This week’s Inequality Roundup: May 16, 2025
All the best inequality-related work on Substack this week
Greetings from the first really warm week in central Illinois!
I curate this weekly roundup of memes and analysis because I truly believe income inequality is at the heart of so many things that are harming society right now.
Enjoy this week’s roundup and then maybe go outside and get some Vitamin D!
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 Martini Glambassador
Shared by Marta
Shared by The Peaceful Revolutionary
Shared by Marta
Shared by Ellen Mitchell
Shared by Robert Reich
The Forever Grind
Katrina Anne Willis, Surrendering to Sappho
The poor pave the way for the wealthy with higher interest rates and overdraft fines and late fees and annual credit card service fees and predatory loans with your junky car as collateral.
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If you can’t pay for things up front, you pay more for them in the long run.
It’s expensive to be poor.
How to Be a Good Billionaire, Part 2: How to Spend a Billion Dollars
Ally Jane Ayers, Money Changes Everything
The system isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do. Capital gains are taxed less than income. Philanthropy can erase tax bills. And billionaires can pass on massive wealth while contributing very little to the public systems that support everyone else.
What About The Lazy?
The Peaceful Revolutionary
Of course there are lazy people under Capitalism too, so what people are really saying when they ask about the lazy is, ‘How will you motivate people if either a) you don’t offer them money to work, and / or b) you don’t threaten to starve them if they don’t?’ Underlying this is the assumption that people will only work for one of these two reasons.
Homesteading with a Planet on Fire
Andy Ciccone, The Poor Prole’s Almanac: Restoration Agroecology
When we boil down the philosophies around homesteading, we choose healthier food, healthier lifestyles, and a disdain for vapid, consumptive society. While homesteading has darker and messier roots that need reckoning, there’s invariably a kernel of truth to the concerns that homesteaders coalesce around— the way we live just isn’t working. The challenge, however, is that as I watched my grandfather, a man whose death carried the loss of agricultural knowledge of dozens of generations, he was no closer to ‘self-sufficiency’ than nearly every homesteader, including those with promises of feeding your family with a few hours of work a week. So what’s the point?
The three-headed beast of climate change, ecological collapse, and fascism leave those of us in this space at a unique crossroads. We can narrow this intersection by borrowing an idea uttered first by Russell Lord and later by Murray Bookchin— that ecological problems are, in fact, social problems. In other words, we cannot address fascism without also addressing ecological collapse, which we cannot address without also wrestling with the reality of climate change. These are all one and the same in many ways.
When we look at how the first two problems accelerate the latter, it’s no surprise then that it wasn’t until the German & English Industrial Revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th century which gave rise to the first inklings of fascism through the conservative movement, led by folks like Ernst Arndt and more (we’ve discussed the rise of the fascism movement in homesteading at length here, here, here, and here). The alienation of industrialism led to the rise of the reactionary politics that has plagued society since. That’s not to say extraction, exploitation, and destruction of ecological sites wholesale didn’t happen before— whether it was the Maya metropolises that demanded clearcutting of forests, which ultimately led to drought and collapse, or the folding of the Mesopotamian empire from land mismanagement— destruction and collapse have existed as long as humans have organized into civilizations.
The $649,000 Price Tag of Being Broke
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
Compound interest is a powerful thing. It can ruin you financially if you’re paying it, and it can make you a fortune if you’re on the other end of it.
The poor often stay poor because they are always paying interest. It’s difficult to get ahead of it.
The rich often stay rich because they pay little or nothing in interest. Not only do they pay no interest, but interest other people pay flows into their coffers.
People in the middle class pay interest when they’re young and benefit from interest when they’re older.
Oh, the hypocrisy.
Cara Howden, The Quiet Spend
I have come to the conclusion that while budgeting hasn’t changed anything about my financial situation and adds to the already-present feeling of failure in all things money related, tracking my money still provides me with the data that I need to be aware of where our money is going.
The term budgeting and tracking are used interchangeably in the world of personal finance, but in my experience, they are two very different things that can yield very different results.
Their Moms Are Getting Evicted
God, Letters From God
This Mother’s Day, a three-time Trump voter found out her mom is going to get evicted…because of Trump.
Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?
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 new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. And yes, those are my husband’s actual boots on the cover! My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.
What an honor to be shared here, Michelle. So much gratitude. Now about that bean loaf recipe ... ;)
I call it the poverty tax.