New Report: The rich are richer than the Gilded Age and half of all U.S. children live in poverty, writes Lee Camp.
Tents on West Madison Street, Phoenix, near homeless shelter services. (Thayne Tuason, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Lee Camp
Lee Camp & Dangerous Ideas
One would think that perhaps the greatest benefit of being a cog in the wheel of a bloodthirsty, predatory, wholly unaccountable, rapacious global empire is being rich. Not rich in an Elon Musk/Monopoly Guy kinda way but rich in a not languishing in poverty kinda way.
But this is not true. A large percentage of Americans never get to touch the spoils of hegemony.
“Over 40% of the U.S. population—including 48.9% of children—is considered poor or low income.”
You read that right. According to a new Oxfam report, half of all American children live in poor or low-income homes. … HALF.
When mapped out clearly for all to see, US inequality levels show that the country is way past revolution time. … Sorry, let me rephrase that. It’s waaaaaaaaaaaay past revolution time.
Let your brain try to make sense of these other stats from the Oxfam report:
“In the past year, the 10 richest U.S. billionaires gained nearly $700 billion…”
Fun fact: If you make $60,000 a year after taxes, in order to make $700 Billion, you’d need to work for nearly 12 million years.
“The richest 1% own half the stock market (49.9%), while the bottom half of the U.S. owns just 1.1% of the stock market.”
“The richest 0.0001% control a greater share of wealth than in the Gilded Age, an era of U.S. history defined by extreme inequality.”
(Lee Camp)
So we’ve surpassed the Gilded Age. I guess no one should be shocked that Donald Trump (the first billionaire president) unironically held a Great Gatsby-themed party a few weeks ago at Mar-a-Lago. Parasites are rarely bashful or timid. They don’t say “excuse me” and they don’t ask permission. They just latch on and suck.
And of course any analysis of inequality tends to also have a race factor, or rather a racism factor, seeing as much poverty in America connects in one way or another to our systemic racism.
“Black and Hispanic/Latin households hold 5.8% of U.S. wealth but make up an estimated one-third of the population…”
Seattle, 2011. (Joe Lauria)
But wealth, or lack thereof, always strikes me as a vague measure until it’s connected to things like health and struggle and death. The report helps us do that too:
“Looking at the 10 largest economies in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. has the highest rate of relative poverty, the second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy.”
Poverty kills. That’s the cold truth. Poverty is not just the inability to purchase the latest video game you really want. It’s not just your car bumper being held on with duct tape or your adult toy no longer vibrating properly but still being used because you can’t afford the new model. Poverty actually kills. In fact, poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in America.
When this data is all taken together, it becomes clear the US has long surpassed revolution time.
The Gini Coefficient is a measure of inequality in a society where 0 represents perfect equality and a score of 1 represents perfect inequality. Although there’s no hard-and-fast rule, when it gets over a certain point, revolution becomes highly likely. Well, hang on to your pantaloons — the U.S. currently has a Gini Coefficient worse than Ancient Rome before its collapse.
(Lee Camp)
Further pantaloon-tugging knowledge: Studies have shown a correlation between a high Gini Coefficient and revolution or revolt.
The Gilded Age ended with the New Deal, which “saved capitalism,” for a time. The richest people in America realized — thanks largely to the Bolshevik Revolution — that they needed to decrease inequality in the US or the people, who were being treated with all the love and humanity one shows a toilet brush, would revolt and put the gilded men’s bulbous heads on gilded pikes.
Capitalism, when left unattended, eats itself, the society, the world. Capitalism is cancer. With loads of radiation or chemo, you can often keep cancer at bay for a while. But with capitalism, no cure or remission is ever possible without revolution and revolutionary ideas. Outside of that, we all just wait to see how long it will take before there are no more trees, or water, or fish.
Lee Camp is the host of Dangerous Ideas, and the former host of Redacted Tonight. Most censored comedian in America.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The question of massive inequality is linked to the question of arms spending.
Political elites tend to applaud high military spending because it stimulates the economy but does not actually produce anything that benefits ordinary people. Inequality is thus maintained.
Bear this in mind next time a politician advocates a military project to “keep us safe”.
You are being conned!
What I got from this is I just need to work for somewhere around 12 million more years or perhaps a bit more than that, and I’ll be rich! Thanks, Lee Camp! See all you poor suckers in 12 or 20 million years when you’ll all be wishing you had worked as hard as me! Once people retired when they were maybe around 60, but I’ll be retiring around 20 Myr; younger, if you only consider the number and not the unit, and after all Einstein says time is relative anyway, right?
Yes, you can add Canada to the list. Poverty and homelessness in this country is totally unacceptable, yet here we are. Now we have a Goldman Sachs banker as our Prime Minister. In the “gilded age” they didn’t have the Internet, online gaming and cell phones with the addictive “notification” feature to colonize our minds creating zombies who walk around with their phones in front of their faces – everywhere! Or the powerful propaganda machine where journalism has died and is masquerading as “news”. Poor people back then didn’t have the powerful diversions to keep them stupid like we do now. It is truly depressing
Is inflation a way of reclaiming (Devaluing) your savings, If originally currency was to be a representative exchange of value per hours of labor.
Those who created inflation are thieves!
At least AI Thinks so.
AI Overview
“Inflation devalues the purchasing power of your savings, which can be viewed as “reclaiming” or eroding their value over time relative to the original labor they represented [1, 2].
Here is an explanation of this concept:
Currency as Value Exchange: The premise is correct: money initially represents an exchange of value for the hours of labor you performed [1]. The currency you save is essentially a store of that labor value, which you plan to exchange for future goods and services.
Impact of Inflation: Inflation is a general increase in prices and the decrease in the purchasing power of money [2]. When inflation occurs, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services.
Devaluation of Savings: The core mechanism by which inflation “reclaims” value from your savings is through this loss of purchasing power.
If you saved $100 last year (representing a certain amount of labor or goods), that same $100 might only buy $97 worth of goods this year if the inflation rate was 3%.
The value stored in your savings has effectively diminished over time [1, 2].
Therefore, inflation acts as a mechanism that slowly reduces the real value of your accumulated savings, especially if the interest earned on those savings is lower than the rate of inflation [2]. “
“Fear/Hatred of “Communism/communists” has all been Capitalist propaganda. Like Shaw said of Christianity, that it’s never been tried, must be said of Communism. After the White Czars came the infinitely more bloody Red Czars (the Holodomor and the Gulag). After Chiang Kai-shek came Mao, purges and mass famines. All this was an atavistic return to terrorizing tyrants. It wasn’t Communism. Communism has never been tried over there. Meanwhile, over here there’s a very good reason Capitalist Yankee democracy was so precise and thorough in its destruction of the IWW, the International Workers of the World: because “the Wobblies” were going to be that “one big union” we all need. All but a few big exclusive “company unions” have been dying ever since that night in 1917 when capitalist cops (our cops) busted all the Wobblie offices and jailed/murdered the leaders.That “One Big Union” was never tried either. The Capitalists knew that it would work so they had to bash it fast and get up another big war. So yes, we’re overripe for revolution but, if you’ve read Howard Zinn’s Peoples’ History of the United States, you will see again what’s already happened a thousand times. And this time we’ll have to make our own media too.”
How about instead of a gold standard we have a people standard, a person can do things that gold can not.
In the beginning the creation of currency was the meaning of enslavement.
AI Overview
“The idea that the creation of currency represented the beginning of enslavement is a philosophical and historical argument that suggests early forms of money led to power imbalances and debt systems [1].
Historically, various forms of commodity money (like livestock, grain, or precious metals) emerged as practical means of exchange to replace direct barter systems [1].
These systems helped facilitate trade and economic growth. However, the introduction of standardized currency also paved the way fo: Debt and inequality: The ability to accumulate wealth in a durable, portable form created disparities between the rich and the poor, and debt became a mechanism through which some people could control others [1].
Centralized power: Control over the minting and distribution of currency often became centralized in the hands of governments or ruling elites, which used this power to impose taxes and exert authority over populations [1].
Different cultures developed financial systems in different ways, some leading to the development of widespread debt bondage or other forms of servitude [1].
Therefore, many historians and social theorists link the evolution of money systems with the rise of social hierarchies and economic coercion. ”
350 million of us (US) should be able to come up with a better arrangements.
350 million people won’t be able to come up with anything if they have become enslaved by technology and Silicon Valley, and dependent on next-token predicting chatbots to do their thinking for them!
Capitalists “know the price of everything and the value of nothing?” Apologies to Oscar Wylde.
While the forces of war ( not defence) now being called what they are still respond to your demented overlord, there will never be the revolution which is so richly deserved. Sadly many of the other so-called democracies also have unacceptable levels of poverty, Australia for instance. As Lee points out governments have the power to change the tax laws but the wealthy have too much influence to allow that to happen.
Justin Trudeau survived buying the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan Canada for $4.5 billion (costs later ballooning to $34 billion), interfering with his justice minister’s prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for money laundering, and invoking the Emergencies Act to quell the (undoubtedly opportunistically NED funded) Truckers Convoy protesting mandatory covid shots to cross the U.S.-Canada border.
But when he tried to raise the inclusion rate on capital gains in excess of $250,000 from 50% to 2/3, which would have affected the tax bills of 0.13% of Canadians, he was gone six months later and replaced with Prime Minister Mark “Goldman Sachs” Carney, who reversed Trudeau’s increase in the inclusion rate on March 21, 2025, exactly seven days after he was sworn in as prime minister.
Yes, you can add Canada to the list. Poverty and homelessness in this country is totally unacceptable, yet here we are. Now we have a Goldman Sachs banker as our Prime Minister. In the “gilded age” they didn’t have the Internet, online gaming and cell phones with the addictive “notification” feature to colonize our minds creating zombies who walk around with their phones in front of their faces – everywhere! Or the powerful propaganda machine where journalism has died and is masquerading as “news”. Poor people back then didn’t have the powerful diversions to keep them stupid like we do now. It is truly depressing
And yet, as always, the non-communist intellectual working class/”middle class”/Chomsky’s 10%/liberals will do anything, including siding with fascists when the chips are down, to prevent Communism being implemented/succeeding. A “mystery”, just like their overwhelming support for the UkroNazis.
The absolute full throttle assault on any form of politico-economic populism and labor unions by our parasitic financial elite and the drafters of the Powell Memo has resulted in a nightmare for 70% of the American population.
What we really need is to get rid of the inequality directly, with a 95% billionaire wealth tax. Also, all offshored money must be repatriated within one month or it is forfeited. No more hiding tax-free money overseas. A few simple changes in tax law would do a whole lot of good by taking their power away from them. You can’t bribe everyone if you aren’t a billionaire.
Maybe, it would be more sensible to look at how billionaires are created and tackling that issue.
Not a complaint about the essay (well just a little), but what is too often not considered in the concerns for inequality are the levels of consumption that are desirable for social and economic functioning of a society…compared to the levels of environmental exploitation required for that consumption. Only comparing wealth accumulation misses this vital balance.
Societies produce wealth from its only possible source: the materials and energy sources which are available to the society, using accumulated knowledge base, technological development and labor potential. But, implementing these sources of wealth only to produce wealth for a few, or even for everyone, without limiting the use of resources to truly (deepest understanding of ecological principles) sustainable levels can only result in not only social revolutions as social and economic systems fail, but collapse of biophysical systems that support all life: a society can produce only a certain amount of wealth without creating the conditions of its own destruction…and much of the world is presently way over the those amounts.
No balance missed.
This trillion$ wealth is not based on production of things — its manipulation of numbers .
The products of this un-equal society are weapons.
Fear on top motivates greed & grift.
Great essay! That needs to be heard & understood universally.
I understand your argument, but what seems to be missing is that the manipulation of the numbers to “create” wealth must result in one of three things: the numbers come to actually represent material wealth ($1,000,000 in numbers is made to represent an equivalent production in the society); the numbers are used in such a way that the material represented is accumulated into the control of a few (more or less the present situation); or the numbers finally are seen to not represent an equivalent production and the economy collapses into an inflationary spiral. Ultimately the essentially zero-sum rule of physical systems will be meet; human economics can appear to be a separate exchange system from fundamental biophysical economics for only so long before material, energy sources and the recycling/buffering capacities are used up…and the numbers utterly fail to describe actually existing productive capacity needed to give them meaning.
What this does is puts restrictions and limited options (reality) on how the present obscene economic inequities are dealt with. I am suggesting that recognition and desire, while an important beginning, are wholly insufficient.