This is the eighth installment in the short blog series, Cleanup on Aisle 47, which is meant to present ideas on rebuilding and strengthening U.S. democracy.
Wealth Inequality in the U.S. – Pre-Civil War, Gilded Age, Roaring Twenties, and Today
Every time there is a breakdown in American society, there’s been a vast wealth imbalance behind it. A relatively small cadre of individuals decides they must horde all the wealth and resources and treat everyone else as less than human … disposable cogs in their profit machine. Because they control the majority of the wealth in the country, they capture our federal and state governments and twist the laws to enable them to stay in power and horde even more wealth and resources. (Wealth hording is a sickness, really, and leads to a loss of empathy for others. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/)
This happened in the 1850s and eventually led to the Civil War. This paragraph from historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American dated April 22, 2026, sums up the situation at that time:
“In the 1850s, southerners championed their region as the one that had correctly developed the society envisioned by the Founders. In the South a few very wealthy men controlled government and society, enslaving their neighbors. This system, its apologists asserted, was the highest form of human civilization. They opposed any attempt to restrict its spread. The South was superior to the North, enslavers insisted; it alone was patriotic, honored the Constitution, and understood economic growth. In the interests of union, northerners repeatedly ceded ground to enslavers and left their claim to superiority unchallenged.” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-22-2026)
The wealth imbalance developed again during the Gilded Age of the 1870s – 1880s, leading to the Panic of 1893, the most severe economic depression in the U.S. until the Great Depression in the 1930s. This was the era of the ‘robber barons.’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist))
In Richardson’s August 16, 2026 letter, she wrote of this era:
“As soon as it was clear voters had put Democrats in charge, Republican industrialists panicked. Their industries were protected by a high tariff that had enabled them to dominate the domestic market and raise prices, while a lack of labor laws and protections for farmers drove down workers’ wages and agricultural profits. The tariffs had made industrialists very rich indeed, and they insisted that Democrats’ promises to lower tariff rates to help the workers and consumers who paid the tariffs would collapse the economy.
“Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club declared, and losing that administration would be a calamity, especially since, according to Republicans, Democrats were socialists and anarchists who wanted to destroy America. The Chicago Tribune told readers that a lower tariff would destroy industries and throw people out of work, but it seemed fine with the prospect: “The working classes of the country need such a lesson.”” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-16-2026)
The wealth imbalance happened again during the 1920s (the Roaring Twenties), which resulted in a stock market crash and the Great Depression:
“Per capita income had risen 10% for all Americans in the 1920s, but 75% for the wealthiest. The return of conservative politics in the 1920s had reinforced federal policies that exacerbated this divide. High import tariffs, low corporate and personal taxes, easy credit and low interest rates overwhelmingly favored wealthy investors who spent their money on luxury goods and speculative investments in the rapidly rising stock market.” (https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/ushistory2/chapter/great-depression/)
And, of course, it is happening yet again, with Donald Trump, MAGA Republicans, and the Techno Barons running the country. Wealth inequality is becoming more extreme in the U.S..
“The top 1% of households owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025, the highest share on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989. That share has increased even as wealth growth for the rest of the population has stalled or slowed, the data shows.
“Collectively, the wealthiest 1% held about $55 trillion in assets in the third quarter of 2025 — roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans combined.” (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-three-decades-federal-reserve/)
We did not get into the current wealth and power imbalance overnight. It’s been picking up steam since Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, with the wealthy chipping away at our democracy by using their money to buy power, politicians, and favorable legislation.
They also use their money to launder their cutthroat reputations, setting up foundations and giving money to charity, rather than paying taxes for the common good. (When the wealthy do this, they call the shots on the causes they think it’s important to tackle, rather than all of us deciding through our elected representatives. They also get a tax break on their donations, further reducing government tax revenue that could benefit everyone. (https://ips-dc.org/report-true-cost-of-billionaire-philanthropy/)
A small part of the blame for wealth inequality belongs to all of us. We tend to idolize wealth, worshiping the golden calf by constantly striving for more money, which is understandable when we’re broke and can’t afford housing, healthcare, childcare, and food. However, we also put the wealthy on pedestals by mooning over their homes and lifestyles in celebrity magazines, Instagram and TikTok accounts, and TV shows like Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous, MTV Cribs, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. (https://maryewarner.com/2024/09/01/i-blame-lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_Cribs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_with_the_Kardashians)
Further, we keep believing politicians who claim trickle-down economics, which features low taxation for the wealthy, works. It doesn’t. It never has. Yet, we keep voting these sorts of politicians into office, falling for their drummed up culture wars and demonization of immigrants, the poor, Black and Brown people, anyone not a conservative Christian, and trans people.
We have also fallen for the argument of corporations – that only return-on-investment matters, and all of life should boil down to whether it provides a profit for someone. Anyone who doesn’t believe wholeheartedly in capitalism is considered suspect and is called a socialist or communist or anarchist or radical leftist, as though ensuring everyone is cared for in society is a bad thing. Note from the Heather Cox Richardson quote above that using these terms as an insult was happening in the Gilded Age, so this is nothing new. We need to stop allowing the wealthy to define life for everyone based on their net worth.
It’s long past time for a course correction on wealth inequality in the United States. Now that we’ve got a lawless regime running the country, this course correction needs to be bold, swift, and persistent.
Rebalancing Wealth for the Good of All
Here are some ideas for rebalancing wealth for the good of all in the U.S.
Tax the millionaires, billionaires, and trillionaires back to the middle class. (You might argue that millionaires are part of the middle class, particularly if their net worth is tied up in their house or retirement. Fair enough, but with a more robust social safety net, which I discuss below, people might not feel the need to amass a small fortune to pay for a house or retirement.)
Break up monopolies and prevent them from forming in the future. We have laws to do just this, but they haven’t been enforced consistently over time.
End corporate personhood.
Ban hostile takeovers of companies.
Ban stock buy-backs.
Severely limit private equity. They are typically corporate raiders who take over companies to strip them of assets and let them go bankrupt. Private equity should not be allowed anywhere near health care, nursing homes, housing, education, or any sector that is concerned with the well-being of people.
Fully regulate cryptocurrency. Do not continue to let it be a place to speculate and launder money.
Ban prediction markets.
Ban health insurance companies. They are founded on the faulty premise that they ought to make a profit from the healthy, so they can deny care for the unhealthy. The problem is that everyone eventually gets sick.
To reduce the power of the Techno Barons and tech companies, follow the suggestions of Cory Doctorow in his book, “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” These suggestions include, passing federal right-to-repair laws, providing anti-monopoly training for judges, bringing back regulations on corporations and preventing corporate insiders from serving as government regulators of their industries, making net neutrality a law, passing privacy rights for consumers, and restoring workers’ rights, among other ideas. (https://craphound.com/category/enshittification/)
Regulate AI and create public AI. Have AI companies compensate the public for having raided our cultural commons and intellectual property to build their technology.
Use zoning laws to prevent enormous single-family homes from being built, like the $55 million mansion on Lake Minnetonka, whose owner died two months before completion. The house, which is 29,000 square feet with two guest houses that are over 4,000 square fee each, has never been lived in, though it was completed in 2024. (https://minnesotanow.net/mn-lake-minnetonka-estate-2770-gale-road/)
Create a robust social safety net that includes:
Universal healthcare. – Discharge medical debt that has threatened the financial stability of families.
Fully-funded public education. – End the private school voucher system and fully fund public education. (See Heather Cox Richardson’s letter of August 21, 2026, for more on how public education has been eroded by the wealthy: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-21-2026.)
Free or heavily subsidized post-high school education. – Change the interest rate on student loans to straight-line, rather than compounding interest. Lower student loan interest rates to 1-3%. Allow student loans to be discharged through bankruptcy. Forgive more current student loans (including private ones).
An improved Social Security system. – Stop forcing people to pay for their own retirement through the stock market.
Housing for all. – Create and pay for housing for those who can’t afford it. This gives them the greatest chance to rebuild their lives and, barring that, it prevents other costs incurred from managing homeless populations.
Universal free or heavily subsidized childcare.
Set full-time work to between 24 and 32 hours a week. PTO is required for all employees (including restaurants and retail). – This would solve a number of societal problems, like allowing people time to care for children or aging relatives, reducing sick days and stress, and providing people time for hobbies, volunteering, and taking part in democracy.
I would also strengthen the IRS and other oversight agencies to prevent waste, fraud, abuse, and all-out corruption, all of which we are seeing with the Trump regime.
These ideas may seem pie-in-the sky, but if other countries can manage to keep wealth inequality in check while providing a social safety net, surely we can manage that here in the United States.
What would you do to tackle wealth inequality in the United States? What would you like to see added to the social safety net?
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