Living In Dunce Dynasty
This Week’s Inequality Roundup: March 28, 2025
Have you ever had an idiot boss? Have you ever been passed over for a job in favor of someone whose work you knew to be subpar?
These are near-universal experiences, so I am sure your answer to both questions is God, yes! Yet we somehow persist in believing we live in a meritocracy.
Never has this been more obvious than in this week’s Signal chat debacle, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and other national leaders discussed military action in a way that either was or should have been classified. Oops, they also added a journalist to the group but went on discussing the bombing without ever realizing the journalist was there.
The officials in that group are not America’s best
Everyone knew this ahead of time. When we fill a position, whether it be defense secretary of the U.S. or district manager for a chain of shoe stores, a lot of considerations go into it, and capability is certainly not the only thing. It’s usually not even the main thing.
If you accept that the people who end up with more money and power aren’t necessarily the most intelligent or hard-working or talented but merely the best-connected, how is it that we blame the poor for their lot?
If you’re a poor or working-class person stuck in a low-level job, it’s likely that all your friends are also working lower-level jobs similar to yours. They can recommend you for a lower-level job where they work, but they can’t help you rise to a higher level.
If you did have rich and powerful friends, they could give you an opportunity to reach a more comfortable position, but in today’s world, people tend to socialize within their own socioeconomic class.
Once in a while, you do see someone rocket to a higher position. And I think the general assumption is that that person must have exceptional talents. Sometimes that’s the case. But it’s probably also true that quite a number of ordinary people would thrive if only they were given a chance.
I’m not quite suggesting that if we randomly put different people into different places, they’d do about as well as those who went through some kind of vetting, but I am saying the difference might not be as dramatic as you think. Much of what we call “vetting” is just choosing people who know the right people or who have been taught how to fit in with the right people.
Once we acknowledge that this is how the world works, it becomes even harder to justify extreme wealth inequality.
If you have some hot income inequality-related news you don’t see shared here, please add it in the comments or shoot me a message! I intend this round-up to be a one-stop shop for everyone who cares about this topic and a great place to discover new sources to follow.
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And now, here’s this week’s inequality roundup:
Shared from Lydia Royer
Shared from William Murphy
Shared from William Murphy
Shared from Katharine
On Power and Stupidity
Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths
There is no Secret Genius lurking in the Trump administration. They’re not playing 3-D chess. There’s not some grand strategy. No, Occam’s Razor cuts deep here, and lots of blood may soon be spilled as a result of the evident implication:
The most powerful people in the world are both stupid and incompetent.
Trump & Musk Aren’t Ready For What They Are Unleashing
Will Lockett, Planet Earth & Beyond
Did you know multiple studies have shown that political revolution directionally correlates with wealth inequality? History has spelt this out time and time again, from the French Revolution to India kicking out the Brits to even the Chinese and Russian revolutions. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t take an entire nation to overthrow the status quo. Researcher Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, has found that once 3.5% of a population engages in a revolution, it always results in total political change.
‘Abundance’ Thinkers Asked Many of the Right Questions in 2021. Are We Going to Like the Answers in 2025 (and 2050)?
Todd Tucker, Fireside Stacks
Take organized labor. Reams of evidence show unions are one of the best tools we have to lessen income inequality, improve voter turnout, support progressive candidates, train students on how to be better organizers, unblock climate progress, ensure climate progress is pro-growth, help energy developers get permits from planning bodies, and reform permitting rules. On the other hand, the decline of unions in the neoliberal era has been a major factor behind pushing working-class voters to the right.
The Oligarchy Isn’t Really In Control
Noah Berlatsky, Everything Is Horrible
Fascists often work well with oligarchs, because fascists are militant crusaders on behalf of existing hierarchies. But fascism is not solely interested in generating wealth for the rich. Trump and Musk are also obsessed with racial hierarchy, with gender hierarchy, and with crushing immigrants (to point to just three obvious examples.)
Retirement Redefined
Spike Gillespie, Crone Poems & Gen X Reflections
I had a really welcome epiphany recently. I was dealing with the Ranch Crisis Du Jour—I can’t even remember which one, as March has been particularly fraught and Money Pit-ish—when I had a grim thought: I’m never going to get ahead.
That thought was not the epiphany. The epiphany came when I stopped myself and very deliberately asked, “Get ahead of what?”
The surface answer is, of course, rooted in finances. I can say with deep confidence that, unless and until I sell this place, there will be no cushion in my bank account, nothing to “fall back on” in case of emergency, and thus no getting ahead financially. The sort of getting ahead that would, say, allow me to take a proper vacation, cover ongoing expenses with ease, spring for surprise expenses without too much pain, and, you know, exhale.
No one wants to do housework
Maya Rodale, Hidden Herstories
There are other ways off this merry go round, I think. They come from suffragist Elizabeth Perkins Gilman, who is best known for writing The Yellow Wallpaper. She also had some radical ideas on how to restructure society. In short: for people who loved childcare—be paid to give childcare! For people who loved housework—pay them well for it! For people who loved to cook—pay them to cook for all of us! We have approximations of this in the form of Amazon, food delivery services, cleaning ladies, and childcare if you can get it/afford it. But what isn’t properly valued is the work and expertise that goes into proving these vital services. This is what the Home Economists were trying to show us: it’s important work, based in scientific research, with real life consequences and it should be valued accordingly.
Understanding the Fury in America
Jan. D. Weir, Why You Can’t Afford A Home Newsletter
Dostoyevsky disclosed the billionaires’ method, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.” We can rephrase Dostoyevsky: The best way to keep the salaried classes from winning the class war, is to make sure they never realize there is a class war.
Here the billionaire-controlled media has successfully used the Russian tactic known as the firehose of falsehood. The suffering classes believe such a thorough deception could happen in Russia, but never in America. They don’t see who their prison wardens are.
Their key tactic: the moneyed class keeps knowledge of several systems essential for the stealth upper transfer of wealth secret. There are no courses in the universities or colleges on the causes of economic inequality.
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the billionaires.
W.A. Finnegan, The Long Memo (TLM)
We used to do this. It worked.
In the 1950s, when the U.S. economy was booming and the middle class was thriving, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. That didn’t stop innovation. It stopped hoarding.
Even in the 1970s, the rich paid 70%. Then Reagan slashed it to 28%, and the billionaire class exploded.
Today, billionaires pay less in taxes than the average worker because they make their money through stocks and loopholes, not salaries.
Sometimes being a parent means breaking the ‘rules’ – my anti-budget approach to parenting
Sarah Elizabeth Graves, Healthy Rich
I’ve long understood that spending has an opportunity cost: If I spend money on “this,” I won’t have it for “that.” Because my husband and I don’t have a lot of disposable income, the opportunity cost of socking away money for the future is no less than my son’s childhood.
Social Security: A Time for Outrage
Paul Krugman
Donald Trump is often described as a “populist.” Yet his administration is stuffed with wealthy men who are clueless about how the other 99.99 percent lives, while his policies involve undermining the working class while enabling wealthy tax cheats.
What is true is that many working-class voters supported Trump last year because they believed that he was on their side. And that disconnect between perceptions and reality ought to be at the heart of any discussion of what Democrats should do now.
Right now the central front in the assault on the working class is Social Security, which Elon Musk, unable to admit error, keeps insisting is riddled with fraud.
Do You Still Think You’ll Retire?
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
Ask yourself these questions: How AI-proof is the work you do? Can you keep doing it for your whole life? Are you going to be one of the rare people who can actually save enough money to fully retire, or do you have plans to do some kind of freelance or part-time work indefinitely? Would you consider moving to an area where the cost of living is cheaper? What about emigrating to a more affordable country with better healthcare? How’s your health? If you’re married, how’s your marriage doing and is your spouse healthy?
Most of us need to stop daydreaming about golf courses, beaches and cruises and start considering things like part-time work and a paid-off house in an affordable area.
No one is Coming to Save You
The Working Class Investor
The sad reality is that many people are stuck in dire financial circumstances and no amount of thrift will get them out of it, and often it’s no fault of their own.
Where the HELL are the Democrats?
Robert Reich
Democrats should be all over this — stopping all official action until they get answers to what’s happening and why, not allowing a thing to move through Congress, yelling from the roof beams of the Capitol, conducting rallies across America. YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN INEQUALITY GETS OUT OF CONTROL? WHEN THE BILLIONAIRES ARE PUT IN CHARGE? WHEN BIG CORPORATIONS AND BIG MONEY TAKE OVER FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT?
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 new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. And yes, those are my husband’s actual boots on the cover! My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.
There is a saying that is relevant to your post today: "Talent is equally distributed; opportunity is not."
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