Redistributing Wealth

Michael Tubbs believes that children growing up in poverty are as limited in opportunity as the rose in Tupac Shakur’s poem “The Rose That Grew from Concrete.” “The issue is that we shouldn’t be planting roses in concrete and expecting them to grow,” Tubbs said. In 2016, he became the first Black mayor of Stockton, California, and the youngest mayor of any major American city.

Having grown up in poverty, Tubbs said he dedicated his political career to exposing how economic inequalities rob America of hidden intelligence and talent. “Just think about the lost potential—how much brilliance we’re losing and how many of the answers to the problems we’re facing are probably within somebody who is hungry,” Tubbs said. He is confident that poverty in America can be managed by redistributing small quantities of wealth. “The reason why there’s so much poverty is that there hasn’t been any sort of regulatory structure that allows for some of the wealth to be redistributed,” Tubbs said.

He said that his time as mayor of Stockton allowed him to responsibly test the effects of redistributing wealth and set the groundwork for other cities. “I’m fascinated by the divide between what we know works and what we do,” Tubbs said. “At first, it is important to establish a body of evidence to give other people the courage to try.” After implementing systems to redistribute wealth in Stockton, Tubbs said that citizens living below the poverty line experienced notable improvements in quality of life. “What we’ve seen is it allows people to transfer from part-time to full-time work,” Tubbs said. “We’ve seen the payoff of debt—it allows people to have a baseline. It’s hard talking about ceilings, but we can at least talk about the floor.”

Although Tubbs was not reelected as mayor in 2021, he said fluctuations in his political status do not affect his commitment to fighting the poverty crisis in America. “I think oftentimes, particularly when you’re smart and successful and go to great schools, you have a pretty clear point of view about what you’re willing to win for,” Tubbs said. “But I think the most important question is, ‘What are you willing to lose for?’”

In a world with countless opportunities for public service, everyone must look out for their suffering neighbors, Tubbs said. “I think no matter what you do, as a citizen, as a beneficiary of acts of service, you have a responsibility to do something,” he said. “You can’t let your ability to do anything cause you to do nothing.”

Tubbs encouraged students to take action for the issues they are passionate about while still in college. “So much of the work I do now started in dorm rooms,” Tubbs said. “The things I read and the conversations I had are the same as those I had as a mayor.”

Adapted from The Heights article by Elise Kirwin '27