Chuck Collins Explores Privilege and Wealth Inequality

Chuck Collins, great grandson of meatpacker Oscar Mayer and author of multiple books on economic inequality, spoke at Friday’s assembly, exploring the effects of privilege and bridging the divide between America’s magnates and the working class. In addition to Friday’s assembly, Collins held a lunch in the Latin Study and spoke at the Exeter Congregational Church on Tuesday night.

“I had this really intimate experience because I would meet with every mobile home resident and ask about their savings, their incomes and what they could afford. I had a front-row seat into low-income people’s economic circumstances and how they handled taking on debt and working multiple jobs.”

Collins has written about wealth inequality in books such as Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, 99 to 1 and Economic Apartheid in America, and he co-wrote Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes with Bill Gates Sr. His writing has also appeared in The Nation and The American Prospect, among other publications.He serves as senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good and also serves as an editor and columnist of Inequality.org, a website that regularly discusses income and wealth disproportions.Collins grew up in a wealthy household, attending the Cranbrook Schools, a private preparatory school in suburban Detroit, with classmates like 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Pulitzer-Prize-winning photojournalist Taro Yamasaki, whose father designed the World Trade Center.Surrounded by affluent classmates, Collins did not begin to realize his own privilege until he accepted a job at the Institute for Community Economics, where he worked to provide technical advice to community land trusts and mobile home resident cooperatives. Thinking back on his childhood in Detroit, Collins recalled an “economic and racial apartheid” that he had not noticed during his childhood. He said, “That early experience of inequality sparked me to pursue my career, spreading awareness of societal disparities.”In his assembly speech, Collins reflected on the duality of his perspectives on American economic echelons. “I had this really intimate experience because I would meet with every mobile home resident and ask about their savings, their incomes and what they could afford. I had a front-row seat into low-income people’s economic circumstances and how they handled taking on debt and working multiple jobs,” he recalled. “On the other hand, I also had a front-row seat, growing up in a wealthy family, where people’s wealth multiplied.”Lower Isadora Kron expressed appreciation for Collins’ objectivity and distinct voice in analyzing socioeconomic disparities. “He was very knowledgeable about income inequality in America, and exposed a lot of truth that often goes unsaid about how stark the difference is between the working class and the one percent of America,” she said. “It was interesting to hear the perspective of a wealthy person speak about income inequality because often we only hear the perspective the voices of lower-income citizens.”At his Latin study lunch, Collins discussed his initial inability to relate to people outside of the upper class and his yearning for a sense of kinship. “My wealth was a barrier for building strong relationships. It was a disconnect from the vulnerability needed for me to fully belong in a close community like the neighbors in the mobile home cooperatives. I wanted to be in the same boat as the other 99 percent,” he said.As a result, when he was twenty-six years old, Collins decided to divide his entire inheritance between four social justice organizations. “I won the lottery at birth. I was born on third base. I gave away my inheritance because I didn’t want to live in a society where a large inheritance had such an influence. I wanted to make it on my own,” he said. “I didn’t want something that happened four generations ago to dictate my future.”Even after donating his entire inheritance, Collins began to realize that he still could not divorce himself from the privilege that followed him everywhere. “I still had all these other advantages like having four generations of financial stability, being a white male, and completing higher education debt-free,” he said.Collins has been working to reduce inequality and strengthen communities since 1982. He co-founded initiatives like Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition, the Jamaica Plain Forum, Divest-Invest, Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders, high-income households and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation, and United for a Fair Economy (UFE), an organization that raises the profile of the inequality issue and supports popular education and efforts addressing inequality.Collins has also worked to defend the Estate Tax, sometimes referred to as the Death Tax or the Inheritance Tax, which applies to estates of persons worth more than $5,495,000 or married couples worth more than $10,990,000. He feels that such a tax promotes the circulation of wealth from the upper class to other economic classes and provides opportunities for people outside of the wealthy minority. “To abolish the inheritance tax is to assume no responsibility, no moral obligation to reimburse the society from which that wealth was built upon. The inheritance tax is an economic opportunity recycling program,” he claimed.At his presentation at the Congregational Church on Tuesday night, Collins discussed how wealth inequality affects U.S. politics. He believes that American economic disparities will aggrandize without an Estate Tax and other progressive tax reforms to slow the concentration of wealth to upper class citizens. He proposed that wealth inequality undermines democracy and leads to populist anger—similar to the outrage that provided presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders a platform to speak on these issues during the 2016 presidential election. Collins also pointed out that such inequality breeds economic instability that is harmful to all, not just those at the bottom.Senior Alejandro Arango commended the unbiased nature of Collins’s analysis of institutions that perpetuate inequality and political strife. “The assembly and the luncheon were political, but they weren’t partisan. At the heart of his issues, there are certain political parties that represent certain things that he was arguing, but as far as assembly speakers go, I don’t think conservatives or liberals could say that they represented their view and looked at the other view as alienated,” he said. “He was a good middle-ground—not a very left-leaning or a right-leaning speaker.”Lower Anna Clark found Collins’ idea of societal reimbursement for fortuitous privilege especially pertinent to Exonians. “It’s important that we had an assembly speaker who addressed how privileged people can give back to the communities and recognize their own advantages, especially in a community like ours, where there is so much privilege from students’ backgrounds before their time at Exeter or getting the education that we are fortunate enough to receive. We have an obligation to give back,” she said.Similar to Clark, Kron felt that Collins relayed a particularly powerful political purport, one that provoked her to search for outlets of change. “His message is relevant to youth like us. Change will not happen unless everyone takes part. If people put their money where their mouth is, real change can happen in the government of our nation,” she pressed. “We can all make influential decisions that enact change, even if we don’t all have big trust funds. Our work and where we put our time and effort can make a difference.”