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The Racial Wealth Gap

Written by New Ventures Maine | Published on June 13, 2016
Man with racial wealth text

 

Did you know that 2/3 of people living in the USA live paycheck to paycheck? For those that experience this, it is hard to build wealth when there is nothing left at the end of the month to save or invest. Wealth inequality is becoming just as a big of a problem as income inequality. According to an article written by Robert B Reich, the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the bottom 80% own only 7% of the wealth and the top 1% own 40% of the wealth.

Reich explains in more detail how and why this is happening in the video above. He also shares some ideas of how things can be changed to help lower income Americans build wealth.

So you may be wondering, how can I help? If you like the ideas Reich has come up with, then this is a great time to write a letter to your Senator or Representative at the federal level. You can locate information on how to write a letter on our website. You can locate the contact information for your House Representative and your Senator, where you can send a letter or email about this issue.