Very interesting post, but I think the age issue deserves more attention. Mr. Roscoe interprets the last graph as a reflection of current reality rather than history. By this I mean that Mr. Roscoe assumes that the youngest cohort is on a trajectory to become just like their older counterparts. They have equal equity now to whites, but will lose it as they age. My own guess at what is going on is that the oldest cohort is behind whites because they started out handicapped by existing discriminatory policies. But because circumstances have improved - barriers to black progress in America have been slowly disappearing - the younger cohorts are less and less affected.
I'm surprised that I never hear scholars with a research interest in this area incorporate family structure into their analyses of "household income inequality." The unstated premise seems to be that family structures are equal across all races and income quintiles, when the data show precisely the opposite. Even in a hypothetical world where all adults were paid the same, if one race tended to have more intact households than another, this would give rise to substantial "household" income inequality that has nothing to do with discriminatory practices in the workplace.
I am a mortgage loan officer in Alabama ..blacks can afford homes most (9 out of 10) have fabulous jobs and income .. 9/10 don’t pay their bills and have terrible credit.. OR have $100k plus in student loan debt and make $3k a month and have late pays on student loans .. federal debt .. can’t get a FHA loan. I spend 3x’s the time with them getting their credit intact and I really love doing it (no cost) because it’s my passion to get every one in a home. I’m only offering a perspective in my neck of the woods. We need classes on credit for EVERY ONE!!
I’m curious if there are answers to some really basic questions I have on this subject. Firstly, what is defined as a family/household? If a 16 year old has a child (or more) is that now a family/ household, if the father remains present is that a family or household? That 16 year
old (of whatever race by the way) has zero wealth as compared to the couple in their thirties who decide they have the financial stability to create a foundation for a child or children. If a family has a similar income but one has 5 kids and the other has one then the wealth of that next generation is in a sense increased in the hands of the one than the division among five. Are these not decisions people make which will be contributing factors in the options they will have in life and which are also affected by cultural and racial influences? These are questions which seem valid given the comments of (among others) Walter Williams, Shelby Steele and Larry Elder regarding the number of children born outside of marriage or where the father has zero interest, they have pointed out the prevalence of this in poor black communities and if each of these is considered “a household” then it may go some way to explaining part of that 32% vs. 13% negative worth. We have arrived at a point where we have “jokey” expressions such as “baby daddy” which somehow make child abandonment a “cute” thing to do. Where have we come to if (to take a stereotype) polygamy in the mormon community is viewed as strange but a man not taking responsibility for his offspring is viewed as just a funny alley cat? Which of these is actually toxic masculinity/patriarchy and which is someone taking responsibility? I am not Mormon by the way and I do view polygamy as an odd institution but I try to remain consistent by also viewing irresponsible fatherhood and child abandonment
as a far worse lifestyle choice. Having a child or children is a choice, fortunately we live in a society where no end of options are available to avoid pregnancy or to curtail one. From what I understand (again see the names above) 2/3 of black Americans are in the middle class and the wealth of the group as a whole would be the ninth largest economy in the world. If this is correct then we have a far greater problem of lack of distribution of wealth in that community than we have in the country as a whole.
Thank you for the article about wealth gaps. There are myriads of reasons why there is such a gap. I know for my family it has always been debt and the lack of savings. I am 62 years old and I'm just now learning about investments. I didn't grow up with any financial knowledge, only poverty brought on by my dad's alcoholism. Much of what I have learned in the past several years has been through hardship. My husband is disabled and retired, on a fixed income. I am retired from teaching, but not receiving my tiny pension yet. I rolled it over into an IRA so it will grow. I work part time. We are scraping by on what we make. This has been going on for many years. Our children are grown and doing well on their own, for which we are glad. But I don't have much hope for accumulated wealth for our family. Our son has two baby girls and I am unhappy that have nothing to pass on to them so they can get a good start in life. My start was debt and very little has changed over the years. I owe over 100,000 in school debt, the only debt we have. I am also a writer, trying to make a dent in this newsletter business. I have no illusions of wealth, not at this late stage of my life.
I've gone back and forth whether to actually write about my views of this subject or not. Frankly, I get tired of people not bothering to give me the time of day. I mean.. That's EXPECTED. Yet tiring even still. I run up against the wall of "unless You've spent YEARS developing a reputation as an intellectual, Your views aren't worth shite."
I don't know what M. Roscoe's reputation is, other than he's well-respected here. That's good enough for me, but doesn't necessarily impact my views on this article.
Having thought about it some more, IF (italics) I write anything, it'll most LIKELY be the first, last, and only article I write on the "Inciteful Experiences" Substack. And, either Way, writing subtracts so much TIME from reading and learning.
The essence of the article will be to call most everybody the stupidest fools in existence, but then I include myself in that number so don't intend it as an insult. I've already selected quotes from "'Silver Rights': Finding Future Success through the Group Economy" by John Sibley Butler. I take it as gospel. It's in the book "Race and Justice in America: The Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Way Forward" which I finished a few days ago.
All that to say... I enjoy a few Substacks and will continue to do so. But writing?
The historic timeline is what interests me in the first graph. Black homeownership seems to flatline from around '84 to '04. What caused that plateau and subsequent drop?
The start of it corresponds to, roughly, the end of the first generation of Affirmative Action, while the second is about when we start seeing the effects of massive globalization. Now, I don't want to overprescribe the effects of these two events, as teasing things like this out is quite difficult, but unless events are accounted for, analysis tends to be weak. So, what other historical factors can be seen in these charts? What can be eliminated and what points to real problems that need to be addressed?
Great that you printed this. Like the conversation with Lara Bazelon, it feels like these discussion are revealing the problems in greater detail, and in context - in other words, dealing with them realistically. Curious how Kaiser and you would respond to this?
You cherry-pick numbers of race disparity well. Black families have been here for 400 years, and new Hispanic families have only been here for one or two generations. Many Hispanics work construction, restaurants, and open their businesses. They work hard, and I am sure they will reach the American dream. I am a white whose parents came to the US in 1950, and I feel like a foreigner.
Your statistics are misleading. Talk about the earnings and holding so the top 10%. The top 1% owns 42.3T, 90-99% owns 50.53 T, 50-90% 37.25 T, Bottom 50% 3.03T. Total is 134.08 T. (2) The major inequality is in corporate equities and mutual funds.
The Top 1% own 27T in corp. Equities and mutual funds and 7T in private business. The top 10% own 14.6T in corp. equities and mutual funds and 4T in private businesses. (3) The median income of the top 10% is about 200K/yr( 4)
If you look at the results long and hard, you will see Corporate Equities and mutual funds, and businesses create the most wealth disparity. The top 10% holds about 70% of the wealth and 90% of corporate equities and mutual funds, and about 90% of the businesses. The top 1% owns about 50% of the corporate equities and mutual funds and 70% private businesses.
Yes, about 98% of the top 10% of the money earners are white (5). But by attacking whites and not class, you are playing into the hands of corporatists or the rich whites. You are attacking about 90% of white people. The Elites have been dividing the people for ages so they could maintain power. Take off those race goggles and look at numbers that show the disparity of class, don’t be a fool of the elites.
II'm not sure why you think I'm cherry-picking numbers or that I might be a "fool of the elites." The conversation that Glenn Loury had with David Kaiser was focused on race. My email to Professor Loury was in response to that conversation.
The numbers you posted seem to be right, but where do you want to draw the line when deciding who the elites are and who they're manipulating? Federal Reserve data shows that about 69% of America's wealth is held by people 55 and over as of Q2 of this year. Federal Reserve data also shows that college graduates control about 72% of America's wealth. The upper 20% of the income distribution control just over 70% of America's wealth as well. Whites control 84% of America's wealth.
You can verify all the numbers above at this Federal Reserve web site:
I don't necessarily see evil or gross manipulation in these numbers. I see the outcomes of complex political, legal, and economic systems instead. The dissection of differences in wealth accumulation by different demographic groups is complicated. That's the point I was trying to make.
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
Still thinking about writing something, but since I already decided I wouldn't post it?
Here's the thing: I get REAL TIRED of the "beat up on white-boy" game. Not because it affects me personally. I'm retired and have a nursing-home fund of four years if the stock market doesn't tank. (Which I actually expect it WILL, but i digress.)
My comment is to supplement what NROL34 Odin is saying. The problem with this GAME I'm talkin' about, what-i-call The Narrative, is that it makes people delusional. (Or, rather, moreso than usual. ;)
I've posted this so many times that my fingers are bleeding. One looks at all the numbers and ignores the salient FACTS. The BOTTOM HALF owns 2% of the wealth. Like You said, M. Roscoe, the educated own 70%. I SUSPECT that a LOTTA the BOTTOM HALF that owns 2% do NOT have a college degree. ICBW, haha.
There's elites, and then there's elites. Businesses work against their own self-interests with this fantasy that people with a college degree are worth more than a person with common-sense. But that's life. High school grades? SAT? College degree? IQ? GREAT MEASURES, to an EXTENT. GENERALLY (italics, recall) measures ability to deal with abstract concepts. Why not? It's what separates us from apes, right?
Weeeel, there's just a teensy-tiny problem with all-a that mumbo-jumbo: Talking about HUMAN BEINGS and, at the same time, using numbers? There's just not much of a relation there, is there?
The "white-boy" game and The Narrative? ANY-a that stuff have anything to do with real live HUMAN BEINGS? Nup. Because if it DID, then the difference between what the races percentages breaks down to just doesn't come up in a conversation at all. I looked yesterday but couldn't find it. I THINK Professor Loury pointed out a situation where a guy sleeping under a rug and ten cents, where a guy living in a cardboard box had a buck twenty. IOW, TEN TIMES AS MUCH. See?
The percentages dont' really signify. The problem in this country is we got too many jumped up educated people looking DOWN on poor people of ALL races. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50364458-the-tyranny-of-merit "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?"
This may seem to be a digression, but it actually isn't. I'm EXACTLY 50% Fundmentalist Atheist. That's how I grew up first 22 years or so. That leaves me 50% Religio-Spiritual. Now there are scientists, with PhDs and a LOTTA POWER, who believe that some people believe in blatant falsehoods (religion). And that, for the good of mankind, these beliefs should be excised from the human race. I understand that view, but I would VEHEMENTLY beg to differ. There's elites, and then there's elites.
The Wokeism Religion. Their not anti-racist but a bunch of radicals, according to Prof. McW. Just finished "Minds Wide Shut" which confirmed my view. What we're dealing with is, in essence, a very left-wing FUNDAMENTALIST religion. Beliefs opposite, but it's nature, power, and ALL-a that is nearly identical to Christian fundamentalists. Wokeianity will destroy the institutions Democracy runs on, apparently because it's something fun to do. I don't get it, myself. And the elites the Tablet article refers to. They'll do just fine.
POINT of all this? Wokeianity clouds people vision of what Reality actually IS. Takes Your eyes off the ball, INDEED. Article by McKinsey says in five years, AI will cause 87M people to lose there jobs. But GREAT NEWS! 92M NEW jobs will be created!! I'm not convinced about the five years. But it's a sick joke to think that the 87M people are gonna find themselves employable. Yah, I know clerical are gonna be hurting. But when jobs for CPAs are gonna be declining? Who's NEXT on the chopping block? The jobs that will be in DEMAND? Data Scientists and other computer nerd-like people. ADVANCED degrees, no DOUBT.
You see, I edited bad book about this stuff. But learned that Machine Learning is having computers teach themselves how to think better without human intervention. Using "neural networks" that a few people are convinced emulate the human brain. Could even be true. But if this stuff really IS gonna go on "improving" exponentially, then the educated elites are gonna be a much SMALLER group but richer. Sam Altman, who believes humans are just neural networks with energy going through them? He thinks it'd be MURDER to turn off the electric to one of these things. But he may end up being right that individuals with net worth of TRILLIONS will come outta this.
Finally, if You wanna sleep well at night, do NOT go into the subject of Transhumanism. Eugenics (or as they call it nowadays "Genetic Engineering"). CRISPR technology to edit genes already created. For MEDICAL purposes. Riiiight. Just recently they've identified 1300 genes that effect intelligence. Each one doesn't amount to a pimple on a gnat's arse. But if You take the 1300 and put them in a FORMULA You get a NUMBER. FAR-left scientist who made discovery is finding out that progressives do NOT wanna hear ANY-a this. That individual people have different levels of intelligence? CANNOT BE, right? Because, if this common-sense notion was to take hold, then Kendi and all the quotas he has in mind are based on a great deal of NON-intelligence, right?
Same with Musk's Neuralink. Will be GREAT ADVANCEMENT in medical fields. Help quadriplegics to walk. But they say, right there on their website, that they expect eventually it'll be used for people who don't have a medical condition. Musk, who is 100% opposed to AI? Wants to give people the leg up by implanting a computer chip inside a person's brain, connected to all the info on the Internet working in nanoseconds? Of course, may never happen. I'm just glad I'm 66 and not likely to see a new SPECIES of human being.
Done. See if this even fits. Back to READING and LEARNING. Eric Hoffer on mass movements. Too bad written in 51.
I could be wrong, but I think your concerns about "elites" is a proxy for the concerns that many of us have about the fading American Dream - the idea that each generation will do as well or better financially than their parents. Raj Chetty at Harvard and a team of researchers have done extensive work on this:
One of the defining features of the “American Dream” is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. We assess whether the U.S. is living up to this ideal by estimating rates of “absolute income mobility” – the fraction of children who earn more than their parents – since 1940.
We measure absolute mobility by comparing children’s household incomes at age 30 (adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index) with their parents’ household incomes at age 30. We find that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class. These findings are unaffected by using alternative price indices to adjust for inflation, accounting for taxes and transfers, measuring income at later ages, and adjusting for changes in household size.
The work of Chetty and his team shows that the odds of achieving the American Dream went from an almost sure thing to those no better than a coin flip in just over 40 years (two generations). Some will think this was intentional. I tend to think it was "accidental" in the sense that our policy makers don't always understand how their ideas will play out over extended periods of time.
Thanks for the reply. Your information is excellent, and I could not quantify the stagnation and the losses in economic opportunity the late Boomers, and the nation has seen. This is another view of the problem of our government and the system created that harms all of us.
Intentionality vs. accidental. Conspiracy theories like JFK assassination, 9/11, and the computers show things that happen in synchronicity. Jung came up with the term synchronicity. Could it be a function of; chance, collective consciousness (God's will), or conspiracy (man's will) . I have to read more on Jung and this topic to educate myself. I don't know; I'm limited with time and this feeble brain.
As humans, we are all limited by the amount of information we can take in with our senses and mortality. I hear that someday eyes may be created that see more than light, perhaps x rays or very low-frequency sounds. Perhaps neural implants will assist in gathering information in other ways. What would that do to human consciousness? The Techno-human, transhumanism. Internet of bodies, health, and freedom. These are the next Justice issues. Is it right to create a better man than what God created? God wanted us to participate in creation as evidenced by; God giving Adam the ability to name creatures God was creating. Is man hastening evolution evil or good? These are the questions we all must answer.
I gotta say I let the Boomers and Gen=Xers off to easily. SOMEBODY taught these kids to go $100K in college debt in order to "follow their PASSIONS." That's GREAT if You can turn Your passion into a living wage. But, better still, have a PASSION for MAKING A LIVING. Too many kids that didn't work out that way.
As far as Boomers being "Me Generation" and beggaring their great grandkids with so many TRILLIONS of govt. debt? Got be them that started the "tradition" right? Not likely to be them who ends it, either. But all that is long conversation that isn't really my specialty, so there is that.
I'm a boomer, and my engineering degree (BSEE) cost about $14.000 dollars. Schools raised prices. A lot of my wealth, about half came from inheritance. I lost $300.000 of my 401K, in 2000 in the tech crunch. I had 10 cents on the dollar and built up my account again, investing in China. At the same time, I had to change careers to become an RN. YOU FORGET INHERITANCE IN THE CALCULATIONS. Some of the wealth accumulation comes from inheritance.
The past 40 years sucked with frozen wages, NAFTA, changing to a service economy. It is not the boomers that created the debt. It was the foreign wars and the country building from Bush through Trump. The Vietnam war was paid for by Social Security money. SO DON'T PLAY THE VICTIM. Right now I am living like a pauper so I could pass wealth on to my millennial son.
Biden and Trump created trillions in debt, paying off Boeing for a plane that wanted to crash itself, airlines that did not fly, cruise ships that did not sail and franchise restaurants and retailers that had no sales. I got a 1000 dollar check, which was about five cents on the dollar to what the elites got.
Check out the Bayh/Dole act of 1980, where the Government provides research billions of dollars, in grants, from the NIH. Fauchi gives companies and universities billions each year for Pharma. American taxpayers get no royalties on drugs patented and developed. Pharma then charges the US, the highest prices in the world for drugs. These drugs are licensed for manufacture as generics in other countries. Molnupiravir, the cure for HepC, AIDS and others are examples of such drugs. The taxpayer pays 8 billion a year for AIDS drugs to be given in Africa. Fauchi pushes drugs and withholds others. Medical Literature is based on what drugs the NIH advocates. You only write papers if you get money. Money is behind making repurposed drugs like Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine from being successful. There is very little profit in curing bacterial infections and virus infections. There is more profit in curing chronic diseases like high cholesterol or diabetes.
Fauchi may have seen an opportunity to develop new antivirals and vaccines at the cost of the taxpayer. Is Fauchi a devil or an angel? Could the monies paid by the American Taxpayer for Pharma research be recompense for colonial ambitions?
Ivermectin (Stops glycosylation of the virus) and Hydroxychloroquine (a Zn ionophore, mitigates immune response, inhibits glycosylation, inhibits RNA replication)
Fauchi has power that people do not realize. The Bayh/Dole act created the machinery for making the best pharmaceuticals, at the cost of the American Taxpayer, and it has corrupted the medical system.
Years of giving that money to corporations have bankrupted the American people. Tax breaks for the wealthy to offshore money, treating China as a developing country with favored trading status, exporting jobs, hiding money, and now ruining our Government. Has anyone taken China off these trading statuses?m Maybe the hostilities with China are not real, just like climate change and living in the Hamptons, Martha's Vinyard, or Maura Lago. Words vs. behaviors create distrust..
It is not the boomers; it is not a system of racial inequity, it is the system of corruption. GET YOUR AGE, RACE, GENDER, CULTURAL GLASSES OFF. LOOK AT REALITY. It is the elite corrupting our Government.
"IP Advocate: Beyond misuse and misinterpretation, what is the worst you have seen?"
"Dr. Barnett: It comes down to money. Nowhere does it say that Bayh-Dole was intended to earn big bucks for universities. Yet many universities and corporations in the system skip right for the money, any way they can get it. Ironically, apart from some rare, substantial transactions over the nearly 30 years of Bayh-Dole, universities haven't got all that much of the money, and have done even worse at the other stuff, such as dealing with software and data.
"The problems also show up with university inventors. I've seen money-driven behavior with federal funding that wouldn't do so well if it surfaced in the press. It isn't that money driven behaviors are themselves bad. It's just that within a university, in the conduct of science and other public interested research, it's the public interested part that gets squeezed out. Who advocates for the public interest in the push and pull between inventors and administrators over Bayh-Dole inventions?"
Got one other to read first thing tomorrow. Then will think on this some.
I'm at the end of a long day. Let's see... 14 hours at computer. But I don't need a study of this kind to tell me the obvious. IOW, I agree completely. Didn't have good instincts on the exact numbers. Dunno when the study was done but I've seen this for a decade or two without really even looking into it.
PART of it, to me anyway, is that the Millenials and Gen-Zers expected the world to be handed to them on a platter, and got a bad attitude when it didn't. Sure, over-generalization but answers some questions anyway. But Boomers and GEn-Xers? AFAIK, had a lot to do with raising a large number of kids that didn't have much respect for authority of any kind other than themselves.
Can't remember when. Long ago. Person who ONLY writes on race complained that she was getting shuffled to side where she works, because she's fifty. Said she might hafta tgake up ageism but didn't. Yah, ALL generations think they know everything and their parents are idiots. But most grow OUTTA that in their 20s, right? Or maybe that isn't the way the world works now, but I'mn a dreamer. I think of how it should/could work.
My comment to the article was that I thought it a fairly strange society that the young know everything there IS to know. And these are the generations that "know" it's better to be "non-binary" when it comes to males and females. Hmph. Mebbe You can smell that I'm not impressed, but don't claim to be "on the right side of history." Wouldn't WANNA be, if that's what it takes.
Like I said. Too tired.., I get up around 2 or 3am so my days PAST done. TY for reply, M. Roscoe. :)
I would not use societal constructs. The standard for the elites should be drawn at 10%. NOTHING ELSE IS REAL. The median of Age, Religion, and Race are all skewed by the elite whales in the country. Also, the data the government gets is the data they know about. Holdings elites have in other countries and are not known. Many of the Elites do not want anyone to know what property and income they really have. I would look at the tax codes of the 1960's, and 1970's, when the US dealt equitably with elites. Reagan did something to the tax codes to remove the "fairness in tax codes." I have not yet had time to research what it was.
You quote the upper 20%. IT IS THE UPPER 10% of the income of the wealthy; when semiconductor manufacturing moved offshore, my wife and I, who were semiconductor engineers, became registered nurses. We had to study and break ass constantly to make ends meet; I would much instead study biology, pharmaceuticals than what the Technocracy is doing to society. They are clouding your vision by using emotionality in looking at societal constructs. They don't care about you or me; they want power. Looking at anything else but the wealth they have gets your eye off the ball.
Wages have been frozen for 40 years, we have been in managed decline as job opportunities have dried up with NAFTA. The US changed from a manufacturing society to a service society.
Semiconductors have a large capital load; the labor load is meaningless compared to the bottom line. High capital load - a plasma etch machine would cost $500,000. Labor load, an operator would get $25.00 per hour(52,000 + 25,000 medical) $75,000/yr to work two plasma etchers. Equipment would have to be replaced every five years, so on straight-line depreciation over five years; therefore, two plasma etchers would be $200,000. The worker's wages were insignificant to the cost of the equipment. A mold injection press at an auto plant may cost $125,000, and an operator making $25.00 per hour would run it. Auto manufacture could be offshored. Why move semiconductors offshore? It was to hide money offshore and not repatriate it. A security risk, sure, if the supply chain is cut. Object-oriented manufacturing (where a person makes something but has no idea about what the product is for) is considered safe. I knew of one manufacturer making the head of Javalin (FGM-148) missiles in China rather than Pittsburg. The head requires very fast real lime Optical. Recognition
FROM THE MID-1950s TILL 2000s, the US was tops in making semiconductors. It changed for several reasons, but the major reason is that semiconductors are highly profitable, and money and ownership could be hidden offshore. Would you trust bastards like these?
They don't care about race, but why are they funding Social Justice Causes with philanthropy? Politicians who have power and want money and Elites who want power are in synchronicity. The government looks inept, and you can't trust it. The elites are out for themselves and you can't trust them. The established media and established social media can't be trusted. TRUST IS NECESSARY FOR SOUND FINANCE AND A SOUND SOCIETY. There is evil in what you are looking at. You are going after people like myself instead of the very wealthy.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT EVIL IS? I have been looking at evil. Radically Evil, (Kant), Banality of Evil (Arendt), and Pure Evil, which Scientific American says is a myth. Marcuse and the use of repressive tolerance is pure evil. The intentional repression of another's view with no listening to logic is destructive to the ego and spirit. Defining evil, I would say, is having pleasure, schadenfreude in destroying the ego or someone else's spirit I have seen evil as a psychiatric nurse working in a state hospital. Evil there was the product of a sick mind. Borderlines were the worst to take trust and betray it. If God were omnipotent and good, why did he put evil in the world? My answer is so that man can understand what good is. As you fight monsters, beware not to become a monster yourself. That is why I retired. If you lose money, you lose nothing. If you lose health, you lose something. If you lose character, you lose everything.
I think we can agree that assessing wealth gaps is complicated, with many confounding variables to be sorted out. I would guess that David Kaiser would agree.
I don't recall if Glenn and his guest discussed this point, and I didn't see if in a quick read of Clifton's analysis, but isn't age a critical factor in wealth accumulation? The median age of whites is 44, while the median age of blacks is 27. That makes any comparison not adjusted for age into an apples-to-oranges comparison, doesn't it? If I missed something, I apologize. Coincidentally, just this morning I watched a 2016 Sandy Darity talk at Brown on this very topic and he didn't once mention the role of age, which I assume was a deliberate omission.
The short answer to your question is that adjusting for age wouldn't substantially diminish the racial wealth gap according to a Federal Reserve analysis of the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances:
Wealth accumulation generally follows a predictable life-cycle arc, wherein families generally accumulate wealth during their working years, in preparation for retirement. Table 1 displays median wealth by age category based on the age of the reference person, separately, for White, Black, Hispanic, and other families.7 Following the expected life-cycle savings patterns, within each race or ethnicity group median wealth is sharply higher for middle-aged families (35 to 54) compared to young families (under 35) and is highest among older families (55 and over).
Table 1: Wealth rises with age for all families, but substantial wealth gaps between White and non-White families persist throughout the life-cycle.
White Black Hispanic Other
Under 35 25.4 0.6 11.2 13.5
35-54 185.0 40.1 46.1 154.5
Over 55 315.0 53.8 111.5 213.2
Source: Federal Reserve Board, 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Notes: Table displays median wealth by age group and by race and ethnicity in thousands of 2019 dollars.
Within each age group, the SCF data indicate large differences in wealth across racial and ethnic groups. Even among young families who have had relatively little time to accumulate wealth, there are sizeable differences in wealth by race and ethnicity, most starkly between young Black and young White families. The median young Black family has almost no wealth ($600). In contrast, the median young White family has a wealth of $25,400. Young Hispanic and other families fall in between, with $11,200 and $13,500 in median wealth, respectively. Differences in parental resources may contribute to these early life cycle gaps, which we will discuss in the next section.
In absolute terms, the gaps in median wealth between White and non-White families widen considerably at older ages. For example, amongst families under 35, White families have between $11,900 and $24,800 more in median wealth than Black, Hispanic, or other families. For families over age 55, the gaps widen to between $101,700 and $261,100. In proportional terms, however, the gaps are relatively stable or diminish with age. With respect to the Black-White gap at middle and older ages, the median wealth of White families is four to six times greater than the median wealth of Black families. These within-age ratios are somewhat lower than the Black-White ratio of nearly eight for all families combined (implied by Figure 1).
Apologies for the table formatting, but I'm not the best at 'cutting and pasting.' My guess is that the racial wealth gap widens for older folks because black incomes tend to lag those of whites, which means we have less to invest, and because older blacks, as a group, have fewer equities in their portfolios.
It is also worth noting that black household incomes are about 61% of those of whites as of 2020 according to the latest figures from the US Census Bureau. Use this link and download Table 2 is you want to do a deep dive
I used the median household figures for "White Alone, Not Hispanic" ($74,912) and "Black Alone" (45,870) to calculate the 61% figure I referenced above.
First, let me mention Sandy Darity's combined numbers -- for which you are not accountable, obviously. He had combined numbers for three years. I'm doing the following ratios in my head, but I think they are close.
2005 12 times greater
2009 20 times greater
2011 16 times greater
The combined number in the link you provided is about 8 times. Different years, yes, but I don't think anyone is saying the gap has been cut in half in the past ten years. But you are not responsible for his numbers, I know.
Rather than gather the numbers properly and make a proper case, I'm just going to make a few observations and share a couple of thoughts.
If we use your link's 8 times, then the 35-54 drops to 4-1/2. Over 55 goes from 8 to 6. Those are significant changes for just one adjustment. Now, I know, I just skipped right over the Under 35 because it goes from 8 to 40. (Warning: I'm still doing this in my head.) Cherry-picking two ranges and ignoring the other is bad, so I'm just going to abandon my contention for the time being.
However, I think that $600 vs $25,400 comparison is what Dr. Loury was getting at when he discussed how using the median isn't such a good idea when the number ($600) is so close to zero. Maybe he can discuss this in the future. (I'd like to see the numbers for the 25th percentile. Would they both be zero?) It would also be helpful if we had smaller age ranges. If there is a median age difference of 17 years, there must be many ways that affects the compilation of the comparisons, and the distribution of the people in the ranges would have an effect, too.
I would also like to see other adjustments before I join Team Systemic Racism. Years in workforce must be critically important in wealth accumulation. I just don't think defaulting to "racism" as the explanation to every disparity is helpful. (And I'm absolutely NOT saying that in regards to you. In fact, I think your numbers in the past have generally supported quite the opposite.)
I don't think I've said it specifically yet myself, so I will now: Your contributions here have been great. I think all subscribers look forward to you weighing in on the various topics and commenting on your analysis. I'm sorry I don't have a heftier response for you in this case, but I hope I have explained, in general, why I approach the headline explanation (i.e., systemic racism) for wealth disparity with such skepticism.
I'm not an expert and I'm definitely not the right guy if you want to go way into the weeds. Moreover, I don't know enough about Professor Darity's numbers to try to explain the variations in the racial wealth gap that you mentioned. That said, my guess is that at least a portion of the variations in the black-white wealth ratio is a function of stock market volatility. The total value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, an asset class that represents a greater share of white wealth than black wealth, was $9.48 trillion as of Q1 2005 according to the Federal Reserve. It was 7.05 trillion in Q1 of 2009 and $13.03 trillion in Q1 of 2011. It was`$40.37 trillion at the end of Q2 of this year. The total value of real estate, an asset class that represents a bigger share of black wealth than white wealth, by contrast hasn't been nearly as volatile. It was $21.76 trillion in Q1 of 2005, bottomed out at $17.99 trillion in Q2 of 2012 and was at $34.88 trillion as of Q2 of this year. Pension liabilities, which represent over 40% of black wealth compared to about 20% of white wealth have been even more stable. Their total value was $13.69 trillion in Q1 2005 compared to $30.95 trillion as of Q2 of this year.
Use this link if you want to do a deep dive into the numbers I listed above:
I can't back into Professor Darity's numbers, but I hope the numbers from the Fed suggest the possibility of significant variations in the black-white wealth ratios over time. Scholars at Brookings have done some work in this area. Their analysis of the black-white wealth gap and why it changes over time is more rigorous than my back of the envelope calculations and theories. Use this link if you want to see an analysis that was published at the end of 2020:
I disagree with your numbers. Your data is skewed by the corporate elitists. The top 10% control 70% of the corporate equities and mutual funds and private businesses. A great deal of their income comes from there. About 98% of the top 10% are white and they skew the information of what is really going on.
Whites like myself that became an electrical engineer and then became a nurse earn a comfortable wage but are nowhere near $315,000. You putting 80% of the whites that don't earn big bucks in with Bezos, Blumberg, Ray Dalio, Bill Gates. Zuckerberg and the other stealing bastards of our race.
I wonder too about savings/investing rates. I have family members who drive old cars and retire early while others have the latest model every year and don't think about retirement planning at all
This is a well-documented huge difference culturally between groups... Expensive jewelry fancy cars hair and makeup the latest sneaker from Nike the list can go on. Different groups place different preferences on where they spend their money... If you look at some of the stats that are referenced by this letter you can even see it inside the numbers and of course no one's mentioning it because it's inconvenient...
Interestingly, in the Darity talk I mentioned above, he is asked that very question. It's at the 50-minute mark. (If you search for "Darity Brown 2016," it should be your top return. There is a purple backdrop.) His answer was odd, it seemed to me. He said, roughly, If you control for household income, that blacks actually have a slightly higher savings rate than whites. After a moment of reflection, it occurred to me that if you control for household income (and some other key factors), you can also make his claim of wealth inequality disappear.
I watched TGS episode with David Kaiser more closely this morning, and I was amused by something Glenn said. First, my complaint yesterday was that Darity (and others) did not consider age in their wealth analyses. I could only find charts with broad ranges, but Under 35 is vastly lower than 35-45, as it's difficult to accumulate wealth when young and first starting out. By the way, the only reason this age/wealth matter entered my mind while watching Darity was that Coleman Hughes had mentioned it on one of his podcasts.
Which brings me to Glenn's remark. Watching Darity, I gave him much credit for using median rather than average. Yes, yes, that's fair, I thought, That's the way to do it. Then, today, I hear Glenn explain why using median -- in this situation where the bottom half have, more or less, zero wealth accumulation -- is another trick. I had to replay Glenn's remarks a couple of times before I caught on. I laughed at patting my own back for catching one bit of subterfuge -- while completely falling for another.
Thanks for this....interesting behavioral data findings he cites. I think the metric that is most disturbing is the lack of any savings across all demo's compared to other countries.
Clifton's analyses are always insightful, considered, and well-written. I might suggest a regular column or status as TGS's first "official" correspondent, but even short of that, his contributions are a real plus and I hope he keeps sending them in given that they obviously take thought, time, and effort to put together.
Very interesting post, but I think the age issue deserves more attention. Mr. Roscoe interprets the last graph as a reflection of current reality rather than history. By this I mean that Mr. Roscoe assumes that the youngest cohort is on a trajectory to become just like their older counterparts. They have equal equity now to whites, but will lose it as they age. My own guess at what is going on is that the oldest cohort is behind whites because they started out handicapped by existing discriminatory policies. But because circumstances have improved - barriers to black progress in America have been slowly disappearing - the younger cohorts are less and less affected.
I'm surprised that I never hear scholars with a research interest in this area incorporate family structure into their analyses of "household income inequality." The unstated premise seems to be that family structures are equal across all races and income quintiles, when the data show precisely the opposite. Even in a hypothetical world where all adults were paid the same, if one race tended to have more intact households than another, this would give rise to substantial "household" income inequality that has nothing to do with discriminatory practices in the workplace.
I am a mortgage loan officer in Alabama ..blacks can afford homes most (9 out of 10) have fabulous jobs and income .. 9/10 don’t pay their bills and have terrible credit.. OR have $100k plus in student loan debt and make $3k a month and have late pays on student loans .. federal debt .. can’t get a FHA loan. I spend 3x’s the time with them getting their credit intact and I really love doing it (no cost) because it’s my passion to get every one in a home. I’m only offering a perspective in my neck of the woods. We need classes on credit for EVERY ONE!!
I’m curious if there are answers to some really basic questions I have on this subject. Firstly, what is defined as a family/household? If a 16 year old has a child (or more) is that now a family/ household, if the father remains present is that a family or household? That 16 year
old (of whatever race by the way) has zero wealth as compared to the couple in their thirties who decide they have the financial stability to create a foundation for a child or children. If a family has a similar income but one has 5 kids and the other has one then the wealth of that next generation is in a sense increased in the hands of the one than the division among five. Are these not decisions people make which will be contributing factors in the options they will have in life and which are also affected by cultural and racial influences? These are questions which seem valid given the comments of (among others) Walter Williams, Shelby Steele and Larry Elder regarding the number of children born outside of marriage or where the father has zero interest, they have pointed out the prevalence of this in poor black communities and if each of these is considered “a household” then it may go some way to explaining part of that 32% vs. 13% negative worth. We have arrived at a point where we have “jokey” expressions such as “baby daddy” which somehow make child abandonment a “cute” thing to do. Where have we come to if (to take a stereotype) polygamy in the mormon community is viewed as strange but a man not taking responsibility for his offspring is viewed as just a funny alley cat? Which of these is actually toxic masculinity/patriarchy and which is someone taking responsibility? I am not Mormon by the way and I do view polygamy as an odd institution but I try to remain consistent by also viewing irresponsible fatherhood and child abandonment
as a far worse lifestyle choice. Having a child or children is a choice, fortunately we live in a society where no end of options are available to avoid pregnancy or to curtail one. From what I understand (again see the names above) 2/3 of black Americans are in the middle class and the wealth of the group as a whole would be the ninth largest economy in the world. If this is correct then we have a far greater problem of lack of distribution of wealth in that community than we have in the country as a whole.
Use this link for US Census Bureau definitions of family, household, and other terms they commonly use:
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/technical-documentation/subject-definitions.html
Thank you for the article about wealth gaps. There are myriads of reasons why there is such a gap. I know for my family it has always been debt and the lack of savings. I am 62 years old and I'm just now learning about investments. I didn't grow up with any financial knowledge, only poverty brought on by my dad's alcoholism. Much of what I have learned in the past several years has been through hardship. My husband is disabled and retired, on a fixed income. I am retired from teaching, but not receiving my tiny pension yet. I rolled it over into an IRA so it will grow. I work part time. We are scraping by on what we make. This has been going on for many years. Our children are grown and doing well on their own, for which we are glad. But I don't have much hope for accumulated wealth for our family. Our son has two baby girls and I am unhappy that have nothing to pass on to them so they can get a good start in life. My start was debt and very little has changed over the years. I owe over 100,000 in school debt, the only debt we have. I am also a writer, trying to make a dent in this newsletter business. I have no illusions of wealth, not at this late stage of my life.
I feel bad for you. Something should be done to help you out. All I can do is add you to my prayers right now.
I've gone back and forth whether to actually write about my views of this subject or not. Frankly, I get tired of people not bothering to give me the time of day. I mean.. That's EXPECTED. Yet tiring even still. I run up against the wall of "unless You've spent YEARS developing a reputation as an intellectual, Your views aren't worth shite."
I don't know what M. Roscoe's reputation is, other than he's well-respected here. That's good enough for me, but doesn't necessarily impact my views on this article.
Having thought about it some more, IF (italics) I write anything, it'll most LIKELY be the first, last, and only article I write on the "Inciteful Experiences" Substack. And, either Way, writing subtracts so much TIME from reading and learning.
The essence of the article will be to call most everybody the stupidest fools in existence, but then I include myself in that number so don't intend it as an insult. I've already selected quotes from "'Silver Rights': Finding Future Success through the Group Economy" by John Sibley Butler. I take it as gospel. It's in the book "Race and Justice in America: The Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Way Forward" which I finished a few days ago.
All that to say... I enjoy a few Substacks and will continue to do so. But writing?
The historic timeline is what interests me in the first graph. Black homeownership seems to flatline from around '84 to '04. What caused that plateau and subsequent drop?
The start of it corresponds to, roughly, the end of the first generation of Affirmative Action, while the second is about when we start seeing the effects of massive globalization. Now, I don't want to overprescribe the effects of these two events, as teasing things like this out is quite difficult, but unless events are accounted for, analysis tends to be weak. So, what other historical factors can be seen in these charts? What can be eliminated and what points to real problems that need to be addressed?
Why, I wonder, does The Narrative CONSISTENTLY leave out the results of Asians? Hm.
Or latinos.
Great that you printed this. Like the conversation with Lara Bazelon, it feels like these discussion are revealing the problems in greater detail, and in context - in other words, dealing with them realistically. Curious how Kaiser and you would respond to this?
You cherry-pick numbers of race disparity well. Black families have been here for 400 years, and new Hispanic families have only been here for one or two generations. Many Hispanics work construction, restaurants, and open their businesses. They work hard, and I am sure they will reach the American dream. I am a white whose parents came to the US in 1950, and I feel like a foreigner.
Your statistics are misleading. Talk about the earnings and holding so the top 10%. The top 1% owns 42.3T, 90-99% owns 50.53 T, 50-90% 37.25 T, Bottom 50% 3.03T. Total is 134.08 T. (2) The major inequality is in corporate equities and mutual funds.
The Top 1% own 27T in corp. Equities and mutual funds and 7T in private business. The top 10% own 14.6T in corp. equities and mutual funds and 4T in private businesses. (3) The median income of the top 10% is about 200K/yr( 4)
If you look at the results long and hard, you will see Corporate Equities and mutual funds, and businesses create the most wealth disparity. The top 10% holds about 70% of the wealth and 90% of corporate equities and mutual funds, and about 90% of the businesses. The top 1% owns about 50% of the corporate equities and mutual funds and 70% private businesses.
Yes, about 98% of the top 10% of the money earners are white (5). But by attacking whites and not class, you are playing into the hands of corporatists or the rich whites. You are attacking about 90% of white people. The Elites have been dividing the people for ages so they could maintain power. Take off those race goggles and look at numbers that show the disparity of class, don’t be a fool of the elites.
(1) https://readingterminalmarket.org/1st-black-owned-bakery-in-rtm/
(2) https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/
(3) https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/compare/chart/
(4) https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/how-much-you-need-to-be-in-top-10-percent-by-state/
(5) https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/
II'm not sure why you think I'm cherry-picking numbers or that I might be a "fool of the elites." The conversation that Glenn Loury had with David Kaiser was focused on race. My email to Professor Loury was in response to that conversation.
The numbers you posted seem to be right, but where do you want to draw the line when deciding who the elites are and who they're manipulating? Federal Reserve data shows that about 69% of America's wealth is held by people 55 and over as of Q2 of this year. Federal Reserve data also shows that college graduates control about 72% of America's wealth. The upper 20% of the income distribution control just over 70% of America's wealth as well. Whites control 84% of America's wealth.
You can verify all the numbers above at this Federal Reserve web site:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:127;series:Net%20worth;demographic:race;population:all;units:shares
I don't necessarily see evil or gross manipulation in these numbers. I see the outcomes of complex political, legal, and economic systems instead. The dissection of differences in wealth accumulation by different demographic groups is complicated. That's the point I was trying to make.
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
Still thinking about writing something, but since I already decided I wouldn't post it?
Here's the thing: I get REAL TIRED of the "beat up on white-boy" game. Not because it affects me personally. I'm retired and have a nursing-home fund of four years if the stock market doesn't tank. (Which I actually expect it WILL, but i digress.)
My comment is to supplement what NROL34 Odin is saying. The problem with this GAME I'm talkin' about, what-i-call The Narrative, is that it makes people delusional. (Or, rather, moreso than usual. ;)
I've posted this so many times that my fingers are bleeding. One looks at all the numbers and ignores the salient FACTS. The BOTTOM HALF owns 2% of the wealth. Like You said, M. Roscoe, the educated own 70%. I SUSPECT that a LOTTA the BOTTOM HALF that owns 2% do NOT have a college degree. ICBW, haha.
There's elites, and then there's elites. Businesses work against their own self-interests with this fantasy that people with a college degree are worth more than a person with common-sense. But that's life. High school grades? SAT? College degree? IQ? GREAT MEASURES, to an EXTENT. GENERALLY (italics, recall) measures ability to deal with abstract concepts. Why not? It's what separates us from apes, right?
Weeeel, there's just a teensy-tiny problem with all-a that mumbo-jumbo: Talking about HUMAN BEINGS and, at the same time, using numbers? There's just not much of a relation there, is there?
The "white-boy" game and The Narrative? ANY-a that stuff have anything to do with real live HUMAN BEINGS? Nup. Because if it DID, then the difference between what the races percentages breaks down to just doesn't come up in a conversation at all. I looked yesterday but couldn't find it. I THINK Professor Loury pointed out a situation where a guy sleeping under a rug and ten cents, where a guy living in a cardboard box had a buck twenty. IOW, TEN TIMES AS MUCH. See?
The percentages dont' really signify. The problem in this country is we got too many jumped up educated people looking DOWN on poor people of ALL races. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50364458-the-tyranny-of-merit "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?"
This may seem to be a digression, but it actually isn't. I'm EXACTLY 50% Fundmentalist Atheist. That's how I grew up first 22 years or so. That leaves me 50% Religio-Spiritual. Now there are scientists, with PhDs and a LOTTA POWER, who believe that some people believe in blatant falsehoods (religion). And that, for the good of mankind, these beliefs should be excised from the human race. I understand that view, but I would VEHEMENTLY beg to differ. There's elites, and then there's elites.
10% isn't a bad cutoff. But I'd say there's another definition that's a little more fine-grained. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/authority-blob-roundtable Ah well... Link doesn't work. The top million or so? Coincidently, or mebbe NOT, their all woke. Wesley Yang calls them "The Successor Regime." As Professor McWhorter observed, people who think it's fun to build themselves up by getting people fired? Another example where some deserve it, and some DON'T: https://level.medium.com/the-self-infantilisation-of-black-people-b064ac516982
The Wokeism Religion. Their not anti-racist but a bunch of radicals, according to Prof. McW. Just finished "Minds Wide Shut" which confirmed my view. What we're dealing with is, in essence, a very left-wing FUNDAMENTALIST religion. Beliefs opposite, but it's nature, power, and ALL-a that is nearly identical to Christian fundamentalists. Wokeianity will destroy the institutions Democracy runs on, apparently because it's something fun to do. I don't get it, myself. And the elites the Tablet article refers to. They'll do just fine.
POINT of all this? Wokeianity clouds people vision of what Reality actually IS. Takes Your eyes off the ball, INDEED. Article by McKinsey says in five years, AI will cause 87M people to lose there jobs. But GREAT NEWS! 92M NEW jobs will be created!! I'm not convinced about the five years. But it's a sick joke to think that the 87M people are gonna find themselves employable. Yah, I know clerical are gonna be hurting. But when jobs for CPAs are gonna be declining? Who's NEXT on the chopping block? The jobs that will be in DEMAND? Data Scientists and other computer nerd-like people. ADVANCED degrees, no DOUBT.
You see, I edited bad book about this stuff. But learned that Machine Learning is having computers teach themselves how to think better without human intervention. Using "neural networks" that a few people are convinced emulate the human brain. Could even be true. But if this stuff really IS gonna go on "improving" exponentially, then the educated elites are gonna be a much SMALLER group but richer. Sam Altman, who believes humans are just neural networks with energy going through them? He thinks it'd be MURDER to turn off the electric to one of these things. But he may end up being right that individuals with net worth of TRILLIONS will come outta this.
Finally, if You wanna sleep well at night, do NOT go into the subject of Transhumanism. Eugenics (or as they call it nowadays "Genetic Engineering"). CRISPR technology to edit genes already created. For MEDICAL purposes. Riiiight. Just recently they've identified 1300 genes that effect intelligence. Each one doesn't amount to a pimple on a gnat's arse. But if You take the 1300 and put them in a FORMULA You get a NUMBER. FAR-left scientist who made discovery is finding out that progressives do NOT wanna hear ANY-a this. That individual people have different levels of intelligence? CANNOT BE, right? Because, if this common-sense notion was to take hold, then Kendi and all the quotas he has in mind are based on a great deal of NON-intelligence, right?
Same with Musk's Neuralink. Will be GREAT ADVANCEMENT in medical fields. Help quadriplegics to walk. But they say, right there on their website, that they expect eventually it'll be used for people who don't have a medical condition. Musk, who is 100% opposed to AI? Wants to give people the leg up by implanting a computer chip inside a person's brain, connected to all the info on the Internet working in nanoseconds? Of course, may never happen. I'm just glad I'm 66 and not likely to see a new SPECIES of human being.
Done. See if this even fits. Back to READING and LEARNING. Eric Hoffer on mass movements. Too bad written in 51.
Here's a response to you and NROL34 Odin:
I could be wrong, but I think your concerns about "elites" is a proxy for the concerns that many of us have about the fading American Dream - the idea that each generation will do as well or better financially than their parents. Raj Chetty at Harvard and a team of researchers have done extensive work on this:
https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/the-fading-american-dream/
Here's an excerpt:
One of the defining features of the “American Dream” is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. We assess whether the U.S. is living up to this ideal by estimating rates of “absolute income mobility” – the fraction of children who earn more than their parents – since 1940.
We measure absolute mobility by comparing children’s household incomes at age 30 (adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index) with their parents’ household incomes at age 30. We find that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class. These findings are unaffected by using alternative price indices to adjust for inflation, accounting for taxes and transfers, measuring income at later ages, and adjusting for changes in household size.
The work of Chetty and his team shows that the odds of achieving the American Dream went from an almost sure thing to those no better than a coin flip in just over 40 years (two generations). Some will think this was intentional. I tend to think it was "accidental" in the sense that our policy makers don't always understand how their ideas will play out over extended periods of time.
Thanks for the reply. Your information is excellent, and I could not quantify the stagnation and the losses in economic opportunity the late Boomers, and the nation has seen. This is another view of the problem of our government and the system created that harms all of us.
Intentionality vs. accidental. Conspiracy theories like JFK assassination, 9/11, and the computers show things that happen in synchronicity. Jung came up with the term synchronicity. Could it be a function of; chance, collective consciousness (God's will), or conspiracy (man's will) . I have to read more on Jung and this topic to educate myself. I don't know; I'm limited with time and this feeble brain.
As humans, we are all limited by the amount of information we can take in with our senses and mortality. I hear that someday eyes may be created that see more than light, perhaps x rays or very low-frequency sounds. Perhaps neural implants will assist in gathering information in other ways. What would that do to human consciousness? The Techno-human, transhumanism. Internet of bodies, health, and freedom. These are the next Justice issues. Is it right to create a better man than what God created? God wanted us to participate in creation as evidenced by; God giving Adam the ability to name creatures God was creating. Is man hastening evolution evil or good? These are the questions we all must answer.
I gotta say I let the Boomers and Gen=Xers off to easily. SOMEBODY taught these kids to go $100K in college debt in order to "follow their PASSIONS." That's GREAT if You can turn Your passion into a living wage. But, better still, have a PASSION for MAKING A LIVING. Too many kids that didn't work out that way.
As far as Boomers being "Me Generation" and beggaring their great grandkids with so many TRILLIONS of govt. debt? Got be them that started the "tradition" right? Not likely to be them who ends it, either. But all that is long conversation that isn't really my specialty, so there is that.
I'm a boomer, and my engineering degree (BSEE) cost about $14.000 dollars. Schools raised prices. A lot of my wealth, about half came from inheritance. I lost $300.000 of my 401K, in 2000 in the tech crunch. I had 10 cents on the dollar and built up my account again, investing in China. At the same time, I had to change careers to become an RN. YOU FORGET INHERITANCE IN THE CALCULATIONS. Some of the wealth accumulation comes from inheritance.
The past 40 years sucked with frozen wages, NAFTA, changing to a service economy. It is not the boomers that created the debt. It was the foreign wars and the country building from Bush through Trump. The Vietnam war was paid for by Social Security money. SO DON'T PLAY THE VICTIM. Right now I am living like a pauper so I could pass wealth on to my millennial son.
Biden and Trump created trillions in debt, paying off Boeing for a plane that wanted to crash itself, airlines that did not fly, cruise ships that did not sail and franchise restaurants and retailers that had no sales. I got a 1000 dollar check, which was about five cents on the dollar to what the elites got.
Check out the Bayh/Dole act of 1980, where the Government provides research billions of dollars, in grants, from the NIH. Fauchi gives companies and universities billions each year for Pharma. American taxpayers get no royalties on drugs patented and developed. Pharma then charges the US, the highest prices in the world for drugs. These drugs are licensed for manufacture as generics in other countries. Molnupiravir, the cure for HepC, AIDS and others are examples of such drugs. The taxpayer pays 8 billion a year for AIDS drugs to be given in Africa. Fauchi pushes drugs and withholds others. Medical Literature is based on what drugs the NIH advocates. You only write papers if you get money. Money is behind making repurposed drugs like Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine from being successful. There is very little profit in curing bacterial infections and virus infections. There is more profit in curing chronic diseases like high cholesterol or diabetes.
Fauchi may have seen an opportunity to develop new antivirals and vaccines at the cost of the taxpayer. Is Fauchi a devil or an angel? Could the monies paid by the American Taxpayer for Pharma research be recompense for colonial ambitions?
Ivermectin (Stops glycosylation of the virus) and Hydroxychloroquine (a Zn ionophore, mitigates immune response, inhibits glycosylation, inhibits RNA replication)
Fauchi has power that people do not realize. The Bayh/Dole act created the machinery for making the best pharmaceuticals, at the cost of the American Taxpayer, and it has corrupted the medical system.
Years of giving that money to corporations have bankrupted the American people. Tax breaks for the wealthy to offshore money, treating China as a developing country with favored trading status, exporting jobs, hiding money, and now ruining our Government. Has anyone taken China off these trading statuses?m Maybe the hostilities with China are not real, just like climate change and living in the Hamptons, Martha's Vinyard, or Maura Lago. Words vs. behaviors create distrust..
It is not the boomers; it is not a system of racial inequity, it is the system of corruption. GET YOUR AGE, RACE, GENDER, CULTURAL GLASSES OFF. LOOK AT REALITY. It is the elite corrupting our Government.
Ah well... Got WAY distracted on another Substack. Read this from MIT student 2005 which was mebbe overly hopeful. Hindsight being 20/20:
http://web.mit.edu/lawclub/www/Bayh-Dole%20Act.pdf#:~:text=The%20Bayh-Dole%20Act%20has%20created%20opportunities%20for%20conflict,while%20simultaneously%20funding%20these%20faculty%20members%E2%80%99%20research.%20%2816%29
THIS one fascinated me, but couldn't find a DATE it was written:
http://ipadvocatefoundation.org/stories/120409/
Part I thought was MOST significant was:
"IP Advocate: Beyond misuse and misinterpretation, what is the worst you have seen?"
"Dr. Barnett: It comes down to money. Nowhere does it say that Bayh-Dole was intended to earn big bucks for universities. Yet many universities and corporations in the system skip right for the money, any way they can get it. Ironically, apart from some rare, substantial transactions over the nearly 30 years of Bayh-Dole, universities haven't got all that much of the money, and have done even worse at the other stuff, such as dealing with software and data.
"The problems also show up with university inventors. I've seen money-driven behavior with federal funding that wouldn't do so well if it surfaced in the press. It isn't that money driven behaviors are themselves bad. It's just that within a university, in the conduct of science and other public interested research, it's the public interested part that gets squeezed out. Who advocates for the public interest in the push and pull between inventors and administrators over Bayh-Dole inventions?"
Got one other to read first thing tomorrow. Then will think on this some.
I'll hafta read over this a couple more times, M. Odin. Not saying I DISAGREE with much. Just 4am and I'm not "woke" yet. (Haha! ;)
I'm at the end of a long day. Let's see... 14 hours at computer. But I don't need a study of this kind to tell me the obvious. IOW, I agree completely. Didn't have good instincts on the exact numbers. Dunno when the study was done but I've seen this for a decade or two without really even looking into it.
PART of it, to me anyway, is that the Millenials and Gen-Zers expected the world to be handed to them on a platter, and got a bad attitude when it didn't. Sure, over-generalization but answers some questions anyway. But Boomers and GEn-Xers? AFAIK, had a lot to do with raising a large number of kids that didn't have much respect for authority of any kind other than themselves.
Can't remember when. Long ago. Person who ONLY writes on race complained that she was getting shuffled to side where she works, because she's fifty. Said she might hafta tgake up ageism but didn't. Yah, ALL generations think they know everything and their parents are idiots. But most grow OUTTA that in their 20s, right? Or maybe that isn't the way the world works now, but I'mn a dreamer. I think of how it should/could work.
My comment to the article was that I thought it a fairly strange society that the young know everything there IS to know. And these are the generations that "know" it's better to be "non-binary" when it comes to males and females. Hmph. Mebbe You can smell that I'm not impressed, but don't claim to be "on the right side of history." Wouldn't WANNA be, if that's what it takes.
Like I said. Too tired.., I get up around 2 or 3am so my days PAST done. TY for reply, M. Roscoe. :)
I would not use societal constructs. The standard for the elites should be drawn at 10%. NOTHING ELSE IS REAL. The median of Age, Religion, and Race are all skewed by the elite whales in the country. Also, the data the government gets is the data they know about. Holdings elites have in other countries and are not known. Many of the Elites do not want anyone to know what property and income they really have. I would look at the tax codes of the 1960's, and 1970's, when the US dealt equitably with elites. Reagan did something to the tax codes to remove the "fairness in tax codes." I have not yet had time to research what it was.
You quote the upper 20%. IT IS THE UPPER 10% of the income of the wealthy; when semiconductor manufacturing moved offshore, my wife and I, who were semiconductor engineers, became registered nurses. We had to study and break ass constantly to make ends meet; I would much instead study biology, pharmaceuticals than what the Technocracy is doing to society. They are clouding your vision by using emotionality in looking at societal constructs. They don't care about you or me; they want power. Looking at anything else but the wealth they have gets your eye off the ball.
Wages have been frozen for 40 years, we have been in managed decline as job opportunities have dried up with NAFTA. The US changed from a manufacturing society to a service society.
Semiconductors have a large capital load; the labor load is meaningless compared to the bottom line. High capital load - a plasma etch machine would cost $500,000. Labor load, an operator would get $25.00 per hour(52,000 + 25,000 medical) $75,000/yr to work two plasma etchers. Equipment would have to be replaced every five years, so on straight-line depreciation over five years; therefore, two plasma etchers would be $200,000. The worker's wages were insignificant to the cost of the equipment. A mold injection press at an auto plant may cost $125,000, and an operator making $25.00 per hour would run it. Auto manufacture could be offshored. Why move semiconductors offshore? It was to hide money offshore and not repatriate it. A security risk, sure, if the supply chain is cut. Object-oriented manufacturing (where a person makes something but has no idea about what the product is for) is considered safe. I knew of one manufacturer making the head of Javalin (FGM-148) missiles in China rather than Pittsburg. The head requires very fast real lime Optical. Recognition
FROM THE MID-1950s TILL 2000s, the US was tops in making semiconductors. It changed for several reasons, but the major reason is that semiconductors are highly profitable, and money and ownership could be hidden offshore. Would you trust bastards like these?
They don't care about race, but why are they funding Social Justice Causes with philanthropy? Politicians who have power and want money and Elites who want power are in synchronicity. The government looks inept, and you can't trust it. The elites are out for themselves and you can't trust them. The established media and established social media can't be trusted. TRUST IS NECESSARY FOR SOUND FINANCE AND A SOUND SOCIETY. There is evil in what you are looking at. You are going after people like myself instead of the very wealthy.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT EVIL IS? I have been looking at evil. Radically Evil, (Kant), Banality of Evil (Arendt), and Pure Evil, which Scientific American says is a myth. Marcuse and the use of repressive tolerance is pure evil. The intentional repression of another's view with no listening to logic is destructive to the ego and spirit. Defining evil, I would say, is having pleasure, schadenfreude in destroying the ego or someone else's spirit I have seen evil as a psychiatric nurse working in a state hospital. Evil there was the product of a sick mind. Borderlines were the worst to take trust and betray it. If God were omnipotent and good, why did he put evil in the world? My answer is so that man can understand what good is. As you fight monsters, beware not to become a monster yourself. That is why I retired. If you lose money, you lose nothing. If you lose health, you lose something. If you lose character, you lose everything.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychological-power-satan/
I think we can agree that assessing wealth gaps is complicated, with many confounding variables to be sorted out. I would guess that David Kaiser would agree.
Dr. Loury, Can you please share Roscoe's letter with Dr. Kaiser? Could you publish Kaiser's response?
I don't recall if Glenn and his guest discussed this point, and I didn't see if in a quick read of Clifton's analysis, but isn't age a critical factor in wealth accumulation? The median age of whites is 44, while the median age of blacks is 27. That makes any comparison not adjusted for age into an apples-to-oranges comparison, doesn't it? If I missed something, I apologize. Coincidentally, just this morning I watched a 2016 Sandy Darity talk at Brown on this very topic and he didn't once mention the role of age, which I assume was a deliberate omission.
The short answer to your question is that adjusting for age wouldn't substantially diminish the racial wealth gap according to a Federal Reserve analysis of the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm
Here's an excerpt:
Wealth over the life-cycle
Wealth accumulation generally follows a predictable life-cycle arc, wherein families generally accumulate wealth during their working years, in preparation for retirement. Table 1 displays median wealth by age category based on the age of the reference person, separately, for White, Black, Hispanic, and other families.7 Following the expected life-cycle savings patterns, within each race or ethnicity group median wealth is sharply higher for middle-aged families (35 to 54) compared to young families (under 35) and is highest among older families (55 and over).
Table 1: Wealth rises with age for all families, but substantial wealth gaps between White and non-White families persist throughout the life-cycle.
White Black Hispanic Other
Under 35 25.4 0.6 11.2 13.5
35-54 185.0 40.1 46.1 154.5
Over 55 315.0 53.8 111.5 213.2
Source: Federal Reserve Board, 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Notes: Table displays median wealth by age group and by race and ethnicity in thousands of 2019 dollars.
Within each age group, the SCF data indicate large differences in wealth across racial and ethnic groups. Even among young families who have had relatively little time to accumulate wealth, there are sizeable differences in wealth by race and ethnicity, most starkly between young Black and young White families. The median young Black family has almost no wealth ($600). In contrast, the median young White family has a wealth of $25,400. Young Hispanic and other families fall in between, with $11,200 and $13,500 in median wealth, respectively. Differences in parental resources may contribute to these early life cycle gaps, which we will discuss in the next section.
In absolute terms, the gaps in median wealth between White and non-White families widen considerably at older ages. For example, amongst families under 35, White families have between $11,900 and $24,800 more in median wealth than Black, Hispanic, or other families. For families over age 55, the gaps widen to between $101,700 and $261,100. In proportional terms, however, the gaps are relatively stable or diminish with age. With respect to the Black-White gap at middle and older ages, the median wealth of White families is four to six times greater than the median wealth of Black families. These within-age ratios are somewhat lower than the Black-White ratio of nearly eight for all families combined (implied by Figure 1).
Apologies for the table formatting, but I'm not the best at 'cutting and pasting.' My guess is that the racial wealth gap widens for older folks because black incomes tend to lag those of whites, which means we have less to invest, and because older blacks, as a group, have fewer equities in their portfolios.
It is also worth noting that black household incomes are about 61% of those of whites as of 2020 according to the latest figures from the US Census Bureau. Use this link and download Table 2 is you want to do a deep dive
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html
I used the median household figures for "White Alone, Not Hispanic" ($74,912) and "Black Alone" (45,870) to calculate the 61% figure I referenced above.
First, let me mention Sandy Darity's combined numbers -- for which you are not accountable, obviously. He had combined numbers for three years. I'm doing the following ratios in my head, but I think they are close.
2005 12 times greater
2009 20 times greater
2011 16 times greater
The combined number in the link you provided is about 8 times. Different years, yes, but I don't think anyone is saying the gap has been cut in half in the past ten years. But you are not responsible for his numbers, I know.
Rather than gather the numbers properly and make a proper case, I'm just going to make a few observations and share a couple of thoughts.
If we use your link's 8 times, then the 35-54 drops to 4-1/2. Over 55 goes from 8 to 6. Those are significant changes for just one adjustment. Now, I know, I just skipped right over the Under 35 because it goes from 8 to 40. (Warning: I'm still doing this in my head.) Cherry-picking two ranges and ignoring the other is bad, so I'm just going to abandon my contention for the time being.
However, I think that $600 vs $25,400 comparison is what Dr. Loury was getting at when he discussed how using the median isn't such a good idea when the number ($600) is so close to zero. Maybe he can discuss this in the future. (I'd like to see the numbers for the 25th percentile. Would they both be zero?) It would also be helpful if we had smaller age ranges. If there is a median age difference of 17 years, there must be many ways that affects the compilation of the comparisons, and the distribution of the people in the ranges would have an effect, too.
I would also like to see other adjustments before I join Team Systemic Racism. Years in workforce must be critically important in wealth accumulation. I just don't think defaulting to "racism" as the explanation to every disparity is helpful. (And I'm absolutely NOT saying that in regards to you. In fact, I think your numbers in the past have generally supported quite the opposite.)
I don't think I've said it specifically yet myself, so I will now: Your contributions here have been great. I think all subscribers look forward to you weighing in on the various topics and commenting on your analysis. I'm sorry I don't have a heftier response for you in this case, but I hope I have explained, in general, why I approach the headline explanation (i.e., systemic racism) for wealth disparity with such skepticism.
Thanks for the feedback!
I'm not an expert and I'm definitely not the right guy if you want to go way into the weeds. Moreover, I don't know enough about Professor Darity's numbers to try to explain the variations in the racial wealth gap that you mentioned. That said, my guess is that at least a portion of the variations in the black-white wealth ratio is a function of stock market volatility. The total value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, an asset class that represents a greater share of white wealth than black wealth, was $9.48 trillion as of Q1 2005 according to the Federal Reserve. It was 7.05 trillion in Q1 of 2009 and $13.03 trillion in Q1 of 2011. It was`$40.37 trillion at the end of Q2 of this year. The total value of real estate, an asset class that represents a bigger share of black wealth than white wealth, by contrast hasn't been nearly as volatile. It was $21.76 trillion in Q1 of 2005, bottomed out at $17.99 trillion in Q2 of 2012 and was at $34.88 trillion as of Q2 of this year. Pension liabilities, which represent over 40% of black wealth compared to about 20% of white wealth have been even more stable. Their total value was $13.69 trillion in Q1 2005 compared to $30.95 trillion as of Q2 of this year.
Use this link if you want to do a deep dive into the numbers I listed above:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:127;series:Corporate%20equities%20and%20mutual%20fund%20shares;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7;units:levels
I can't back into Professor Darity's numbers, but I hope the numbers from the Fed suggest the possibility of significant variations in the black-white wealth ratios over time. Scholars at Brookings have done some work in this area. Their analysis of the black-white wealth gap and why it changes over time is more rigorous than my back of the envelope calculations and theories. Use this link if you want to see an analysis that was published at the end of 2020:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/08/the-black-white-wealth-gap-left-black-households-more-vulnerable/
Sorry for the bad formatting from Table 1 above. Here's what I hope is a clearer display of the same information:
Median family wealth for those under 35
White - $25,400
Black - 600
Hispanic - 11,200
Other - 13,500
Median family wealth for those 35 to 54
White - $185,000
Black - 40,100
Hispanic - 46,100
Other - 154,500
Median family wealth for those over 55
White - $315,000
Black - 53,800
Hispanic - 115,500
Other - 213,200
I disagree with your numbers. Your data is skewed by the corporate elitists. The top 10% control 70% of the corporate equities and mutual funds and private businesses. A great deal of their income comes from there. About 98% of the top 10% are white and they skew the information of what is really going on.
Whites like myself that became an electrical engineer and then became a nurse earn a comfortable wage but are nowhere near $315,000. You putting 80% of the whites that don't earn big bucks in with Bezos, Blumberg, Ray Dalio, Bill Gates. Zuckerberg and the other stealing bastards of our race.
The 315,000 is not salary, but accumulated wealth for people over 55. I assume it includes home equity and retirement savings.
This is a point made by Thomas Sowell in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" as well in other of his writings.
I wonder too about savings/investing rates. I have family members who drive old cars and retire early while others have the latest model every year and don't think about retirement planning at all
This is a well-documented huge difference culturally between groups... Expensive jewelry fancy cars hair and makeup the latest sneaker from Nike the list can go on. Different groups place different preferences on where they spend their money... If you look at some of the stats that are referenced by this letter you can even see it inside the numbers and of course no one's mentioning it because it's inconvenient...
Interestingly, in the Darity talk I mentioned above, he is asked that very question. It's at the 50-minute mark. (If you search for "Darity Brown 2016," it should be your top return. There is a purple backdrop.) His answer was odd, it seemed to me. He said, roughly, If you control for household income, that blacks actually have a slightly higher savings rate than whites. After a moment of reflection, it occurred to me that if you control for household income (and some other key factors), you can also make his claim of wealth inequality disappear.
I watched TGS episode with David Kaiser more closely this morning, and I was amused by something Glenn said. First, my complaint yesterday was that Darity (and others) did not consider age in their wealth analyses. I could only find charts with broad ranges, but Under 35 is vastly lower than 35-45, as it's difficult to accumulate wealth when young and first starting out. By the way, the only reason this age/wealth matter entered my mind while watching Darity was that Coleman Hughes had mentioned it on one of his podcasts.
Which brings me to Glenn's remark. Watching Darity, I gave him much credit for using median rather than average. Yes, yes, that's fair, I thought, That's the way to do it. Then, today, I hear Glenn explain why using median -- in this situation where the bottom half have, more or less, zero wealth accumulation -- is another trick. I had to replay Glenn's remarks a couple of times before I caught on. I laughed at patting my own back for catching one bit of subterfuge -- while completely falling for another.
Thanks for this....interesting behavioral data findings he cites. I think the metric that is most disturbing is the lack of any savings across all demo's compared to other countries.
Clifton's analyses are always insightful, considered, and well-written. I might suggest a regular column or status as TGS's first "official" correspondent, but even short of that, his contributions are a real plus and I hope he keeps sending them in given that they obviously take thought, time, and effort to put together.
I appreciate the kind words. I also appreciate Professor Loury's willingness to indulge my prattles.