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10 Ways Billionaires Are Making Your Life Worse and 5 Ways to Fight Back
An economy rigged to funnel so much wealth and power to the billionaire class is bad for you and everyone else. It undermines your life in some major ways.
Oct 15, 2025
As a coeditor of Inequality.org, I get a lot of fan mail (and a few complaints). Greg B. recently wrote in, “None of my problems exist as a result of someone else being a billionaire.”
My response to Greg: “An economy rigged to funnel so much wealth and power to the billionaire class is bad for you and everyone else. It undermines your life in some major ways.”
I wrote my new book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, for folks like Greg to talk about how extreme wealth inequality disrupts our daily lives. Here are 10 ways you are being burned by billionaires, pulled from my book.
My analysis doesn’t focus on the behavior of individual billionaires—though some are gnarly ones (while a handful show signs of decency). The problem is the system of laws, rules, and regulations tipped in favor of big asset owners at the expense of wage earners and working folks.
When I’m talking about billionaires, I’m thinking of more people than the 905 US billionaires that together control about $7.8 trillion in wealth. I include the top one-tenth of 1%, the 0.1% of households that have over $40 million on up to the billionaire class. People with wealth north of $40 or $50 million have every need and desire met and easily accumulate power. They’re not just buying mansions and private jets but also lawmakers and media outlets. That’s when we need to sound the alarm about “the billionaires.”
Here are 10 of the ways you are personally getting burned by billionaires:
1. The billionaires stick you with their tax bill. By opting out of their tax obligations, the billionaire class is shifting responsibility on to you to pay for everything from infrastructure to national defense to veterans services.
2. They rob you of your voice and vote. With the billionaire capture of the government, what you think barely matters. Your vote might still make a difference, but only in marginal situations where the billionaires haven’t dominated candidate selection, campaign finance, and policy priorities. The billionaires love gridlock and government shutdowns because they can block popular legislation from happening.
3. The billionaires supercharge the housing crisis—and profit from it. Billionaire demand for luxury housing is driving up the cost of land and housing construction, supercharging the already existing housing crisis. Billionaire speculators are buying up rental housing, single family homes, and mobile home parks to squeeze more money out of the housing shortage. Global billionaires are coming to “tax haven USA” to park their money in US farmland, timber and housing.
4. They inflame existing divisions in society. The billionaires don’t want you to understand how they are picking your pocket. So, they invest heavily—pouring millions into partisan media organizations and divisive politicians—to deflect our attention away from their harmful behavior. Their divisive policy and social agenda drives down wages, worsens the historic racial wealth divide, and scapegoats immigrants.
5. They are trashing your environment. The billionaires are the super polluters and carbon emitters, burning up the Earth with their excessive consumption through yachts, private jets, and multiple mansions. While you’re recycling and walking, they are zooming around in private jets and yachts with the carbon emissions and pollution of small nation states. While we all need to do our part, the billionaires make us feel like chumps for making ecological choices and sacrifices.
6. They are making you sick. Billionaire backed private-equity funds are buying up hospitals and health specialties—along with big pharma drug companies—with the aim of squeezing more out of healthcare consumers. Health outcomes in societies with extreme disparities in wealth are worse for everyone, even the rich, than societies with less inequality.
7. They are blocking timely action on climate change. Fossil fuel billionaires spend millions to block the transition to a healthy future. They fund politicians to declare a bogus energy emergency to keep their coal plants open and shut down competing wind projects. They are literally running out the clock for our governments to take action to avert the worst impacts of climate disruption.
8. They are coming for your pets. Billionaire private equity funds know we love our pets like family members and are sometimes willing to go into debt for their healthcare. To squeeze more money out of us, the billionaires are buying up veterinary care, medical specialties, pet food and supply—and even pet care services like Rover.com.
9. They are dictating what’s on your dinner plate. The food barons—the billionaires that monopolize almost every sector of the food economy—are dictating the price, ingredients, and supply of most food stuffs.
10. They are corrupting charity and philanthropy. Billionaire philanthropy has become a taxpayer subsidized form of private power and influence. As philanthropy gets more top-heavy—with most charity dollars flowing from the ultra-wealthy—it distorts and warps the independence of the nonprofit sector.
11. Bonus: They are buying up and hijacking the media. The billionaires are buying up the media: broadcast, social media, news outlets. We need more news and social media outlets that are independent of billionaires, like this one!
Burned by Billionaires isn’t another gloom and doom book. I talk a lot about what we can do together to fight the billionaire hijacking of our society and democracy. And you can read about our faces on the frontlines in our Inequality.org newsletter every week to see how people are taking action. A few action steps you can undertake today:
1. Talk to your neighbors about these 10 ways they are feeling the billionaire burn. Organize a discussion group of Burned by Billionaires. Don’t act alone. Join with others.
2. Advocate for taxing the rich and ensuring that billionaires pay their fair share. When your neighbor understandably complains about local and state taxes, explain how the billionaire class has lobbied for tax law changes—to shift taxes off the wealthy and onto everyone else; off federal tax systems onto local; off taxes on income from wealth and into taxes on wages.
3. Game-changing campaigns. Advocate for policies that tax billionaire wealth and invest in housing, educational opportunity, and the energy transition away from Earth-cooking fossil fuels. If federal changes are blocked by the billionaires, work at the state and local level. Tax luxury real estate transfers to fund affordable housing. Tax private jet fuel and fund green transit. Tax billionaire inheritances and fund debt-free higher education and job training.
4. Join the satirical resistance: Trillionaires For Trump! We see the power of comedians and late-night talk show hosts. You can join a new comic resistance effort, see www.trillionairesfortrump.org. Have fun while imitating and parodying the powerful billionaires and join their new health campaign, “Go Fund Yourself!”
5. If you haven’t already checked out Inequality.org, the web site I coedit. Please sign up for our weekly newsletter HERE. Every week we lift up action campaigns and heroic “faces on the frontline” of people working to reverse extreme wealth inequality.
If this intrigues you, I hope you’ll buy Burned by Billionaires from your local independent bookstores or online. Learn more at www.burnedbybillionaires.com.
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Mike Johnson Sits Stone-Faced as GOP Voters Plead With Him to Cave to Dems' Healthcare Demands
“I’m begging you to pass this legislation,” said a Republican caller whose children rely on medication. “My kids could die.”
Oct 10, 2025
House Speaker Mike Johnson has stuck to the Republican Party's script regarding the US government shutdown that began more than a week ago when the GOP refused to include an extension of healthcare subsidies in a spending bill—but voters from both sides of the aisle made clear to him Thursday on "Washington Journal," the C-SPAN call-in show, that they aren't buying the claim that Democrats are holding crucial spending hostage.
“I’m begging you to pass this legislation,” said a Republican caller named Samantha, who identified herself as a military mom from Virginia. “My kids could die.”
Samantha explained that her children are "medically fragile" and said a missed paycheck for her partner, a service member, on the 15th would be catastrophic for her family.
“If we see a lapse in pay come the 15th, my children do not get to get the medication that’s needed for them to live their life,” she said. “As a Republican, I am disappointed in my party and I’m very disappointed in you because you do have the power to call the House back."
Republican C-SPAN caller to Mike Johnson: "As a Republican, I'm very disappointed in my party,and I'm very disappointed in you, because you have the power to call the House back. You refuse to do that just for a show." pic.twitter.com/3gxdXxtsDj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 9, 2025
Johnson (R-La.) has not called the House back into session since September 19. Military members' paychecks are affected by government shutdowns like the one that began October 1 after the GOP refused to sign on to a Democratic stopgap proposal to keep the government funded through the end of the month, with $1 trillion in the Republicans' Medicaid cuts restored and Affordable Care Act (ACA) chbsubsidies extended.
Republicans including Johnson have persisted in claiming the Democratic proposal would give free healthcare to undocumented "non-Americans" and have demanded that Democrats relent and vote for a continuing resolution to keep the government funded for seven weeks.
Johnson told Samantha that "Democrats are the ones preventing you from getting a check"—but she made clear that she wasn't convinced of that.
“You could stop this and you could be the one that could say: ‘Military is getting paid,'" said the caller. "And I think it is awful and the audacity of someone who makes six figures a year to do this to military families is insane.”
Johnson said earlier this week that he supported calling the House back to vote on a stand-alone bill to ensure service members and air traffic controllers are paid during the shutdown, but walked back his support on Wednesday.
Another Republican caller from Texas asked Johnson, considering that the GOP passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allows the ACA subsidies to expire and could raise monthly premiums by an average of 75% for millions of households, whether the party has a plan to improve the program.
The House speaker offered only more claims that "illegal aliens" and "able-bodied men without dependents" have been "draining the resources" in the Medicaid program and said the Republicans "have a lot of ideas to fix" the ACA.
C-SPAN CALLER: What is your plan to fix Obamacare?MIKE JOHNSON: Great question. There's a lot of improvement that's needed. Obamacare did not do what was promised. We gotta fix that. In the big beautiful bill we reformed Medicaid.
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 9, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Mimi Gergees, the host of "Washington Journal," pressed Johnson on whether there is "a plan that we can read and find out more about," but the GOP leader replied only that congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are "setting up the conditions" to develop a healthcare proposal.
A poll by KFF found last week that 78% of Americans want Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance through the ACA's exchanges. A CBS survey released this week showed that more Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats.
Other callers lambasted Johnson on Trump's efforts to federalize National Guard troops and deploy them to cities including Chicago and Portland, Oregon, where Republicans have insisted the White House is responding to crime, chaos, and "war-ravaged" conditions caused by immigrants and anti-fascist protesters.
“Everybody is smiling here" following Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC, said Johnson. "The sun is shining again.”
A Democrat from Colorado called in to say that the comment, made amid reports of federal agents pointing weapons at civilians and using force against protesters and journalists in Chicago, was "dystopian and insane."
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'Full of Sh*t' Texas Cops Lied About Why They Used AI Surveillance to Track Woman Who Had Abortion
"This is what cruel, abusive men seeking to exert power over women do," said a pair of reproductive rights reporters.
Oct 08, 2025
Police in Texas—led by a county sheriff later charged with an unrelated felony sex crime—lied about their motive for using artificial intelligence-powered surveillance technology to search for a woman who allegedly self-administered a medication abortion, new documents obtained by 404 Media and Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed on Tuesday.
In May, 404 Media's Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler reported that the Johnson County Sheriff's Office tapped into 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras manufactured by Flock Safety while conducting a nationwide search for an unnamed woman who authorities said took abortion medication in alleged violation of a 2021 state ban that empowers anti-abortion vigilantes to sue anyone who “aids or abets” the medical procedure.
Since thata law's passage—and the right-wing US Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization the following year—Texas has passed additional forced birth laws banning nearly all abortions as well as targeting providers who mail abortion pills from other states.
According to Cox and Koebler, Johnson County Sheriff's deputies accessed Flock cameras in states where abortion is legal, including Illinois and Washington. Johnson County Sheriff Adam King told 404 Media at the time that his department searched for the woman because "her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital.”
“We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion,” King said. “It was about her safety.”
NEW: Cops in Texas told 404 Media in May they used Flock to find a woman who self-administered an abortion out of concern for her safety. Documents now show police were conducting a “death investigation” and discussed whether they could charge her with a crime: www.404media.co/police-said-...
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— 404 Media (@404media.co) October 7, 2025 at 6:30 AM
King's office, forced birth advocates, and Flock Safety subsequently attempted to gaslight those who reported that deputies searched for the woman as part of a probe into potential violations of state laws.
However, new documents and court records obtained by the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and shared with 404 Media show that Johnson County Sheriff's deputies initiated a "death investigation" of a "nonviable fetus" and discussed prosecuting the woman for allegedly self-administering an abortion.
"To no one's surprise, they were full of shit," Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung wrote Tuesday for Valenti's Abortion, Every Day Substack.
As EFF's Dave Maass and Rindala Alajaji noted:
In recent years, anti-abortion advocates and prosecutors have increasingly attempted to use “fetal homicide” and “wrongful death” statutes—originally intended to protect pregnant people from violence—to criminalize abortion and pregnancy loss. These laws, which exist in dozens of states, establish legal personhood of fetuses and can be weaponized against people who end their own pregnancies or experience a miscarriage.
In fact, a new report from Pregnancy Justice found that in just the first two years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases charging pregnant people with crimes related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth—most under child neglect, endangerment, or abuse laws that were never intended to target pregnant people. Nine cases included allegations around individuals’ abortions, such as possession of abortion medication or attempts to obtain an abortion—instances just like this one. The report also highlights how, in many instances, prosecutors use tangentially related criminal charges to punish people for abortion, even when abortion itself is not illegal.
"By framing their investigation of a self-administered abortion as a 'death investigation' of a 'nonviable fetus,' Texas law enforcement was signaling their intent to treat the woman’s self-managed abortion as a potential homicide, even though Texas law does not allow criminal charges to be brought against an individual for self-managing their own abortion," Maass and Alajaji added.
Valenti and Cheung asserted that "this is what cruel, abusive men seeking to exert power over women do: harass them over their abortions."
They were referring not only to the Texas woman's "vindictive, controlling partner" who tipped off police—and was later convicted of pistol-whipping and choking her—but also to King, who, despite being recently arrested and indicted on four felony sexual harassment charges, was allowed to return to work part-time. King was also previously indicted in August for alleged sexual harassment and corrupt influence for allegedly retaliating against a witness.
"These are the kind of men who target women for their abortions," Valenti and Cheung wrote. "It’s a trend that AED warned about in our 2025 predictions: that the anti-abortion movement would increasingly rely on aggrieved and abusive men to do their dirty work."
They continued:
Since November, top Texas-based anti-abortion activists have bragged about recruiting men to sue over their partner’s abortions. Jonathan Mitchell is one of the anti-abortion attorneys leading that charge: after his client Marcus Silva sued his ex’s friends over her abortion, he tried to use the case to blackmail her into resuming a sexual relationship. At this point, even Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reportedly recruiting men for this purpose.
"This isn’t about a few bad actors—but the predictable outcome of living in a reproductive police state bent on surveillance and punishment," Valenti and Cheung said. "And in a moment when pregnancy criminalization is on the rise, it’s vital we understand how this police state operates."
The willingness of Republicans including US Vice President JD Vance to embrace the tracking of women who have or are seeking abortions has raised alarms among reproductive rights advocates.
"Reproductive dragnets are not hypothetical concerns. These surveillance tactics open the door for overzealous, anti-abortion state actors to amass data to build cases against people for their abortion care and pregnancy outcomes," Ashley Kurzweil, senior policy analyst in reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told 404 Media Tuesday.
“Law enforcement exploitation of mass surveillance infrastructure for reproductive health criminalization promises to be increasingly disruptive to the entire abortion access and pregnancy care landscape," Kurzweil added. "The prevalence of these harmful data practices and risks of legal action drive real fear among abortion seekers and helpers—even intimidating people from getting the care they need."
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