When the wealthy have money, they don’t just let it sit in a bank account collecting dust. They use it to buy real assets—houses, office buildings, stocks, businesses, art, yachts, and even sports teams. The more they buy, the more the prices of those assets rise, making it harder for middle and working-class people to afford them. Instead of owning, more and more people end up renting these things back from the wealthy, which just makes the rich even richer.
This is how wealth keeps getting concentrated at the top and the way trickle-down economics failed us. The U.S. and much of the Western world haven’t seen this level of wealth inequality since the 1920s. Back then, the wealth gap was a major factor that led to the Great Depression. We’re seeing the same trend today, and if we don’t do something about it, most Americans will experience lower living standards in the future. That’s why so many younger people have lost faith in the American Dream—they just don’t see a realistic path to financial security, homeownership, or upward mobility.
The only reasonable way to fix this is by taxing the wealthy and using that money to invest in our country’s future. We need better public education, greater access to healthcare, and major investments in infrastructure. These things would directly improve people’s lives and address the growing frustration of those who feel left behind by globalization and the extreme concentration of wealth. Right now, the top 1% controls about 31% of the total wealth in the U.S., while the bottom 50% has just 2.6%. That’s not a functioning economy—it’s a system rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Trump’s budget proposal does absolutely nothing to address these problems. Instead, it doubles down on the same failed trickle-down policies we’ve seen before: cutting spending on social programs, borrowing even more money to run up the national debt, and handing out massive tax breaks to the ultra-rich and corporations. Nothing in this plan lowers the cost of housing. Nothing makes groceries more affordable. Nothing helps raise wages or improve the standard of living for working Americans.
If we keep going down this road, we’re only going to see more of the same—an economy where the wealthy hoard more and more, while everyone else struggles to get by. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can choose policies that actually invest in people and create opportunities for everyone, not just the privileged few. The question is whether we have the political will to do it.
Mike McCready 