Broadway

Complete News World

United States: Discrimination against blacks and Latinos costs $50 trillion

United States: Discrimination against blacks and Latinos costs $50 trillion

It’s not like there is a lack of insight, Sunday sermons, and warm words. On the contrary: American politicians repeatedly complain that the country’s ethnic minorities are economically disadvantaged and excluded from participating in growth and prosperity. Hours later, most white citizens forgot the topic again, which may also have something to do with the fact that discrimination against blacks and Latinos does not bring them any disadvantage. or is he?

A study by four female economists, including Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco Regional Central Bank, came to the conclusion that not only are directly affected groups experiencing inequality, but the majority of the population cuts their flesh through their ignorance. Experts give a definite number: according to their study, the country’s serious economic, social and societal inequality has cost the United States nearly $51 trillion (about €43 trillion) in economic output over the past 30 years.

There are many arguments against such calculations: that they are too theoretical, that they ignore many influencing factors and are based on dozens of assumptions, where the smallest transformation leads to a different sum. But that doesn’t change the fact that the study revealed the full dimension of the problem for the first time, because basically it doesn’t matter whether the three-decade boom’s losses are $30, 50, or $70 trillion: From a political point of view, from a political point of view, every one of these numbers It is basically out of question.

African Americans earn eight dollars less an hour

In Daly’s view, the critical factor is the realization that large and lasting racial differences in employment rate, education level and income opportunities not only harm those directly affected, but “make the economic pie of the nation as a whole smaller” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/. The head of the central bank said the region, which is responsible for the entire western United States. Daly is also a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, the most important body of the US Federal Reserve.

Numerous examples show how different the working lives of many Americans can be – depending on their skin color, origin, and social status. Black workers earn an average of eight dollars less per hour than white workers, unemployment among African Americans is much higher, and black and white women’s wages are more disparate than ever before. White Americans and those with Asian roots are more likely to get jobs that match their level of education than are blacks and people of Latin American origin. They often have to live in simpler jobs even after they graduate from college.

The United States is destroying the myth of its founding

In their Brookings Institution study in Washington, Daly and their co-authors Lily Settleman, Laura Choi, and Shelby Buckman calculated how much economic output would increase since 1990 if the number of college degrees, participation rates, and wages for blacks were white, Latinos, Asian Americans, and women and men identical over the entire period. If only direct effects were taken as a basis, according to the study, GDP would have been about $23 trillion higher than it actually was. That’s more than the United States earns in an entire year today. If we take into account that such a more productive workforce would also result in significantly higher investment, it would amount to a total of $51 trillion, which the US lost in economic output according to the study.

Daly points out that the problem is likely to get worse in the coming years as the proportion of non-white Americans in the overall population increases. According to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the United States is not only losing strength in competition with other countries, but is increasingly undermining the myth of its founding, according to which every American has the right to economic participation and self-determination according to his skills. and diligence. Politics and business must understand that it is not about distributing the existing cake differently. “It’s about making the cake bigger.”