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wealth inequality
What Jeffrey Epstein's Emails Really Expose: The System Itself
The Epstein files aren't about one dead predator or even about the powerful men who enabled him. They're about a revelation that terrifies the ruling class: We're finally seeing the structure of division and dehumanization clearly.
Nov 23, 2025
Over the past few years, Jeffrey Epstein has dominated our collective attention in ways that are both revealing and troubling. On the surface, the sustained focus on a wealthy sexual predator who trafficked children over decades seems like progress. Perhaps a sign that we're finally holding powerful people accountable. But look closer. This has unfolded during a backlash against survivors of sexual violence, a rollback of protections for women, and the systematic removal of women from positions of power. Research funding for gender equity has vanished. So what does our obsession with Epstein really mean?
Part of it is obvious: The details are sensational, and social media algorithms reward outrage. The names in those files read like a global directory of power: political leaders, billionaires, academics, celebrities. Everyone who's anyone seems to orbit this depravity. That explains the clicks.
But I want to suggest something else is happening. Something more profound. As a psychologist who teaches students to analyze complex social problems, I see us collectively engaging in what I call for in my classroom: a dual analysis, what Lois Weis and Michelle Fine termed as critical bifocality. We're learning to hold two truths, two ways of understanding the world, at once. And that terrifies the powerful.
Why We Blame Individuals, and Why That's Dangerous Now
Americans have been trained to see failure as personal. Lost your home in foreclosure? You must have been irresponsible. Can't afford groceries? You should have worked harder. This is the logic of capitalism, and it's everywhere.
Psychologists call this the fundamental attribution error: We overestimate individual responsibility for others' suffering while excusing our own struggles as caused by circumstances. It's a cognitive bias that protects our self-esteem but destroys our capacity for solidarity.
This isn't just about one man's moral failure. It's about a system where wealth creates impunity. Where the rules simply don't apply.
Right now, this error is especially dangerous. Grocery prices are up nearly 30% since 2019. Jobs feel precarious as AI reshapes entire industries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are terrorizing communities, disappearing neighbors and co-workers. For millions in Appalachia and the Rust Belt—regions promised economic revival—things have only gotten harder. This is the case all over the country, no matter whether red or blue designations have been imposed on us by the pundits.
When we're scared, we want simple answers. We want someone to blame. The fundamental attribution error gives us that: blame the immigrant, blame the lazy, blame anyone but the system itself.
The Power of Dual Analysis
But here's what I see happening with Epstein: We're refusing that simple narrative. We're doing something more sophisticated, more dangerous to power.
We're using what I teach as the individual lens: Yes, Jeffrey Epstein made choices. Yes, every person who enabled him (the many who looked away, who benefited, who participated) bears individual moral responsibility. We must hold them accountable. Children were harmed. Yes, Megyn Kelly, they were children. That demands justice.
But we're also using the structural lens: What system allowed this to happen? What conditions enabled it? And here's where it gets uncomfortable for the powerful in the world, like Donald Trump, one of Epstein’s closest friends.
When the System Protects the Predator
In 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. He served barely a year in the private wing of a county jail with work-release privileges, where he was able to leave 12 hours a day, and even the door to his cell was unlocked. Most Americans would have gone to federal prison. But Epstein had connections.
Fast forward a decade. Between November 2018 and July 2019, 10 years after his conviction, Larry Summers was texting with Epstein, seeking advice on how to seduce a female colleague he called his "mentee." Summers was former president of Harvard, former treasury secretary, one of the most powerful economists in America. And he was asking a convicted sex offender to be his "wing man" in pursuing a woman professionally vulnerable.
The correspondence ended July 5, 2019, one day before Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
This isn't just about one man's moral failure. It's about a system where wealth creates impunity. Where the rules simply don't apply.
The Numbers Don't Lie
The wealthy aren't just getting richer. They're extracting from the rest of us at an accelerating rate.
Today, the top 1% hold 30.5% of America's wealth. The bottom 50% (that's half of us) hold only 2.5%.
Imagine 100 of us in a room with a meal to share. It is a delicious platter of burgers and warm, salty fries that fills the room with a savory smell. All of us are hungry.
One person walks up and takes nearly a third of everything. They pile their plate high and walk away.
Nine more people step up and take most of what's left, about another third of the food between them.
The Epstein files are thousands of emails, each one a point of light illuminating how the system actually works. And it's terrifying to those who benefit from it.
That leaves 90 of us to divide the remaining third. But here's the thing: It's not divided equally. Forty people in the middle get modest portions. They have access to just enough to take the edge off their hunger. And the last 50 of us? We're left fighting over a few cold fries and some burger crumbs on the edge of the platter. That tiny pile is 2.5% of the meal that fed one person so lavishly.
The one person who took a third? They're not worried about the 90 of us who got less. They're counting on the 40 who got modest portions to blame the 50 who got crumbs. They're counting on all of us to fight each other instead of asking why one person gets to take so much in the first place.
It wasn’t always this way. Since 1989, the richest 1% have increased their share of national wealth by 34%. The bottom 50% have lost 26% of theirs.
This isn't about hard work or merit. The system is designed for extraction. You work every day. You show up. And still your debts deepen. Your loans grow. Your ability to build security evaporates.
Meanwhile, the wealthy fly on private jets to private islands where they commit acts of cruelty most of us can't imagine but all of us (except Megyn Kelly) agree are unlawful and immoral.
Why Trump Is Scared
The Epstein files are thousands of emails, each one a point of light illuminating how the system actually works. And it's terrifying to those who benefit from it.
Watch Trump's reaction. On November 14, when Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey asked about the files aboard Air Force One, Trump jabbed his finger at her: "Quiet! Quiet, piggy." Days later, he threatened ABC's broadcast license when reporter Mary Bruce asked similar questions.
This is the powerful suddenly being exposed, the curtain is lifting, and we see that these monsters are just tiny pathetic, greedy people. This is fear.
Trump campaigned in Appalachia promising economic relief. Eleven months later, he's proposed cutting the Appalachian Regional Commission by 93%, from $200 million to $14 million. In a region with 75 counties classified as economically "distressed," he's pulling the last federal lifeline.
The people who voted for Trump because they were promised someone who would fight the elites are watching those same elites protect each other. They're watching the system close ranks.
What Comes Next
The Epstein files aren't about one dead predator or even about the powerful men who enabled him. They're about a revelation that terrifies the ruling class: We're finally seeing the structure of division and dehumanization clearly.
This is why they are afraid: the 50 of us fighting over crumbs have far more in common with the 40 who got modest portions than any of us have with the one who took a third of the meal. The worker whose factory closed in Ohio and the immigrant whose neighbor was disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement? We’re all being crushed by the same system. The rural Appalachian who can't afford medication and the urban renter who is being priced out? Same system. The young person drowning in student debt and the parent who can't afford childcare? Same system.
We can hold individual wrongdoers accountable AND dismantle the systems that enabled them.
The powerful maintain control by convincing us we're each other's enemies. Red versus blue. Urban versus rural. Immigrant versus native-born. But Jeffrey Epstein's private island wasn't divided by those lines. It was divided by one line only: those with enough wealth and power to do whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted, and those without.
The Epstein files show us something the powerful never wanted us to see: They protect each other. Across party lines, across industries, across borders, wealth creates a solidarity among the ruling class that transcends everything else. Larry Summers stayed loyal to Epstein a decade after his conviction. Trump's fear when reporters ask questions isn't about embarrassment, it's about exposure of that solidarity.
The question isn't just, "What will we do with what we know?" It's "Who will we do it with?"
The answer has to be each other. All of us who show up and work and still fall further behind. All of us whose neighbors are disappearing, whose communities are being stripped of resources, whose futures are being extracted by those private jets to private islands.
We can hold individual wrongdoers accountable AND dismantle the systems that enabled them. We can refuse the fundamental attribution error that asks us to blame our neighbors while ignoring who's taking the largest share.
This is the moment for clarity. This is the moment we refuse to unsee what's been revealed. This is the moment we recognize each other.
The 99% of us who aren't eating the majority of the meal? We have everything in common. Let's build with each other instead of for those who extract from us.
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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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'This Is OIigarchy': While Job Market Sinks, Musk Aims to Become First Trillionaire
A report released this week revealed that the top 100 billionaires in the US have a net worth totaling $3.86 trillion.
Sep 05, 2025
The US job market has ground to a near halt, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday estimating that the economy produced an average of fewer than 30,000 jobs over the last three months.
However, not every American is feeling economic strain, as The New York Times reported on Friday that the board of electric car maker Tesla has unveiled a proposed compensation package for CEO Elon Musk that could make him the world's first trillionaire.
As the Times wrote, Musk could become worth $1 trillion so long as he boosts Tesla's share value "eightfold over the next decade" and as long as he stays at the company for at least that period.
Musk, who is already the world's richest man with a net worth of over $400 billion, would be left owning 29% of Tesla as part of the package, which the Times noted would be "an extraordinary level of control for a chief executive."
The report did add, however, that it will be very hard for Musk to achieve the full value of the compensation package given the intense competition that has emerged in the electric vehicle market and the damage Musk has inflicted on the Tesla brand with his embrace of far-right politics that have resulted in plunging car sales around the world.
Warren Gunnels, a top adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), observed on Musk's platform X that the billionaire's massive increase in wealth in the middle of a stalling job market was not a fluke, as several other tech billionaires have also seen their fortunes grow over the last three months.
"In the same 3 months [as the economy averaged under 30,000 jobs created per month]: Musk became $21 billion richer. He’s worth $435 billion," wrote Gunnels.
Gunnels also noted that:
- Oracle founder Larry Ellison became $69 billion richer. He's worth $277 billion.
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg became $19 billion richer. He's worth $257 billion.
- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos became $22 billion richer. He’s worth $245 billion.
"This is oligarchy," Gunnels concluded.
On Wednesday this week, global wealth intelligence firm Altrata released a new report estimating that the total number of billionaires in the US had increased from 927 in 2020 to 1,135 last year, with a collective net worth totaling $5.7 trillion. The top 100 billionaires in the US had a net worth totaling $3.86 trillion, Altrata estimated, with just three of these billionaires—Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg—accounting for nearly $1 trillion in net worth.
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