Some years ago, as part of a wider investigation of expected returns, I was going through the literature on pension and retirement finance.
Economist Zvi Bodie was one of the big dogs of the field and was secure enough in his position—comfy endowed chair at Boston University, bestselling textbook, editorial board of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, consultant to the World Bank, the love of his students etc.—secure enough to ask the "Emperor has no clothes" question:
"If the risk of negative returns decreases over time, why does the cost of long term puts increase?"
The second most profound statement I've ever heard on pension finance was from a black truck driver I met in a Reno truck stop as I was making the long drive down from Lake Tahoe to the Silver State Classic road race in Ely Nevada:
"Did you know that they set the Social Security retirement age for black men higher than the average life expectancy?"
No I did not know that. And it's a fact. In 1935 when the Social Security Act was passed the average life expectancy for black males was 51.1 years, vs. 61.0 for white males. In fact average life expectancy for black males would not reach 65 years until 1995 when it was 65.2 years.
And the majority of black women were initially excluded altogether because they worked as domestic servants, a class of workers that was not covered, another class being farmers.
This led to Charles Houston, an NAACP official commenting on the New Deal programs, calling them:
"a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through."
Thinking about it, the truck driver, his name was George, may have had the more profound observation.
Here's the headline story from Atlanta Black Star:
February 4, 2015:
Until the New Deal, Blacks had shown their traditional loyalty to the party of Abraham Lincoln by voting overwhelmingly Republican. By the end of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first administration, however, one of the most dramatic voter shifts in American history had occurred. In 1936, some 75 percent of Black voters supported the Democrats. But instead of using New Deal programs to promote civil rights, the administration consistently succumbed to discrimination — in order to pass major New Deal legislation, Roosevelt needed the support of Southern Democrats. In the end, while Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt became beloved figures to millions of American Blacks, the New Deal did little to advance the cause of racial equality in America.
Authorizing Lower Pay Scales for Blacks
The National Recovery Administration, intended to reduce “destructive competition” and to help workers by setting minimum wages and maximum weekly hours, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for Blacks, according to the site Digital History.
Keeping Blacks Out of White Neighborhoods
The Federal Housing Administration was created by Congress in 1934 to insure loans for construction and repairs of homes. White middle-class families could buy suburban homes with little or no down payments and extended 30-year amortization schedules and their monthly charges were often less than rents the families had previously paid to housing authorities or private landlords. But the FHA had an explicit policy of not insuring suburban mortgages for African-Americans, according to writer Richard Rothstein on the The American Prospect website. In suburban New York’s Nassau County, just east of Queens, Levittown was built in 1947 containing 17,500 mass-produced two-bedroom houses, requiring nothing down and monthly payments of about only $60. At the FHA’s insistence, developer William Levitt did not sell homes to Blacks, and each deed included a prohibition of such resales in the future.
Segregated Camps in the Civilian Conservation Corps
The CCC was created to employ young single men from ages 18 to 25 on outdoor conservation projects. Enrollees had to be physically fit and come from families that were on relief and to whom they were willing to send most of their pay. During its nine-year existence, the CCC distributed more than $2.4 billion in federal funds to employ more than 2.5 million jobless young men (up to 519,000 were enrolled at any one time) who worked in about 3,000 camps. According to the Texas Almanac, the CCC was of very limited assistance to Black families because of local bigotry and national CCC leaders’ political concerns. Though CCC rules forbade discrimination based on race, color or creed, the local relief boards often refused to enroll Blacks, particularly in the South. When they were enrolled, Blacks were almost always placed in segregated camps, not only in the South, but all over the country.
Social Security Excluded Most Blacks
The Social Security Act of 1935, which provided a safety net for millions of workers by guaranteeing them an income after retirement, excluded from coverage about half the workers in the American economy. Among the excluded groups were agricultural and domestic workers — job categories traditionally filled by Black workers.Killing the Crops
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration reduced agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land and to kill off excess livestock, which in turn reduced crop surplus and effectively raised the value of crops. But since 40 percent of all Black workers made their living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the (AAA) acreage reduction hit Blacks hard, according to Digital History. White landlords could make more money by leaving land untilled than by putting land back into production. As a result, the AAA’s policies forced more than 100,000 Blacks off the land in 1933 and 1934. The act initially required landowners to pay the tenant farmers and sharecroppers on their land a portion of the money, but after Southern Democrats in Congress complained, the secretary of agriculture surrendered and reinterpreted the act to no longer send checks to sharecroppers directly....
....MUCH MORE
