What’s Helping You Cope With Fascism?
This week’s Inequality Roundup: April 25, 2025
How are you today?
Don’t just say “fine,” because I know you’re not. If you’re like me, you’re attending protests, dealing with insomnia, questioning whether it’s going to be safe to stay in the U.S., checking your finances and crying a lot. How are you really?
Here’s the thing: This isn’t like the movies.
I had the same sense of unreality during the height of the pandemic. It just never occurred to me that even as the world goes to shit, you still have to go to work, cook meals, mow the lawn, deal with the insurance company and live your normal life as best you can.
“Trump just had a judge arrested, but also, we are low on shampoo.”
I thought I’d be able to concentrate on end-of-the-world stuff
But I still need to deal with so many mundane things. Life doesn’t stop just because your democracy is dying, although at any time you know MAGA might swoop in and utterly destroy your life by snatching away your totally-legal-but-that-doesn’t-matter-anymore spouse or disappear you because your writing is too anti-Trump. Who knows?
Most people living in Ukraine, I know, are still going to work and school, doing their laundry and having birthday parties for their children. If they can carry on, we can, too.
My working class life makes this easier
If there’s a silver lining to never having had a lot of money, it’s that I already know how to make the best of simplicity.
During the lockdown, for example, my life didn’t change one iota. While others were posting on social media about the struggle of being unable to go out for dinner or drinks, or have the housekeeper come, or go shopping, or get a manicure or travel … I just shook my head. Except for being unable to have friends over, nothing changed at my house. That’s how we always live.
Right now, travel is unsafe for us, but we haven’t been to visit my husband’s family in Europe since 2017. We actually would be able to afford the tickets this year (thank you, viral Medium story that gave us a cushion we’ve never had before!) but we would not dare cross a border right now.
So we’ll do what we’ve always done
We will make the most of what we have. My very-handy husband has built amazing structures in our backyard with free scrap lumber. Last year we added a patio with a fire pit. This spring, I’ve been planting flowers, cleaning up around the perennial herbs and doing everything I can to make our backyard a comforting oasis to hang out. Digging in the dirt on a warm spring day is actually quite comforting.
The lilacs are blooming in the backyard and smell wonderful. The lily of the valley will come next, and I can count on the honeysuckle vines to contribute some sweet smells soon, too. We’ve had one late-night fire on the patio.
I’ve begun feeding the fish again – you can’t safely feed them during the winter but as soon as spring comes, they start swimming up to the edge and begging if I even walk open the back door. Possibly they can see me in the kitchen. Certainly, the squirrels can. They know when I’m coming with stale bread or nuts and get impatient.
None of these lucky little creatures has ever heard of Donald Trump. They just go about their lives.
Simple pleasures seem safest right now.
Be well.
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 a great place to discover new sources to follow.
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And now, here’s this week’s inequality roundup:
Shared by Marta
Shared by Lynn
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Shared by tdwvan (Snarkymuse)
Corporate Lawlessness Comes Next
Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work
Ronald Reagan, who launched the modern American age of inequality, and Donald Trump, who is riding its consequences into an ominous new era, have something in common: They were both union members, in the Screen Actors Guild.
The fury at ‘America’s Most Powerful’
Brian Merchant, Blood In The Machine
“It is almost universally true,” Scheidel writes, “that violence has been necessary to ensure the redistribution of wealth at any point in time.”
I do of course very much hope that we have not reached such a juncture—that other solutions are available to us beyond violence—but it would be a mistake to ignore the currents online, in pop culture, and in the streets. One explicit policy goal of reducing inequality in the past has been, if nothing else, to reduce the likelihood of pitchfork-wielding mobs. There is such a seething anger at America’s most powerful, our nation a tinderbox. Looking at our timelines, hearing evocations of this rage, and scanning the portraits on Caffier’s cards, it’s hard not to consider: has it come to this? What if it has come to this?
Exactly How I’m Creating, Borrowing, and Going Without
Stephanie Seferian, Sustainable Minimalists
Whether finances are already tight or you’re just sick and tired of participating in our economy, there IS good news: You can make, thrift, borrow, or go without many items that American culture says you simply must buy…
The Rise & Fall of Capitalism
Katie Gatti Tassin and Caro Claire Burke, Diabolical Lies
Would it surprise you to know that the person we casually reference as the stereotypical “genius” penned an essay called “Why Socialism?” in 1949 in which he clocked, beat by beat, how American democracy would crumble from the dynamics of wealth concentration?4
The $43K House
Michelle Teheux, Untrickled
Some people have to live in a big city for their job. But if you can do remote work, consider a smaller town where housing prices are still low. The owner class sees a downside to remote work — if you’re not paying a terrifyingly high mortgage near your job, you’re a bit harder to control.
Affordable housing is a form of freedom.
Why Tariffs are a Tax on the Poor
Jeremy Ney, American Inequality
This is where the inequality machine is about to kick into high gear. We’ve already seen what happens to these communities once. They have not bounced back in the 20 years since they were first hit (though Biden’s infrastructure bill did directly focus on funds to these communities based). Poverty in America is a trap that gets worse the deeper you sink. Tariffs may irreparably damn many of these communities.
The Perils of Human Longevity
Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths
Right now, in the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean, there is a shark swimming who was born sometime between 1513 and 1753—roughly between the reign of Henry VIII and the birth of Alexander Hamilton. Lurking in the vast expanse of waters frozen in temperature and in time, it survives, likely oblivious to the existence of our species or the dramatic social change we have undergone during its sprawling lifespan. The good news for that elderly Greenland shark is that, unlike us, it need not save for retirement.
Am I Financially Screwed Forever?
William A. Finnegan, The Long Memo (TLM)
What we’re living through now isn’t a recession—it’s a deliberate act of economic arson.
#9 GreedBane: Income Inequality Newsletter
Greedbane
Every empire figures out how to make the poor pay for their own chains. The oil barons turned pollution into profit. The railroad tycoons bought off Congress to lay tracks through working-class homes. And now, Silicon Valley has completed the cycle—by turning your behavior, your conversations, and your labor into assets they can rent back to you.
Beautiful outdoor space! Thank you for validating how strange and hard it is to keep doing every day things while our world is burning down around us. I still have a minor child so I’m trying to show her hope instead of the despair I feel. Things we are doing to inspire joy: planting fruit trees, playing with our dog, snuggling our cat, reading, creating art, and connecting with friends and our community.
During this insanity I actually can’t pay much attention to it. We moved our very elderly parents to be near us finally last September. They fought every step of it until it became so very dangerous that they were in the country without any help at age 83 and 86 with physical and mental disabilities. And then in January they both got Covid and declined greatly. My Dad is now in a nursing home and I’ve had to navigate the nightmare of applying for a Medicaid to pay for his care. Still waiting on approval. My Mom had a psychotic break and started have delusions and hallucinations. She’s oblivious that anything is wrong with her. My sanity has been saved by a new therapist and my garden and cats. Also, I started baking bread again.