Severe wealth disparity in America is apparent. The bottom 50% of Americans control only 3% of its wealth while the top 10% control 69% (38 times more wealth). By comparison, in 1989 the top 10% controlled only 7 times as much as the bottom half. Today’s wealth gap has not been seen since the Great Depression.
America has always had oligarchic tendencies. Our Constitution made it clear that governing America belonged to white male landowners. Since then, we have made great strides toward reaching the ideals of freedom and equality expressed in Constitutional Amendments and other writings of our founders. Noticeably since 1980, however, the power and influence of wealthy people and corporations have increased until we are no longer living in a democracy but an oligarchy.
The influence of this great and growing wealth can be traced to the heart of all that ails America.
Climate Change
Today 57 companies emit 80% of greenhouse gases. The top 10% alone emit almost half (48%). The fossil fuel industry has known about climate change since at least the 1970s. As the scientific community began clamoring about global warming and then climate change, the coal, oil, and gas industries began spending vast amounts of money on mis/disinformation denying their existence to continue raking in short-term profits.
Destruction of the Environment
The lives that we live, that were sold to us, have been provided by rich people and corporations that destroy the environment intentionally for more profit. As a result of their actions there are 1,340 Super Fund sites in America (land uninhabitable from decades of so much toxic pollution, they must be cleaned up). These one-time industrial sites were abandoned when extracting profit was no longer possible. The polluting companies were legally structured in such a way that those who created and ran them could not be held financially responsible. Their founders and managers moved on to other profitable ventures without paying a cent toward cleanup. An additional 500+ active industrial sites in the U.S. currently emit so much pollution as to require monitoring. We, the American taxpayers, bear the costs of both cleanup and monitoring.
More than 25% of all children, minorities, households living below the poverty line, and people with less than a high school education live within 3 miles of one of these sites. Each of these groups has shorter life spans and worse health outcomes than the average American.
In U.S. alone more than 100,000 people die annually from air pollution. If a dictator killed 100,000 of its citizens every year, it would be called mass murder.
Poverty
Continuing poverty is a policy choice by rich corporations and the wealthy. Those at the top of the income and wealth pyramid have consistently, successfully lobbied lawmakers to stop increases in the minimum wage, reduce or eliminate the social safety net, break up monopolistic business practices, and minimize regulations affecting them.
As a result, more than 50% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. More than 11 million children live below the poverty line in the richest country in the world. Medicaid, SNAP, and other safety net programs for the most vulnerable are being cut. Housing costs are at an all-time high. The minimum wage has not increased since 2009, while the cost of living has risen by 50% (Restaurant wait staff can still be paid less than $3.00/hour). Additionally, there are 6.9 million Americans working as independent contractors (think Uber/Lyft and delivery drivers). For them there is no minimum wage and no safety net. When there is simply not enough to make ends meet, Americans get a second or third job and/or turn to payday loans/credit cards cheerfully provided at loan shark rates with exorbitant service fees furthering their indenture to a system rigged against them.
Food insecurity is rampant and housing obscenely costly for those at the bottom. This is kept in place by virtual monopolies in housing, food production, and delivery that allow their managers to raise directly or shrinkflate consumer prices at will to squeeze every possible penny out of their ‘customers.’
The outcome of these investments is evident. It enforces continuation and maintenance of a workforce that will do any job, at any wage, under any conditions with little or no pushback, thereby promulgating increased profit margins.
Political Division
Our wealth gap has transformed politics in America. The wealthy are no longer the ‘deep state’ massaging and influencing legislation that affects their interests. They can and do now openly buy Congresspeople, Senators, Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, and whole elections to ensure their insatiable need for more is baked into legislation that absolves them of all financial or moral responsibility. Ah, homo sapiens: the only species for whom too much is never enough.
The corrupting influence of money also drives America’s culture wars. Moneyed interests ensure we, the people, are sufficiently at each other’s throats over cultural differences to realize we are being robbed blind, murdered on the streets, or in our sleep by their actions while they further rig the system to keep us from noticing our sentence of life in prison without parole.
These are but 4 of the most pressing problems in America. The rest of our difficulties also spring from the root of wealth disparity. If we do not change our trajectory, America will soon be only feudal lords and peasants. Long live the Patriarchy!
We Must Lead
We must lead the world, as we did in the 20th century, toward a better more just civilization by solving this enormous puzzle. If our democracy is to be revived, we must achieve a more equitable wealth gap. This will require bold drastic action. We must take our would-be overlords in hand by reducing their income, regulating their actions for the common good, reclaiming the wealth stolen from us, reeducating our populace, and rewriting the Rich$peak narrative that dominates our culture.
Raise your lighted torches, pick up your pitchforks and prepare for the fight of your lives.
The current regime cannot last forever. When it ends, there will be much to do. If you want to help work on the policies that we will need for our future democracy, contact Project 2029, a citizen led initiative developing policies for transparent, accountable government. They need organizers, volunteer management, marketing people and more. Or you can support them with donations.
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