This week’s Inequality Roundup: May 9, 2025
All the best inequality-related work on Substack this week
Hello there! I’ve started something new this week. Up to now, I’ve been writing a story to lead into the Friday roundup, but now I’ll be running the roundup on its own. That’s because there’s just so much good stuff on Substack that I think this collection can stand alone.
Anyway, the Friday roundup was just getting too long. When one of you told me you always break it into two reads anyway, I knew I needed to turn it into two pieces.
You can find the piece I originally wrote to lead off this week’s roundup, We’re All Just Cattle Now, here.
You’ll still get just as much writing from me every week, but now the Friday roundup will be a stand-alone piece. Enjoy the memes and stories!
This round-up is a one-stop shop for everyone who cares about this topic and a great place to discover new Substacks. If you find one you appreciate, subscribe!
Shared by Neal Shooter
Shared by Edmond Bertrand
Shared by Robert Reich
Shared by Jeremy Ney
Shared by The Peaceful Revolutionary
An Interview With Bobby Kogan
Paul Krugman
… so they are shooting for $1.5 to $2 trillion of spending cuts. We haven't seen the Medicaid proposal yet. I think no matter what they're doing, it will be the largest Medicaid cut in history. And the only question is, by how much, right? Are we talking $500 billion of Medicaid cuts, 600, 700, 800? They gave the Energy and Commerce committee an $880 billion instruction. But some of that will be things that aren't Medicaid. The majority of that will be Medicaid.
On food stamps, they're looking at cutting it in quarter. Basically, there was a Biden-era reassessment of the thrifty food plan that kind of Reworked it already. Anyway, that doesn't matter. They want to undo that. Right now the average benefit is a little bit more than $2 per person per meal. So already very meager. Already incredibly meager, they want to take it down to a buck sixty-seven per person per meal. Really pinching pennies from hungry families.
The Short-Changed Working Class, Why Tariffs Are A Tax On the Poor …
Joan DeMartin, The Poverty Trap
What is it, exactly, about the American system that it chooses not to help the poor in any significant way, in fact, to punish the poor and at the same time help the rich get richer by our laws, policy choices, and perhaps most powerfully, our myths about the poor.
How ‘Pink Tariffs’ and Other ‘Pink’ Costs Keep Holding Women Back
Katie Jgln, The Noösphere
Sure, we can be more cautious and smart with money — and we definitely should; financial literacy and independence are key — and we can try to dodge some of these gendered costs by buying products marketed to men or consuming less. But as long as we live in a system that is fundamentally rigged against us, that advice alone won’t ever help us achieve full equity.
Individual effort can only go so far without systemic change.
The implications of fewer container shipments
Rachdele, Didion for Doomscrollers
On one hand, America may be better off without environmentally-destructive goods, cheap only as profound as the labor exploitation that went into their production. But as food, medicine, and other necessities rise in price, the struggles of the worst off among us stand to be intensely amplified.
We Traded Good Jobs for Cheap Crap, but Now the Crap Isn’t Cheap
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
What happens when the working class is all dried up and the cheap stuff stops coming? We’re about to find out.
Emptiness Machine
Antonio Melonio, Beneath the Pavement
Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of humanity owns 2 percent of global wealth—a permanent half priced out of their own future.
Is It Bad That Air Traffic Control New Runs On Tinfoil, Morse Code, and 5 D Batteries?
Doktor Zoom, Wonkette
More to the point, the controller shortage goes back nearly as long, because Republicans have for decades preferred tax cuts for billionaires over paying for new equipment or staff, because government is bad and if we just privatize everything, then the market will make everything better. Unless it doesn’t.
Billionaires aren’t people
J.P. Hill, New Means
When three guys have as much wealth as the poorer half of the United States we should ignore whether they’re nice and relatable or annoying assholes. All of that is secondary — we should understand billionaires as economic entities rather than ordinary people.
Want to Survive Shortages? Learn from the Poor
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
You’re about to experience what poor people already know: what it’s like when you can’t buy the thing you need.
Trump’s tariff tantrum is about to empty store shelves. The slow pace of cargo ships coming from China is such that even if he called off tariffs tomorrow, we’d still have a shortage of imported goods for several weeks.
It’ll be March 2020 all over again, except with everything, not just groceries.
We’re All Just Cattle Now
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
Imagine you’re a cattle farmer. When you wake up, you don’t ask yourself, “What can I do to make my cows happier?” You ask, “How can I maximize profit from my herd?”
Everything our government does makes perfect sense as soon as you realize we’re all just a bunch of cows to them
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.
"Cake" was not edible---
it was the burned soot or crust on the oven or doors---
black and disgusting,
thanks michelle