>But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either.

You don't see a difference between USA, 1960 and USA, 2020?

And you know what was the cause of the largest changes between 1960 and 2020? The civil rights protests.

And those protesters were disapproved of / hated by the majority of the population at the time. For upsetting the status quo - and "pushing for change to quickly". There are surveys that list this - that mirror the exact same responses that a number of people give today about BLM.

> And you know what was the cause of the largest changes between 1960 and 2020? The civil rights protests.

So there was change that was achieved by non-revolutionary ways, but this time it's different? This time it needs to be riots and proclaiming autonomous zones of a weird mix of war lord justice and lawlessness? I'm not convinced.

My understanding is that inequality is much worse now than in the 60s. It also seems like back then it was much easier to have a good quality of life with a non-skilled job than it is today. However, I haven't looked into it too much so I could be mistaken.

Census data on percentage of blacks living in poverty.[1]

2018 - 23.3%

1966 - 31.1%

[1]https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

Not saying that you're making it at all but there is a very common error people make when looking at the poverty stats.

"The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps)." (https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc...)

After these programs, the poverty rate is reduced by 53% (https://www.nber.org/papers/w24567.pdf)

This is a good point and something I had heard before! You are correct this is before gov't transfers.

I was looking more at the relative change versus arguing the numbers were absolute.

Thanks for posting this! Good to have numbers to discuss!

I'm having trouble opening the spreadsheets on my Mac. How do the numbers compare for all races? Do numbers like this factor in things like health insurance or renting versus owning a house?