On the origins of America's racial wealth divide, and the endpoint of toxic inequality.
Apr 8 2017
We invest about $200 billion a year on home-ownership, primarily through the mortgage interest deduction. The lion's share of that, approximately 86% of that $200 billion goes to the top 10% of income filers. That's a way that government policy over the years - that's $200 billion every single year - actively redistributes wealth to the top.
Sociologist Thomas Shapiro examines the toxic nature of inequality in America - as a result of government policies in a time of increased precarity and restricted mobility for many Americans, and as the source of America's racial wealth gap, a deep structural divide that robs minorities of equal access to opportunities and threatens democracy in America.
Thomas is author of Toxic Inequality: How America's Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future from Basic Books.
Guest
Thomas Shapiro
Thomas Shapiro is Director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) and is the Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at The Heller School at Brandeis University.
Related Interviews
