Long Island Is Missing More Than $24 Billion
“Equity is the new growth strategy,” PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell likes to say these days. A new report from her organization argues that the economy of New York’s Long Island would have been $24 billion stronger in 2014 alone if racial gaps in income were eliminated.
That’s $24 billion in foregone spending, investment and tax revenues in Long Island’s two counties, Nassau and Suffolk, due to longstanding inequality, coupled with policies ignoring history. That’s $24 billion left on the table in just one year, and it’s an annual loss that will only get larger every year, if nothing is done to address persistent racial inequalities.
