Baby bonds fail because income and wealth are not the same

Evidence

Baby bonds have more advantages than disadvantages. But the baby bonds solution, too, fails to recognize that income and wealth are not the same. There are low-income white Americans who have more wealth than their higher-income black peers, and their children will receive a more valuable trust fund than a high-income, low-wealth black child. Compare Jessica Bzdell, who, through her wife’s inheritance, was able to own a home and work at a low-paying dream job, with John, who has a prestigious job and a higher income, but lost money on his first home and is supporting his extended family. And it doesn’t change the fact that once black children turned eighteen and gained access to their accounts, they’d still be using the money in a system designed to produce white wealth and drain black wealth. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 487

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to her structural-racism-as-mechanism framing from her stated goal and prior chapters; the system producing white wealth while draining black wealth is the book’s core thesis returning here. — connects to: Baby bonds would give poorest children nearly thirty times more at age eighteen — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 486; Closing the income gap alone would not close the wealth gap — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 485; Imitating white financial behavior cannot replicate white wealth because the underlying assets compound. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 504 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Baby bonds would give poorest children nearly thirty times more at age eighteen — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 486; Closing the income gap alone would not close the wealth gap — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 485; Imitating white financial behavior cannot replicate white wealth because the underlying assets compound. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 504 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Closing the income gap alone would not close the wealth gap #corroborates (0.92) — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 485