This Week in Income Inequality: Jan. 3, 2025

An overheard conversation

Never have I ever paid $4.19 for a head of cauliflower. This veggie is officially off my menu for now. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

Last week I overheard part of a conversation between two restaurant workers in a small town greasy spoon. The server said she’s struggling worse than she ever has before. The guy working the grill assured her everything is about to get much better.

I presume the grill guy was referring to what he thinks is going to happen when Trump returns to office, and I know he’s in for a big shock when grocery prices don’t drop.

You have read stories about people in various countries who can no longer afford to purchase food because of a war, famine or economic collapse. It doesn’t just happen in the developing world. Think Venezuela.

Is that going to happen here?

We have always had far too many Americans who struggle to buy groceries, but never in my lifetime have I seen anything like the prices right now. The poorest among us will need more help. (If you can, maybe donate some money to a local food pantry. That helps more than giving old canned goods.)

I normally buy a head of cauliflower every week, usually for about $2.80. The price now is more than $4! I’ve switched to cabbage, and I’m thinking about how I can plant a bigger garden next spring.

Most of my yard is too shady, so I’m considering whether I can make a small vegetable plot look attractive enough for the front yard, where I have more sun. I’ve seen cabbages artfully growing in Chicago’s downtown, so it should be good enough for my small town. Don’t think of it as growing a head of cauliflower. Think of it as growing $4.

That’s four tax-free bucks. By the end of the summer, you may eventually save enough to buy a jar of coffee.

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.

What are they really seeking?

Robert Reich

If America learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that grew like a cancer in the 1930s, it should have been that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power — as Musk, Thiel, Sachs, and other oligarchs are putting on full display — which in turn generate strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.

History shows that under fascist strongmen, no one is safe — not even oligarchs.

The Moral Imperative and the Path Forward

Greedbane

The lessons of the 1950s remind us that prosperity and power go hand in hand with responsibility. In a world shaped by inequality, climate crisis, and technological disruption, the path forward isn’t about reclaiming dominance—it’s about building a better future for everyone.

Economic Extractionism

J. Thomas Dunn, That Better World

Neoliberal capitalism is a wealth extraction machine. That's what it's designed to do. In the last 40 years the top 1% has increased their wealth by Trillions. The bottom 50% has decreased their wealth by 10s of billions.

America in Two Headlines

Ken Klippenstein

Homelessness in America has risen by 18 percent overall, according to the latest annual data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hardest hit were families with children, which experienced a staggering 39 percent increase in homelessness(!). Incredibly, in a press release accompanying the new data, the Biden administration says that it “has been tackling the nation’s homelessness crisis with the urgency it requires,” downplaying the data as not current enough.

As 2024 draws to a close, a major theme of this past couple years seems to be American anger.

Quiet Quitting or Quiet Exploitation? What the Debate Really Misses

Greedbane

Quiet quitting isn’t laziness or apathy. It’s workers setting boundaries and refusing to give more than they’re paid for. It’s saying no to unpaid overtime, to answering emails on weekends, to giving away labor for free.

For decades, corporate greed has pushed workers to the brink. Wages have stagnated, workloads have increased, and job security has eroded. And yet, workers are blamed for wanting balance in their lives.

Let me be clear: there’s nothing wrong with expecting fair treatment. If refusing to be exploited is “quiet quitting,” then I say we need more of it.

The 2024 Poverty Check

Salaam Bhatti, A Paycheck Away

Wealth inequality in 2024:

The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.9 million on average. As a group, they held 67% of total household wealth.

The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $51,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.5% of total household wealth.

St Louis Fed

The Check: Based on the chart below from 2022, not much has changed for the bottom half in 2024. I wrote about what I foresee happening should wealth inequality continue to grow.

A Good Man, A Good President

Michelle Teheux, Untrickled

We elected a madman who has not even started his second term, but is already spreading chaos.

I see a country in which half of us are either destitute or just above it. The middle class is tiny and the rich are oblivious to everyone else. They no longer are expected to pay their fair share of taxes.

The rich successfully convinced the poor that making the rich pay their fair share of taxes will actually hurt the poor. Isn’t it remarkable how easy it is to bamboozle most people?

Make More Money by Not Caring

Michelle Teheux, Untrickled

Working full-time isn’t always enough anymore. If you are pressured to work unpaid overtime or to let your job bleed into your evenings and weekends, when can you carve out time to pursue your passion projects?

It’s as if the system will not be satisfied until everyone is spending every waking hour feeding the machine.

Doing the work you truly want to do is becoming a revolutionary act.

The War on Wisdom: How the GOP Made Smart Uncool

Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report

Once the public schools are dead and the state has transitioned entirely to private schools, the state will claim budget problems and begin to dial back the amounts available for vouchers. (The same will happen with Medicare Advantage once real Medicare is dead.)

This will widen the relationship between the educational and wealth divides; the racial and class cleavage will become so great that the state will have effectively gone back to a “separate but equal” educational system. Which, of course, is the GOP’s goal and has been since 1954.

Republicans are generally convinced — and surveys show they’re right — that when people have a good, well-rounded education they will vote for Democrats, who explicitly value science and egalitarian social values.

The Truth About Productivity: Why Workers Create More But Earn Less

Greedbane

Since the 1970s, worker productivity in the United States has increased by over 60%. Workers are creating more value per hour than ever before. But here’s the problem: wages have only risen by about 17% in that same time.

Where did the rest of the value go? Straight into the pockets of shareholders, executives, and investors. Instead of rewarding the workers who actually drive productivity, corporations have redirected those gains to the wealthy few at the top.

2025 doesn’t need you to make another restrictive budget

Dana Miranda, Healthy Rich

Specifically, “save more money” is perennially among the top New Year’s resolutions. One Statista survey this year found it to be the most popular resolution, with more than one in five respondents setting this goal. Another one in 10 said they want to reduce spending. This — along with eating “healthier,” exercising more and losing weight also topping the charts each year — is a clear reflection of our culture’s insistence on discipline and restriction in pursuit of elusive perfection.

What “save money” means to respondents is never quite clear in these casual surveys. I imagine for some it means to spend less and for some it means to set aside more for the future. Some for the near future, some for the long-term. Some want to learn more about investing, some simply want to bulk up a bank account.

2024 Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Michelle Teheux, Untrickled

I’ve settled into a twice-weekly schedule here. I post my main piece on Tuesdays. My most recent one was Make More Money by Not Caring. On Fridays, I post a round-up of the week’s income inequality news. I want my Substack to be the obvious place to go if you want a quick summary of current income inequality news.

When I have time, I post extra pieces here, and I’m active on Notes pretty much daily.

My two top pieces on this platform in 2024 were Here's Why Poor People Keep Voting Against Their Own Self Interest which got 3.5K views and brought in 171 new subscriptions and You Cannot Out-Frugal This Economy, which got 3.14K views and brought in 75 new subscriptions.

It’s time for Class War in 2025

J.P. Hill, New Means

It might get worse before it gets better, but 2024 ended with multiple important events that should give us real hope.

It’s not that everything was rosy at the end of last year, far from it. But there were signs that millions and millions of people are tired of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, that millions of people think the pendulum has swung too far toward oligarchy, and most importantly that people are willing to take action and organize and devote themselves to pushing that pendulum back. In other words, we’re catapulting ourselves into this New Year on a wave of class warfare. We enter 2025 with the working class finally fighting back in this war that the owning class has lop-sidedly waged relentlessly for decades against a near-dormant population. But now, slowly, the working class is waking up and learning to fight back – not just that, we’re coming to realize this is the fight of our lives.

Why Do Republicans Hate a Prosperous Middle Class?

Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report

The greed embraced by Republican politicians — and the billionaires and CEOs who fund them — is why average Americans can’t have nice things. It’s why we and our children must walk the tightrope of life without the same safety net other countries — from Canada to Costa Rica, France to Taiwan — offer their citizens.

It doesn’t matter to Republican politicians how many Americans die unnecessarily, how many of our fellow citizens struggle in misery and poverty, how many children’s growth is stunted or bodies and brains are poisoned by industrial and mining waste being poured into our air and rivers or terrified by active shooter drills in our schools.

Exploited and Exhausted: Why America’s Workers Are Reaching Their Limits

ISO: Humanity

When people turn off their humanity, integrity, and morals to exploit others, or allow others to be exploited, it reveals just how far we’ve fallen as a society. Paying employees less than a livable wage doesn’t just harm individuals—it drags us all down. We must refuse to accept this as normal. It’s not too late to make a change.

The bottom line: Avoidance, forced cognitive dissonance, and pushing people to their breaking point, hurts people and costs money. We cannot continue down this path, nor can we allow companies to exploit people to the point of collapse, and then discard them.

What the Science of Predators and Prey Tells Us About the Morbidly Rich and Working People

Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report

Nature and economics share some fascinating patterns, one of which explains why Donald Trump is about to become president and how the morbidly rich have appropriated over $50 trillion from working class people since the 1980s. Scientists use something called the Lotka-Volterra equations to explain how predators and prey interact in the wild.

These equations show us that animal populations rise and fall in predictable cycles — when there are lots of rabbits, fox populations grow, but as foxes eat more rabbits, the rabbit population shrinks, which then causes fox numbers to drop, allowing rabbits to multiply again.

Incredibly, this back-and-forth pattern mirrors what happens between the wealthy and working classes in our economy and political systems over the past 100 years.

From Walmart to Amazon to Walmart

Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work

I mention all this because it now is possible to say how the scales balance in terms of Walmart’s effect on public welfare. As Rogé Karma lays out in this excellent story in The Atlantic, meticulous new economic research shows that the opening of a Walmart causes incomes to decline in the community where the store opens by more than the amount that shoppers save at Walmart. One research paper says that the average net loss from a Walmart’s opening is about $2,000 per year per person, leading to a 16% increase in poverty locally.

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 isStrapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules.