Income inequality scrutinized
Group’s report could signal billionaire’s election run
A think tank founded by San Francisco billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer to find solutions for income inequality in California released a sweeping report Thursday outlining the root causes behind the state’s widening wage gap and how Californians should go about closing it.
The report, produced by the Fair Shake Commission on Income Inequality in California, represents largely a collection of long-standing liberal policy positions and talking points.
Steyer has previously insisted that creating and chairing the commission was not tied to his exploration of a possible 2018 gubernatorial run. But political strategists said it was difficult to divorce the group’s mission statement — and Steyer’s populist projects on issues like high gasoline prices and climate change — from the looming election.
“If Tom Steyer said, ‘Would you run my campaign?’ I would say, ‘This is a great start in terms of crafting a credible, viable and effective agenda for a Democratic candidate for governor,’ ” said Jim Stearns, a Democratic political strategist in San Francisco.
Steyer has researched a possible gubernatorial bid, according to his political adviser, Rose Kapolczynski. He has maintained that his political organizing and fundraising efforts are decoupled from any run for office he might eventually pursue.
“Tom clearly has considered running for office. A lot of people have urged him to run, and he’s going to make a decision later this year,” Kapolczynski said. “We’re not going to discuss our research program in the newspaper.”
Crafted over the course of two years with input from a battery of Democratic political operatives, academics and labor leaders, the report paints a stark portrait of economic inequality in California, calling the state “ground zero for inequality in the United States.”
“This report is an attempt to step back and say, ‘We’ve come off the rails without even really noticing it,’ ” said Steyer, who sat next to Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress and a former adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, at the report’s unveiling Thursday in Oakland. “We need to get back to a place that’s much more democratic and more just, and one that supports the overwhelming number of people living in the state.”
California, the report said, maintains the highest gross domestic product in the nation and plays host to “more millionaires, billionaires and families living in poverty than any state in the nation.”
Citing data from the Public Policy Institute of California, the report said that more than 60 percent of California families were “middle-income earners in 1980. By 2013, that number had fallen to less than 44 percent.”
The commission blames the rapid erosion of California’s middle class on many of the same shifts that have created the income gap seen across the country — a gap that is particularly difficult to overcome for people of color.
In California, “wage stagnation, the loss of manufacturing and other middle-class jobs, and the growth of lowwage work combined with soaring costs of basic needs like housing, education and transportation and child care have made it harder for those earning a median wage to keep up, let alone get ahead,” the report said.
The commission’s report also touches specifically on the rapid rise of what is called the gig economy, in which a growing number of workers have taken on contractual, part-time work. The report notes that such ad-hoc employment contracts often leave employees without protections like access to disability and unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation and “structures that make a collective worker voice possible.”
In terms of solutions, the Fair Shake Commission’s report suggests a variety of broadly construed policy changes, including establishing greater protections and workplace benefits for contract workers, strengthening enforcement measures against wage theft, and supporting greater access to education and vocational training, as well as increasing affordable housing and providing more opportunities to immigrants.
Though the commission’s stated goal is ultimately to enact change through legislative or ballot initiatives, the group’s next steps remain unclear. Steyer said he expected the commission to begin crafting the “metrics” needed to measure progress in closing the wage gap and as “a way to hold people accountable.”
Kevin Spillane, a Republican political consultant, said the report “didn’t offer anything groundbreaking or particularly helpful. He’s someone trying to position himself for higher office. Obviously, he’s either planning to run for governor or U.S. senator.”
Stearns, the Democratic strategist, said the report represented a “made-to-order agenda for a Democratic candidate for governor,” adding that it was a shrewd political move for Steyer to align himself with leaders and other experts who embody the Democratic causes that he likely would be promoting on the campaign trail.
Steyer already has worked to establish his political bona fides through his work with the environmental activism organization NextGen Climate.
“If, in fact, Steyer’s intent is to run, it’s a very clever way to go about creating a platform, because you bring together all these third-party organizations with a lot of credibility in their fields to help you build your platform and launch (a candidacy) with credibility,” Stearns said.