shapiro, professor and director on assets on social policy. dr. shapiro, i am such a fan of your work, thank you so much for joining us this evening. it s my pleasure to be here, thank you. from what we re seeing right now, listen, those on the right and a few on the left love to make this comparison between households balancing their checkbooks and the government having to tighten its pursestrings. how dangerous is that metaphor? i think it s an extremely dangerous metaphor. i think there s no way around the fact the latest pew center report that the american population is in a crisis if we look at the wealth gap of nearly all households simply from the year 2005 to the year of 2009, it s been an absolute wealth loss for everybody, and that means we re talking about what the opportunities for the american dream in the future are for everybody.
the second largest one happens to be the taxes that we don t pay if we put money aside for pensions when we need to retire. if we add up those those budgets in the united states, what the tax payers are paying for incentives so that some people don t pay taxes, it s about $400 billion a year. now, that $400 billion a year might mean one thing if it were distributed somewhat equitably, but the story is different, the top 1% of tax payers receive 45% of the benefits of that wealth budget of the united states government. and if i can use the phrase the bottom 60% receives 3% of that. i think in terms of policy and in terms of structure, that that is the biggest place to start with and, unfortunately, politically, also the hardest place to start. well, might as well have the hard answers in the middle of this manufactured crisis, so, dr. shapiro, i greatly appreciate you taking the time to come and talk about this with us. cross professor of law and policy. my pleasure. attention
dynamics that have hit communities of color and low and moderate income communities, clearly the crisis is much more devastating. that s why this pew report, i think, is really i don t want to call it an alarm bell, all the alarms in the city, town, should be crying out about the severe crisis that we re in. dr. shapiro, one thing i like most about your work is you point us towards structural reasons for this. your work really talks about how public policy is at the root of so many of these disparities. if public policy helped to create these problems, what, if anything is washington doing to help the disparity now? that s a good question. i think if we get a really good handle on what s driven the increase in the racial wealth gap in the united states, then we start to have some tools and handles on public policy that we might be able to make a redress
foothold they ve been gaining, unemployment, wages go down, hardest by the decline in wealth, they ve lost income, and now they are the ones that are going to have to pay into our national treasury, pay into our social security system. as people of color, our national coffers will rely on them even more. we cannot pay off the national debt if households cannot pay off their personal debt, and if they are in debt, you can t cut enough to fix our government s debt problems, and particularly not if you refuse that one group whose wealth is still tick, tick, ticking up. joining us now, dr. thomas shapiro, professor and director on assets on social policy. dr. shapiro, i am such a fan of your work, thank you so much for joining us this evening. it s my pleasure to be here,
within that, however, the dynamics that have hit communities of color and low and moderate income communities, clearly the crisis is much more devastating. that s why this pew report, i think, is really i don t want to call it an alarm bell, all the alarms in the city, town, should be crying out about the severe crisis that we re in. dr. shapiro, one thing i like most about your work is you point us towards structural reasons for this. your work really talks about how public policy is at the root of so many of these disparities. if public policy helped to create these problems, what, if anything is washington doing to help the disparity now? that s a good question. i think if we get a really good handle on what s driven the increase in the racial wealth gap in the united states, then we start to have some tools and handles on public policy that we might be able to make a redress