In response to @itsafronomics's call to action I am going to make some observations as a macroeconomist. Black Americans’ share of wealth has hovered around 4% of total wealth for the past 30 years. People who account for more than 13% of the population hold 4% of the wealth..1/n

Is a rising tide lifting all boats? No. Real median net worth for black households in 2016 $ rose from $7.4k in 1989 (not a typo) to $26k in 2001 but fell back to $17.6k in 2016. That number in 2016 for white households is $171k...2/n

Avenues to wealth are not equal: 4.7% of black households held equity directly in 2016 as compared to 17.5% of whites (according to the Fed's SCF), home ownership is 44% for black hh and 73.7% for whites..3/n

Black households experience more shocks to their wellbeing: unemployment is higher and rises more in recessions, rates of health insurance coverage are lower, and incarceration rates are higher. 4/n

Stratification economics discusses how this is a feature of our system, not a bug and access to education isn't the panacea many economists want it to be. Unequal policing and incarceration is a major issue here 5/n
@DarrickHamilton @SandyDarity
https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/what-we-get-wrong.pdf

As a macroeconomist I believe racial inequality and growing wealth disparities limit our growth potential by disincentivizing investment and risk taking & reducing consumer spending possibilities. @federalreserve Gov Brainard has a nice speech on this 6/n
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/brainard20170926a.pdf

What to do? Non-employment based access to affordable health care, baby bonds ( @DarrickHamilton) automatic stabilizers (a la @Claudia_Sahm), the creation of a digital currency to deliver monetary stimulus to consumers not asset prices among many ideas 7/n https://twitter.com/PIIE/status/1245434777148235780?s=20

Let's keep talking relentlessly as a profession & thanks to @itsafronomics, @drlisadcook @femme_economics @TrevonDLogan @DianeSwonk @gbenga_ajilore, @pqblair @PeterBlairHenry & many others incl those mentioned in this thread for doing more than their share of the lifting...fin