As President Trump rambled for almost two hours during history’s longest state of the Union Address of his second Presidential term, he pronounced that the state of the union was just fine– at least for him and, of course, big business and his broligarch billionaire buddies. He labeled his second term as a true “Golden Age of America” — and quite frankly it has been, for the Epstein class at least. Certainly, these tone-deaf pronouncements unequivocally belied the condition of the vast majority of struggling Americans whose economic plight was flashing Code Red.
As Trump droned on about “winning so much” and briefly musing about a potential war with Iran, I wondered how the wealthiest democratic country in the world had arrived at this vortex, where the seemingly insane ramblings of a vainglorious, orange gilded President were so completely disconnected from the dire financial situation of most working Americans. Yet, Trump had been re-elected by a majority of U.S. voters–even after managing during his first term to get impeached twice, to bollix the global epidemic and having thoroughly crashed an otherwise thriving Obama economy. And, of course, we all are now experiencing the punishing financial burden of his corrupt policies and the after-effects of this hair-brained Iran “excursion” thing.
While the paradox of economically strained Americans selecting a detached octogenarian with a disastrous economic track record cannot be easily reconciled, the roots of this disfunction surely can be traced directly to Congress’ failure to address and repair the embedded impediments to advancement up the economic ladder initially revealed through the failed policies subsequent to the 2007 Great Financial Crises and then cemented into our economy during the upheaval of the global pandemic. Otherwise, complacent Democrats speak about the issue superficially as one of “affordability,” but it has never actually been just that. Instead, we are in the throes of an existential and potentially doomsday crisis rooted in a stubbornly broken economy that has long been hard-wired to benefit primarily society’s upper crust.
To prevent this gradual, then all-at-once extinction of our democracy, and rectify the perilous imbalance, an urgent “all-in” Project Hail Mary type effort to fundamentally rework and rewire this broken economic system is required. While surely a heavy lift, through the prism of history we can observe how functional governments historically have chosen to implement comprehensive disruptive strategies during similar periods of economic upheaval threatening to upend this democratic experiment.
The Blight of the Top 1%
Daily news feeds continue to report that America’s wealth gap is at an all-time high, with the top 1% of the population hoarding almost one-third of our net national wealth (up from 23% in 1990), while the bottom fifty percent has been permanently marginalized with access to less than 2.5% of our nation’s bounty. Critically, according to the Fed, the wealthiest 10% of American families control a full two-thirds of our nation’s abundance. The trajectory of these absurd ratios shows no signs of abating– the wealth gap more than doubled between 2016 and 2025, owing largely to the “financialization” of America’s economy, stock ownership and the enduring loss of unionized manufacturing jobs.
As a cherry on top, for the first time in recent memory the top 1% of wealthy Americans now possess more wealth than the entire middle class— the greatest ongoing wealth divide since at least the days of the original robber barons more than a century ago. Trump’s elitist policies, epitomized by the “Big Beautiful Bill,” have only served to supercharge this divide. And this ridiculously rapid hoarding of wealth by the uber-wealthy has been accomplished without a commensurate increase in American jobs—for 2025 alone over 80,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared, while job creation has been at or near zero.
To put these numbers in real terms, it is estimated that more than two-thirds of working Americans—more than 110 million people— live paycheck to paycheck, with many reporting that they would struggle to pay any unexpected expense. Often, the choice is one between paying for an essential car repair, hospital bill or buying monthly groceries; a medical emergency means sure bankruptcy. And food insecurity now affects almost 50 million Americans, including more than 18 million children. For this broad swath of working, middle class and poor America, the punishing albatross of financial strain is as crippling as it is real—the American Dream, for them, is no more than a pipe dream. That bountiful 20th century economic model no longer offers even a hint of prosperity for most Americans – the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has now been effectively extinguished.
The Fix Imperative
This unseemly chasm between obscene wealth, and long-suffering, cash-strapped middle class and poor Americans remains a symbolic feature of much of the broad popular distrust and rejection of our historical democratic institutions. Consequentially, our feckless government has proven clownishly incapable of addressing the root causes of this grotesque financial inequality. Intuitively we know that this calcified wealth divide serves as the principal propellant of the current democracy-destroying tumult.
Recent polling confirms that almost two-thirds of American’s are actively dissatisfied with the way democracy is serving them. The pinball elections of Obama, Trump then Biden and then Trump again are sufficient proof of ballot box disenchantment with the status quo.. That neither political party has offered any comprehensive solutions to attack the root causes of this disadvantage for working Americans, serves only to fuel the demagoguing seduction of populist national candidates.
Yet, the constant fascination with the toxic shiny objects of Trump’s “flood-the-zone” distractions and disruption of our historical norms seems intended to prevent Democrats from focusing on a thorough examination into the pernicious structural and institutional causes that enshrine this corruptive wealth gap and portend economic catastrophe. Over the past century we can see that economic injustice has been corrected only when popular uprisings forced courageous leaders to coerce the levers of government into implementing the necessary structural reforms.
Teddy Roosevelt’s Trust Busting and the “Square Deal”
By the close of the 19th century’s Gilded Age, Americans had witnessed the unregulated industrialization of America which produced price-manipulating monopolies and trusts, the byproduct of which was the exploitation of adult and child labor, environmental degradation and adulterated food. This Gilded Age was fueled by industrial robber barons, such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan, who had personally amassed enormous wealth through monopolistic and unethical business practices. These perceived and real abuses led to severe backlash and spurred progressive Republicans to platform their desire to break up monopolies and regulate big business to “subserve the public good.”
Fortuitously, most men elected Teddy Roosevelt (neither women nor blacks could vote or freely cast ballots) with a platform of busting the trusts and a “square deal for every man.” Roosevelt’s Square Deal reforms promised to take control of corporations, establish standards for consumer protection, and protect and conserve our natural resources. These progressive reforms were intended to broaden the business base, ensure fairer competition, and produce higher wages and a stronger demand for farmer’s crops.
Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive Republican policies not only sought to level the playing field for workers and consumers, but they also directly addressed the causes of the inequality brought about by unrestrained capitalism, bringing long-term economic prosperity to America’s working class. More to the point, the government had managed it obligation to effectively push back the excesses of capitalism to benefit of working-class Americans. This new “Progressive Era,” and the shared prosperity it ushered, extended the election of progressive Republican presidents for five of the next seven election cycles.
Black Tuesday, the Great Depression and FDR’s “New Deal”
By the late 1920’s largely unregulated capitalism had again taken a foothold in the U.S., economy exposing the vulnerabilities of America’s corporate economic structure. Hoover’s laissez-faire policies and Smoot-Hawley tariffs contributed to significant wage inequality for the working class, contracted the economy and decimated international trade. These hands-off business policies, rampant speculation by wealthy investors and the lack of financial regulation culminated in the Black Tuesday stock market crash of October 29, 1929, exposing the vulnerabilities of an unregulated economy and concentrated economic power.
Upon his election, FDR instituted several New Deal reforms to combat the Great Depression by addressing three core principles– 1) recovery of the economy, 2) relief to millions of impoverished Americans, and 3) reforms to address the root causes of the depression. These progressive reforms, including the implementation of a national social safety net through the Social Security Administration, and the creation of the FDIC to protect the bank deposits of Main Street Americans; the SEC to protect investors; and the FHA to permit affordable home ownership for millions of Americans, again ensured the “general welfare” of the American working class and fundamentally reshaped the government’s role in American life. And nobody blanched as the tax rate for the wealthy remained above the 90% threshhold.
The reforms also triggered a massive and significant political realignment—marginalized communities and working-class voters (Jim Crow effectively prevented blacks in the South from voting)shifted their political allegiance toward the Democratic Party. Again, the government capably provided solutions to the economic betterment of most Americans, forging a New Deal coalition that stabilized progressive Democratic Party leadership in the U.S. for the next 35 years.
Civil Rights, Bloody Sunday and LBJ’s Great Society Legislation
Despite the post-WWII “Golden Age,” by the late 1950’s it became apparent that minorities had been purposefully excluded from the “abundance” of that ongoing boom. Through discriminatory housing, employment, and lending practices, both the government and corporate America had again turned their backs on a vast and vulnerable population. Large swaths of the working class and poor had been effectively redlined out of the economy and remained excluded from pursuit of the American dream. To compound the pain, entrenched Jim Crow laws continued to deny a voice to many minorities by impeding their right to vote. Urban decay had also become entrenched as nearly 25% of Americans, mostly children, minorities and the elderly, lived below the poverty line. The aging population was also finding it difficult to afford adequate health care with more than 40% lacking any kind of health care coverage of any kind.
In a nationally televised address in June of 1963, President Kennedy called this a “moral crisis” and formally proposed Civil Rights legislation. Martin Luther King had described the compelling need for immediate governmental action as “the fierce urgency of now.” As JFK’s proposed legislation stalled, marginalized minorities became restless as unrest bubbled across the South. JFK’s assassination ultimately provoked passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the brutal March 1965 “Bloody Sunday” police attack on 600 civil rights demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge demonstrated that more was needed. Martin Luther King described the immediate need for governmental actions as “the fierce urgency of now.” Within a week LBJ, fresh off his landslide election victory, gave his “we shall overcome” address to a joint session of Congress. By June, the Voting Rights Act was passed.
LBJ’s “Great Society” had been launched, culminating in the July 1965 amendments to the Social Security Act, enshrining Medicare and Medicaid relief to seniors and the poor. Ultimately, the Fair Housing Act was also passed. The government had responded to the injustice in economic advantage by taking dramatic progressive steps to level the playing field and direct relief to those who needed it most. Again, the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans remained steadfastly above 90% through 1963. While the Great Society legislation provoked Democratic congressional dominance for the next 30 years, both the Vietnam war and the Voting Rights Act eventually served to both push out LBJ and to push the South toward the Republican Party.
The Rise of the Republican “Neoliberal” Order
While the Great Society legislation offered beneficial checks on racism and capitalism seemed to allow all workers and the middle class to participate equitably in our economy and to flourish, a more sinister anti-labor capitalistic philosophy lurked nearby in the guise of a “revolution.” The stagnant growth and high inflation (stagflation) of the late 70’s paved the way for the emergence “neoliberalism” in America which demeaned the role of government and promoted the well-worn “cures” such as industry deregulation to the detriment of labor unions, free trade that encouraged unfettered capital flows and privatization of government services diminishing social service programs, and decreased spending on social welfare validated through tax cuts for the wealthy.
Ronald Reagan led this revolution, which effectively dismantled New Deal guardrails, by convincing American people that government was the problem rather than the solution and framing neoliberalism as a moral and religious imperative rooted in political “liberty.” Reaganomics was the fulfillment of core neoliberal principles through the support of supply-side economics –promoting tax cuts for the wealthy; deregulation –reducing government oversight in banking and energy; privatization –slashing funding for social programs while increasing defense spending; and anti-unionization –weakening organized labor.
By the mid-1990’s after the spectacular failure of his universal health care plan and the subsequent political blood bath of the mid-term elections, President Clinton ultimately embraced the anti-regulation tenets of neoliberalism through both repealing Glass-Steagall (enforcing separation of commercial and investment banks) and ensuring that derivatives markets were not meaningfully regulated. This purposefully lax enforcement and regulatory environment, of course, paved the way for the grotesque abuses that vanquished the middle class after the arrival of the 21st century.
The Great Financial Crisis of 2007: A Colossal Failure to Meet the Moment
As 2007 rounded into 2008, the U.S. economy began to melt down. By late 2008 tens of millions of Americans had lost their livelihoods (8.7 million), their homes (10 million) or their retirement savings ($4 trillion lost). For about 7 million of these workers, their highly skilled, long-term positions would be lost permanently. The share of long-term unemployed peaked at almost 50% by April of 2010, while the wealth of the average family had decreased by an unconscionable 25%. And despite the penetrating economic harm across middle America, organized protests outside of the solitary Occupy Wall Street movement were virtually non-existent.
The causes of this economic rupture are by now well known—predatory “subprime” lending, unregulated securitization, relaxed regulation of commercial and investment banks, a new “shadow” banking system with virtually no oversight and, finally, corruption and greed—all features of neoliberal policy. Nevertheless, to prevent their wholesale collapse, our political leaders fought mightily to ensure that the country’s sagging financial institutions, insurers and predatory lenders—the very creators of the toxic assets– were immediately bolstered by the infusion of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. That herculean effort to resuscitate a financial sector on life support knew no precedent.
This preferred bromide of corporate handouts, failed to account for the fact that the disease had emanated from financialization, regulatory absence and toxic greed that had become the way of life on Wall Street—corruption activated by government largesse that remains unrestrained to this day. And while the titans of our financial system basked in the salvation of corporate welfare, the government feigned amnesia toward the enormous swath of Main Street Americans teetering on a knife’s edge of economic ruin, who had impatiently waited for similar economic and legal relief. It never arrived.
That forbearance from rescuing the lost private wealth of middle-class Americans paved the way for the amplification of the corporate and financialization excesses that haunt us to this day. During this pivotal moment the Justice Department too suffered from the same sin by also abandoning the true victims of Wall Street malevolence and squandering the final opportunity to hold the culpable financial titans accountable.
As my colleagues and I at DOJ struggled mightily to corral sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the most culpable financial institution executives, we were more than chagrined by the tepid support at the top for our efforts. Recall that Attorney General Holder shown his hand by declaring before the U.S. Senate, somewhat incredulously, that some banks might be “too big to prosecute” and, somewhat ridiculously, that any such prosecution could have a negative impact on the national or “world economy.” We saw his subsequent public hobnobbing on the terrazzo floors of Main Justice with arguably complicit Jamie Dimon as a tacit rejection of the legitimacy of our efforts. Plainly, this paucity of support for our endeavor was borne out of institutionally co-opted benefactors at the highest level of our government—some would see this as a hallmark of neoliberal infused small “c” corruption.
Not a single culpable executive had been held accountable as the government was simply not up for the heavy lift of holding accountable those who had visited the vast economic damage on marginalized middle America families. The apparent secondment of our government by Wall Street and the divorce from Main Street was now complete. The plight of the working class was now fully cleaved from both economic and legal equality.
Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK and LBJ each had faced similar harrowing challenges, and each found the courage to garner support for and pass legislation which empowered the government to tame the sharp edges of unrestrained capitalism and level the economic playing field for working class and disadvantaged Americans. Given the events of the past two decades, they most assuredly are spinning in their graves.
A Democratic Rescue Must be Revolutionary
With their deeply entrenched financial woes having been jettisoned by both their elected representatives and the executive branch, the Humpty-Dumpty of working-class America has abandoned any hope that their broken finances are ever going to be put back together again. Americans, along the Rust Belt especially, now recognize that those lost union jobs are gone forever. The inescapable political discontent from that rupture remains ever present and is rife among working class voters.
To illustrate the confidence whiplash, on the heels of the 2007 Great Financial Crisis, Obama won the support of low and moderate working-class voters by more than 20% over John McCain. By 2024, those now fully disillusioned and largely male working-class voters had flip-flopped and turned against Democrats as Trump’s seductive populist policies now attracted a whopping 14% of that segment over Harris—an almost 35% voting block swing from Obama’s first term. Plainly, the root problem is not one of surface level “affordability,” but has been the unwillingness and inability of Democrats to tackle the foundational issues head on and force bold policies and solutions.
The existential challenge to the Democratic party today is whether it can muster, for once, the courage and imagination to radically alter this chronic social stratification by breaking corporate and regulatory capture to fashion a new economic model that ensures equitable opportunity for everyone. Otherwise, the risk map of Trumpism’s billionaire fealty and diversionary chaos will continue to further dismantle our democracy while visiting economic havoc on the working and middle class. Success in the next two election cycles would offer Democrats a unique but narrow window of opportunity to codify and implement such a structural course correction.
The Great Realignment – A Roadmap to Revolution
As we have seen, for at least most of the 20th Century, political leaders understood that the paramount obligation of our democracy has been the government’s mandate to rectify systemic economic and social inequality caused by capitalistic excess. They plainly recognized that forcing corporate accountability through government intervention was a feature of democracy, not a bug. Absent a willingness to make the brutally difficult choices necessary for a Project Hail Mary-type effort to reorder economic advantage amongst working and middle-class Americans, the pitchforks will be out for the party in power during every subsequent election cycle. A more consequential and not far-fetched scenario is the ultimate capitulation of our constitutional democracy itself.
This slow moving and destructive consolidation of corporate, financial and political power, unique in our history, has many fathers but one powerful godfather—the Supreme Court. Most assuredly, a permanent fix is not possible without first addressing that proverbial “elephant in the room” –the Citizens United case which allows unlimited anonymous corporate political contributions. This shift, which supercharged the wealth of our oligarchy, via Supreme Court imprimatur, has installed structural political advantage to the corporate and billionaire class.
As just one example, for the 2024 election cycle 40% of total political contributions were made by the crypto industry alone. Thus, either by legislative and/or legal fix the naked corruption of political access to unlimited dark money as authorized by an unscrupulous Supreme Court must be vitiated before the necessary corrections to today’s inequitable economy can be effectively implemented. Certainly, additional measures to restrain and hold accountable an out-of-control Court must also be considered.
Free from the chains of Citizens United, however, an emboldened Congress can begin to flex their muscles and wrest from the Epstein class and the corporate elite their economic stranglehold over the prosperity of the American poor and middle-class workers. Nothing would be more popular.
Once this path has been paved, this new Project Hail Mary will require experienced and courageous leadership willing to enforce a complete realignment of the current fiscal and economic structure in the United States. As a baseline, the five areas primarily responsible for today’s economic inequality must be addressing: Healthcare, Taxes, Housing, Wages and Jobs– in that order.
1. Providing Equal Access to Healthcare
Without a doubt, the inability to provide access to adequate health care to every American is our wealthy nation’s biggest sin. A record two-thirds of Americans report concern about being unable access necessary health care for themselves and their families; and more than one-third report they would be unable to afford access to needed health. Unsurprisingly, medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America–nothing else is even close.
It’s not a stretch to say that the lack of access to affordable health care by most Americans has reached far beyond crisis levels. Indeed, the dual dynamic of high health care costs and inaccessibility saps middle America of its ability to deter deteriorating physical and mental health, setting the stage for a staggering financial toxicity relentlessly borne by millions of American families.
We know from the plight of Obamacare that fixing fair access to healthcare can be a heavy lift, principally due to the engrained inefficiency of our pay-per-service healthcare delivery system. Moreover, Republicans and the courts have been chipping away at most of Obamacare’s cost-saving features. Whether it be through legislation that dramatically lowers the cost of health insurance and/or enshrining a viable single-payer healthcare system that makes quality health care accessible to everyone, dynamic solutions abound.
2. Ensuring Tax Fairness
Let’s face it: most people intuitively understand that the very wealthy and corporations pay far less than their fair share of taxes. Warren Buffett has famously stated that the U.S. tax system “coddles” the ultra-wealthy and that even his secretary paid a higher effective tax rate than he. And this miniscule “billionaire” tax rate even fails to account for the egregious loopholes exempting much of elite income and investments from any tax consequence.
Other than the billionaire-tailored tax benefits in Trump’s alleged “Big Beautiful Bill” and despite the vast changes in our economy and in wealth distribution, U.S. tax policy has not been significantly revamped since 1986. As such, Democrats must be willing to tip over the tables on the current 4000-page U.S. Tax Code. Biden’s hiring of 7500 IRS Special Agents to help focus on sophisticated tax avoidance schemes used by the wealthy elite (since largely undone by Trump) is part of the corrective course, but just one element of a massive revamp.
Such a fix should first include both simplifying the tax code and imposing a higher minimum tax rate for corporations and the super-wealthy. Second, axing special advantages for only the wealthy should also be considered, including eliminating most, if not all, loopholes for high earners, including the imposition of a minimum tax on America’s 900 billionaires, strengthening estate revenue by taxing the transfer of unrealized capital gains, and eliminating both the carried interest exemption for private equity and the reduced tax rate on capital gains and dividends. Such fixes would enable working middle class families to rebuild wealth while also ensuring that the financial elites contribute an equitable share of their wealth.
3. Making Housing Affordable
A Brookings Institute study recently determined that roughly one-third of middle Americans cannot afford basic necessities after paying for housing. This chronic housing stress leads directly to significant physical and mental health issues, with children in unstable housing typically registering lower academic achievement. Finally, studies have determined that housing shortages cost the U.S. government $2 trillion in lost wages and productivity.
The median age of the average home buyer in the United States today is an incredible 59 years old, up from 39 in 2010 and 31in 1981. For first-time buyers, the median age is 40. High cost, high interest rates, low inventory and the prevalence and concentration of institutional buyers all contribute to the lack of access to affordable housing. Correcting these barriers to home ownership necessarily requires addressing, both nationally and locally, many of the hot button issues of the day, including immigration reform, tariffs, inflation and high interest rates.
4. Bolstering Labor with Fair Wages
Today’s dramatic income inequality is a relatively new phenomenon. Until the late 1970’s, incomes across all strata generally grew at similar rates. But that equilibrium and income concentration began to change radically and has now returning to 1920’s levels. The globalization of our economy, the demand for highly skilled labor around information technology and a concentrated dependence on financialization are commonly seen as the catalysts for this increasing divide as wealth is channeled to those at the top. Indeed, since 1978, CEO pay has increased by more than 1000% while typical worker pay has increased by only 26%. And the wage growth promised by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered the corporate tax rate by 40%– the largest corporate tax cut in history–simply never materialized.
Dramatically altering the federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25 per hour since 1989 ($4.80 in today’s dollars) would be the easiest place to start. Taking steps to strengthen unions (since 2000, 2 million union jobs have been lost) is worth consideration. It is also imperative to increase take-home pay by linking pay to inflation through COLA adjustments as well as increasing salary ceilings for overtime pay eligibility. Mandating that employers provide workers an equity interest or profit sharing, a la Henry Ford, should be strongly considered. Whatever the methodology, wages must be substantially increased as a counterweight to grossly disproportionate and historic pay inequality.
5. Promoting Job Creation
A robust job market has been central to the country’s economic health in that it drives innovation and productivity, reduces government spending, and increases tax revenues–all necessary for long term prosperity. Most important, a healthy job market ensures that economic growth will permeate multiple demographics across the country. Wealth distribution, however, first requires wealth creation.
In 2025, job growth declined 70% from 2024 levels, due largely to Trump’s tariff and immigration policies. It is also reliably predicted that job growth will be near zero this year, is not likely to improve soon and may become the new norm. Moreover, the last report card on our nation’s economic health was not good. In the fourth quarter of 2025 the economy grew at an abysmal .5% with GDP at 2.1% for the year—the worst in a decade.
As we have stated, globalization, the financialization of our economy and ongoing AI boom have dramatically reordered the types and availability of U.S. jobs. But while big tech and AI require mostly highly skilled labor, emerging financial markets such as criminal-adjacent crypto exchanges remain relatively job free. Any governmental solution must address both the realignment of the international and domestic economies and, further, the downsizing trend in big business today. It is against this backdrop that Democratic leadership must also take on the mandatory task of reviving the moribund GDP in order to create and sustain high-wage jobs.
It’s Far Past Time for Democrats to Do Their JOB and Act
Plainly we are at a defining moment in our history. The public, as indicated by their weekly protests, beckon profound change. Should they manage gain control of both houses of Congress, and ultimately the Presidency, Democratic lawmakers simply must be at the ready to prioritize and enact bold solutions in these critical areas and actually deliver economic equality to every American.
FDR’s revolutionary New Deal created the foundation for a half-century-plus of majority rule in congress, remade a profoundly reactionary court in the aftermath of his court-packing proposal, and brought on organized labor as a powerful countervailing force against corporate impunity in the New Deal coalition. The public disgust with the current state of affairs should provide the requisite impetus to gird today’s democratic party as we face a similar economic and social battle. Solutions require that Democratic Party leaders, like FDR, have the courage and fortitude to reorient the apparatus of government to serve the interests of everyday people over the wealthy and powerful. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Like the one- shot success of Project Hail Mary, to preserve and restore our Democracy, a responsible Democratic Party must faithfully engage in finding systemic solutions sufficient to rebalance economic power away from the modern-day Robber Barons and into the hands of working Americans. Such revolutionary change will empower the economically dispossessed for generations and preserve an economically just America– ultimately a thriving democracy to which grace could actually choose to return. There’s not a minute to waste.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Widening Wealth Gab in America
What caused America’s growing wealth gap?
The article argues that deregulation, weakened unions, financialization, tax policy and corporate political influence have driven massive wealth inequality in the United States.
Why does the article criticize Citizens United?
It claims the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowed unlimited corporate political spending, increasing billionaire influence over government policy.
What reforms does the article propose?
The piece calls for major reforms in healthcare, taxes, wages, housing and job creation to restore economic fairness.
How does the article connect inequality to democracy?
It argues that extreme inequality fuels distrust in democratic institutions and creates conditions for populism and political instability.
Why are healthcare costs central to the argument?
The article describes healthcare affordability and medical debt as major drivers of financial insecurity for working Americans.
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