabilization caused by concentrated wealth and power," the report recommends:
"Federal policymakers have a clear choice to make," said Collins. "They can allow this pattern to continue and set our country on a road to economic devastation, or they can stop facilitating the wealth divide and start expanding opportunities to boost wealth for all families, especially households of color."