If we really want to honor the Rev. Dr. King....

If we really want to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birth we celebrated last week, we should focus on what he was focused on when he died: economic justice. Simply put, ours was then and remains now a fundamentally unequal society, especially from an economic perspective, and, contrary to our popular and unfounded belief, it hasn't an improved since his time (and has, in fact, gotten worse). In sum, the best way to honor MLK is to focus on eradicating the profound and growing inequality in our society.

Although there are many possible approaches, data sources and statistical realities, I'd like to illustrate our current challenge using three stunningly representative facts:

1. 78% of us in this country live paycheck to paycheck (as the recent government shutdown evidenced so clearly and painfully).
2. 33% of us in this country have no retirement savings; that's right, 1/3rd of Americans have not saved a single dollar toward a time when work can become optional for them.
3. The top 1% of us in this country own 40% of the total wealth of our nation, the top 20% own almost 90% and the bottom 10% have a negative net worth.

The stunning reality is that American society has produced far more unequal outcomes than we realize and, in fact, our politics has exacerbated this problem in the last several decades. This profound economic inequality threatens our long-term viability in terms of our individual lifestyles and our collective standing in the world. And our lack of awareness of this major problem is preventing us from dealing with it in a meaningful way … which means that our inaction is leading to the problem worsening before our very eyes.

As James Baldwin noted a half-century ago, not every problem that is faced can be solved, but every problem that is solved must be faced: the time for the reckoning with American (economic et. al.) inequality is now.…

Truth be told, the time for this reckoning was also 50 years ago when Rev. Dr. King was focused on it (and, one could argue, there are even more distant historical antecedents). His focus on economic justice reflected not only an evolution in his spiritual and philosophical growth but the practical reality of his experience: as he noted at the time, what good was being able to sit at a lunch counter if you couldn't afford the meal? So, after the highest points of the Civil Rights Movement - his I Have A Dream speech in 1963 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 - MLK moved North to the Chicago slums and began to advocate for economic justice in the forms of fair employment practices, fair housing, etc. To put it kindly, this work was far less well-received than his previous focus on civil and voting rights.

We've chosen to forget now that at the time of his death it was estimated that as many as 75% of Americans had an unfavorable view of the Rev. Dr. King. (I hate to be so crass, but to put a finer point on it and keep it real, you can deduce from his 25% approval that if African-Americans were about 12% of the population at the time and he was overwhelmingly still popular in this community, his popularity with the broader, white society was quite low indeed … but I digress.…)

There's no doubt that the most significant driver of MLK's unpopularity near the end of his life was due to his dissent about the Vietnam War, having made the courageous decision to speak out publicly against a conflict that enjoyed widespread support in our society at the time. But he was also reviled because he dared to expose the harsh realities and ubiquity of economic injustice in our country.

And let us not forget an important aspect of his final effort, the organization of the Poor People's Campaign: the Rev. Dr. King advocated for all Americans who were affected by poverty, Blacks, whites, Latinos, Native Americans and everyone else who had effectively been shut out of the American Dream. I feel compelled to note an observation that continues to have currency relative to the cause of his assassination and that is that when MLK began to focus on income and wealth and its redistribution and broadened his coalition to include whites as well all People of Color, he became a much greater irritant to the powers that be at the time. Though none of us can say that he was killed because of this, we can't rule it out, either.…

Sadly, since the Rev. Dr. King's death, the movement for economic justice has largely stalled and the racial and class-based harmony that he sought to foment has largely dissipated. In fact, after the 1960s we witnessed the rise of Reaganomics and its cardinal focus on trickle-down economics, which though discredited from a policy standpoint remains as politically salient as ever. Not shockingly, then, in the last four decades we've seen the rich get much richer and the poor being left behind to fend for themselves while too often being disparaged and demonized in our political discourse.

That's not my opinion, it's what the data shows. To illustrate, let's address the three stunning realities that I cited at the beginning of this piece in reverse order:

Fact: The top 1% of us in this country own 40% of the total wealth of our nation, the top 20% own almost 90% and the bottom 10% have a negative net worth.

That's right, wealth has become even more skewed to the upper end of our societal spectrum. In fact, the wealthiest in our country, represented by those in the Top 1%, now own more wealth than at any time in modern economic history, including before the Great Depression almost a century ago. Myriad studies demonstrate this, but a recent Washington Post article illustrates it nicely, pointing out the following harrowing realities:

• Today, the top 1 percent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. That gap, between the ultrawealthy and everyone else, has only become wider in the past several decades.
• In the United States, the distribution of that wealth is even more skewed toward the top than the distribution of income.
• Among rich nations, the United States stands out for the extent of its wealth inequality. The top 1 percent in the U.S. on a much larger share of the country's wealth than the 1 percent elsewhere. The American 1 percent gobble up twice as much (of a wealth share) as the 1 percent in France, the U.K., or Canada, and more than three times as much as the 1 percent in Finland.
• This kind of extreme inequality is bad for the economy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which represents a number of the world's richest countries including the United States, estimates that inequality has not nearly five percentage points off the economic growth in those countries between 2000 and 2015.

[Author's note: the above are direct quotations from the article, not my interpretations.]

The article even cites research that has uncovered how Americans feel about wealth inequality that also reveals how little they actually know about it. A recent survey uncovered that there is actually surprisingly widespread consensus - irrespective of factors like wealth, income level, gender, political affiliation, etc. - among the American public that wealth should be reasonably equitably distributed. While we are comfortable with some inequality - to reflect the reality that, collectively, we believe that those who work hard should be able to enjoy a significant amount of the fruits of their efforts (and that those who aren't as economically successful shouldn't enjoy as much) - the ideal wealth distribution that survey participants identified is shockingly different than our current reality. Among other things, this reflects the fact that the average American has no idea how fundamentally skewed wealth in this country is currently.

Another surprising finding of this research is that there is also a broad consensus that wealth should be redistributed from the top quintile (i.e., top 20%) to the bottom three quintiles in our society so that those who have significantly less can have a little more. Yet, the authors note, agreeing on this goal is different than developing a practical plan to achieve it, which is why they suspect that it has not been attempted in any significant way in our national history.

The Washington Post article even closes on this theme of a shared consensus around some meaningful redistribution of wealth by noting that our recent politics - especially as exemplified by the 2017 tax cut legislation - is in fact going in the exact opposite direction and we are enacting policies that actually exacerbate rather than ameliorate our wealth inequality. In other words, in this way as well, Americans espouse one thing and yet vote in a way that is against their own economic interest.…

(Another reality related to those cited in the Post article is that the bottom 10% of us have a negative net worth. So, not only are 1 in 10 of us struggling financially, their immediate goal is to survive long enough to get out of an economic hole and then they can begin to think about building wealth, etc. Imagine this kind of life at the bottom of our society....

Also, for an understanding of how race exacerbates these already horrific realities, see my most recent LinkedIn article based on some incredible Yale research.)

[For additional information on our staggering wealth gap, see, among many, the publications cited at the end of this article.]

Fact: 33% of us in this country have no retirement savings; that's right, 1/3rd of Americans have not saved a single dollar toward a time when work can become optional for them.

The Internet site GoBankingRates.com regularly surveys the American public to assess its financial standing. In a recent article, it reported the findings of a CareerBuilder.com survey that uncovered numerous shocking realities about the state of our collective saving and investing for retirement, and chose to illustrate this with one of the most shocking of these facts as its headline: "1 in 3 Americans Have $0 Saved for Retirement."

That's right, one out of every three fellow citizens has saved nothing for his or her retirement. It's a particularly stunning reality in an age when pensions have given way to worker-funded 401(k) plans and IRAs and Social Security and other aspects of our societal "safety net" are under siege both demographically and politically. And yet this is just one of many maddening and saddening realities that this single article - just one of literally thousands on the subject that are illustrative - uncovers (and I quote verbatim):

• Saving for retirement is not an area of financial strength for Americans. Too often, meeting the financial demands of today means delaying, diminishing or simply never starting to save for tomorrow.
• GOBankingRates asked Americans how much money they have saved for retirement and found that most people are behind on their retirement savings.
• Most Americans are falling short of the amount of savings required for a comfortable retirement ― if they are saving at all. The most common responses to the question of what people have saved for retirement across all age groups are “I don’t have retirement savings” and “less than $10K,” breaking down as follows: One-third of Americans report they have no retirement savings; 23 percent have less than $10,000 saved.
• This lack of savings indicates that just getting started on retirement planning is a significant obstacle for many people. This difficulty can be due to a lack of education on the importance of retirement savings, said Kristen Bonner, the GOBankingRates research lead for this survey.
• The gap between men's and women's retirement savings is cause for concern for anyone planning for retirement. It’s as much as 26 percent, according to the 2015 Gender Pay Gap in Financial Wellness report from financial education company Financial Finesse. Overall, GOBankingRates’ survey findings show that women are significantly less likely to be sufficiently saving for retirement: Women are 27 percent more likely than men to say they have no retirement savings; Two-thirds of women (63 percent) say they have no savings or less than $10,000 in retirement savings, compared with just over half (52 percent) of men.
• Women’s retirement savings needs are also greater than men’s. “Women not only need to catch up with men but they also need to save more because their medical costs tend to be higher in retirement,” Huddleston said. Women are also more likely to live longer, increasing their chances of outliving retirement funds.
• As the youngest group surveyed, millennials are the least likely to have substantial retirement savings. Three in four (72 percent) of millennials have saved less than $10,000 or nothing at all.
• As respondents get older, the gap between the savers and the save-nots widens. Although a larger portion of people age 55 and over report high-balance retirement funds, there remains a significant subgroup that has little to no retirement savings: About 3 in 10 of respondents age 55 and over have no retirement savings.
• For those age 40 and over, however, the picture is bleaker: Among those in their 40s and 50s, four in five savers have balances that fall behind the benchmarks for their age groups, which means only about 20 percent are on track for retirement. Among those 60 and over, about a quarter have sufficient retirement savings, but the other 74 percent are still behind.

Yes, this data paints a horrible picture of our collective retirement readiness, but it's also reflective of inequality: as we saw with our examination of wealth inequality above, there are haves and have-nots with respect to funding our retirements, too (though admittedly to a slightly less disturbing extent). As the GoBankingRates.com article notes:

"On the other end of the spectrum, many baby boomers and seniors have successfully socked away substantial savings in retirement accounts:

• 26 percent of baby boomers nearing retirement (ages 55 to 64) report healthy retirement savings with balances of $200,000 or more.
• 31 percent of seniors at or above the retirement age (65 and over) have balances of $200,000 or more.

'Those who have saved more than $300,000 have clearly made saving for retirement a priority and want a more comfortable lifestyle in retirement than what Social Security benefits will afford them,' (GoBankingRates Life + Money columnist Cameron) Huddleston said."

So, not only with respect to our wealth (and income), but also clearly with respect to the ability to live comfortably in retirement, there is a significant inequality gap that is widening and must be addressed. Since I've written extensively on this challenge previously, I'll in this assessment by simply noting that we are headed toward a future in which a significant percentage (if not a majority) of our fellow citizens "will have to work a lot harder to set aside more and likely will have to work longer - or never fully retire."

[For additional information on the approaching daunting "Retirement Gap," see, among many, the publications cited at the end of this article.]

Fact: 78% of us in this country live paycheck to paycheck (as the recent government shutdown evidenced so clearly and painfully).

Here's where we see inequality in income play out tactically, as opposed to how it impacts us strategically relative to the retirement savings challenge we've just examined: the vast majority of Americans, right now and in this very day and age, live paycheck to paycheck, or, as a snarky social media meme points out, from direct deposit to direct deposit. That's right, more than three out of every four people in this country are are literally living on the brink of financial disaster and potential insolvency.

Leaving aside the mind-bogglingly tone deaf statements by some of our legislative and executive leaders, among the lessons that the recently concluded longest government shutdown in history has taught us is that even federal workers who have average salaries far above the median in our country have little to no financial reserves to tide them over during such an unexpected economic storm. A recent CNBC article cites the harrowing statistic that frames this part of our discussion as well as shares stories of the hardships experienced by literally hundreds of thousands of furloughed and essential government workers (the latter being those who have the privilege of having to work without getting paid, while the former must stay home while a significant part of the federal government is shut down). Apparently, their largely billionaire and millionaire bosses were unaware of the plight of average Americans, including those government workers who are ostensibly above average income earners.

As noted in another recent CNBC article, "Across nearly all ages and generations, from millennials to baby boomers, one-quarter of Americans, or roughly 55 million people, said they had nothing saved in an emergency fund, according to a Bankrate.com survey...." And in still another of its stories, the financial network notes that "only 39 percent of survey respondents said they would be able to cover a $1,000 setback using their savings." Suffice it to say that being furloughed or working without pay for more than a month as these public servants experienced cost far more than many if not most of them could afford … and their incomes are over 50% higher than the national average.

We may be the richest country on earth, but almost 4 out of 5 of us live on the razors' edge financially. And, not surprisingly, if more than 60% of us don't have $1,000 saved up as an emergency fund, they'll find it hard to save for retirement, too (which, as we've seen, is in fact the case). So, even though we've enjoyed a decade-long economic recovery that has coincided with the recently-concluded longest bull market for stocks in history and now find ourselves enjoying an economy that is near full employment, the vast majority of us are barely making it, or, put perhaps a bit less charitably, are not capable of living in a reasonably prudent way in terms of our personal finances. As much as we may shudder to think it, the question does assert itself: if so many of us are doing so poorly during these objectively good times, what happens when the economic winds shift unfavorably?

[For additional information on our collective financial instability, see, among many, the publications cited at the end of this article.]

Which brings us back to the Rev. Dr. King and his focus on economic justice: Clearly, the rise in inequality that we have experienced in the past half-century is unsustainable and threatens the long-term health of our economy, which is still the largest on earth. When we then factor in the shared consensus that the outcomes of our economic system should be more broadly distributed, we have the impetus to foment major change in the structure of our society. The question is whether we will evidence the will and discipline to do so.

As noted previously, gaining consensus on how we reform our society is likely to prove far more difficult than uncovering our general concurrence that it should be reformed ... and yet we must do so sooner rather than later if we are going to continue to be one of the world's most resilient and successful economies. Thankfully, there are hopeful signs on the horizon:

Thanks to the paradox of an influx of bold young congressional leaders and the recently appreciated legacy of one of our oldest legislative leaders, issues of economic justice like universal healthcare and progressive taxation are being discussed meaningfully. Trickle-down economics - the very antithesis of an economically just approach - is being disputed as the reality that the benefits from the 2017 tax cut have largely accrued to the fortunate few at the top of the US income scale becomes ever more clear. And an awareness that our current system (which has disproportionately benefited Baby Boomers and, as is increasingly evident, in a way that is increasingly accruing to the detriment of their Gen X and Millennial heirs) needs to be reformed in significant ways is growing and has now reached into the debates in our statehouses and the halls of Congress.

While I can't pretend that I have the multi-faceted answer to this conundrum, a few things are clear:

• We need to continue to examine ways in which to make our society more equitable in terms of the distribution of opportunity. There seems to be a growing recognition that in many ways our society favors the fortunate and disenfranchises the already disadvantaged in significant ways that can and should be reformed. One example of this is the general agreement that our public education system needs to be revitalized, revamped and strengthened greatly. While we can debate various methods for achieving this, we are winning as long as we continue to have the dialogue that gets us closer to effecting this change in meaningful ways. Another example is the newly renewed debate about our tax policy, especially as our latest overhaul is shown to exacerbate the inequality that we seek to remediate. While I don't suspect that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's suggested return to the 70% marginal tax rates of yore will happen anytime soon, her raising the issue to be debated is a very good thing for us indeed. Etc.
• One way in which our society needs to be transformed that isn't receiving as much focus of late but is critical to achieving the more equitable outcome that we seek is the removal of virtually unlimited campaign donations from our political process. In brief, Citizens United must be overturned as the virtually unchecked influx of cash into our politics has skewed the balance of power even more greatly toward the already wealthy and powerful. As study after study has demonstrated, the voice of the average American is being drowned out in meaningful ways by special interest cash. If we can couple this diminution with ending the widespread voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering efforts that we've seen in the past decade, we can get back closer to the principle of one citizen one vote to which virtually all of us subscribe. Then, not only will tens of millions of young people newly eligible to vote find it easier to do so, but these progressive trends in society will encourage them to do so as well.
• While there are many possible tools of a more technical nature like new, enhanced retirement savings vehicles (with greater incentives to invest), etc., a complementary, more universal effort should be made to increase the overall level of financial literacy in our society. Simply put, the more financially literate we are, the better decisions we make about our our personal financial choices over time as well as the more informed we are with respect to economic policy options at the societal level. And, to be blunt, collectively, our current level of financial literacy is appalling, as numerous studies and articles attest. The time has come for Financial Literacy to be a(n age-appropriate) core component of every curriculum from grade school on as well as to make (gameified) learning opportunities widely available to adults (who would be then incented via various methods like tax breaks/rebate/credits to use them). In sum, we must increase our Financial Literacy dramatically in the next decade and beyond, especially because we know that life is likely to get ever more complex as technology becomes ever more deeply ingrained in how we live and we become more educated about the myriad new and innovative opportunities available to us over time.

And, as much as it pains me, I end on a more emotional than empirical note by asking this question: which society do you want to live in, the one that works toward providing reasonably equitable economic (et. al.) opportunity to all of its members or the one that advantages the few and disinherits the many? Although I suspect that, much like the American public as a whole, virtually all of us will opt for the former, the reality is that our abhorrence of our current state of affairs, which is the latter option, clearly isn't sufficiently disquieting to spur us to meaningful action at present.

Of course, some of this is about education, which the Rev. Dr. King understood: part of the reason that he envisioned an encampment on the Mall in our nation's capital as a core component of his Poor People's Campaign is so that our legislative leaders could literally see the problem first-hand (as Senator Robert Kennedy encouraged him to do). So we must spread the word about this problem, bring it far more meaningfully into the public awareness while holding our elected officials accountable for doing so as well and providing the means for our fellow citizens of every station to educate themselves continuously. The research cited above has exposed our abject ignorance of the reality of our present situation, so gaining an informed awareness is the first step to a new and more equitable future.

Thereafter, it's incumbent upon us to advocate for more just and therefore inclusive public policy, both by voting consistently in an informed way and, again, by holding our elected representatives far more accountable for doing so as well. As our current level of awareness and readiness suggests, this is both a tall order and one that will take a long time to be addressed successfully. But if we've learned anything from the 2018 midterm elections, it's that when it becomes clear(er) to our fellow citizens that their interests are not being particularly well represented, they can and do act. Hopefully, increasing levels of financial (et. al.) education will continue to spur such increasing engagement and thereby result in a well(-reasoned and) -debated process of societal transformation, likely spurred on in large part by our younger fellow citizens, especially Millennials and the upcoming Gen Zers.

Not to go too deep into the weeds, but to supply a King-ian example of the type of policy debate that we could and should have, let's go back to his penultimate book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (published in 1967). In it, MLK discussed the needed address of the triple evils of racism, materialism and militarism that were, at the time, evidently and meaningfully damaging American society.

The pushback to the Civil Rights Movement and the focus of economic justice had ignited racial tensions, leading to civil unrest in many cities and often violent reprisals when neighborhoods were integrated; we were spending generously on the creature comforts afforded by our exceptionally resilient and burgeoning economy as the newly-minted (white) middle-class experienced the American Dream as never before, making the majority fiercely protective of the uniquely bountiful system that they were experiencing; and our misadventure in Vietnam was not quite clearly so yet, so the vast majority of older Americans supported it fully, earning the enmity of a younger generation that increasingly had no interest in fighting it (but from which many were drafted to do so involuntarily).

At this time, the Rev. Dr. King began to talk about the Beloved Community and about how we as Americans had to appreciate the interdependent lives that we shared with each other domestically as well as with our international neighbors. It's in this context that he grounded his focus on economic justice, noting that the social and economic reforms of the Great Society were in fact disintermediated to fund the escalating war.

Specifically, in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, he reminded us that:

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's road .... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution in values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

And implored us to be aware that:

(T)rue nonviolence is more than the absence of violence. It is the persistent and determined application of peaceable power to offenses against the community - in this case the world community. ... It is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the eradication of war but on the affirmation of peace.

And challenged us to be mindful of the reality that:

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live together as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.

So, informed by our greater economic (et. al.) awareness and guided by the Rev. Dr. King's inclusive embrace of the whole of our humanity, we would work to create greater understanding between and among the members of our diverse population, including with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religious affiliation, national origin, sexual identity, etc. In sum, we would work toward the eradication of the many -isms that continue to afflict our society, with the expressed intent of affirming our mutual humanity and providing more equitable and inclusive access to opportunity.

We would address head-on wealth and income inequality, seeking to create a more just system that consistently enabled the many to build reasonably accomplished and comfortable lives while still providing the possibility of outsized success and comfort to the few. Such an address would necessitate dialogue and collective action on issues ranging from public education to the components of the social safety net to establishing equitable tax policies to ensuring easy access to the exercise of our fundamental right to vote, etc.

And we would take a hard look at our outsized spending on our national defense and especially at the many violent entanglements around the world in which we've chosen to involve ourselves virtually constantly since the founding of this nation (even though we consider ourselves to be a peaceful people). We would have to have hard conversations not only about the strategy behind such choices, but also an evaluation of their benefits relative to their costs (given that we spend more than the next seven highest investing countries combined). Imagine the programs of uplift, as MLK described them, that we could invest in, particularly domestically, if we were to rationalize our military spending (for the 21st century).

If you reflect on the types of conversations that I've highlighted above - as well as others that brevity demands that I forgo mentioning - and compare it to our present societal discourse, you can't help but notice that we would be in a far better place because we'd be having better, more constructive conversations. Then imagine what courses of action we would pursue as we identified consensus that enabled us to evolve and transform our society, moving us ever closer to our goal of a just and equitable country (and, indeed, world).

So while in this piece where I began it, by suggesting that if we really want to honor the Rev. Dr. King, will educate ourselves and engage collectively and constructively in evolving our society and our world to be a more just experience for ever more of our fellow human beings. In so doing, we'll be building his Beloved Community in which will all have reasonable access to opportunity as well as be judged by the content of our character and capability.

Isn't this the world that you'd rather live in? Me, too.

Now, together, let's go build it….

P.S. As promised, some additional informational resources to aid in your own research:

Wealth/Income Inequality

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/?utm_term=.bfb17518f2b3
• https://www.nber.org/papers/w24085
• https://www.nber.org/digest/jan18/w24085.shtml
• https://dqydj.com/net-worth-brackets-wealth-brackets-one-percent/
• https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
• https://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf
• https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/americans-want-to-live-in-a-much-more-equal-country-they-just-dont-realize-it/260639/
• https://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/09/americans_have_no_idea_how_bad_inequality_is_new_harvard_business_school.html
• https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/how-fair-is-american-society
• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/18/upshot/black-white-wealth-gap-perceptions.html
• https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/on-views-of-race-and-inequality-blacks-and-whites-are-worlds-apart/
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-fair-our-society-walter-k-booker/?published=t
• https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/oligarchy-in-the-united-states/C23926DB2E90E340C4DC2B2BCDEEE27C#
• https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/S1537592714001595a.pdf/testing_theories_of_american_politics_elites_interest_groups_and_average_citizens.pdf
• https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/S1537592714001595a.pdf/testing_theories_of_american_politics_elites_interest_groups_and_average_citizens.pdf
• https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4

Retirement Inequality/Gap

• https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/1-3-americans-0-saved-retirement/
• https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/why-americans-will-retire-broke/
• https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/americans-dont-know-how-much-need-retirement/
• https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/15/how-much-americans-have-saved-for-retirement.html
• https://fortune.com/2018/04/18/americans-save-less-than-10000-for-retirement/
• https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/1-in-3-americans-have-less-than-5-000-in-retirement-savings-300643774.html
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbiggs/2016/09/20/how-many-americans-are-saving-for-retirement-how-many-should-be/#657e82976705
• https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/first-quarter-2018/many-americans-still-lack-retirement-savings
• https://www.nirsonline.org/reports/the-retirement-savings-crisis-is-it-worse-than-we-think/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbiggs/2016/11/11/what-do-academic-studies-have-to-say-about-americans-retirement-saving/#64f0dc307b4e
• https://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-retirement-inequality-savings-gap.html
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-golden-your-years-walter-k-booker/?published=t
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/oh-its-just-little-retirement-crisis-walter-k-booker/?published=t

Financial Instability

• https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html
• https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/few-americans-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-1000-emergency.html
• https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/02/about-55-million-americans-have-no-emergency-savings.html
• https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/091015/why-high-earners-still-live-paychecktopaycheck.asp
• https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2019-01-11/stretched-thin-majority-of-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck

Financial Literacy

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/danipascarella/2018/04/03/4-stats-that-reveal-how-badly-america-is-failing-at-financial-literacy/#26f967232bb7
• https://www.tiaainstitute.org/publication/2018-tiaa-institute-gflec-personal-finance-index
• https://www.plansponsor.com/study-shows-low-level-financial-literacy-among-americans/
• https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/corporate-responsibility/library/pwc-financial-education-report.html
• https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/how-pricewaterhouse-coopers-is-fixing-americas-financial-literacy-crisis
• https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2008/04/02/financial-literacy-101
• https://fortune.com/2016/07/12/financial-literacy/
• https://www.thestreet.com/story/13547249/1/america-s-financial-literacy-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it.html
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842661400096X
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450829/

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