Taking Back the Power:
Summary:
I. Introduction
II. Statistics That Prove We Are Losing the American Dream
III. How We Got Here
IV. Corporate Greed Accelerates
V. The Game is Rigged
VI. Citizens United is a Disaster
VII. The Federal Reserve is a Reverse Robin Hood
VIII. Re-redistribution of Wealth
IX. Conclusion
Had the ultra-wealthy been just a little more subtle, they might have gotten away with it. But as the saying goes, “You get greedy, you get caught.” Through Citizens United and other manipulations of our representatives, along with recent attempts to raise the national debt by $5.7 trillion—all while stripping the poor and middle class of basic needs like food and healthcare—they’ve shown they’ll chase every last dollar, even if it pushes our nation to the brink. The problem is not just that the rich are getting richer while the middle class withers, it’s that this is happening at an accelerated rate! We must fight back.
II. Statistics That Prove We Are Losing the American Dream:
That last one has a lot of numbers, but the point is important: corporations are getting way more profitable, yet they’re not increasing wages! WTH…
II. How We Got Here:
The New Deal (1933-’39) ushered in a golden era for the American middle class, laying the foundation for unprecedented economic security and mobility. Through policies like Social Security, labor protections, and public infrastructure projects, the government invested in the prosperity of everyday citizens. The post-World War II boom further cemented this progress, with the GI Bill expanding homeownership and higher education, strong unions securing fair wages, and manufacturing jobs providing stable careers. Economic growth was widely shared, and for much of the mid-20th century, a single factory job income was enough to support a family, buy a home, and retire comfortably. The American Dream felt attainable because policies ensured that hard work was rewarded with fair pay, benefits, and protections.
However, by the 1980s, the pillars supporting the middle class began to erode. Deregulation, tax cuts favoring the wealthy, and the decline of labor unions weakened worker protections and allowed wages to stagnate despite rising productivity. The outsourcing of manufacturing jobs and the shift to a service-based economy led to less stable employment. Meanwhile, the cost of housing, healthcare, and education soared, making it harder for families to maintain the same standard of living. Policies that once prioritized broad prosperity were replaced by those that concentrated wealth at the top, leading to historic levels of inequality.
III. Corporate Greed Accelerates:
Have you ever heard a CEO say, “I have a fiduciary obligation to the shareholders.”? It’s spouted all the time, often when they’re in the hot seat for say, laying off thousands of workers despite record profits, slashing employee benefits, outsourcing jobs, or gutting environmental protections. They moralize wealth-obsession by elevating it to fiduciary righteousness.
In 1970, Milton Friedman, revered as a rockstar economist at the time, published a landmark essay in The New York Times titled “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” arguing that corporate executives have a duty to shareholders above all else, not to broader social goals. This perspective gained traction throughout the 1970s and 1980s, especially under the pro-market policies of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981–1989). Friedman’s philosophy helped shift corporate America away from stakeholder capitalism—where workers, communities, and the public good were considered—and toward a model focused almost entirely on maximizing shareholder profit. This shift played a major role in widening inequality and weakening the middle class, as companies prioritized profits over wages, job security, and long-term investment in workers.
IV. The Game is Rigged:
“A small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power, has been able to dominate the economic life of the country. It is not merely that the great corporations and monopolies have accumulated vast sums of money, but that they have used their wealth to dominate and control the political process.” -FDR
You may have heard the idea from the right that “it’s the job of the government to ensure equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.” Even if the game we play were played fairly, I would still argue that the winners in society should be more giving. But the game’s not even fair. The opportunity is fare from equal. Imagine playing Monopoly where every round of play, whoever is ahead gets to change the rules. Such is our current reality.
The mega-rich use their financial power to manipulate markets and shape political decisions that grant them subsidies, deregulation, and favorable tax policies. In turn, governments prioritize corporate profits over public welfare. Lobbying, campaign contributions, and revolving-door politics further entrench this system, ensuring that laws serve to deepen inequality rather than resolve it.
(Read my What’s Wrong With the Rich to better understand their psychology)
Lobbying: The wealthiest entities spend billions influencing lawmakers, ensuring policies that benefit them. For example:
Campaign Financing: The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling allowed unlimited (and even anonymous) political spending by corporations and billionaires, meaning elections are now often won by candidates who serve the interests of the wealthy.
Regulatory Capture (Revolving-Door): Government agencies that should regulate industries are often staffed by former corporate executives, or vise versa, leading to policies that prioritize corporate profits over the public interest. (See my Healthcare for All for specific examples).
While subsidies are often pitched as helping the economy or creating jobs, they disproportionately benefit large, politically connected corporations rather than small businesses or the general public. Some of the biggest recipients of government subsidies include:
The common underlying theme of all the aforementioned is that your basic interests as a regular citizen (talking bottom 99%) when it comes to things like wages, inflation, healthcare, education, and housing are not at all represented. Princeton University did a great study about this, showing that if there is 0% support for a law, there’s about a 30% chance it will pass in Congress. If there’s 20% or 70% or 100% support for a law, there’s STILL just a 30% chance it will pass! What you want, what you say or do, what you care about has ZERO influence on what actually becomes law. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE FOUNDERS WANTED when they drafted our Constitution and envisioned the shining ‘city upon a hill’.
V. Citizens United Is a Disaster:
Citizens United is so offensive to our democracy that it begs a brief explanation:
The road to Citizens United was a decades-long judicial coup orchestrated by the Koch brothers, and The Federalist Society, and Heritage Foundation which they funded. Their goal: stack the courts with justices who would dismantle campaign finance laws and entrench corporate power.
Laying the Foundation: The Reagan & Bush Years (1980s-1990s):
In the 1980s, the Koch brothers began funding The Federalist Society as a vehicle to reshape the judiciary, while the Heritage Foundation published Mandate for Leadership, a judicial blueprint embraced by Ronald Reagan. With their backing, Reagan appointed over 380 federal judges, including Antonin Scalia (1986), a Federalist Society mentor and future Citizens United vote.
George H.W. Bush continued the trend, appointing over 190 judges, including Clarence Thomas (1991), a former Heritage Foundation fellow. While this created a bloc hostile to campaign finance laws, it wasn’t enough—they needed more.
The Koch Network’s Legal War on Campaign Finance (1990s-2000s):
While stacking the courts, the Kochs also launched legal challenges against campaign finance laws. Their James Madison Center for Free Speech, led by attorney James Bopp, spent years dismantling restrictions on corporate money in politics. Backed by The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society, Bopp’s efforts gained momentum as George W. Bush—guided by The Federalist Society—appointed over 325 federal judges, including John Roberts (2005) and Samuel Alito (2006), two key players in the coming legal battle.
By 2010, the Roberts Court issued the 5-4 Citizens United v. FEC ruling. The majority? Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy—each tied to The Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. Overnight, billionaires gained the power to pour unlimited dark money into politics, all under the guise of "free speech."
VI. The Federal Reserve Is a Reverse Robin Hood:
Quantitative easing (QE) is a tool used by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy during crises. It works by injecting money into the economy through the purchase of government bonds and issuing corporate loans, which lowers interest rates and increases the availability of credit. In theory, this is supposed to encourage borrowing, hiring, and investment. In practice, QE often inflates the prices of financial assets like stocks, bonds, and real estate, that benefit those who already own them: primarily the wealthy. While asset prices soar, the benefits rarely actually reach workers in the form of higher wages or tax breaks. QE doesn’t directly put money in the hands of consumers—it props up capital markets. That’s how the Fed can pour trillions into the economy and still leave working families behind. Trickle down it does not.
In both the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic, this pattern repeated. After 2008, massive QE programs helped banks and corporations recover quickly, while millions of Americans lost homes and jobs. Companies like GE and Boeing borrowed at record-low interest rates—but instead of hiring or investing, they spent billions on stock buybacks, rewarding shareholders and executives. By 2014, 93% of the post-crisis recovery’s wealth went to the top 1%, while real wages barely budged. Then in 2020, a similar script played out. The Fed launched over $4 trillion in QE alongside trillions in federal relief through the CARES Act. Big corporations received massive support—airlines alone got $25 billion to retain workers—but still laid off tens of thousands. Many used the aid for stock buybacks shortly after receiving it. As the stock market soared, unemployment reached 15%, and companies like Amazon and Apple posted record profits while their frontline workers labored in unsafe conditions. Billionaires gained over $1.6 trillion in wealth by 2021, even as ordinary Americans faced eviction, job loss, and rising food prices. The flood of cheap money fueled inflation, which hit working families hardest—effectively acting as a regressive tax on those least able to afford it.
VII. Re-redistribution of wealth:
Over the years, the term 'redistribution of wealth' has become demonized, but the reality is that wealth has been redistributing up the socioeconomic ladder since the early ’80s, when tax policy changed to significantly favor the rich. Now, we are simply trying to reclaim the economy that should have been ours. The more accurate term for what we are calling for now is a ’re-redistribution of wealth’.
It’s better for more money to be in the hands of the middle class—it’s sound economics: In the 1920s, Henry Ford paid his workers enough money to buy the car they were making and it proved to be a highly successful business model. This was two times the average wage at the time. The highly regarded economist John Maynard Keynes proved this with his Keynesian multiplier: the poor and middle class tend to spend almost all of the next dollar they earn, whereas the rich are more likely to save it. This is known as the marginal propensity to consume (MPC)—the fraction of additional income that is spent rather than saved. When the working classes have more income, they spend a larger portion of it, stimulating demand and fueling economic growth. In contrast, when wealth is concentrated at the top, a significant portion of money is saved, reducing the multiplier effect and slowing down overall economic activity. (Read here for real examples).
If we adopted Bernie Sanders’ tax policies, we could raise an additional $1 trillion annually just from taxing the super-rich. On top of that, bolstering the middle class would fuel demand, potentially generating another $500 billion in additional annual tax revenue through increased economic activity. These projections are consistent with the views of leading economists such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Brad DeLong, Robert Pollin, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. Together, this $1.5 trillion in new yearly revenue could fund all the programs listed on this website, help reduce the national debt, and restore the American Dream. This is the upside of 'demand-side economics', but what's truly paramount is what happens if we don't do this and instead maintain the status quo.
The downside of not doing this is truly alarming: when the rich earn passive income (most of their income is passive) at a rate faster than the economy grows, their share of wealth increases automatically—without producing anything new. Meanwhile, wages for workers remain stagnant, and prices for essentials like housing, healthcare, and education continue to rise. Over time, this causes the middle class to shrink: people take on more debt (the rich issue it) just to stay afloat, small businesses struggle to compete, and upward mobility becomes a myth. The economy starts to behave like a black hole—where wealth at the top grows so massive that it pulls more and more resources away from everyone else. With each cycle, the wealthy accumulate even more power to influence laws, suppress wages, and avoid taxes, locking in a system that benefits them perpetually. Without intervention, the middle class won’t just struggle—it will disappear.
VII. Conclusion:
As you can see, this crisis of the classes has long been in the making—well before Trump and his oligarchs, but recent acts by the elites in D.C. like the House and Senate’s Continuin resolutions are so aggressive in their attack on the middle class and financially vulnerable, all while benefiting the rich, that we should almost thank them, as they now leave no doubt: WE MUST FIGHT BACK. Now is our moment.
On February 25, 2025, Republicans in the House voted in favor of H.Con.Res.14. This bill proposed raising the federal debt limit by $4.5 trillion (the Senate’s, $5.7T) while making deep cuts to essential programs supporting the poor and middle class—all to benefit the top 1%. It included $880 billion in Medicaid cuts, a $50 billion reduction in retirement and health benefits for federal workers—and a devastating 20% ($23 billion) cut to SNAP, jeopardizing food assistance for millions of low-income Americans. These are not just numbers on a budget sheet, it could destroy lives:
I recently heard a man at a rally, I’d say in his 50s, stepped up to the microphone and told us how he has a heart transplant and has to take immunosuppressant medications twice daily. He can only afford them through his current Medicaid coverage. He made it quite clear—non-hyperbolic—that if he loses any level of coverage, he will die. His exact words were, “It will be impossible to afford the meds, and it will be a death sentence for me.”
Is this really the America we want our kids to inherit?
Conservatives used to say, “We have to hurt the poor and middle class to keep national debt in check”, but now with that $5.7T increase, that second half of the statement is gone. What’s that leave us with…?
Disaffected Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, and Democrats—let’s set aside partisan divides and focus on the crucial economic issues that affect us all. These are the battles we can fight together as we take on the oligarchy, restore the original vision of our Founding Fathers, and secure a fairer, freer future for our children and the generations to come.
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