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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Report Uncovers Gender, Class, Color Disparities in Michigan Incomes

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Monday, August 1, 2016   

LANSING, Mich. – New data suggests Michigan's rich are getting richer while many others struggle to make ends meet.

According to a fact sheet from the Michigan League for Public Policy, the top 1 percent of earners in the state make 22 times more than the bottom 99 percent.

Rachel Richards, legislative coordinator with the Michigan League for Public Policy, explains that after similar growth for three decades, from 1979 to 2007 incomes for the top 1 percent rose 100 percent while slightly declining for the rest of workers.

"The gap was actually fairly small in 1979,” she points out. “The top 1 percent still made more than the bottom, but the top 1 percent of Michigan households held only about 9 percent of the total income in the state."

That share nearly doubled to almost 18 percent by 2013.

And Richards notes women and people of color are particularly hurt by the gap. Women earned about 75 cents for every $1 earned by men in 2014, and workers of color made $3 less per hour than white workers in 2012.

Richards says these are important areas to examine because despite an improving economy in Michigan, poverty is still a major issue for many workers. And the league will be diving deeper into these income inequality issues with a series of fact sheets.

"This is a much broader issue than what I originally started looking at,” she stresses. “It's not just necessarily the top versus the bottom, you know, it spans gender issues, it spans race and ethnicity issues, it spans educational attainment issues."

Richards adds that Michigan policymakers can help bridge the divide by improving the state's tax climate, restoring the Earned Income Tax Credit to 20 percent of the federal level, as well as improving working conditions and wages.

"There's national policies as well as state policies that have caused this income gap to grow and to continue to persist, so it's really not necessarily about pushing down the top but it's about lifting up the rest of us and especially those that are struggling to make ends meet," she states.

Michigan's income gap is the 11th worst nationally.






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