Sally Bowles, the entertainer in the musical Cabaret, sang it best: “Money makes the world go around.” It’s as true today as it was in Sally’s pre-World War II Germany. We all want a better life, and we need money to do that. It’s a crass subject, but it’s an important one to examine as we look at the health of our city and its future.
Wealth is one of Dallas’ greatest strengths, but it exposes one of our greatest vulnerabilities. We know of our city’s wealth, but we don’t talk much about “not having money.” We don’t discuss why some parts of our city are drowning in poverty. We don’t discuss why capital flows to some ZIP codes and never comes close to others. We never talk about how money and race relations work.
In 2011, the net worth of the average black household in the United States was $6,314, while the average white household was worth $110,500. The income gap between blacks and whites has grown by 40 percent since 1967. This is the real racial divide.
Did you know that 38 percent of Dallas children live in poverty? Or that during the past 12 years our population grew by 5 percent and that the population of those in poverty grew by 41 percent?
In Dallas, most of us are lucky compared with the rest of the world, and if you don’t think you’re a 1 percenter, think again. If you earn $34,000 or more a year, you are in the top 1 percent of wage earners in the world. One percent of the world’s population owns almost half of the world’s wealth.
I don’t quote these numbers to moralize or to espouse policy but to wake us up to the fact that a major tidal shift in global economics is taking place, and it is hitting hard right here in our backyard.
Why is this important? Because until we start to better understand this divide, we will not make major dents in important issues. We would have better race relations, a better educational system, a better health care system, a better criminal justice system and a better quality of life in our city if we could answer this question: Why is capital such a good friend to some and so foreign to others?
Answers are not easy to come by, but asking the right questions is a good start. Such as:
• What are the cultural biases regarding money?
• What are the hurdles to certain types of investments?
• Is it a zero-sum game where we must fight each other for a piece of the financial pie, or can we really grow that pie for everyone?
Tonight at the Come Together discussion organized by The Dallas Morning News we will try to begin to answer some of those difficult questions. The answers will not be silver bullets but insights to help us build solutions. The history of the world and marketplaces everywhere was created through millions of small decisions and insights and not by a singular, sweeping political decision.
I bring two biases to this discussion. First, people want to work and add value to the world they live in. According to the Gallup research firm, the No. 1 thing people around the globe want is a good job — over health, water and education. They want to work, not sit around. Those who have capital must stop acting like anyone without capital is somehow lazy. It’s just not true. Those without capital should stop using the words “fair” and “money” in the same sentence because that’s not how money works.
My second bias is that capital will always eventually go where it’s treated best and where it gets the greatest return, whether in an investment, at a grocery store, in a charitable cause or in a government. It must make more of itself or it dies. Capital, by itself, has no inherent morality. It is we, the stewards of capital, who must use our intelligence, wisdom and, yes, our morality to put systems in place that allow capital to work in the right way.
If done correctly, the capital grows itself and we also improve our city and the lives of our citizens. In doing so, we can come together for Dallas in the 21st century.
Mike Rawlings is mayor of Dallas. Reach him at dallascityhall.com.
Come Together
What: Panel discussion titled “Connecting Capital with Underserved Communities”
Who: Participants include Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, Grand Bank of Texas chairman Mike Casey, UT-Dallas professor Susan McElroy, syndicated business columnist Michelle Singletary and John Martinez, Regional Hispanic Contractors Association.
When: 7-8:30 p.m. tonight
Where: Adamson High School, 201 E. Ninth St.
