I joined Michael Medved’s show recently to talk about the worsening wealth gap. Bullet points below. Here’s the clip. (Sorry for the jiggly video, I’ve since fixed it!)
Inequality has been worsening for at least 30 years, as more of the nation’s wealth goes to people who own financial assets and less goes to workers earning most of their income through labor.
These trends are accelerating under Trump.
It starts with tax cuts for the wealthy, who don’t need them. Wealthy Americans have earned extraordinary amounts of money during the last 30 years from a booming stock market and the rise in real-estate values. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they didn’t need the 2025 tax cuts Trump signed into law.
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Trump, meanwhile, has cut food-aid benefits for lower-income Americans. And last year Congress let health care subsidies expire for at least 3 million people who buy insurance through the ACA marketplace. Those moves have made several million lower-income people worse off.
Trump’s Iran war is another burden for working Americans. The higher cost of gas and many other necessities hurts lower-income Americans more than higher-income people.
Tariffs raise costs even more. The average tax on imports has gone from 2.6% to about 12% under Trump, so far. Importers pay the tariffs up front, but pass on as much of the added tax as they can to their own customers, with no apparent benefit to anybody.
The housing bill Congress recently passed may help make homes more affordable at some point, but Trump distanced himself from that and called it a “big yawn.” He seems to have no regard at all for the cost struggles of ordinary Americans.
Wealth inequality is complicated and not readily understood by everybody, but many people know something’s wrong, even if they can’t define it precisely. This is probably one of the reasons consumer confidence levels are dismal, even in an economy that looks pretty good on paper.
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