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1.) In my 2012 book “The Great Divergence” I wrote that race didn’t contribute in any direct way to the post-1979 boom in income inequality b/c the gap between white and black incomes hadn’t widened. That conclusion now requires revision. politico.com/newsletters/mo…
2. New evidence (see link in previous) shows that the black-white wage gap has been growing since 2000. It may even have started growing before that. This is horrible news. It was bad enough when we thought no progress had been made in four decades. Now ...
3.) we learn that the wage gap has actually been growing—and that’s corrected for education level, geography, and other non-racial factors. And it’s been growing during a period when the median white worker hadn’t exactly been thriving.
4.) This means, among other things, that racial bias IS now a driver of income inequality, though of course not the only one. It also means that bickering between people who think class matters most and people who think race matters most ought to stop. The two are ...
5.) ... demonstrably intertwined. Here’s yesterday’s report by Elise Gould of EPI: epi.org/publication/st… And here’s an earlier study by the St. Louis Fed that reached a similar conclusion: frbsf.org/economic-resea…
6.) That the wage gap between blacks and whites is widening is a social catastrophe. I’d be surprised if it didn’t come up in the 2020 presidential contest. The End.
