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Friend,
Fair warning: This is a long email. But it’s long for a reason. Closing the wealth gap is one of my top priorities, so I’d love to take just a few minutes to get into the weeds with you on how we can do it.
My dad was born poor to a single mom, but he came a long way — and through a lot of hard work and the help of some folks along the way, he and my mom were able to give my brother and me a better life.
But he told me something before he died that’s stuck with me. He worried that a kid born in his circumstances — poor, black, to a single mom in a segregated environment — would be better off being born in 1936 than today.
That landed like a punch to the gut. Because while my generation undoubtedly drinks deeply from wells my father’s generation dug, he spoke to the harsh reality that oppression has a compound effect over time. Today in the United States, there is a huge racial wealth gap. Young white people have 16 times the wealth of young black people.
The racial wealth gap is the highest it’s been in decades. This didn’t happen by accident. Purposeful federal policy has concentrated wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.
Communities of color have historically been excluded from things that gave white people a pathway to the middle class: the GI Bill, college admissions, and Federal Housing Administration loans that would allow them to buy houses.
I have a plan that would tackle the problem directly using something called baby bonds — federally-funded savings accounts for every child that starts at birth and that grows with them as they grow up.
The math is simple. We close tax loopholes and roll back some of the giveaways to the wealthiest Americans in the Trump tax bill, and we create an account for every child that starts with $1,000 and could grow by up to $2,000 every year depending on family income.
By the age of 18, the most impoverished kids in our country would have access to nearly $50,000 to do things like pay for college, put a down payment on a home, or jump-start a small business.
Columbia University researchers believe this policy would virtually close the racial wealth gap in America. It’s not solely about sentiment, or just acknowledging the past — it’s about actually balancing the scales and confronting the bias that persists in the present, and that’s exactly what baby bonds would do.
Thanks,
Cory
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