Wealth Inequality

Wealth offers people choices and opportunity, helps people endure hard times – like a major medical expense or job loss – and can be passed on to future generations. But in DC, white households have 81 times the wealth of Black households and 22 times the wealth of Latinx households.

Higher educational attainment, better financial decisions, and other individual habits and practices can’t close the racial wealth gap. It’s the result of systemic racism: laws and institutions have been designed to reward wealth building by the already wealthy while denying Black people and other people of color access to economic opportunity. From enslavement to restrictions on the types of jobs Black people could hold, to residential segregation, intentional policy choices have denied Black the ability to earn a fair income and build wealth.

Just 1,500 households in DC have a net worth over $30 million and they hold nearly half of all wealth in the District. Directly taxing wealth would make DC’s tax system more progressive – meaning the greater your income and ability to pay, the greater the share of your income you pay in taxes – and advance racial justice by ending tax privileges for wealth that is largely held by a small share of white families. It also could raise significant revenue for our schools, affordable housing, and other public services that can strengthen DC’s communities and economy.