How Income Inequality Threatens the Rich, Too

You can’t dismantle society’s foundations without getting crushed in the collapse

We can forget our technology fantasies if we let society collapse. Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

The nation’s cult leadership is funding unneeded tax cuts for the rich by ripping apart the systems that everyone depends on.

From air travel to disease control, the world the wealthy rely on is starting to break down. And no one, not even billionaires, can buy their way out forever.

Infrastructure cuts hurt everyone

The ultra-rich generally don’t use a lot of public infrastructure but whether they realize it or not, they still depend on it. Even private jets rely on publicly funded air traffic control and airport infrastructure.

Elon Musk still uses the same air traffic control systems as the poor person who scrapes together enough to fly Spirit once a decade — even though his DOGE team tried to fire hundreds of air traffic controllers. You’d think he’d understand what happens when you gut the infrastructure you rely on.

Germs don’t recognize wealth

Mark Zuckerberg, who can afford to pay cash for the world’s best medical care, could still die from an infectious disease raging on the other side of the planet. We’ve cut vaccination programs in the developing world.

Germs don’t care how much you have squirreled away in a numbered bank account somewhere and they don’t know where nation borders are, either. Even the best vaccines aren’t perfect. They rely on herd immunity.

When we let millions go unvaccinated, we give deadly viruses the chance to evolve and spread, putting everyone at risk.

Yes, the germs of a child in a refugee camp can spread from one person to another and eventually sicken somebody on the other side of the world. It’s remarkable that we didn’t learn that lesson from Covid.

You can’t privatize innovation

Even Jeff Bezos can’t afford to pay for the entire infrastructure that regularly delivers breakthroughs in medicine. When we cut medical research, we are choosing not to develop new treatments that would have saved lives in the future.

We will never know how many people will needlessly die young. Some of these lost lives will be wealthy people benefitting from tax cuts today but dying prematurely from something that would have been treatable if we had funded the research.

We all live on the same planet

We all breathe the same air.

And that isn’t likely to change within dozens of generations, if ever. Yes, we’ve all watched Star Trek and dreamed of boldly going where nobody has gone before. Ironically, we’re cutting all kinds of programs that might have eventually led to interstellar exploration.

Everything we do that makes life miserable for the poor will eventually harm the privileged, too.

Climate change, pollution and rising sea levels won’t stop at the entrance of a gated community. Clean air and a livable planet are collective goods and they’re slipping away.

Billionaires still need clean air, stable systems and healthy workers.

Talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn’t

The children of millionaires and billionaires can attend the best private schools, but they won’t thrive if the rest of society is full of people who suffer from illiteracy and innumeracy.

Imagine the loss to the world if Albert Einstein had spent his life doing menial labor to survive.

Of the 8.2 billion people on this planet, millions will live and die in subsistence farming — a tragedy for them, and a loss for the rest of us. All of them deserve better, and some of them are as smart as Einstein. Their fine minds could move humanity forward but instead they will die in obscurity.

Income inequality isn’t just bad for the poor

You cannot harm the poor without harming the rich.

Money doesn’t trickle down, but harm does.

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

Part 5, The Value of $60,000

Part 6, How Marriage and Divorce Shape Financial Futures

Part 7, Why the Rich Don’t (Usually) Get Divorced

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.

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