{"id":48042,"date":"2026-05-04T22:26:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T05:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=48042"},"modified":"2026-05-04T22:26:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T05:26:49","slug":"america-chose-wealth-over-well-being-how-billionaires-rewrote-the-american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/america-chose-wealth-over-well-being-how-billionaires-rewrote-the-american-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"America Chose Wealth Over Well-Being: How Billionaires Rewrote the American Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While other nations offer universal benefits, we double down on serving billionaires\u2019 interests\u2026<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Thom Hartmann<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan 07, 2025 (wisdomschcool.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, Congress certified the electoral vote count making a billionaire president again, starting after he\u2019s sworn in on January 20th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, we chose a billionaire. Again. After other billionaires spent billions to convince us to make that choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you\u2019re reading these words, billionaires from America and around the world are making pilgrimages to his shabby golf motel to kiss our upcoming billionaire president\u2019s ass and hand him envelopes with $1 million checks that represent a few hours (at most) of income for most of them or their companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, our billionaire president-in-waiting is packing his cabinet \u2014 the heads of all of the most important federal agencies \u2014 with even more billionaires. This is all being celebrated over on billionaire-owned Fox \u201cNews\u201d and on billionaire-owned hate radio networks, as well as in the billionaire-owned Washington Post, LA Times, and the roughly half of American local newspapers owned by billionaire hedge funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other countries enjoy benefits like free healthcare and college; modern mass transit; and affordable housing, food, and drugs.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also have inexpensive internet and phone service without companies listening in and selling their information, schools that don\u2019t even need to mention school shooters, and streets and parks filled with pedestrians and children instead of tents for the homeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, they benefit from renewable electricity that gets cheaper every year while cleaning their environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We, on the other hand, have the world\u2018s largest collection of billionaires.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most Americans probably didn\u2019t realize this was the choice they were making in the election of 1980 when Reagan and Bush promised \u201cMorning In America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d been battered by that generation\u2019s version of the Covid shock: when Arab nations got together to punish us for taking Israel\u2019s side and cut off our oil supply in 1973, it threw us into a decade-long period of \u201cstagflation\u201d (high unemployment and inflation).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nixon couldn\u2019t handle it; odd\/even days at the gas pumps merely infuriated drivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jerry Ford couldn\u2019t handle it; his \u201cWIN\u201d (Whip Inflation Now<\/a>) buttons were a sad joke that guaranteed he\u2019d become a one-term president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jimmy Carter made some good progress \u2014 particularly with his plan for a \u201cnational solar bank\u201d that would provide 20% of the country\u2019s energy by 2000 \u2014 but Reagan\u2019s campaign cut a deal with Iran to hold the American hostages until after the 1980 election, ending Jimmy\u2019s hopes for a second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time Reagan ran for office in 1980, inflation was still a problem; it was an echo of the 1973 oil embargo, amplified by a second oil shock resulting from the 1979 Iranian revolution, again exploding American gasoline prices and cutting economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that time, as I detail in <\/strong>The Hidden History of the American Dream<\/a>, <\/strong><\/em>we were desperate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reagan \u2014 an even more talented actor than Trump (who NBC spent millions training to act for TV cameras) \u2014 convinced us he had it all figured out. At first, his promises were vague; something about supply-side economics, \u201ctrickle down,\u201d and Laffer Curves that nobody really understood (and George HW Bush initially called \u201cVoodoo Economics\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once he took office, America watched with hope and some trepidation as Reagan turned our economy inside-out, massively cut taxes on the country\u2019s thirteen billionaires, repeatedly raised taxes on millions of working-class people, cut and taxed Social Security, stopped enforcing our anti-monopoly laws, gutted federal funds for education, killed off two-thirds of the country\u2019s unions, and, negotiating the GATT and NAFTA agreements, beginning the process of offshoring over 60,000<\/a> factories.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reagan never got inflation below 4 percent and he almost tripled the national debt (from $800 billion to roughly $2.2 trillion), but throwing around those trillions in borrowed money made it seem like the economy was getting better even as wages were frozen by monopolists and a lack of union representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s how we got the billionaires.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 1980, nobody in America was rich enough to shoot himself into space on a penis-shaped rocket, and superyachts were a fantasy. The nation\u2019s richest man was shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig, whose net worth \u2014 at just a bit below $2 billion \u2014 wouldn\u2019t even qualify him for today\u2019s Forbes 500 list; he lived a low-key life and, like most wealthy men of that era, didn\u2019t much involve himself in politics (there were laws back then against rich people subsidizing federal judges or politicians).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Reagan\u2019s changes in the tax code and destruction of unions led to a 50,000 billion<\/a> dollar ($50 trillion) transfer of wealth from the pensions, homes, incomes, and bank accounts of middle class Americans into the money bins of the morbidly rich between 1981 and today.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had only 13 billionaires from 1980 to 1986 but \u2014 with Reagan\u2019s final tax cut which took the rate on multimillion-dollar incomes from over 70% down to 28% \u2014 that number began to explode. By 1990, there were 99 billionaires in America; today there are over 800<\/a> of them, representing a more-than-50-fold increase in just four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not content with simply grabbing much of America\u2019s wealth for themselves, a handful of our billionaires next reached out for control of our government.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They created media empires, think tanks, and policy centers, both writing and then pushing their own legislation that was dutifully carried into law by politicians they\u2019d bought off. They outright purchased the entire GOP, along with a large handful of elected \u201cproblem solver\u201d Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They set up institutions to seize control of our independent judiciary; five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court returned the favor by fully legalizing billionaires buying elections with their <\/strong>Citizens United<\/strong><\/em> decision in 2010.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Total spending on federal elections \u2014 for president, the House, and the Senate combined <\/em>\u2014 was $92 million in 1980, $103 million in 1984, and $324 million in 1988. How quaint!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just one billionaire \u2014 Elon Musk \u2014 spent over a quarter billion dollars putting Trump into office this past fall. Other billionaires jumped in, pushing total 2024 spending over $7 billion (and that doesn\u2019t count dark money, which is almost certainly billions more).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saudi billionaires jumped in to help billionaire Musk purchase Twitter for $44 billion, turning it, along with an alleged<\/a> army of Russian-billionaire-funded trolls pretending to be Americans, into a massive megaphone to elect billionaire-friendly Republicans including billionaire Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re now building \u201cconservative\u201d colleges and primary schools, funded with state tax money thanks to bought-off politicians, that will educate the generation coming up that billionaires are a necessary and benevolent force in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we don\u2019t talk about our nation\u2019s billionaire problem because billionaires own or control so many of the nation\u2019s channels of news and discussion from social media to television networks to newspapers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even simple, traditional political endorsements get censored; G-d forbid somebody (who won a Pulitzer!) should draw a cartoon showing media billionaires bowing down to our new billionaire president. Or speak <\/a>out on billionaire-owned social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe one day America will join the other 37 OECD \u201crich\u201d nations in offering to our average- and low-income people nearly-free college and healthcare, removing guns from our streets and schools, housing the homeless, and building modern mass transit.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe our middle class will again become socially and economically mobile, we\u2019ll rid ourselves of over $2 trillion in student debt, and we\u2019ll never again be the only developed country in the world where people lose everything to bankruptcy because somebody in the family got sick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For at least the next four years, however, we must content ourselves with the proud knowledge that we have more billionaires than any other country in the world. That they now run out government, with their top 1 percent owning fully 40.5 percent of our nation\u2019s entire wealth ($43.45 trillion<\/a>). As the Forbes \u201cCapitalist Tool\u201d headline<\/a> gloats: \u201cThe 3 Richest Americans Hold More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Of The Country<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yep, sure enough: We\u2019re number one! And Trump and the GOP promise to do everything they can to keep it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my daily fight on behalf of a newly prosperous American middle class, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My reading this article as an audio podcast is here<\/a>.

My new book, The Hidden History of the American Dream<\/a>, is now available.

You can follow me on Blue Sky here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While other nations offer universal benefits, we double down on serving billionaires\u2019 interests\u2026 Thom Hartmann Jan 07, 2025 (wisdomschcool.com) Share Yesterday, Congress certified the electoral vote count making a billionaire president again, starting after he\u2019s sworn in on January 20th. Yes, we chose a billionaire. Again. After other billionaires spent… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48043,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48042\/revisions\/48043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}