Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.S. household wealth fell by a record $6.1 trillion in the second quarter to its lowest in a year as a bear market in stocks far outweighed further gains in real estate values, a Federal Reserve report showed on Friday.

Household net worth tumbled to $143.8 trillion at the end of June from $149.9 trillion at the end of March, its second consecutive quarterly decline, the Fed's quarterly snapshot of the national balance sheet showed. Through June, Americans' collective wealth had fallen by more than $6.2 trillion from a record $150 trillion at the end of 2021.

The net drop in wealth in the second quarter was about $30 billion larger than the previous record decline notched two years earlier, as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic upended financial markets. That decline - in the second quarter of 2020 - still stands as the largest on a percentage basis at 5.2% versus 4.1% in the most recent report.

The latest fall was led by a $7.7 trillion decline in stock market values as equities slid into a bear market in the first half of the year on worries about surging inflation and the Fed's aggressive response with interest rate increases. The equity market drop outstripped a $1.4 trillion gain in real estate values.

Total nonfinancial debt rose at a 6.5% annualized rate after rising at an 8.3% rate in the first quarter, the Fed data showed. Household debt growth also slowed to a 7.4% annual rate from 8.3% in the first three months of the year, while business, federal, state and local government debt levels all rose.


https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-household-wealth-falls-again-second-quarter-fed-says-2022-09-09/

• King Charles has inherited the Duchy of Lancaster estate valued at more than $750 million.
• He will not have to pay inheritance tax on the estate due to a rule approved in 1993.
• The duchy generated income of $27 million for the Queen last year, financial records show.

King Charles will not have to pay inheritance tax on the Duchy of Lancaster estate he inherited from the Queen due to a rule allowing assets to be passed from one sovereign to another.

Charles automatically inherited the estate, the monarch's primary source of income, while his eldest son, Prince William, inherited the Duchy of Cornwall estate - valued at more than $1 billion - from his father.

The new king will avoid inheritance tax on the estate worth more than $750 million due to a rule introduced by the UK government in 1993 to guard against the royal family's assets being wiped out if two monarchs were to die in a short period of time, i News reported.

The provision was first exercised in 2002 when the Queen Mother passed on an estate worth about $80 million to the Queen including a collection of Faberge eggs.

The clause means that, to help protect its assets, members of the royal family do not have to pay the 40% levy on property valued at more than £325,000 ($377,000) that non-royal UK residents do.

The Lancaster estate generated revenue of £24 million ($27 million) last year, its financial records state, and the King is now entitled to its income.

It had assets worth more than £650 million ($754 million) at the end of March this year, the duchy's website states. A law passed in 1702 forbids the monarch from selling any of the assets.

The Queen began voluntarily paying income and capital gains tax on the estate in 1993 and Charles may decide to follow suit.

The Duchy of Lancaster estate, founded in the 13th century, consists of "commercial, agricultural and residential" properties, including a portfolio of financial investments, according to its website.

Its five rural units, or Surveys, cover about 18,000 hectares of land in England and Wales.

The Foreshore Survey covers about 36,000 hectares (one hectare is equal to about two and a half acres) from the river Mersey, on which the city of Liverpool is built, to Barrow-in-Furness in the north of England. It also consists of the Minerals Survey, comprising limestone and sandstone quarries from south Wales to North Yorkshire.

However, most of its income comes from the Urban Survey, which includes extensive commercial property interests in central London such as the Savoy Hotel.

The Balmoral and Sandringham residences are owned by the royal family, while most of the other properties they use including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are part of the Crown Estate.   

The Duchy of Lancaster was contacted for comment.

https://www.businessinsider.com/charles-doesnt-have-to-pay-inheritance-tax-750-million-estate-2022-9

The Treasury’s sanctions watchdog, OFAC, exceeded its authority in blacklisting smart contract wallets, six plaintiffs allege in a new suit.

Six crypto users are suing the U.S. Treasury Department for blacklisting Tornado Cash last month, claiming the department’s sanctions watchdog overstepped its authority in prohibiting all American persons from interacting with the privacy tool.

According to the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) didn't have the legal right to designate Tornado Cash, which the suit refers to as “a decentralized, open-source software project that restores some privacy for Ethereum users,” as a sanctioned entity because it isn't an entity, person or organization.

OFAC added Tornado Cash’s wallet addresses, including smart wallet addresses, to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list last month, saying the privacy mixer was a key tool for North Korean hackers, who used it to launder crypto stolen from projects like Axie Infinity. The SDN list is made up of blacklisted individuals or companies that are owned by, or are acting on behalf of, countries targeted by OFAC.

The plaintiffs are Coinbase employees Tyler Almeida and Nate Welch, Prysmatic Labs co-founder Preston Van Loon, GridPlus engineer Kevin Vitale, Ethereum proponent and angel investor Alex Fisher and former Amazon engineer Joseph Van Loon. Crypto exchange Coinbase is funding the effort.

Each of the plaintiffs has some ether (ETH) locked in Tornado Cash that he or she used for various legal purposes – including donating to Ukraine and protecting their private wallets from being traceable to their public online identities – but can no longer access because of the OFAC’s sanctions, the suit claims.

Alongside Treasury, the plaintiffs are suing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and OFAC Director Andrea Gacki.

The plaintiffs are claiming OFAC violated the Administrative Procedures Act, which dictates how federal agencies must develop and issue regulations, because Tornado Cash isn't property or a foreign national or country, and therefore the sanctions watchdog exceeded its authority.

The filing also claims a violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights to “engage in important, socially valuable speech.”

Preston Van Loon, Almeida and Welch are also claiming a violation of their Fifth Amendment rights, which protect against self-incrimination, as they didn't receive a notice or any other form of prior process before their ETH was frozen.

As a result, the plaintiffs are calling on the court to “declare that defendants’ designation is null, void, and with no force and effect; declare that defendants’ designation is not in accordance with law; … vacate the designation; permanently enjoin defendants’ and their officers, employees and agents from enforcing, implementing, applying or taking any action whatsoever under, or in reliance on, the designation,” and litigation costs.

Controversial designation

OFAC’s designation of Tornado Cash and its smart wallet addresses has been controversial since it was announced last month.

Crypto think tank Coin Center said in a blog post that this was the first time software, rather than an individual or entity, was added to the SDN list, a point the plaintiffs jumped on.

“Historically, defendants have used their delegated authority to designate individuals, corporations and other entities on the SDN list. For instance, on February 25, 2022, OFAC added Vladimir Putin to the SDN list,” the filing said, referring to the Russian president. “Defendants have also designated Blender.io, a virtual currency mixer … Unlike Tornado Cash, Blender.io is operated under centralized control. Also unlike Tornado Cash, users of Blender.io do not retain custody of particular crypto asset at all times and instead receive randomly ‘mixed’ crypto assets.”

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, told CoinDesk that while the exchange has “the utmost respect for Treasury and OFAC … the recent designations of the Tornado Cash smart contracts gave us serious pause.”
The Treasury Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/09/08/crypto-engineers-investors-sue-us-treasury-over-tornado-cash-sanctions/

5 years to Mars? You are obviously basing your assumption on some outdated data, because if NASA is to be believed, the journey to Mars takes 7 months under optimal conditions.

On Wednesday, the Census Bureau reported that retail sales were flat in July, showing that inflation is affecting American spending. Consumer spending drives more than two-thirds of GDP, offering important insight into the state of the economy and the likelihood of a recession.

Here are some less-intuitive markers, from lipstick sales to swipes on dating apps, that might qualify as economic tea leaves:

Lipstick

The theory was born during the 2001 recession, when Estée Lauder heir and chairman Leonard Lauder noticed that lipstick sales had still managed to climb. The same was true even from 1929 to 1933, during the Great Depression. The phenomenon known as the “lipstick index,” in which purchases of cosmetics are inversely correlated with the health of the economy, remains true today. According to Natalia Bambiza, an analyst for NPD, sales for lip makeup spiked 48 percent in the first quarter of 2022 year over year.

Men’s underwear

In 2008, as the nation spiraled into the Great Recession, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time pointed to one product seen as a good economic omen: men’s underwear. Alan Greenspan told an NPR reporter that men tend to forgo buying new underpants during a recession because it’s less obvious to others when it’s time for a new pair. “You need clothes on the outside,” the reporter recalled Greenspan saying.

Romance

As the markets fell in 2009, the website Match.com posted its strongest fourth-quarter earnings in seven years. During the pandemic, Bumble and Tinder both soared as singles flocked to the apps while they were stuck at home. “People still need love and relationships in recession — and you can argue they need it more,” Lauren Schenk, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said on a podcast.

Frozen pizza and mac and cheese

When money is tight and eating out is not an option, consumers tend to be strategic about how they spend in grocery stores. They often skip the fresh-food aisles and go straight to the freezer section. Kraft saw sales rise in 2009 as more people bought DiGiorno and opted for boxed macaroni and cheese. A similar trend is happening now — inflation is driving consumers to store-brand items to shave off a few dollars.

Champagne

When money is tight and layoffs are prolific, consumers generally aren’t in the mood to pop a bottle of Dom Pérignon. In a 2011 survey, NPR’s Planet Money found that economic indicators derived from sales of the French beverage in the United States were 90 percent accurate. Sales went up in 1999 during the internet bubble and again in 2007 during the housing bubble, and most recently in 2021.

---

Obviously, there are more substantive predictors of a recession, such as unemployment, spending and wage data. And the U.S. economy already has contracted in two consecutive quarters, another typical sign. That said, maybe think twice before buying that lipstick.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/how-lipstick-underwear-can-predict-economy/

A pioneer of cryptocurrency is turning to a different frontier: Jed McCaleb, the original founder of Mt. Gox and an early developer of Ripple, has founded a new company called Vast that aims to build space stations with artificial gravity.

It’s a high-risk business plan, but because the International Space Station is aiming at retirement in 2030, and NASA is shifting its focus to the Moon and beyond, a handful of companies are raising money and mocking-up plans for private habitats in low-earth orbit.

“We’re at the beginning of this explosion of activity in orbit and in space generally,” McCaleb tells Quartz. “A lot of that will require people in the loop to bring down the prices for things we really can’t do remotely or robotically at this point. There will be demand for multiple stations. We will be one of the first, if not the first.”

Building a machine shop in space, where astronauts could perform scientific experiments, manufacture special goods, or even build other spacecraft is a tall order for a software entrepreneur who has never run an aerospace business before. Vast will vie with firms like Axiom Space, which has its own module on the ISS and is flying private astronaut missions; Nanoracks, a longtime NASA contractor with its own space station plans; and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, which is developing a habitat called Orbital Reef.

How to build a space station

The first obstacle for any mission like this is cost: While rockets built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX are driving down the price of access to orbit, launching substantial infrastructure still isn’t cheap. The ISS cost more than $100 billion, and while McCaleb thinks his station will be an order of magnitude cheaper, it’s still likely to cost a billion dollars or more, once development, testing, launch, construction, and operations are all factored in.

What sets Vast apart thus far is its dedication to creating a space station with artificial gravity. Existing plans for private space stations envision habitats like the ISS, where astronauts float about in microgravity. However, that environment can cause significant health problems for humans, including declining vision and loss of bone density, particularly over long-term stays. Creating artificial gravity, such as by rotating a habitat as in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, will be a significant engineering challenge. Vast isn’t yet ready to share the details on its concept for such a space station.

To get Vast’s station in orbit, McCaleb is betting on SpaceX’s Starship, the next-generation rocket the company is currently developing. While it has yet to make its first orbital flight, the vehicle is also at the center of NASA’s plans to put humans back on the Moon.

Like the other space station aspirants, Vast hopes to attract a variety of customers: Government astronauts from NASA and other space agencies, private astronauts on tourist trips, or from companies attempting to develop space-based businesses. While business models exist that take advantage of the unique properties of microgravity, from making drugs with microscopic crystals that can’t form in Earth’s gravity to creating goods like ultra-efficient fiberoptic cable, it’s not clear how much demand there will ultimately be for time spent 500 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Vast is mainly in recruiting mode right now, scooping up former employees of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. One key adviser is Hans Koenigsmann, formerly the top engineer at Musk’s firm.

Silicon Valley turns its eyes to orbit

McCaleb, whose net worth is estimated in the billions of dollars, wouldn’t say how much he has invested in Vast. He plans to self-fund the business through the launch of its first habitat, but wants it to ultimately be a sustainable enterprise. Vast’s future is not dependent on the crypto markets, according to McCaleb, who says “I still own a bunch of crypto, but I know that it’s volatile.”

McCaleb’s professional history began with developing peer-to-peer networks and creating Mt. Gox, initially a trading platform for Magic: The Gathering cards that became one of the most prominent early crypto exchanges. After he sold it in 2011, it collapsed dramatically in 2014. McCaleb was also one of the lead developers of Ripple, an early crypto alternative to bitcoin, and today is involved with Stellar, a digital currency trading protocol.

Now, he is turning a longtime personal interest in space exploration into a business. McCaleb, like Bezos and Musk, believes that the future of human civilization is beyond the Earth. “As a civilization, we need a frontier, otherwise things get very zero sum, and that’s very bad for society,” he told Quartz. “This is something that has higher [return on investment] for humanity. For me personally, I want to do the biggest ambitious thing, given the resources I have.”


https://qz.com/a-crypto-billionaire-is-joining-the-race-for-private-sp-1849525299

Eh.  Those "brain gains" you mentioned happen over an extremely long period of time, and nature gives us no guarantees that the trend will continue, right?

The modern human brain may only be 40,000 years old, scientists say

Homo sapiens, in our most "modern" form, have been roaming the earth for about 200,000 years now.

But there's something rather special about the way our brains look today: human skulls are rounder, faces are smaller, and more retracted into the skull. It's different from the way our ancestors looked, more than a hundred thousand years ago.

And now, for the first time, scientists say they've pinpointed precisely when they believe we grew into our modern skulls.

Research published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany says there's something distinct about the way our brains and skulls look now, and it likely developed around 40,000 years ago.

https://www.businessinsider.com/human-brains-may-only-be-40000-years-old-scientists-say-2018-1

#1  Your point: Rich people make money work for them.
My opinion: Poor people are doing the same too with the little they have.

#2  Your point: Rich people spend on necessities and what is needed not what is desired.
My opinion: The poor people are more prudent than the rich because they have limited resources.

#3  Your point: Rich people are eager to learn but poor people are not eager to learn.
My opinion: I disagree with you, poor people also learn, it is evident around you my friend. They even learn under unfriendly conditions compared to rich people. Just a piece of evidence that they learn, they are used as skilled labour in every facet of life by the so-called rich. Do you think they can fit in if they did not learn?

Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new government analysis published Wednesday. This is the biggest two-year decline — 2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the primary cause of the decline. However, increases in the number of people dying from overdoses and accidents is also a significant factor.

American Indian and Alaskan Native people have experienced a particularly precipitous drop in life expectancy since 2019, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years. This kind of loss is similar to the plunge seen for all Americans after the Spanish Flu, said Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It’s a ridiculous decline,” Anderson said. “When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.”

Life expectancy isn’t really a prediction for a single individual. It’s more like a check engine light — an indicator for the health of society as a whole. When more people die than would be expected, or when they die at younger ages than expected, then life expectancy will decline.

“Life expectancy is an interesting measure, because it emphasizes deaths that occur at younger ages,” Anderson explained. “A death at a younger age basically takes away more years of potential life than again in older age.”



Image link:  https://i.ibb.co/wCyPZFC/us-life-expectancy.jpg

For decades, Americans saw steadily rising life expectancies. Efforts to reduce smoking contributed to this increase in the 1990s and 2000s, because fewer people were dying of related conditions, like cardiovascular disease. American mortality data has been collected since at least 1900.

But American life expectancy began to stagnate around 2010 — while other developed countries continued to see gains, Anderson noted.

This year’s life expectancy figure is 0.9 years lower than last year’s. Covid-19 accounted for about half of the decline, and a category encompassing accidents and unintentional injuries is responsible for another 16%. That category includes overdoses; in fact, about half of the unintentional injury deaths in this analysis were due to overdoses.

“We think that the increase in drug overdoses during the pandemic is partly due to the pandemic, but probably not wholly due to the pandemic,” he said. “It'll be interesting to see [what happens] as the pandemic abates — assuming that it does, hopefully it will.”

Although deaths from heart disease were the third biggest contributor to the decline in life expectancy, the number of people dying from this condition actually decreased. “With heart disease, we did see increases in mortality at younger ages — from ages 35 to 64 in particular,” Anderson said.

Not every demographic group saw the same changes, the researchers found. Asian-Americans have the highest life expectancy of any group — 83.5 years — and only saw a 0.1 year decline from 2020. Meanwhile, Black Americans lost 0.7 years between 2020 to 2021.

But American Indian and Native Americans saw the largest loss of life expectancy of all — 1.9 years less than 2020’s life expectancy, and 6.6 years less than 2019’s. They also had the lowest life expectancy among the groups studied. (Historically, Native Americans’ life expectancy has been staying level even in years when the life expectancy of the entire population did increase, one recent study found.)

The data used for this analysis is still technically incomplete, Anderson noted; it includes about 99% of the deaths that the researchers expected to have. The precise figures could change when the final analysis is released in December.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/08/31/u-s-life-expectancy-drops-sharply-the-second-consecutive-decline/

The data used for this analysis is still technically incomplete, Anderson noted; it includes about 99% of the deaths that the researchers expected to have. The precise figures could change when the final analysis is released in December.

Hello, the community I am a person asking how I can fetch better improvements in the country's economy.

In my opinion, the first thing you need to survive under apocalyptic conditions is a good army equipped with heavy weapons. I don't think there is any futuristic city designed with that in mind (CMIIW). Unfortunately, there are still organized military groups acting like weare living in the Stone Age. They end up miserably when confronted with serious force, but you have to have that force.

OPEC and its allied producers on Monday agreed to reduce oil production by 100,000 barrels per day amid concern regarding falling oil prices and lingering fears of a global recession.

Why it matters: The move reverses the group's decision last month to boost oil production for the month of September by 100,000 barrels per day.

• OPEC said in a press release Monday that, alongside its allies, it had agreed to "revert to the production level of August 2022...for the month of October."

The big picture: This is the group's first cut in oil production in more than a year and comes as crude oil prices have fallen 25% in the past three months, the Wall Street Journal reported.

• Saudi Arabia's energy minister warned last month that OPEC+ countries could cut oil production at any time, AP reported.
• Members of the group are concerned that a successful revival of the 2015 Iran deal could see an influx of Iranian oil hit the market, though tensions between the U.S. and Iran have spiked in recent days, with the U.S. conducting a military flyover of the Middle East over the weekend.
• Members are also concerned that a global recession, egged on by sky-high inflation, energy woes in Europe and economic slowdown in China spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, could weaken oil demand, per the Journal.

What they're saying: "The President has been clear that energy supply should meet demand to support economic growth and lower prices for American consumers and consumers around the world," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

• "U.S. oil production is up by more than half a million barrels per day since the beginning of the year and is on track to be up by more than one million barrels per day by the end of the year, on the way to a new production record next year," Jean-Pierre added.

What's next: The group noted in the press release that it has plans to reconvene on Oct. 5, and could meet again in the meantime if necessary to "address market developments."



https://www.axios.com/2022/09/05/opec-cut-oil-production

In addition, it can be said that some fans of brain biohacking are very brave in order to use all sorts of nootropic drugs to further activate their thought processes. Medicine also does not stand still; all the drugs that are being developed to improve people's IQ naturally turn society into a devoured information source. Dave Asprey, author of the book "Brain Biohacking," talks about this very interesting topic.

I think that the level of access to education is growing on the planet, and the level of critical thinking, on the contrary, is falling. People in general are becoming more infantile, more suggestible.

People are being bombarded by advertisements and algorithmic content, few questions that would arise is does it really benefit the brain as a whole? And how many percentages does people are really comprehending the near real-time content that they view with critical thinking/thought?

People becoming smarter ? We getting cyborgs and at the same time using machines everywhere, what you think is gonna happen ? There are loads of things happening as well in countries like Japan where people are getting their food delivered by the robots as well, I do think that this is just going to increase and get better over time as well. I think when we talk about people being intellectual beings, they will ofcourse get better over time, after homo erectus we got loads of new species, even lost the one with more cranial capacity. People will ofcourse become smarter to integrate themselves with the growing world there is also a epic research telling us how the brain have decreased in volume :

It's definitely not the same as cranial capacity, intelligence is not like the movie where you take the pill and use 100% of your brain, it doesn't work like that, we use various sections every once in a while, this I do think when we are going to be processing data it would depend on your : environment+ genetics 🧬 but ofcourse the survival of the fittest is going to pertain.

A counter argument could be that, the modern world involves use of computers and devices, many of which does most of the critical thinking for us, making people need to do less and hence process less amounts of information independently.
Simple tasks like typing is now heavily promoted by text predictors, which only requires the individual to enter the first 2 or 3 letters they associate to that word and it would take it from there, this has been linked to reduced ability to recognize spellings and word structure in some.

The era of search engines also means people retain less and consult Google at the slightest inquiry, as opposed to before, when learning was more practical.

This improved technology is of course a positive as it makes learning significantly easier and automated but the ease of it all could make the newer generation lazier overtime.

I've been under the impression that intelligence is directly linked to how well the brain is able to make and revisit connections between neurons/ideas it's made.

It's certainly possible that the people who handle the most raw data, reading and information will have be able to become a lot more intelligent but I think there are other things too (such as receiving information in multiple formats, I can learn something well if someone else already knows it and can quickly explain it and then answer any questions that arise).

They eventually do. Shipping is a very classic example of a cyclic sector and does go down and also up. The reason is that when prices become sufficiently attractive, other competitors will build ships and everything will stabilise or go opposite direction eventually. Now, the cycle is usually very long and the price includes a heavy exposure to bunker fuel, which is a product of refining.

Employers in California may soon have to post salaries for job listings and publicly reveal pay scales by race, ethnicity and gender.

The state Legislature passed a law Tuesday requiring all employers in the state to post salary ranges for open positions. It also would require companies with more than 100 employees to report pay scales by gender, race and ethnicity, data that California would then make public.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.

“Disclosing salary ranges during hiring negotiations has been proven to narrow the wage gap,” said state Sen. Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat, in a statement to USA TODAY. “I am hopeful that the governor will sign SB 1162 and take meaningful action to create an equitable economy that supports women, families, and people of color.”

The California Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill and put it on its “Job Killers” list, saying it would encourage more lawsuits against businesses and make hiring “more burdensome.”

California joins other cities and states in enacting laws to force employers to hand over more compensation information. Employers oppose the growing movement, saying they are proponents of pay transparency and equity but don’t agree with how states and cities are going about it.

“States and localities are moving to mitigate pay disparity, and it’s obviously gaining traction,” Michelle Holder, a labor economist whose research focuses on the Black community and women of color, told USA TODAY in February. “I am hopeful this momentum continues at the local and state levels, and perhaps works its way up to the federal level at some point.”

What’s behind the national push for pay transparency? Pay equity.

A California study found that women made $46 billion less than men in similar positions in 2020. People of color were paid $61 billion less than white workers.

Women and people of color have historically been offered significantly lower salaries, and corporations profit from underpaying them, said Holder, president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and associate professor of economics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

At the current pace, women won’t close the pay gap with men until 2059, according to the Center for American Progress. And it could take a century for Black and Hispanic women.

Disparate pay has helped widen the wealth gap. The median Black household owns nearly 90% less wealth than the median white household, according to Goldman Sachs research on Black women. Lower levels of earnings for Black households drive much of the gap.

Federal legislation that would have made it harder for employers to pay women less than their male co-workers was blocked last year by Senate Republicans who said the Paycheck Fairness Act would primarily benefit trial lawyers, not women.

https://money.yahoo.com/california-passes-law-requiring-companies-034237391.html