This Week’s Inequality Roundup: May 23, 2025
Now with even more income inequality!
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Well this has been a helluva bad week for anyone who cares about income inequality, which should be everyone. That “Big Beautiful Bill” was seemingly designed to increase income inequality as quickly as possible.
If you’re new here, welcome! I curate this weekly roundup of memes and analysis every Friday because I truly believe income inequality is at the heart of so many things that are harming society.
I write and post at least two original pieces per week on this subject and I restack everything I see that others have written on this subject. Plus, every Friday I post this roundup. That’s at least three pieces every week, people. I care passionately about this subject!
If you haven’t yet subscribed, you are probably missing a lot of my work.
Some of my posts are newsy pieces about economics and politics (We Traded Good Jobs for Cheap Crap, but Now the Crap Isn’t Cheap) while others are aimed squarely at those of you who are, like me, obliged to watch every penny to make it. That means I often share tips on thrifty living. My bean loaf is legendary (You Can Serve Dinner for a Dollar).
I do not paywall any of my work here because I want lower-income folks like me to be able to read this. I depend upon those of you who voluntarily pay a subscription to keep me in black beans and rice.
This round-up is a one-stop shop for everyone who cares about income inequality and a great place to discover new writers. If you find one you appreciate, subscribe!
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Sunday Thought
Robert Reich
I’m old enough to remember when CEOs took home 20 times the pay of their workers, not 300 times. When members of Congress acted in the interests of their constituents rather than be bribed by campaign donations to do the bidding of big corporations and the super-wealthy.
‘Some People Are Lazy Dirtbags’ is the Magic Phrase that Lets Democrats Talk About Medicaid Work Requirements
Jeff Maurer, I Might Be Wrong
About lazy dirtbags: They exist. I’ve got one in my family — I’ll call him “Curt”, because that’s his first name.2 Don’t worry, Curt doesn’t read this, he honestly doesn’t read anything except yet another a positive pregnancy test from the rotating cast of girlfriends that I just call “The Tiffanys”. I don’t know how Curt came to be how he is, my aunts have held a 30-year brainstorming session on this topic with inconclusive results. But I think of Curt when someone makes it sound as though anyone who’s going through tough times is a victim of circumstance — Curt’s not a victim of circumstance! Not on the societal level, anyway; maybe he got dealt the “lazy asshole” gene, which I suppose is a form of circumstantial bad luck. But there’s no societal fix for what ails Curt; you could drop him into the egalitarian utopia from Gulliver’s Travels, and within one week, the giants would be saying “So…you’re just gonna sit there on your little couch made from a kitchen sponge with your feet up on your bottle cap coffee table? Get an itty-bitty job, deadbeat.”
Luckily, evidence suggests that people like Curt are quite rare.
The Billionaire MAGA Murder Bill Is Coming
Walter Rhein, I’d Rather Be Writing
Billionaires need their tax breaks, so we're no longer able to retire. We have to work until we stop being useful. When we're no longer able to produce, we become a burden. It's too expensive to keep us alive. So, instead of retirement age, we work until we die. We're strapped into our chairs, stripped of our dignity. We breathe our last breath and topple over.
No Room to Breathe: Inside America’s Overcrowded Homes
Jeremy Ney, American Inequality
Overcrowding is also a helpful way to understand why America's homelessness numbers don’t capture the full picture. As I’ve written about several times, the point-in-time count of homelessness in America fails to properly count the extent of America’s challenges. Mississippi shows this in the extreme: it has the nation’s lowest per-capita rate of sheltered and unsheltered homelessness, 4 people for every 10,000, but it’s third highest for doubled-up households per capita — nearly 200 people for every 10,000. Double-up households are those that are living with others because of economic hardship or housing loss.
The GOP plan to cut the EITC via administrative burdens
Greg Leiserson, Can We Still Govern?
The disparity in treatment becomes even clearer when we consider the impacts of DOGE-related cuts at the IRS more broadly. These cuts are undermining the IRS’s capacity to audit the complex returns of wealthy taxpayers, allowing them to more easily avoid paying the tax they owe. In contrast, when inadequate funding undermines the IRS’s ability to administer the EITC precertification system, more low-income taxpayers will lose access to the credit and end up paying too much in tax. Wealthy tax cheats benefit from IRS cuts, while the low and moderate-income families who play by the rules are hurt.
What People Got Wrong About the Film ‘Parasite’
Rob Henderson
During my conversation with Richard Hanania about the 2019 Academy Award-winning film Parasite, I talked about how viewers and critics were quick to assume that Parasite was about a rich family and a poor family.
It shows how little people know about class.
This is how the director of the movie, Bong Joon Ho, characterized the Kim family:
“The father has accumulated numerous business failures, the mother who trained as an athlete has never found particular success, and the son and daughter have failed the university entrance exam on multiple occasions.”
This is not the profile of a poor or working class family. The Kims are not poor, they are failed middle class.
OMG! The Bond Vigilantes!
Robert Reich
I’m old enough to remember when America’s super-rich financed the government with their tax payments. Under President Dwight Eisenhower — hardly a left-wing radical — the highest marginal tax rate was 91 percent. (Even after all tax credits and deductions were figured in, the super-rich paid way over half their top marginal incomes in taxes.)
But increasingly — since the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump 1 tax cuts — tax rates on the super-rich have plummeted.
So instead of financing the government with their taxes, the super-rich have been financing the U.S. government by lending it money.
(You may have heard that America’s debt is held mainly by foreigners. Wrong. Over 70 percent of it is held by Americans — and most of them are wealthy.)
So, an ever-increasing portion of the taxes from the rest of us are dedicated to paying ever-increasing interest payments on the debt — going largely to the super-rich.
Do you trust your neighbors?
Dana Miranda, Healthy Rich
I find the Pew Research study on trust fascinating. As someone who understands the way working-class folks always feel taken advantage of, as someone who lives in a town where most voters would rather a woman like me didn’t exist, as a neurodivergent person who’s always been perceived as a weirdo, I understand distrust deeply. And yet, I believe in the value of community and the goodness of people just as deeply.
The Billionaire Colonies Are Already Here: How the Ultra-Rich Are Seceding Without Leaving
Greedbane
The billionaire class doesn’t just want to escape taxes.
They want to escape the people who might hold them accountable.
They don’t want to coexist with the poor.
They don’t want to share space with the disabled.
They don’t want to see the trauma their wealth inflicted.
They want to live in a curated simulation where the only people who exist are profitable, passive, and permanently grateful.
That is what these colonies represent:
The end of citizenship.
One Big Bad Bill
Dan Rather, Steady
The consequences of some of Trump’s executive orders are now affecting real people in real time. First, the tariffs. Over the weekend, Walmart, the retail version of the canary in the coal mine, said it would be passing on price increases caused by the tariffs to Walmart shoppers. This incensed the president, who jumped on Truth Social to yell at the country’s biggest retailer, insisting that Walmart should, “EAT THE TARIFFS and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”
And with one social media post, Trump finally admitted what he’s long denied — tariffs raise prices. The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the average American household will pay an additional $2,300 a year.
What They’re Not Telling Us About Walmart Eating Trump’s Tariffs
Jonathan Larsen, The Fucking News
Remember I told you Walmart said it’ll make up tariff losses by charging more for American goods? That’s what Rainey told CNBC: Walmart will “maybe change prices on other products that might not have a tariff applied to them.”
In other words, raise prices on American-made discretionary items to subsidize imports just to protect Walmart’s market share of those items.
You shouldn’t have to be extraordinary
Dana Miranda, Healthy Rich
No one wants to hear that they’ve been lucky. People especially don’t want to hear they’ve been lucky when they feel supremely unlucky and have witnessed wild strokes of luck for others. That’s why it’s so hard to convince the rural, working class people in my community of their relative privilege.
When your life is hard and you feel like you’re handling it all alone, it’s easy to believe government support is just another stroke of luck for someone who seems less deserving than you.
I don’t have any sympathy for this stance; I was raised among the supremely unlucky, and I didn’t come out of it wanting to hurt immigrants and trans people. There’s no excuse for that lack of empathy — but if you want to change hearts and minds, you have to recognize that it exists.
When someone says, “I wasn’t given any handouts, and I’m doing just fine,” there’s no use in trying to convince them of their privilege and luck.
Instead, acknowledge what they believe: “Yes, you are extraordinary, and you put in an extraordinary amount of effort to get where you are.” Then focus on a different truth: “But people shouldn’t have to be extraordinary to access basic needs.”
When ‘Trickle Down’ Hits the Rich
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
Ever since the industrial revolution, machines have taken the jobs of manual laborers.
Now, it’s erasing the futures of people who thought they had done everything right. People who earned advanced degrees, bought pricey homes and established lifestyles dependent on generous salaries are about to learn how quickly it can all disappear.
While we were worrying about immigrants taking the jobs of the working class, AI quietly began taking the jobs of the college-educated upper class.
Many people who believed the system was fair (because it was working great for them!) will become its newest casualties.
May 21, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American
Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.
Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: “Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.”
We Don’t Know Our Neighbors and That’s Killing Us
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
You used to have a little more mixing of the socioeconomic classes in a neighborhood. The kids of a doctor and factory worker might both go to the same school. Not so much now. We sort people by zip code.
No genuinely rich person lives on my block. If you’re wealthy, no genuinely poor person lives on yours, except perhaps live-in domestic help if you’re really rich.
Is It Red vs. Blue or Working Class vs. Billionaires?
Kip Hedges, Workers Resist
You could understand that Trump and his crew are fascists and the revolt they are leading is a revolution of the billionaires. You could choose to understand that the Elon Musks of the world are currently trying to roll back every right, every improvement to the quality of life working-class people have made over the last 100 years. You could also choose to understand that the Democrats have been weak, ineffectual, and two-faced and have in fact helped to ruin the working class.
A Big, Beautiful Theft
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says this: “... in general, resources would decrease for households in the lowest decile (tenth) of the income distribution, whereas resources would increase for households in the highest decile.”
Translation: The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. By design.
Hey, it has worked for hundreds of years, and it has been debunked for almost as long, but a lot of people still pretend to believe it, because it suits their general outlook on life!