The phrase “race relations” brings many things to mind, but rarely does it make one think about financial success and opportunity. However, that is exactly the crises we are currently facing in race relations, and it is particularly a big problem for states like New York and other high-tax states.
Everyone knows that NY has been losing population to low-tax states in the South and Midwest. Where that loss has been most dramatic is with educated blacks and Hispanics, who are fleeing the state in alarming numbers. Surely there are many reasons people relocate, but in this case the main factor seems to be job opportunity.
A surprising 21 percent of the black workforce is in the public sector. Unfortunately, in these times of fiscal crises, those jobs are becoming far harder to come by. Meanwhile, good private sector jobs are far more abundant in low-tax states. Additionally, with the poor economy, brought about by the subprime mortgage crises and exacerbated by bad fiscal policy, the wealth disparity between whites and minorities has doubled.
When the white-black wealth gap was first measured in 1984 it was at 12-1. After a decade of great job creation and the explosion of the black middle class under Ronald Reagan, brought about by a pro-growth fiscal policy, that gap was cut to its low mark of 7-1. However, post-mortgage crises and the lack of an effective recovery policy, the gap has recently blown up to 20-1.
In large part this is due to the fact that the main asset of young black families is their home. Not a good investment these days. Meanwhile, whites are far more likely to be invested in 401k’s and IRA’s. For some, this will increase the call for social justice, which is code for taking wealth from the producers to filter it out to those “less fortunate”(through government, of course, funding the public sector workforce).
But if the last three years should teach us anything, it is that redistributionist policies don’t work for anyone except government workers. In fact, they have never shown any success since Lyndon Johnson first implemented his “Great Society” at the cost of trillions of dollars. This should also call into question the biggest wealth destroyer for minority families, the current Social Security program. But that is another debate.
In the real world, the best social justice you can provide for anyone is job opportunity. Good jobs provide upward mobility and stability that government programs never can. But until we can change our mentality that government is more of a hindrance than a help, at least in the long term, we will never realize the kind of equality that everyone says we should aspire to.
Robert Hornak is a Queens-based political consultant, blogger, and an active member of the Queens Republican Party.
