Why This Economist Wants to Give Every Poor Child $50,000 (Ezra Klein Show podcast)

“Wealth is the paramount indicator of economic prosperity and well-being,” says the economist Darrick Hamilton. He’s right. Policy analysis tends to focus on income, but it is wealth that often determines whether we can send our kids to college, pay for an illness, quit a job, start a business or make a down payment on a home. Wealth is also the source of some of our deepest social inequalities: The top 10 percent of households in the U.S. own about 70 percent of the nation’s wealth, and the typical Black family has about one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family.

Hamilton is an economist at the New School who has spent decades studying the origins of the United States’ wealth disparities and how to close them. His “baby bonds” proposal — which would give poor children up to $50,000 in wealth by the time they become adults — has been put forward as national legislation by politicians like Senator Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley, and a state-level version of it is about to be established in Connecticut. So I asked him on the show to walk me through the structure of wealth in America today, the policy decisions undergirding that structure and the kinds of policies we could pass to dismantle it.

Mentioned:

• “Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?” by Darrick Hamilton and William Darity, Jr. 
• “A Birthright to Capital” by Darrick Hamilton. Emanuel Nieves, Shira Markoff and David Newville  
• “Hidden in Plain Sight” by The Corporation for Enterprise Development 
• “Umbrellas Don’t Make it Rain” by Darrick Hamilton, William Darity, Jr., Anne E. Price, Vishnu Sridharan and Rebecca Tippett 

Book Recommendations: 

• When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson 
• Racial Conflict and Economic Development by W. Arthur Lewis 
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Interview: 

https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-t35rq-1918eb7f

Climate change is really about prosperity, peace, public health and posterity – not saving the environment - The Conversation US

Decarbonizing the global economy would help the climate change problem – but also many others. Would putting all those additional co-benefits center stage help drum up support for climate action?
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-really-about-prosperity-peace-public-health-and-posterity-not-saving-the-environment-120476

Rich Pastor Goes BALLISTIC When Asked About Private Jets

In this Majority Report clip, does Kenneth Copeland have a demon inside him?https://youtu.be/KuO12MOysE4

Did Christianity Cause the Crash? - The Atlantic

America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it’s still going strong....
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/did-christianity-cause-the-crash/307764/

Study: most wealthy countries aren’t religious. Then there’s the US - Vox

Fifty-five percent of Americans pray daily. That's a statistical anomaly. ....
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/1/17639444/pew-study-americans-wealth-prayer-religion

A Televangelist Begs for a Private Jet | The Daily Show

Ronny Chieng takes on televangelist Jesse Duplantis who asked his followers to buy him a private jet under the guise of the so-called "prosperity gospel."...
https://youtu.be/PhSn3tDIYZc

Enlightenment Now (Dan Barker, Freethought Radio)

Harvard cognitive psychologist, linguist and popular science author Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature) gave his very first public talk about his new book, Enlightenment Now, at FFRF's 40th annual convention in Madison, Wisconsin. His optimistic talk is replayed in full on this week's show while Dan and Annie Laurie are traveling to the Central Florida Freethought Community's cruise to the Bahamas.
Interview:
https://ffrf.org/news/radio/show-items/item/31957-freethought-radio-march-8-2018