Victor Jara
IT’S TIME TO CRACK DOWN ON EXCESSIVE CEO PAY
The pay gap between workers and CEOs at America’s largest low-wage employers is now 670 to 1. That’s obscene.
By Sarah Anderson | July 27, 2022
Working families are getting hammered by inflation while corporate leaders and politicians are calling for belt-tightening. But there’s one group of Americans that’s actually profited from increasing prices.
Big company CEOs have enjoyed soaring pay, even as their employees have been struggling to keep their families safe and their bills paid.
Look at Target, for example. Last year, the median Target worker salary did not even keep pace with inflation, rising by less than 4 percent to just $25,501.
Did the giant retailer lack the money to make sure wages kept up with rising prices?
No, just the opposite. In 2021, Target spent $7.2 billion of their extra cash on stock buybacks. That would’ve been enough to give every one of their 450,000 employees a $16,000 raise.
When a company repurchases their own shares, it does nothing for workers. Instead, it makes rich CEOs even richer by artificially inflating the value of their stock-based pay. Last year, Target CEO Brian Cornell made $19.8 million, which is 775 times more than the median pay for his employees.
How do CEOs get away with making hundreds of times more than their workers? Corporate pay practices are still based on the ridiculous notion that the “genius” in the corner office is almost single-handedly responsible for company value.
This was always pure nonsense, but during the pandemic it became even clearer that lower-level workers are essential to their companies and our whole economy.
Target is just one example of corporate America’s obscene disparities. At the Institute for Policy Studies, we looked at 300 low-wage employers and found that the average gap between CEO and worker pay rose to 670 to 1 in 2021. That was up from an already obscene 604 to 1 the year before.
And among the companies where worker pay fell below inflation, about two-thirds spent huge sums on stock buybacks to further enrich their CEOs. With such extreme unfairness, it’s no wonder we’re seeing record numbers of workers quitting their jobs and a surge in unionization.
One recent poll shows 87 percent of Americans view the growing gap between CEO and worker pay as a problem for the whole nation.
What can we do about it?
Workers can fight for equitable pay through collective bargaining. In other countries with higher unionization rates, CEOs tend to earn much less than their U.S. counterparts. In Canada, for example, the share of workers who are union members is about triple the rate in the United States, while average CEO pay there is less than half the U.S. level.
But policymakers need to step up as well.
On Capitol Hill, one pending bill would use tax incentives to encourage companies to narrow their divides — the wider the gap between a company’s CEO and worker pay, the higher their corporate tax rate. But companies with narrow gaps wouldn’t owe an extra dime.
President Biden could also take action on his own without waiting on Congress.
For instance, he could make it hard for companies with huge pay gaps to land lucrative federal contracts. That would have a big impact, because federal contractors employ an estimated 25 percent of the private sector workforce.
Biden could also ban contractor CEOs from personally profiting from stock buybacks. And he could order contractors to be neutral in union organizing drives. That would help combat the union-busting we’ve seen at some major federal contractors, like Amazon.
These kinds of executive actions would build on Biden’s executive order requiring federal contractors to pay a minimum of $15 an hour.
By wielding the power of the public purse against excessive CEO pay, the president could strike another blow against extreme inequality. All workers, up and down the corporate ladder, deserve a fair share of the wealth they create.
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits Inequality.org. This op-ed is adapted from a video produced by More Perfect Union and distributed by OtherWords.org.
THE FAR RIGHT HATES ‘WOKE’ SOCIETY BECAUSE THEY WANT ONE THAT’S ASLEEP
Florida governor and rising GOP star Ron DeSantis has made a favorite hobby of censoring speech and thought.
By Jim Hightower | July 27, 2022
Although we haven’t even gotten through this year’s midterm congressional elections, it’s still not too early to start examining some of the characters who hope you’ll make them president in 2024.
I know, you don’t want to… but we must.
That’s because corporate elites have already chosen their favorites, and they intend to use massive sums of money, lies, more money, PR slickum, and even more money to slide their toady into the Oval Office — hoping you don’t discover until it’s too late that their chosen one really is a toad.
Take Ron DeSantis. The GOP’s far-right, power-hungry, narcissistic Florida governor promises to be the next Donald Trump — only more effective and not as nice.
His favorite gubernatorial hobby is the Orwellian practice of monitoring and censoring people’s speech and thoughts, culling out ideas he deems objectionable. “Don’t Say Gay” is his most infamous dictate to the state’s teachers, but he has also outlawed any teachings that might “denigrate the Founding Fathers.”
Nor will DeSantis tolerate the study of institutional racism in America. Indeed, he has even mandated that social studies textbooks (get this!) must not even include concepts of social justice.
DeSantis adamantly opposes what right-wingers call a “woke” society — he wants one that’s asleep.
Sound asleep. He recently rallied his right-wing cadre to ban some math textbooks. Yes, math! They screech that some real-life topics like wage disparities are being used to make math problems relevant to today’s students — so it was Fahrenheit 451 for those books.
Thus far, DeSantis’s censorship binge has nixed 42 math books for “incorporat[ing] prohibited topics.” Imagine what he could ban as president!
Did I mention that DeSantis is also forming his own gubernatorial paramilitary force — a state army that answers to him, which he can deploy in “emergencies”? What’s an emergency? He says he’ll decide.
We’ll need to decide, too.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
HOW TO PREVENT AN AMERICAN THEOCRACY
Six judges shouldn’t get to overturn the will of voters and destroy our rights. Expand the Supreme Court.
By Mitchell Zimmerman | July 13, 2022
Barely a month ago we lived in a world where all Americans had the right to decide for themselves whether to continue a pregnancy. For much of the country, that’s now history.
Just weeks ago, states could implement at least some common-sense limits on carrying guns. Public school employees couldn’t impose their religious practices on students. And the EPA could hold back our climate disaster by regulating planet-heating carbon emissions from coal plants.
Thanks to an appalling power grab by the Supreme Court’s conservatives, all that’s been demolished too. And they’ve hinted that the right to take contraception, marry someone regardless of your sexual orientation, and even to choose your own elected representatives could be next.
How did we get to this place? Because Republicans spent decades cheating their way to a right-wing Supreme Court majority that enacts an extremist agenda, rather than interpreting the law.
When the very close presidential election in 2000 turned on Florida, five GOP justices halted the vote count, stealing the election for the man most voters rejected, George W. Bush. In return, Bush appointed right-wing judges John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
In 2016, the Republican Senate defied the Constitution by refusing to let President Obama fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Instead, they let another voter-rejected president, Donald Trump, install right-winger Neil Gorsuch. Finally, even as voting was underway in the 2020 election, Republicans rush-approved Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment.
So we now have a hard-right Supreme Court drunk on its own power.
We need a fair balance — and we don’t have decades to set things right. We need to expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices right now, so we have judges who believe in privacy, who allow our government to protect our children from gun massacres, and who allow common sense steps to protect our future from climate change.
Republican politicians will say that changing the number of justices represents “politicizing” the Court. But it is the Republican-appointed justices who have entered politics, unleashing gun lovers to run wild, vetoing climate change regulations, canceling abortion rights, and threatening other personal freedoms.
The danger from the Republican judges is only growing.
Their latest project is destroying the power of regulatory agencies. We will be left with a government that cannot protect babies from dangerous cribs and hazardous toys, cannot prohibit unsafe drugs and contaminated food, cannot protect workers from dangerous workplaces, and cannot limit climate-ravaging carbon emissions.
If we allow this to continue, our political system will look a good deal more like Iran’s theocracy. Like the United States, Iran has elections. But reactionary, fundamentalist religious leaders there set election rules, decide who can run, and often override the decisions of the elected government.
The Supreme Court’s six conservative justices seem dead-set on playing this role here in our system. So the best way to curtail the power of our own black-robed fundamentalists is to increase the size of the Supreme Court.
Under the Constitution, it is for Congress to decide how many justices there will be. Over the years Congress has changed the number six times. It’s time to change them again.
For much of American history, there’s been one justice for each judicial circuit. Today we have 13 circuits, so we should have 13 justices. We cannot simply accept the unfairness of the Republican judicial takeover. We can and must act to restore balance to protect our rights, our lives, and our planet.
Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
LIKE BAD SCIENCE FICTION: THE GROWING DANGER OF ANTI-ABORTION EXTREMISM
It’s January 2026. The Republican president thanks Congress for banning all abortions and makes an enthusiastic plea for a law that would require a national registry of pregnant women, so their pregnancies could be subject to surveillance.
Far-fetched? Not the way things are going. When it comes to extremism, Republican politicians are racing each other to the bottom.
Once we thought that otherwise anti-choice Republicans favored allowing girls and women who were victims of rape or incest to get abortions. But there are no such exceptions in the laws Republican legislatures have recently enacted.
Many Republican officials now even oppose an abortion exception for protecting the life of the mother. And already in some states, women have been prosecuted for stillbirths and miscarriages deemed suspicious and charged with child neglect or abuse for allegedly causing their pregnancies to end.
We also thought that Republicans acknowledged that the decision to use contraception was a constitutionally protected, private decision. But that’s also now up for grabs.
When an anti-abortion law says a fertilized egg, not yet implanted in the womb, is an “unborn child,” a woman who uses an IUD to prevent pregnancy can be alleged to “murder” the supposed “child” (actually a microscopic clump of cells).
As for other contraceptive methods, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has invited cases to be brought to cancel the constitutional right to use any form of contraception. Is it difficult to imagine that people with certain religious beliefs might demand the GOP outlaw selling contraceptives to unmarried couples or teenagers?
A Republican-sponsored federal anti-abortion bill is certainly in the cards — even though 62 percent of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court’s overruling Roe v. Wade, and a solid majority believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But the Republican Party prefers to follow instead the view of a religious minority that believes they are entitled to impose their religious views on everyone else.
This desire to impose religious orthodoxy is at the root of the issue.
Certainly it’s hard to imagine any justification for asserting — other than religious beliefs held by a minority — that a blastocyst of six to ten cells (which is all there is three days after an egg has been fertilized) is an “unborn child,” let alone a person with full constitutional rights.
How might a nation-wide anti-abortion law be enforced? A federal pregnancy registry is one possibility. The government could require all doctors and clinics to report all pregnancies and require follow-up reports on how the pregnancy ended. Claims of miscarriages might warrant investigation.
Another possibility was offered by the Texas law deputizing private individuals to seek a $10,000 fine from anyone who provides or facilitates an abortion. Congress could pass a federal law along the same lines.
Bounty hunters could use modern technology to track women’s movements. With cell phone location data that’s already available, it is possible to track individuals from place to place.
For a small fee, data brokers can provide bounty hunters — and today’s anti-abortion vigilantes — with data for an abortion clinic, showing how often people visit, how long they stay, and where they came from.
In fact such information is for sale today. It doesn’t yet include the names of clinic visitors, but it’s technologically simple to “de-anonymize” the data and identify each person by name and address. The same technologies can identify pregnant people who travel to another state for an abortion.
It sounds like bad science fiction, but these are elements of a very real near future that Republicans hope to bring to America.
Contraceptives limited or banned. The government surveilling your pregnancy. Prosecutors investigating miscarriages. Bounty-hunters seeking $10,000 fines from you. Private anti-abortion fanatics tracking your movements.
Voters must decide whether they welcome or fear this future.
Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
SELFISHNESS FUELS THE WAR ON ABORTION
Stories abound of conservative women who picket out front of clinics quietly coming in the back to get their own abortions.
By Sonali Kolhatkar | July 20, 2022
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was as predictable as it was shocking. Right-wing forces have spent years working to erase the right to abortion, and — for now — they have won.
Contrary to the idea that men have foisted the abortion ban on women, though, the ban is a patriarchal attack by conservatives — men and women — on the rest of us.
There’s a general attitude that forms the basis of most right-wing attacks: that the denial of rights will only affect someone else — someone who deserves it. But when conservatives are personally impacted, they’re an exception.
Stories abound of conservative women who picket out front of abortion clinics quietly coming in the back to get their own abortions. One provider told The Daily Beast, “All of us who do abortions see patients quite regularly who tell us, ‘I’m not pro-choice, but I just can’t continue this pregnancy.’”
She added, “These are not people who turn anti-choice after having an abortion, but who simply access this essential service when they need it in spite of their personal beliefs about abortion in general.”
A survey of women who’ve had abortions by the fundamentalist Christian group Care Net suggests that many of these women belong to conservative churches. Over 40 percent of their respondents reported attending services regularly.
It’s a classic case of “do as I say, not as I do.” This selfish logic informs many conservative positions.
Take gun violence. Those who support the complete availability of guns seem to have no problem surrendering that right when it comes to protecting the powerful.
Armed members of the public are allowed nowhere near Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, or current and former presidents. Guns are even prohibited at National Rifle Association conventions when current or former presidents speak.
But the rest of us — even children and the elderly — have to risk living among armed and dangerous people.
Take welfare.
Republican politicians have made it their mission to slash what they call “entitlement” programs. But their voters often rely most heavily on food stamps and other benefits. In polls, white Americans, who are overrepresented among conservatives, tend to support welfare programs — until they discover those programs might also help people of color.
Take voting rights.
Conservatives and Republicans want to make it harder for people to vote, premised on the false claim that many people vote for Democrats illegally. But most of the very small handful of people caught illegally voting have turned out to be Republicans.
Circling back, many religious conservatives seem to believe that abortion is the first resort of promiscuous teen teenagers.
In reality, today’s typical abortion patient is a low-income woman in her late 20s who has already had one child and cannot afford another one. In fact, nearly a quarter of all people capable of pregnancy will have one in their lifetimes by age 45. That percentage may be even higher considering that researchers find people severely underreport their abortions.
It’s a fair bet that if anti-abortionists had a way to ensure their own personal access to abortion when they needed it, and a ban for everyone else, they’d do it.
Of course, the religious right didn’t do this on their own. So-called liberals in Hollywood have written anti-abortion tropes into their plot lines for decades, and Democrats in office failed to codify these rights when they had the chance.
Years of invisibility and shame paved the road to Roe’s reversal. But now, more and more people are coming forward to tell their stories, revealing abortion as the mundane and shame-free health procedure that it is.
These stories will be crucial to tell. And when anti-abortion conservatives — victims of their own success — need an abortion have nowhere to turn to, I hope we’ll hear their stories too. When you’re no longer the exception to the rule, it’s harder to be selfish.
Sonali Kolhatkar is the host of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This commentary was produced by the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and adapted by OtherWords.org.
HOMELESSNESS IS A POLICY CHOICE — AND WE CAN CHOOSE DIFFERENTLY
Much of my adult life has been spent homeless or incarcerated. Now I help homeless people and returning citizens.
I’ve lived on the streets, been in Hollywood films, owned my own footwear service, rubbed elbows with a Saudi Prince, and even sung for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago — while in and out of homelessness. I’ve also been to federal prison and battled substance abuse.
In some ways, I’ve lived an unusual life. But with 140 million Americans poor or low-income, there’s nothing unusual about growing up in a broken home, enduring homelessness, or ending up in the criminal justice system.
We all make our own choices. But I’ve learned that our social and political systems often make choices for us, too. And those are the choices we can change together.
My dad left when I was two, and my stepfather was abusive. My mom tried her best to shelter me. But in reality, our “broken home” was a reflection of the politically and economically neglected community we lived in.
As a teen, I was never sure what I would find at home. So I joined band, theater, track, football, martial arts — anything I could do to avoid dangers and make myself strong.
I was supposed to go to the University of Miami for football, but I also suffered from what we now call ADHD. In those days kids like me were just called hyperactive, drugged, and punished. So my grades fell and I went to Miami Dade College instead.
Eventually I fell in with the wrong crowd, lured by the money that came with a life of drug dealing in Miami. When I got caught, I realized how much I’d betrayed the values my mother raised me with.
I used my time in federal prison to become more educated and started counseling my former inmates, who called me “Preacher.” The guards broke the rules and allowed a dozen inmates at a time into my cell to be led in prayer and teachings.
Armed with my faith in God and my values — and the concrete help of the critical housing voucher program — I was able to move from a shelter to a home of my own after I was released.
I now work with the National Coalition for the Homeless, helping other homeless people and citizens returning from incarceration. I’m even a “lived experience expert” with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, helping streamline programs to help people find stable housing.
Many people I work with have stories like mine — or yours.
Some have lost jobs — or had jobs that didn’t pay enough. Some had a baby and couldn’t afford child care. Some suffered domestic abuse. Many had health problems, injuries, or debt.
These things can happen to anyone. So when you see us on the street, look at us like fellow human beings. If you can spare them, gift cards for food, medicine, or supplies can make a huge difference for homeless people individually.
But collectively, we can also make different political choices that will help everyone keep a roof over our heads.
Nowhere in America are rents affordable on the minimum wage, so we should raise it to a living wage and invest in affordable housing, rental assistance, housing vouchers, and stronger unemployment insurance. Better access to affordable child care, mental health care, and health insurance would also keep more people in their homes.
President Biden’s Build Back Better plan would have provided all of this, but conservatives in Congress shelved it. But with enough pressure, we may be able to get housing needs back into a reconciliation bill Congress is now considering.
If we recognize our common humanity and fight for the rights of everyone, we can create a fairer society for all of us.
Don Gardner is an advocate with the National Coalition for the Homeless and a member of the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
AN UGLY NEW ERA OF “STATES’ RIGHTS”
An earlier version of this op-ed was published on May 11, 2022. It was updated on June 29 with new information.
The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade — and with it, half a century of constitutional precedent.
At least 26 states are now likely to criminalize abortions, often without exceptions for rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancies. In Louisiana, people seeking abortions could even face execution, which doesn’t strike me as particularly pro-life.
A few states are already rushing to attack contraception too, with officials in Idaho and Louisiana pushing to ban IUDs, the morning after pill, and other common birth control methods. Hardline lawmakers are also likely to ban methods of conception, including in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.
Down the line, experts warn that the rights to interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, and even divorce, parental custody, and the right to accept or refuse medical treatment could be in jeopardy. People’s control over their own intimate decisions and private lives is at stake.
But among the most alarming things in the ruling is its sneering pretense that this is somehow about safeguarding democracy. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito.
That’s the same “states’ rights” deceit once used to defend segregation. The truth is that in many states, so-called “elected representatives” pick their voters — not vice versa. And that’s leading to a new wave of extremism in statehouses.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called states “laboratories of democracy.” These days, as former Hamilton County, Ohio commissioner David Pepper put it in his book of the same name, many have become “laboratories of autocracy.”
Pepper and I share a home state that’s a case in point. In Ohio, a Trump-appointed federal judge just allowed Ohio Republicans to force illegally gerrymandered maps on voters, who twice voted overwhelmingly for fairer districts. The state Supreme Court ruled four times that the maps illegally diluted Ohioans’ voting power, but we’re stuck with them anyway.
Most Ohioans are pro-choice, but thanks to maps like these we now have one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. That’s why “returning power over basic civil rights to illegally gerrymandered states like Ohio is an absolute disaster in waiting,” concludes David DeWitt in the Ohio Capital Journal.
It gets even more absurd elsewhere.
In states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly gotten more votes than their Republican counterparts. But rigged maps keep giving Republicans sizable majorities — which they’ve then used in all three states to strip power from Democratic governors elected statewide.
Across the country, methods like these are used to ram through extreme legislation that ignores the will of voters. For example, recent polling suggests at least 34 states plus D.C. have pro-choice majorities or pluralities. Many are banning abortion anyway.
It’s not just abortion. Again and again, unaccountable state governments are showing themselves incapable of decent governance.
Florida is ripping up K-12 math books — yes, math books — that allegedly teach “critical race theory.” Unhinged Tennessee lawmakers are calling for literal book burnings. And one-party states nationwide are making it harder to vote.
Frankly, things aren’t much better at the federal level — and Alito should know.
Five of the six conservative seats on the Supreme Court, including Alito’s, were appointed by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote — and confirmed by Republican Senate “majorities” representing a minority of Americans.
The same Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression while lifting bans on money in politics. This court, in short, has made it much harder for people to choose their own representatives.
The loser here isn’t the big-D Democratic Party. It’s small-d democracy. When politicians can do whatever they want to us, everyone loses.
Decades ago, it took a national civil rights movement and federal legislation to reclaim common sense and decency from extremist state governments. Today, it’s also going to take reforming the Supreme Court.
Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and editor of OtherWords.org.
MOST AMERICANS SUPPORT ABORTION RIGHTS. DO YOUR LEADERS?
Often when we get bad news, someone on the sidelines will say “look on the bright side” and offer some pablum to make us feel better.
But with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, there ain’t no bright side.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a leading non-partisan research organization on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion soon as a result of the ruling. In fact, some states’ anti-abortion laws have already gone into effect.
But that doesn’t mean the strong majority of Americans who support abortion rights are helpless.
The street and clinic protests we’re seeing daily are important and likely to grow — at least until the billy clubs and bullets come out. That’s doing what activists have done throughout our history: turn anger into action.
If you’re not there already – get mad. Then get even. There’s time, there’s opportunity, and there’s a process open to all U.S. adults: the midterm elections. If you can’t change their minds, you can change their faces.
Many state legislators and governors have already declared themselves for or against abortion rights. It’s your right to vote accordingly.
All 435 U.S. House seats are on the ballot, and 34 of the 100 Senate seats will be decided. You can find out where your reps stand on codifying abortion access into federal law — often in their own words, if you search for them. If they’re celebrating Dobbs or on the fence, you can vote to kick ‘em out.
Meanwhile, educate your peers and your neighbors. Lots of folks may think the Dobbs decision doesn’t affect them personally. Wrong. All civil rights are in the cross hairs.
Don’t take my word for it. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas celebrated the Court’s conservative coup by declaring that decisions protecting same-sex relationships, marriage equality, and access to contraceptives should be revisited.
Think it will stop there? Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has already tweeted “Now do Plessy vs. Ferguson/Brown vs. Board of Education,” seemingly suggesting going back to racial segregation. (Cornyn tried to walk it back, but you know what they say about cats and bags.)
Get even with time or money or both. Many national and state organizations are mobilizing to turn out the pro-choice vote. You can give money if you’re able. If not, you can give time by knocking on doors or staffing voter registration drives.
Remember that people with good intentions often don’t act unless prodded. Groups will need volunteers to push, pull, or drive supporters to the polls on election day.
There’s never been a more urgent time to heed the words of former President Barack Obama: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
A clear majority of Americans want abortion to be legal and women’s rights safeguarded. Our best opportunity to restore basic rights to bodily autonomy is now.
Martha Burk (@MarthaBurk) is the director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO). This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH WITH BOLD NEW IDEAS
This op-ed was originally published on June 19, 2019. We’re reprinting it to mark Juneteenth in 2022.
One day in late June, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas. They carried some historic news: Legal slavery had ended some two and a half years ago with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. And so some of the last enslaved people left in America were freed.
The day became known as “Juneteenth,” a holiday still celebrated today in black communities across the United States.
Yet more than 150 years after slavery, black wealth still lags centuries behind white wealth. A report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that it would take 228 years for black families to amass the amount of wealth white families already own today.
In fact, the racial wealth divide is greater today than it was decades ago, and still widening. That divide won’t close without bold, structural reform to match the structural injustices that created it — from slavery itself to Jim Crow, red lining, and mass incarceration.
A more recent IPS report offered a number of promising solutions to close this gap. Some ideas include….
1. Baby Bonds: Baby bonds are federally managed accounts that could be set up at birth for all kids and grow over time. When a child reaches adulthood, they could use these federally seeded funds for education, to buy a house, or start a business.
2. Guaranteed Employment and a Living Wage: Bridging the racial wealth means creating good jobs that pay a living wage for everyone who can work. A federal jobs guarantee would provide universal job coverage and eliminate involuntary unemployment. A much higher minimum wage would ensure all jobs actually support families.
3. Affordable Housing: Secure housing remains out of reach for millions of families, and homes are the biggest source of middle class wealth. We need big investments in public housing, rent control, and down payment assistance for first-time buyers from marginalized backgrounds to ameliorate historical injustices and address the current crisis.
4. Medicare for All: People of color accounted for more than half of the 32 million non-elderly uninsured people in 2016, putting them at serious medical and financial risk. Medicare for All would drastically reduce bankruptcies from health care, the single largest source for all Americans.
5. Postal Banking: People of color are particularly vulnerable to being unbanked, along with rural people and the elderly. The Postal Service could offer short term, low-interest loans to these populations to protect them from predatory payday lenders.
6. Higher Taxes on the Ultra-Wealthy: Significantly raising taxes on the extremely rich would reduce the corrupting influence of wealth on our politics while producing significant revenue to create opportunities for those who’ve been blocked from generating wealth.
7. Fixing the Tax Code: We spend $600 billion per year on tax subsidies that ensure the wealthy are able to become wealthier. Shifting these expenditures toward low-wealth people would have a monumental impact.
8. Reparations: A bill called HR 40, championed currently by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18), would create a commission to study the issue of reparations and grapple with what they could really look like. That’s a welcome step.
9. Better Data Collection: It’s difficult to understand the scope of the racial wealth divide without good information on the full range of racial diversity in the United States. Localized data on household assets and debt by race would provide better insight for policy making.
10. A Racial Wealth Audit: All laws and policies can have unintended consequences. So we need a framework to assess the impact of new ideas on the wealth divide.
All of these are bold ideas. But none are so bold as the news that greeted Galveston in 1865: Slavery was over. This Juneteenth, let’s keep thinking radically about how to take on this incredibly important challenge.
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