SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
");background-position:center;background-size:19px 19px;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-color:#222;padding:0;width:var(--form-elem-height);height:var(--form-elem-height);font-size:0;}:is(.js-newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter_bar.newsletter-wrapper) .widget__body:has(.response:not(:empty)) :is(.widget__headline, .widget__subheadline, #mc_embed_signup .mc-field-group, #mc_embed_signup input[type="submit"]){display:none;}:is(.grey_newsblock .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper) #mce-responses:has(.response:not(:empty)){grid-row:1 / -1;grid-column:1 / -1;}.newsletter-wrapper .widget__body > .snark-line:has(.response:not(:empty)){grid-column:1 / -1;}:is(.grey_newsblock .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper) :is(.newsletter-campaign:has(.response:not(:empty)), .newsletter-and-social:has(.response:not(:empty))){width:100%;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col{display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;align-items:center;gap:8px 20px;margin:0 auto;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col .text-element{display:flex;color:var(--shares-color);margin:0 !important;font-weight:400 !important;font-size:16px !important;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col .whitebar_social{display:flex;gap:12px;width:auto;}.newsletter-wrapper .newsletter_bar_col a{margin:0;background-color:#0000;padding:0;width:32px;height:32px;}.newsletter-wrapper .social_icon:after{display:none;}.newsletter-wrapper .widget article:before, .newsletter-wrapper .widget article:after{display:none;}#sFollow_Block_0_0_1_0_0_0_1{margin:0;}.donation_banner{position:relative;background:#000;}.donation_banner .posts-custom *, .donation_banner .posts-custom :after, .donation_banner .posts-custom :before{margin:0;}.donation_banner .posts-custom .widget{position:absolute;inset:0;}.donation_banner__wrapper{position:relative;z-index:2;pointer-events:none;}.donation_banner .donate_btn{position:relative;z-index:2;}#sSHARED_-_Support_Block_0_0_7_0_0_3_1_0{color:#fff;}#sSHARED_-_Support_Block_0_0_7_0_0_3_1_1{font-weight:normal;}.sticky-sidebar{margin:auto;}@media (min-width: 980px){.main:has(.sticky-sidebar){overflow:visible;}}@media (min-width: 980px){.row:has(.sticky-sidebar){display:flex;overflow:visible;}}@media (min-width: 980px){.sticky-sidebar{position:-webkit-sticky;position:sticky;top:100px;transition:top .3s ease-in-out, position .3s ease-in-out;}}.grey_newsblock .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper, .newsletter-wrapper.sidebar{background:linear-gradient(91deg, #005dc7 28%, #1d63b2 65%, #0353ae 85%);}
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
The evidence is overwhelming. The American economic system is no longer failing by accident; it is succeeding at its new design: concentrating wealth and power for the few while dismantling the foundations of a dignified life for the many.
Nine days ago, I laid out a draft of a pledge akin to Newt’s Contract for America. First, we must agree on what is broken. If you can’t agree on the scale of a crisis, you can never agree on the scale of a solution.
This is my attempt to lay out the first and most important reality, one that so many of us know in our bones but that the establishment continues to deny.
The people in charge—the politicians in Washington, the economists at Hahvahd, the CEOs in boardrooms—all describe a nation that does not exist for most of us. Strongest economy EVER! Record GDP! Look at the MARKET FOLKS! “Real Wages” are up across the board!
Our greatest economic minds reckon we oughta be in awe of the riches that their management has bestowed upon us.
Every official metric tells us we're richer than our parents and grandparents, and that all who have come before us would look at even the poorest among us green with envy. The story goes that even Kings and Queens could only dream of trading their lives for those of trailer park dwellers or Section 8 residents. We're living the dream.
Alas, it’s a lie. A goddamn lie. It's the big lie.
Why does it matter that we share this understanding of reality? Why can’t you think things are okay but need improving? Because this lie paralyzes us. If the prevailing wisdom is to be believed then there is no problem. No need for fundamental shifts in the foundation of our system.
Also, implicit in this lie is that failure is our fault if we struggle financially or socially. It means that if we’re poor, we’re fuck ups that didn’t heed Dave Ramsey’s advice. After all the fantasy of America and the data tell us the same story. America is the land of opportunity. You fail, you suck.
Politicians, voters and non-voters alike all look at the stats to determine a plan of action. Is the good life out there waiting for us?
Unless we share this reality we have no chance in mobilizing the strength to overturn a system that constantly fails us. To overcome the corporations, the billionaires and the yes men in our government that have their boots on our throats economically it’ll take a lot of political will. A lot of political fights. Brave people, terrified people, but united people.
The odds of a child earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% for those born in 1940 to 50% for those born in the 1980s.
People that agree in this simple truth: We are not failing. The system is failing us.
Let's start with what we know in our bones.
Our parents and grandparents could afford a home on one income. Now we struggle on two. Our grandparents raised a family on a factory wage. Today even with a college degree many can't afford daycare. That degree once cost a summer job. Now it's a lifetime of debt.
They want to tell you about personal responsibility, bootstraps, or about the choices you've made. The elite, academics, and CEOs want us to believe that if we’d worked a little harder, gotten a different degree, made a different decision, we’d have risen above it all.
But when an entire generation is locked out of the stability their parents took for granted, the problem isn't the generation—it's the system.
According to a 2017 study we’ve long lost social mobility. We're not better off than our parents. Our kids probably won't be better off than us.
We need to understand that the people telling you otherwise are invested in not seeing the truth. They are tracking the portfolios of the rich instead of the lives of the working. They are celebrating the health of the parasite while the host, you and me, get sicker every year.
You don't need an economics degree to see the crime scene. You just need basic arithmetic.
Housing: In 1950, the median household income was about $3,073 and the median home cost around $7,500. 2.8 times a household’s yearly pay. In 2023, the median household income was $80,610 and the median home cost $430,000 or 5.3 times a household income. No inflation though. Just ask experts.
Keep in mind that more and more homes had two people working full-time. So what once took 2.8 years of income for one worker now requires 5.3 years from TWO. The one-income household is DOA.
Education: In 1973, you could pay for a year of public university tuition (about $400) by working roughly 250 hours at the federal minimum wage ($1.60). Today, with average public university tuition at $11,610, you'd need to work over 1,600 hours at the current minimum wage—most of a full-time job just for tuition. Forget food, rent, or books.
The game has been fundamentally changed. The cost of entry into the middle class now requires a lifetime of debt and labor that was unimaginable two generations ago.
So where did all the prosperity go? It didn't vanish. It was taken. Housing, healthcare, education, transportation, and food make up the bulk of our spending. And corporations have gobbled it up.
A landmark study from the RAND Corporation calculated the scale of the heist. If income had been distributed as equitably as it was from 1945-1975, the bottom 90% of Americans would have earned $79 trillion more over the past 50 years.
That's not a typo. Trillion. With a T.
In 2023 alone, the transfer was $3.9 trillion. That's enough to have given every single worker in America an additional $32,000.
Stop and think about that number. Every American worker in a single year, 2023, was robbed of 32 grand. What would an extra $32,000 have meant for your family last year? A down payment? An end to credit card debt? The ability to see a doctor without checking your bank account first?
That money is our money. It was earned by our labor, our infrastructure, our markets. Then stolen with interest, inflation, and policy choices.
CEO pay exploded from 30-to-1 in 1978 to 290-to-1 today. The top 1% now owns 31% of all wealth—up from 23% in 1989.
Why are people so pissed? Why is xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, on the rise in the West? This is one of the reasons. We’ve spent the last 50 years being mugged with policy. Blaming immigrants or leftists or right wingers and Trump and everyone in between is simpler than acknowledging the truth. They are easier fixes too. Walls, bombs, bullets, and deportations. Much easier than rebuilding an entire economy and society.
How do they hide a crime this massive in plain sight? They build a gaslighting machine “experts say” or “the News” or "economic data."
They use sophisticated, elegant-sounding mathematical formulas to tell us it's raining while they piss all over us.
The official inflation number is their primary weapon, engineered to hide the affordability crisis. Here's exactly how they do it:
"Substitution": When steak gets too expensive, the statisticians quietly assume you now buy hamburger. When hamburger gets too expensive, they assume you switch to chicken. When chicken gets too expensive, it's beans. They are not measuring the cost of living; they are measuring the cost of surviving. By constantly moving the goalposts downward, they report that prices are stable while you are eating worse for more money.
"Hedonic Adjustments": When a new car includes a backup camera that used to be an option, they count that as a price decrease because you're "getting more car for your money." But you can't buy the old, cheaper car anymore. You are forced to pay the full sticker price, while the government reports that your cost of living went down.
"Averaging the Absurd": TVs got 94% cheaper while healthcare costs have tripled since 2000—from $4,900 per person to $14,570. They call it a wash. But you need healthcare to live. A TV is optional. It's like saying "Sure, chemotherapy will bankrupt you, but have you seen the deal on flatscreens?"
The lies, the blatant lies that we're told about our economy, our living situations, are just enraging and offensive.
The $79 trillion heist was never just about cash. They didn't just steal our money; they stole our capacity. They stole our ability to do things, to build, to create, and to care for our own.
We can't build infrastructure projects anymore. We can't complete a high-speed rail system. The road on I-40 between Asheville and my home is still down to two lanes because part of it collapsed into a river, and God knows how many years that'll take to fix.
They've got us in a situation where 54 percent of this country can't read beyond a sixth-grade level, and 20 percent of us are functionally illiterate. At the same time, they tell us we have a 99 percent literacy rate because people can read a sentence.
We are the only developed nation where mothers are three times more likely to die in childbirth than 25 years ago. Our life expectancy is falling.
We are literally sick from the stress, the debt, and the garbage food that's all many can afford. Over 130 million Americans have multiple chronic conditions.
The average family now spends $13,174 annually on transportation—more than double what most people think. Childcare costs average $11,582 per year, often exceeding college tuition. We're spending more on basic necessities than we earn.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' own data shows that families in the bottom 80% spend more than they earn just on necessities—before accounting for anything else. This isn't overconsumption; it's mathematical impossibility sustained only through debt.
They haven't just taken the fruit; they've poisoned the tree. They've left us a nation rich on paper but poor in the real capacity to provide decent lives for our people.
The evidence is overwhelming. The American economic system is no longer failing by accident; it is succeeding at its new design: concentrating wealth and power for the few while dismantling the foundations of a dignified life for the many.
This is the rot beneath the floorboards of our democracy. This is the economic carnage that fuels the political chaos. January 6th, Minnesota, Kirk, Pelosi...
Trump’s election victories were outlandish. They were the predictable consequences of telling a drowning country that it's not even wet. When you gaslight people about their own lives for long enough, they will eventually burn the whole thing down. Blame anyone they can find—an immigrant from Guatemala, some trans kid, whomever—because the people who actually robbed us live in walled-off communities or a yacht in the Mediterranean. We're not running into them at the grocery store.
We have a choice. We can keep pretending. We can keep tweaking the machine that's grinding us into dust. Or we can admit the truth. The experiment failed. The system is broken. It's time to build something new.
We have a choice. We can keep pretending. We can keep tweaking the machine that's grinding us into dust. Or we can admit the truth. The experiment failed. The system is broken. It's time to build something new. An economy where we build things again. An economy where one job is enough to raise a family. An economy where the goal is the prosperity of our people, not the fiction of our spreadsheets.
We did this before, from 1933 to 1975. We can do it again. But first, we gotta stop lying about where we are and how we got here.
Our eyes aren’t lying to us. The spreadsheets are.
Help spread a shared reality. Share this. Post it on social media. Restack it. Forward it. And comment on the thoughts below.
Did any of these numbers or comparisons surprise you? Which ones stood out most? If you were explaining this to a friend, which example would you start with? What’s the best way to show people that the system is failing us—not that we’re failing as individuals? If you could put just one chart, story, or fact on a billboard in your town, what would it be?
For the economists reading this: The data supporting these claims comes from Carter C. Price's extension of the RAND wage divergence study (WR-A516-2, 2025), Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts (WFRBST01134), Census Historical Income Tables (P-60 series), NCES Digest of Education Statistics, BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys via FRED (CXUTRANSLB0101M), CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Commonwealth Fund maternal mortality analyses, NAEP Reading Assessment data, and Chetty et al.'s work on intergenerational mobility (Science, 2017). The productivity-compensation gap documented by EPI, the PCE deflator biases analyzed by the Boskin Commission, and the hedonic adjustment critiques from Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi all support the core thesis: our measurement systems systematically obscure declining affordability and eroding living standards for the bottom 90% of Americans.
"Enough with the attacks on working people in order to fund billionaire tax cuts," said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas). "Tax the billionaires instead of funding the billionaires."
As House Republicans prepared to vote Tuesday on a budget blueprint that calls for ravaging Medicaid and other programs to help fund trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthy, progressive lawmakers joined community members and organizers outside of the U.S. Capitol to launch a new coalition demanding a radically different approach.
"Enough with the attacks on working people in order to fund billionaire tax cuts," Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said at a press conference. "Just tax the billionaires instead of funding the billionaires."
Speakers at Tuesday's event cast the "Tax the Greedy Billionaires" coalition—which includes People's Action, MoveOn, and other advocacy groups—as a direct challenge to President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' legislative agenda, particularly the push for $4.5 trillion tax cuts primarily for the wealthiest Americans, financed by deep cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other key programs.
"The Republican plan is about making government more efficient for big corporations and billionaires who are screwing us over," said Casar. "We don't need to cut Social Security; we can expand it. We don't need to cut people's healthcare; we can expand it. We can have a country that is better off for small businesses and workers alike."
LIVE: The Congressional Progressive Caucus Holds Tax the Greedy Billionaires Press Conference https://t.co/ZCKGk61r1a
— Congressman Greg Casar (@RepCasar) February 25, 2025
The press conference included remarks from organizers who warned the House GOP's proposed $880 billion Medicaid cuts over the next 10 years would have devastating—and potentially deadly—impacts on their communities.
"Medicaid afforded me the opportunity to get on life-saving medication," said Elissa Tierney, co-founder of an organization that helps people negatively impacted by substance addiction. "I am asking, begging: Please protect these programs."
"If your vote is going to result in someone dying or losing their home," Tierney added, "vote no."
A full House vote on the budget blueprint, which Trump has endorsed, could come as soon as Tuesday evening, though there could be delays caused by divisions in the narrow Republican majority as GOP lawmakers face mounting constituent backlash in their home districts.
Politico noted Tuesday that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) "faces some bleak arithmetic: No Democrats are expected to back the budget plan, and if all members are present and voting, he can lose only one Republican and still approve it."
"Do not take your eye off the ball—and the ball is always the money."
In a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday, the new coalition urged lawmakers not to "slash programs that working families depend on."
"Tax the greedy billionaires now," the letter adds. "The American Dream is dying in a system where unlimited wealth for the few destroys opportunity for all."
Last month, according to an analysis unveiled Monday, the world's billionaires saw their collective wealth surge by $314 billion—roughly $10 billion per day.
The GOP's proposed extension of expiring provisions of their 2017 tax law would be a major boon to billionaires in the United States, who saw their wealth skyrocket in the years following the law's enactment.
"Republicans are not thinking about regular people ever," Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) said at Tuesday's press conference. "It's about who's at the top who we can give more money to while the rest of us are scrapping around for every little bit that we can get. It's not right."
"Do not take your eye off the ball—and the ball is always the money," Balint added. "Who has the money, who's getting the money, and how are the rest of us being screwed."
The president should let Deere know that they can’t continue to receive taxpayer money if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico.
The greed of the John Deere company is giving President Biden the perfect opportunity to win back working-class voters. All he needs to do is put up a major fight to stop Deere from shipping U.S. jobs to Mexico.
Really, the company should be renamed “Greed R Us.” Amid layoffs totaling approximately 1,000 U.S. workers in Illinois and Iowa, the company has posted $10 billion in profits in the 2023 fiscal year and paid its CEO $26.7 million.
But the real motivation for Deere to can workers and flee to Mexico is to finance $12.2 billion in stock buybacks. What are stock buybacks? A way to boost the price of the company’s shares—a blatant form of stock manipulation that was illegal until deregulated by the Reagan Administration.
Come on Joe, go to bat for these workers.
Stock buybacks are a quick and easy way to shovel corporate money straight into the pockets of the company's largest shareholders, mostly hedge funds and other Wall Street entities, and to the top officers who receive most of their compensation in stock incentives. When the company rushes into the market and buys back its shares—as listed below—ka ching! The stock price goes up and the biggest shareholders get richer and richer. But it takes a lot of U.S. layoffs to pay for these buybacks over the last two years alone:
It’s time for Biden to take a page from the Trump playbook. Trump stopped the Carrier Air Conditioning company from moving to Mexico in 2017. Polling shows that Trump’s effort was extremely popular. Even a third of those who voted for Hillary Clinton had a more favorable view of Trump after he pressured Carrier to keep 800 jobs in Indiana.
Why did Carrier give in? As its president said, “I was born at night but it wasn’t last night. I also know that about 10 percent of our revenue comes from the U.S. government.”
If they want to lay off workers, it must be voluntary. The company should offer pay and benefit packages so that workers agree to leave. Clearly, Deere has more than enough money, given what they're pumping out in stock buybacks.
John Deere also gets considerable revenue from Federal contracts. Its website boasts, “John Deere manufactures every kind of power generating, land moving, base building, grass cutting, people transporting equipment you can imagine through AFNAF, DLA and GSA contracts.”
Biden should let Deere know that they can’t continue to receive taxpayer money if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico. He might even threaten to use the Defense Production Act to prevent the move. He should pressure them to accept a “no compulsory layoff” agreement. If they want to lay off workers, it must be voluntary. The company should offer pay and benefit packages so that workers agree to leave. Clearly, Deere has more than enough money, given what they're pumping out in stock buybacks.
Come on Joe, go to bat for these workers. Put the heat on John Deere and show the working class that you’re tougher than Trump when it comes to saving American jobs.
Your election and the future of our democracy may depend upon it.