Rev. Jesse Jackson on Budget & Economy
Race gap being replaced by class gap
We must expand our focus from the historical race gap to the vertical resource gap, the structural gap. These resource gaps affect whites who live in struggling towns throughout the nation’s heartland, just as surely as they affect the African Americans
and Hispanics who live in southwest Texas. The race walls were made illegal. These walls impeded growth. They denied us the capacity to see the whole marketplace. But the vertical gap, the class gap, is growing and devastating and legal.
Source: It’s About the Money!, p. 97
Jul 2, 1999
Working poor choose bear lottery over bull market
Too many working poor people choose a bear lottery over the bull market. How come? Because the lottery is advertised all over-on the bus, on billboards, on TV. These people choose floating gambling boats over stable banks. This idea is fed by fear,
ignorance, & greed. People who play these high-risk games are afraid of the bull market & ignorant of it. They think the bull market is something for the elite. The scam artist plays on your greed, telling you, “Here’s how to get something for nothing.”
Source: It’s About the Money!, p.207
Jul 2, 1999
Focus on poor building wealth, not just income
Income is how much you make; wealth is how much you keep. Accumulating wealth-as distinct from just making a big income-is the key to financial independence. Wealth is used not just to pay the rent or buy groceries, but to create opportunities,
to free you to pursue your dream. Income-without wealth or a steady plan of savings and investment-is just flash without cash. There’s nothing behind it. It can be gone in an instant. If you work for a company, you could be downsized or fired and your
salary would evaporate overnight.The fourth movement of the Freedom Symphony is the battle to provide greater access to capital and economic power to underserved America. All of underserved America. Black America. White America. Brown America.
Red America. Women in America. Now that we have ended legal apartheid, it is time to tear down the economic partition and build bridges to wealth and growth.
Source: It’s About the Money!, p. 8-12
Jul 2, 1999
Minorities should influence companies by being shareholders
We need to become investors. We’re currently underinvested in the stock market and there are historical reasons why this is so, but it must change. African American consumers currently wield $500 billion in buying power. Hispanics have $350 billion.
They purchase a disproportionate share of items like soft drinks, fast food, and athletic shoes. Thus they should become shareholders of the companies they patronize-such as Nike, Coca Cola, and McDonald’s-and exert pressure as shareholders to change
the current state of affairs. They could use their leverage as shareholders to see to it that blacks, browns, and women are promoted to the boards of directors of various companies and advance in the business world.
As a shareholder and not a sharecropper, you’ve got access to the floor. Shareholders raise issues like, “Who are our vendors and ad agencies? Who’s on our board of directors?”
Source: It’s About the Money!, p.125
Jul 2, 1999
Lotteries disproportionately hurt the poor
Ask many low-income people how they plan to make half a million dollars in the course of their lifetimes and most will tell you, “I’m going to win the lottery.” So they go into their local convenience store, betting on the numbers every day, in search of
a phantom. They make this the centerpiece of their financial planning. This is complete and utter folly.Saving and investing even small amounts, steadily over your lifetime, is the best way to create wealth. Trying to hit it big by winning the lottery
is sheer nonsense. The chance of winning is infinitesimal.
Lotteries disproportionately hurt the poor. [A 1999 survey found] that people who live in the lowest-income areas spend more than five times as much of their money on lottery tickets as do
people who live in the highest-income areas. And for every $10,000 of income earned in low-income areas, $108 was spent on taxes and $111 on the lottery. This is why the lottery is often called “a tax on the poor.”
Source: It’s About the Money!, p.220
Jul 2, 1999
Back out of debt the same way we got in
The conservatives come looking for your support because of their commitment to balance the budget. You know those plans depend on assumptions that are wrong. We are in a hole. The first thing we must do is stop digging. The next generation must figure
out a way to climb out. If you were going down a road at night and it was dark, and the longer you drove the darker it got, it would not take a rocket scientist to figure out what to do. Put on your brakes and back out the same way you went in.
Source: United We Stand America Conference, p.128
Aug 12, 1995
Economic justice & fairness over efficiency
In the 1988 Democratic campaign, Dukakis sought to arouse the Democratic rank-and-file on the basis of a call to competence rather than to conscience. Jackson’s campaign was more populist. He sought to move beyond his core of black support and weave
together a coalition of special interests on the basis of an economic message. Yet his economic appeal was based on fairness and justice. Jackson sought to expand the electoral arena, while Dukakis went after Reagan Democrats.
Source: The Search for Common Ground, by Charles Henry, p. 75
Jul 2, 1991
Reagan’s recovery was for corporations, not the poor
Pres. Reagan says the nation is in recovery. Those 90,000 corporations that made a profit last year but paid no Federal taxes are recovering. The 37,000 military contractors who have benefited from Reagan’s more than doubling of the military budget in
peacetime surely they are recovering. The big corporations and rich individuals who received the bulk of a three-year, multibillion tax cut from Mr. Reagan are recovering. But no such recovery is under way for the least of these. Rising tides don’t lift
We must expand our focus from the historical race gap to the vertical resource gap, the structural gap. These resource gaps affect whites who live in struggling towns throughout the nation’s heartland, just as surely as they affect the African Americans
and Hispanics who live in southwest Texas. The race walls were made illegal. These walls impeded growth. They denied us the capacity to see the whole marketplace. But the vertical gap, the class gap, is growing and devastating and legal.
Source: It’s About the Money!, p. 97
Jul 17, 1984