From ‘War on Poverty’ to ‘War on the Poor’ (This Week’s Income Inequality Roundup, July 4, 2025)
We warned the house was on fire. They brought gasoline.
An optimistic person might have believed America had simply lost its way — that the harm done by our tax code, budget priorities and laws was accidental.
But this week makes it plain: It was never a mistake.
I won’t belabor the point because I did that yesterday. (See Mourning In America.)
I feel as if people like me were screaming that the house was on fire and would somebody please spray some water on it, and the GOP came by with a gas tanker and sprayed that instead.
It is not a mistake. Forget the old war on poverty. This is a war on the poor.
I post these curated roundups every Friday, plus original work on inequality every Tuesday and Thursday. And don’t miss my serialized feature, Poverty and Privilege, every Saturday.
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Katie Jgln, The Noösphere
A 2022 report by the Institute for Policy Studies found that at America’s low-wage companies, CEOs now earn, on average, 670 times more than their workers. At some firms, the gap is even more staggering, with CEO-to-worker pay ratios exceeding 1,000-to-1. In other countries, these disparities tend to be lower, but they’re far from what could be considered reasonable. In the UK, for instance, some FTSE 350 companies report ratios as high as 2,820 to 1. Still, if you look at the highest-paid top executives in the US corporate world, things are getting increasingly bonkers, too. In 2023, several American corporations paid their CEOs thousands of times more than what their average employees earned. Abercrombie & Fitch, for example, reported a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 6,076-to-1. Meanwhile, Mattel clocked in at 3,620-to-1.
The Secret Story of Nordic Prosperity
Erik Engheim, Erik Examines
… all the way back to the 1930s American conservatives spoke in alarming terms about the horrors of Swedish socialism. Of the attempt to characterize the Swedish system as totally socialist utterly backfired when Sweden failed to fail, and instead along with the other Nordic countries became model countries, other nations would want to follow.
Ouch!
This has put American conservatives in a bind. They cannot decide whether the Nordic model is a totalitarian socialist nightmare or actually capitalist.
The Tragic History of Neoliberalism
Robert Reich
The chart shows the widening divergence between the rise of pay and the yields from productivity.
In the first three decades after World War II, the typical American’s pay rose in tandem with the nation’s growing productivity. The benefits from higher productivity were broadly shared.
But then, starting in the late 1970s and dramatically after 1980, pay barely grew, even as productivity continued to soar. The benefits from higher productivity went increasingly to the top.
A big beautiful bomb
Steve Schmidt, The Warning
It is an abomination. It will beggar millions of people, while transferring trillions in wealth to the world’s richest individuals and companies.
Additionally, it will strip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans, devastate working-class families, close hundreds of rural hospitals, and simply crush the VA.
The bill will also profoundly change the character and feel of the United States.
Perhaps the most significant devastation in the entire bill is the funding of a police state — and that is precisely what it is.
This Isn’t a Budget. It’s a Betrayal.
Jojo From Jerz, Are You F’ing Kidding Me?
Let’s be clear: This is the biggest smash-and-grab wealth heist in modern American history. They’re vacuuming up resources from the people clinging to the edge and shoveling it into the gold-plated vaults of people who already use hundred-dollar bills as napkins. It’s a billionaire tax cut gift-wrapped as a steel-toed boot on your throat.
Republicans Beware: Medicaid Is Not a Soft Target
Paul Krugman
Actually, in some ways Medicaid resembles the health care systems of other advanced countries, which are much cheaper than U.S. health care (while achieving equally good results) largely because they’re more cost-conscious, willing to bargain hard with drug companies, say no to expensive procedures of dubious medical benefit, and so on.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients either are working or can’t work — they’re disabled or need to stay home to care for others…
The New Gilded Age and the Big Ugly Bill
Fred Wellman, On Democracy
I want to discuss this moment in the light of this past week. While people all try to project why Mamdani won, they are missing what is really happening in this country. I believe we are facing a breaking point like nothing I’ve experienced in my life time. The gap between haves and have nots has never been more glaring. Those elites are on the precipice of being handed our government by the Republican Congress, and the people who will pay for it are the little people.
I call this the new Gilded Age but a lot has changed in over a hundred years.
Lip Service and Exploitation: The Truth About Workers, Mothers and Veterans
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
If we truly cared about mothers, we’d have safer childbirth, longer maternity leave and economic policies that don’t punish women for taking time away from work to raise children.
If we truly cared about veterans, they wouldn’t be dying by suicide, living on the streets or waiting months for basic medical care.
And the working class? We don’t even get performative appreciation anymore. Labor Day is just a time to buy a mattress on sale.
Everyone Wants Socialism
Jeremy Novak, The Banter
One thing that Zohran Mamdani’s surprising New York Democratic Mayoral primary win confirms is that socialism is popular.
Mamdani—who, like Trump, is a charismatic entertainer that speaks fearlessly— spoke blatantly about socialist policies he’d like to implement, such as rent price controls and government-owned grocery stores.
It’s not that a young, exciting new politician based out of New York is representative of the whole country. It’s that Mamdani’s rise makes it clearer that people are increasingly voting for more government help…
Don’t miss my current special series, Poverty and Privilege, which comes out every Saturday:
Poverty and Privilege is the story of Richard, a man with generational wealth, and Lauren, a single mom struggling to keep her household afloat. The twist is they both have Ivy League educations but life has turned out very different for each of them. The story is true but names and certain identifying details have been changed.
Part 1, Unlikely Allies in an Unequal America
Part 2, The Country Club Lunch
Part 3, One Family’s Fall From the Middle Class
Part 4, Billable Hours Don’t Pause for Birth
About Michelle Teheux
I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.
All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park
For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.
Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.
When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.
Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.
Right now there is only one message and that is of DT and the republican party. Jeffries spoke for 8 hours and no one remembers a word he said. Schumer ignites the crowd by reading from a piece of paper with his reading classes at the tip of his nose, only looking up to let the crowd know they should clap. Bernie and AOC are drawing ten's of thousands of people to their rallies in red states yet the DNC marginalizes them. The DNC lost the last election because 1) They didn't insist on an open primary even though they were aware of Biden's issues. 2) When Biden stepped down they refused to have a mini-primary and instead anointed Harris as the new candidate. 3) I believe they stopped Harris from having her own agenda and wanted her to support all of Biden's agenda. Aren't Dems tired of losing? Time to clean house! Out with the old and in with the new! There are so many youthful, energetic and articulate democrats but they need the current leaders to get out of the way.
It is a war on the poor because those with few resources have limited ability to fight back. But it’s just the first step. Next the administration will move up the economic ladder to the middle class and beyond. It starts with Medicaid and then moves to Medicare, Social Security, and every other social safety net. Congress is afraid to push back on him now, but all of us will be afraid to push back soon.