Substack: This Week in Income Inequality: Jan. 10, 2025
Who wants to buy Greenland?
According to one meme, this is the time when people stopped worrying about the cost of eggs and decided to buy Greenland.
That sums up the current state of politics pretty well. Yes, the cost of groceries is high, and this has caused severe hardship for lower-income people. But others saw a political opportunity.
Some people who apparently believe in magic are going to be very surprised when egg prices don’t – abracadabra! – go down to their pre-pandemic price the day after Trump returns to the White House.
Many of us are thinking about money right now
If you made a New Year’s Resolution to save more money, you’ve probably already broken it.
And maybe that’s OK. Sometimes, our money resolutions – like our weight-loss resolutions – are pretty toxic. But there’s a different way to think about money and Dana Miranda is showing us the way.
Dana is currently creating a stir with her new book You Don’t Need A Budget. You can also read her work in a recent Salon article. She interviewed Lindsey Stanberry of The Purse and a veritable Who’s Who of money writers for a story called Let’s normalize talking about our credit histories. She quotes Maria DeVoto, Brittany Brown and Doug Boneparth of The Joint Account. Heck, she even interviewed me!
In her story, I talk about the time I ran up a medical bill after I tried to cut into a giant pumpkin after Halloween – thinking I’d save a fortune in canned pumpkin because I’m mega frugal – and very nearly cut my finger off. I’m a klutz and always have been! Anyway, you’ll have to read her story if you want to know what carving up my finger instead of the pumpkin has to do with credit ratings.
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.
Healthcare Reform Must Become a Redline for U.S. Voters
Dr. Dan Goyal, The Antidote
The U.S. healthcare industry is massively lucrative, grossing $4.8 trillion annually. Astonishingly, over half of all spending on healthcare for the entire world occurs in the U.S.
The margins are also eye-watering, at around 20% profit. Over half a trillion dollars are made each year in profits from the health needs of the U.S. citizen. That is twice as much as is made through the oil and gas industry. The U.S. healthcare system is unequivocally the largest gravy train of any market in the entire world.
Of this $0.5 trillion in profit, healthcare providers (hospitals and community services) make over $190b; pharmaceutical companies make over $150b; health insurance companies make over $100b; Medtech companies (scanners, analysers, etc) make around $70b per year; Healthcare IT make over $25b, and pharmacies/distribution makes around $20b. These values are not turnover, but actual profits.
It is as if the entire system exists solely as a profit-making enterprise.
What’s Coming on the Anti-Monopoly Front in 2025?
Matt Stoller, Big
In 2019, I started BIG, hoping to chronicle a growing anti-monopoly movement, which had its origins in its modern form in anger at Too Big To Fail banks, but goes back, if you want to trace it that far, to the 17th century fight between the Roundheads and the Jacobites in the English Civil War. It was never a pro vs anti government debate, it was always one of privilege against democracy.
Martin Van Buren, the founder of the Democratic Party, drew this analogy explicitly, noting that his fight was for the common people against the speculators, the aristocrats, monopolists, and big landowners, and their collusive allies in government. Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the GOP, saw his fight similarly. “Labor is the superior of capital,” he said, “and deserves much the higher consideration.”
Saturday Report 1/4/25 - Is the ‘Scarlet F’ coming to Trump?
Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report
Thus, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, Elon Musk (for example) went from being worth $25 billion in 2020 to $428 billion a few weeks ago. During that same time, Jeff Bezos (who apparently just censored a Washington Post comic showing him bowing down and handing a bag of money to Trump) reportedly went from $113 billion to $235 billion; similarly, three heirs to the Walmart fortune reportedly went, during the same period, from $161 billion to $317 billion. We see a similar phenomenon with members of Congress using inside information to trade stocks, something that would land you or me in jail.
Thus (as I often note here at Hartmann Report), the rich are truly getting richer while average working people have been in a downward spiral ever since Ronald Reagan’s “Revolution” changed the rules (particularly the tax rules, but also around monopolies, etc.) that once kept obscene wealth in check.
Some basic math about cutting government
Don Moynihan, Can We Still Govern?
When Trump was in office previously, not only did he not try to reduce bureaucracy for eligible recipients of redistributive programs. He made those programs harder to access. For example, he ordered work reporting requirements for welfare benefits, which increased the administrative burdens on eligible applicants, many of whom lost benefits as a result, and required more bureaucracy to monitor the paperwork. So I am skeptical that any savings will be redistributed in a way that reduces poverty.
It’s Not Looking Great
Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work
America’s basic problem is that we have an economic system that concentrates great wealth in few hands and we have a political system in which money is allowed to buy political power in a straightforward way and now, on top of that, we have a President who fully embraces—who lives for—the opportunity to make the world bow to him by exploiting those systems. It’s a bit surreal watching this all unfold right in front of us. This is the script of imperial downfall, of a mighty nation that has been teeing itself up to crumble by having no moral scruples finally jumping onto the garbage chute with both feet. Watching all of the highly respected CEOs of America’s most powerful and respectable and, according to a widespread characterization, “liberal” companies donate millions of dollars to the Trump inauguration, unalloyed bribes paid for political protection, is just—it’s not subtle. Detecting the grand direction of America has never required less insight. I mean, 40 years ago, looking at Carter and Reagan deregulate industries and cut taxes, watching union power slowly decline, watching the public’s embrace of celebrity over substance, if you looked ahead and said, “Hey, over the next few decades, this is really going to eat away our shared prosperity and cause an inequality crisis that will ultimately obliterate the very legitimacy of America’s leading institutions”—well, that would be a canny call.
January 5, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American
In the late nineteenth century, former Confederates regained control of their states as Americans across the country accepted the argument that a government that protected civil rights would usher in socialism. Today’s Americans have heard the same argument since at least the 1980s, but rather than a redistribution of wealth downward, between 1981 and 2021 $50 trillion dollars moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Now the incoming president has openly tied himself to billionaires.
America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream
Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report
Reagan never got inflation below 4 percent and he almost tripled the national debt (from $800 billion to roughly $2.2 trillion), but throwing around those trillions in borrowed money made it seem like the economy was getting better even as wages were frozen by monopolists and a lack of union representation.
And that’s how we got the billionaires.
Back in 1980, nobody in America was rich enough to shoot himself into space on a penis-shaped rocket, and superyachts were a fantasy. The nation’s richest man was shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig, whose net worth — at just a bit below $2 billion — wouldn’t even qualify him for today’s Forbes 500 list; he lived a low-key life and, like most wealthy men of that era, didn’t much involve himself in politics (there were laws back then against rich people subsidizing federal judges or politicians).
But Reagan’s changes in the tax code and destruction of unions led to a 50,000 billion dollar ($50 trillion) transfer of wealth from the pensions, homes, incomes, and bank accounts of middle class Americans into the money bins of the morbidly rich between 1981 and today.
What’s Next for The Purse in 2025?
Lindsey Stanberry, The Purse
Over the past year, I’ve really enjoyed getting a chance to feature different stories on The Purse via Home Economics and Division of Labor—you can learn a lot from seeing how other people manage their finances and their households. And this year, I’m excited to get back to my service-journalism roots and provide more advice in this newsletter.
The Poverty Trap’s Most Popular Posts: 2024
Joan DeMartin, The Poverty Trap
The Poverty Trap’s three most popular posts in 2024 have a common theme: By one method or another, America’s economic system is “rigged” in favor of the wealthy and against the poor and middle class. The “rigging” I’ve discussed on The Poverty Trap during the last three-plus years … includes the idea that generational wealth is really a form of affirmative action for the rich, the unfairness of the tax code, the increasing gap between CEO pay and worker pay, and that a good portion of elected officials (mostly Republicans) consistently vote against aid for the poor.
‘My main relationship with money is one of gratitude’
Keris Fox, The Ladybird Purse
I mean, obviously things are not great. I wanted a cushion, a safety net and I do not have that. I don’t have an emergency fund. I haven’t paid off my credit cards. And I don’t have a plan. And, you know, the world is a hellscape. I know I should be worried. But I’m just not feeling it.
I think this means that I may have really actually fixed some of the money mindset stuff I’ve been trying to fix. (Yes, I appreciate it may really actually just mean that I am an idiot.)
And I know I need to fix this. I do need to pay off my debts. And I need a cushion and a safety net. I want to be able to pay my bills and go out with friends and travel and do things with my kids while they’re still willing to do things with me. And I need to work out how.
The Case Against Budget Culture
Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study
Today, we’re talking about budget culture and norms of capital accumulation with Dana Miranda, who consistently challenges me to rethink my established “best practices” when it comes to money. She first wrote about Budget Culture and the Dave Ramseyifcation of Budget Culture here on Culture Study back in 2022, which is a fantastic starting point if you want to get to know what anti-capitalistic finance thinking actually looks like. I also strongly recommend her newsletter, Healthy Rich, and her new book, You Don’t Need a Budget, which serves as the starting point for our discussion below.
This one’s gonna bring up some emotions, because money talk always brings up emotions. But no matter your current thinking about money, budgeting, savings, accumulation, charity, debt, all of it — I hope you approach these arguments with openness, and a willingness to rethink some of the established thinking about how we relate to money and its place in our lives.
Something Scary is Happening
Michael Ian Black
In the Middle Ages, vassals trusted that those who, literally, lorded over them were entrusted with these positions by the king who, himself, was granted his authority by God Almighty. The peasant class faced real problems: starvation, disease, military conquest. They put their faith in their “betters” to keep them fed and safe. A life of grinding, but ostensibly safe, poverty was their reward.
Today, the problems feel no less acute: climate change, nuclear proliferation, war, novel pathogens and the means to make them go global. In addition to the persistent, and probably permanent issues of poverty, homelessness, and mental health woes. Instead of turning to God to ease our suffering, we turn, instead, to smart phones.
In both eras, people kept their faith with their gods. The serfs’ god, of course, was God and His emissary on Earth, the King of the realm. Our gods are, increasingly, technological and too many of us, I fear, are keeping faith with the that god’s emissaries on Earth, the technocratic high priests.
Charles Dickens, the Social Justice Warrior
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
The fact that most Americans believe they can achieve whatever they want if they’re willing to work hard means that the poor generally blame themselves for their failures, often not understanding they were set up to fail.
It’s important the poor blame themselves, for that means they will not blame society and possibly try to change it.
The few who do manage to break through are lauded as examples, not as exceptions.
About Michelle Teheux
I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. My new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules.
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.
In response to this...
"That sums up the current state of politics pretty well. Yes, the cost of groceries is high, and this has caused severe hardship for lower-income people. But others saw a political opportunity.
Some people who apparently believe in magic are going to be very surprised when egg prices don’t – abracadabra! – go down to their pre-pandemic price the day after Trump returns to the White House."
Full agreement. Which is why I didn't vote for Trump, and urged other working class people to stop supporting *any* duopoly politician, because they all serve the same donors who own and control virtually everything. Now, if only more liberals take the Democrats to task when when they provide us with stupid distractions instead of dealing with "bread and butter" issues like soaring grocery prices, housing costs, property taxes, and debt in general. Trump won't do that, true. But neither will the Democrats.
And the one good thing about Trump winning -- the only discernible good thing -- is that now more working class Democrats are talking about class issues again and are more willing to oppose war-mongering and anti-working class decisions if a Republican sitting in the Oval Office does these things on behalf of the 0.1% rather than giving them a free pass, as they have proven they would if a Democrat holds the throne instead. Now maybe we can all get back to fighting the Class War and opposing U.S. military warfare against the world rather than focusing on partisan party support. So, there is hope on the horizon!
The working class were absolutely right to hand the Democrats their walking papers, especially after they ceased talking about class issues almost entirely and this problem with soaring prices got out of hand under their watch while they had no plan for us other than more wars and more identity politics. Now, they need to hand the Republicans their walking papers and *finally* reject the duopoly altogether.
No set of billionaires, no matter which party they belong to, is going to rescue us from the super-rich handful who have both major parties in their pockets. We need to put silly distractions -- whether it's about buying Greenland from this wing, or divisive identity politics from that wing -- aside and create a movement and a plan to rescue *ourselves* from the quagmire of billionaire control over our lives and the industries we depend on.
Let's do it, fellow workers!