This Week In Income Inequality: Feb. 7, 2025

A billion here, a billion there

This simple and unostentatious house belonged to Sen. Everett Dirksen. Are you surprised by how ordinary it is? I doubt if any senators live in comparable homes now. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

You know, we haven’t always been ruled by ultra-wealthy oligarchs.

A short walk from where I live is the house that belonged to Sen. Everett Dirksen. He’s legendary in my community of Pekin, IL, but you might remember him for helping to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or for his probably apocryphal statement “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”

It’s not a particularly fancy house, you’ll notice. The house has seen better days, but there are quite a few houses from the same era and in the same neighborhood that are larger and grander (or would have been, decades ago) than the place Dirksen made his home.

It occurred to me, as I walked my two dogs past the Dirksen house last week, that the days of senators living modest lifestyles are over.

We are no longer ruled by people of moderate means. More than half the members of Congress are millionaires.

Millionaires have no idea how I live

Even if they grew up poor or in the middle class, those memories seem to quickly fade.

That doesn’t keep them from trying to make themselves look like ordinary folks; billionaire J.D. Vance loves to pretend he grew up as a hillbilly and he’s as dangerous to the working and middle classes as any human being on Earth.

Is it too much to ask that the working and middle classes have some representation? If we got the money out of politics, ordinary people would be able to afford to run. If we imposed term limits, our leaders would amass less power and after their allotted terms, they’d have to return to whatever profession they had before they went to Washington D.C.

By odd coincidence, a day or two after taking the picture of his house, I ran into this portrait of Dirksen in my public library. Note the cigarette; he had lung cancer when he died. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

We could end the gerontocracy and get some younger blood.

Just imagine if every member of Congress knew he or she could only serve two or three terms – don’t you think more of them would have had the balls to call out Trump after Jan. 6 if they weren’t trying to protect their ability to serve and enrich themselves and their friends for decades? If about half the members of the House and Senate at any given time had hit term limits and thus would not be permitted to run again, they might have more courage to do the right thing.

Term limits are not thought of as a way to fight income inequality, but I actually think they’d help. Reducing the power of a small group of people and spreading it out to more of the public is always a good idea.

And now, here’s the roundup.

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 if you see a Substack you like in this round-up, subscribe to it! There is strength in numbers.

The Fu*king Nightmare

Robert Reich

For forty years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning ever more wealth and power for themselves.

I’m old enough to remember when America had the largest and fastest-growing middle class in the world. We adhered to the basic bargain that if someone worked hard and played by the rules, they’d do better than their parents had, and their children would do even better than they.

Simplicity as resistance

Dana Miranda, Health Rich

I followed a code of simple living innately in my early adulthood without knowing what it was. I never wanted my life to feel heavy; consumption and accumulation make a life very heavy.

I’m not surprised I detoured from simplicity when I had the chance. I put up with being poor for years because I chose writing over anything else; when writing vaulted me into the middle class, I needed a moment to believe I was worthy of everything poverty had kept from me.

Now we’re staring down a fascist regime and worrying about protecting our relative prosperity from a full slate of unknowns. That worry makes us brittle. I’m embracing some version of voluntary simplicity to opt out of the striving, instead of beating my fists at the doorstep of this regime.

The Billionaire Backlash

Jennifer Berkshire, The Education Wars

… it isn’t just Democrats, like James Talarico, who are sounding the alarm. I’ve spent the last month interviewing conservatives all over the state and have lost count of the number of times I’ve been told that vouchers are part of the ‘globalist billionaire agenda.’ As many of these conservatives see it, their elected officials no longer represent them but are instead carrying out the marching orders of an assortment of billionaires.

What you need to know about Trump’s tariffs and the rest of Trump’s madness

Robert Reich

This is Trump’s game: Huge demonstrations of power that’s wielded unpredictably. They’re eliciting extraordinary deals for Trump and his family, domestically and worldwide.

Trump says he’s doing this for American workers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He’s doing this for himself and for the world’s oligarchy, which, in turn, is busily siphoning off the wealth of the world.

‘Don’t internalize the idea you’re bad with money, when really you’re underpaid’

Keris Fox, The Ladybird Purse

If I want longevity with my business I do need to be bringing in more money. I’m able to look at it with a level head though. During my time at uni I was so scared of money I’d go months without checking my balance because I was too ashamed to see how deep into my overdraft I was.

Sorry, Your Bootstraps Won’t Save You: A Guide to Mutual Aid in the Age of Bullshit

Jo Lorenz, The Progressivists

WHILE BILLIONAIRES play space race with dick-measuring rockets and politicians debate which humans deserve to live, we peasants need to quietly build power.

And unlike the ruling class’ power — built on exploitation and maintained through violence — ours grows through the radical act of *checks notes* giving a fuck about each other. Shocking, I know.

Public Data Is Under Siege: Why It Affects You

Jeremy Ney, American Inequality

As someone who has spent over a decade relying heavily on these government agency datasets (90% of American Inequality articles pull data from one of these government agency portals. It is the #1 input for the maps I build), I’m deeply dismayed to see this change. Many friends of mine maintain these datasets and help make them publicly accessible. I was one of those hobbyists who downloaded a lot of data in that 48 hour window between Wednesday and Friday. And like hundreds of others, I’ve uploaded much of it to our website for public use.

This is what dictatorship looks like

Robert Reich

The irony of the richest man in the world almost single-handedly destroying an agency designed to help the world’s poor, so that the U.S. federal budget has more room for another giant tax cut for the richest man in the world and his pals, should not be lost on anyone.

The Coup Has Already Begun

Greedbane

We are living through an active coup. Not the kind with tanks rolling through the streets or armed revolutionaries storming the capital—this is a billionaire-backed, AI-powered, government-dismantling corporate coup happening in real time.

And most of the country has no idea.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House isn’t just about him—it’s about a coordinated effort by tech billionaires, particularly Elon Musk, to strip democracy for parts and rebuild America as a series of corporate-controlled enclaves. This isn’t a dystopian theory; it’s a well-funded, well-planned, and well-executed power grab by the ultra-wealthy who no longer see the need for a functioning government.

If we don’t call this out, organize against it, and fight back now, we may not get another chance.

When It Comes to Covering Musk’s Government Takeover, WIRED Is Showing Everyone How It’s Done

Parker Molloy, The Present Age

And here’s why this kind of journalism matters: When an unelected billionaire is seizing control of government agencies, we need reporters willing to show exactly how it's happening. We need outlets that will dig past the press releases and official statements to expose the actual machinery of this takeover. Most of all, we need journalism that isn't afraid to call things what they are.

From Famine Walls to Welfare Conditions, Why Do We Always Punish The Poor?

Kaylin Hamilton, Write or Flight

The tale of Scotland’s hunger walls might be a thing of the past. However, the ideologies that informed the decision to force starving Highlanders to build those monuments to cruelty are still deeply embedded in our welfare system and our attitudes towards the poor.

We don’t make those experiencing poverty build famine walls anymore, but we do subject them to a regime known as welfare conditionality.

Racism and Classism: Enemies of Meritocracy

Michelle Teheux, Untrickled

What we’ve always had is bubbles full of cronies and nepo babies. And that explains why some people whose work you know to be mediocre at best keep landing impressive jobs while others whose work you know to be very good can’t seem to advance.

Programs like affirmative action and DEI were supposed to help address this problem. Instead of just hiring your friend’s friend, you’d look outside your bubble and perhaps hire a talented person you’d never met. You would, in fact, be more likely to hire on merit if you stopped hiring on connections.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here or on Medium. My new book is The Trailer Park Rules. Tips accepted here at 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.