Posted on 01/25/2013 6:13:17 AM PST by Sir Napsalot
(snip) In the United States, where real estate is the single largest source of asset accumulation for the middle class, the story of the Sugrues and the Smiths goes a long way to explaining the expanding disparities between white and black wealth. The two families—like many Americans—invested in real estate both for its use value and as a gamble on the future. But one family did far, far better than the other.
Every once in a while, a scholarly book fundamentally shifts how we understand a problem. One of those books was published in 1995, .... Sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro’s Black Wealth/White Wealth stepped into a stale debate about race, class, and inequality in the United States with new data and a fresh perspective. The authors acknowledged the gains of the civil rights era: Black-white income gaps had narrowed. Minorities were better represented at elite institutions of higher education than could have been imagined in 1960. ....
But (they) told another story, a sobering one about the persistent gap between black and white wealth. They methodically gathered and analyzed data about household assets, like real estate holdings, bank accounts, stocks and bonds, cars, and other property, that constitute a family’s portfolio. Their findings were staggering: despite all of the gains of the previous quarter century, the median black family had only 8 percent of the household wealth of the median white family. The asset gap was still strikingly wide among middle-class and wealthy blacks, who, despite their high incomes, still had about a third the assets of comparable whites.
The racial wealth gap has several specific causes beyond the broad legacy of systematic racial segregation, discrimination, and unequal opportunity. Wealth is passed down from generation to generation—even if only modestly. ......
...(Read the very long article, please.)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonmonthly.com ...
You live and work in the city, you take what they dish out to you. What you read about corruption/extortion in Philly, it's all true, and probably just scratched the surface, not the worst of it.
Because there living in the projects to show thier peeps thier down with the cause while buying designer clothes flat screen tvs, stereos and new flashy cars. Savings accounts? are you serious! Does stupid enter into this conversation? livin the gangster life on amiddleclass income. Just cant seem to shake the getto
It is easy to talk about wealth discrepancies but how do you talk about wisdom discrepancies?
You can't fix stupid.
Because you can't.
Hence, Left had been preaching that “zero sum game” forever. “Your wise investment decision” was earned through exploitation of others.
Evil. But a majority bought into it.
Obama ignore that a major majority of the funding for government to build the infrastructure (and hence benefited you) came from makers, and where is the inequality of that?Not sure what you are trying to say there - it's awkwardly phrased...
All I can say is that I worked up from the bottom, just like everyone else I know. I also know that, all along the way, my peers were white, black, brown, yellow, red, etc. We all had equal access to the same environment.
If someone tries to argue that no-one could succeed without the govt provided "goodies" then they must also accept that everyone who fails, failed *in spite* of those govt "goodies". Whether it's teachers, roads, or anything else funded by the "public", everyone has the *same* access to it. The difference is determined by how a given person avails themselves of the opportunities they identify and how they pursue those opportunities (govt provided or otherwise).
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