We Have the Opportunity to Address Inequality
Will we take it?
I once had a boss who would send me Suze Orman articles. I was in my late 20s, a single mom with just one income, and he knew money was tight. I graciously accepted the articles but never read them: Financial planning for me consisted of just paying my bills the best I could.
Most families don’t have the luxury of savings and certainly not of investing. The Federal Reserve reports that 39% of Americans don’t have enough money on hand to cover even a $400 emergency (2019). Most of us know what it’s like to live one paycheck away from disaster. We live in a world where a sick child can make you lose wages and a bad alternator can cost you your job.
The pandemic laid it all bare. At Down Home North Carolina, we spent the early days of COVID distributing mutual aid funds so that people could buy simple safety provisions such as Clorox wipes, disposable masks, and other items to keep their families safe. One woman was grateful for the $25 because she worked at a grocery store and said it was hard to ring up customers who were buying all the supplies when she would have to wait until her next paycheck to afford a half-gallon of bleach.
The disintegration of the working class predates the pandemic. For decades, wage gains have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of…
