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The Poverty Trap’s three most popular posts in 2024 have a common theme: By one method or another, America’s economic system is “rigged” in favor of the wealthy and against the poor and middle class. The “rigging” I’ve discussed on The Poverty Trap during the last three-plus years, and in these three posts specifically,, includes the idea that generational wealth is really a form of affirmative action for the rich, the unfairness of the tax code, the increasing gap between CEO pay and worker pay, and that a good portion of elected officials (mostly Republicans) consistently vote against aid for the poor.
President-elect Trump also has consistently talked about our system being “rigged” and many of his supporters perhaps thought he meant the tax code and other substantive areas of the economic system that would directly affect them. But it’s clear that Mr. Trump was talking about himself. A recent Washington Post article laid out the President-elect’s history of claiming the system is rigged against him, from his failure to win an Emmy for “The Apprentice”, to the 2020 election, myriad indictments and felony convictions, election polls, economic numbers, and more:
Notice that all of this was this year. [all of Trump’s ‘rigged’ claims] And it excludes dozens of other examples, of him calling the COMING election rigged or polls that showed Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley performing well in the primary or the indictments he faces outside New York. Everything bad that he’s experienced of late? Rigged.
He even claimed that he was the first to use the word “rigged” to describe various decisions made by government officials or the system itself:
“I think the system is rigged,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And that was the word that I came up that now everyone is using. They picked up many of my wonderful words. You never heard the system is rigged before until I started it.”
Not exactly. Listen to this rousing speech by Elizabeth Warren at the 2012 Democratic Convention, shortly before she was elected to her first term in the U.S. Senate. It’s likely not the first time the word rigged was used to describe our economic system, but soon-to-be Senator Warren made a compelling case for how our economic system is substantively structured to favor the rich and keep the poor and middle class down.
The Poverty’s Trap’s most popular post of 2024 was inspired by Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National convention last August. She said : “Most of us will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth”.
No we won’t. And that one sentence struck a deep chord with a lot of people. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions a few years ago but legacy admissions remain at most elite universities. I explained why that still matters today:
“And a 2023 report demonstrates why these statistics are relevant right now— the report calls this phenomenon, ‘the amplification of privilege across generations.’ “
Leadership positions in the United States are held disproportionately by graduates of a small number of highly selective private colleges. Less than half of one percent of Americans attend Ivy-Plus colleges (the eight Ivy League colleges, Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford). Yet these twelve colleges account for more than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs, a quarter of U.S. Senators, half of all Rhodes scholars, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century (Figure 1).1 Ivy-Plus colleges also enroll a disproportionate share of students from high-income families: students from families in the top 1% of the income distribution are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college than students with comparable SAT or ACT scores from the middle class (Figure 2).
Legacy admissions help the rich and the white almost exclusively, and it is only the rich (and mostly white) who pass on substantive wealth to their children and grandchildren. So, it is the rich and the white who still get a boost into elite colleges and thus a major boost into our country’s most prestigious and highest paying jobs. And current law forbids giving a similar boost to the minorities and poor who actually need it.
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The Poverty Trap’s second most popular post last year was a re-post of an earlier 2024 post that directly questioned whether our system was rigged through tax law and other means to both benefit the wealthy and prevent the poor from escaping the cycle of poverty. The comments and suggestions to break this cycle are excellent and worth a read—I’d love to hear your thoughts now, particularly post-election.
I included a brief summary and video clip that does a great job of explaining exactly how the U. S. economy is indeed ‘rigged” and how this growing inequality affects all of us.
“Here’s a brief explanation about how the U.S. economy actually increases inequality, and the ramifications of these laws and policies from Nobel Laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz. The video was published in 2018 by Scientific American.”
The Poverty Trap’s third most popular post in 2024 discusses the decision of mostly Republican-led states to turn down extra federal funds to help feed poor children during the summer, when they can’t otherwise access at least a free school lunch, and the effects of these decisions on the least wealthy and least powerful parents and children who live in those states.
I quoted some of the reasons Republican state representatives gave for turning down free federal money, and thought this one from a Wyoming representative was particularly insulting and why:
Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder said she turned down the Summer EBT card funds because she wanted to prioritize the current summer meals programs, which require minimal state funding. “I generally prefer those meals getting directly to kids,” she told The Associated Press. “At the feeding sites, we know that’s happening.”
“The last reason for turning down summer food stamps for kids by the Wyoming spokesperson is particularly insulting and fits with the typical conservative thinking on helping the poor (or not) with government programs. Poor people are trying to scam the government at every opportunity and can’t be trusted with money, despite the fact this money is loaded onto a card and you can only use it for groceries. And despite the fact that in this case, the money is only $40 a month extra for each eligible child, and tops out at $120 per child for the summer EBT program.”
Again, it’s interesting to read the comments… and there is no better time than now to add your thoughts.
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Feel free to explore The Poverty Trap’s Archive and add your thoughts to previous posts. And I hope you give these three most popular posts of 2024 a first or second read and let me know your thoughts in the Comment Section, below.
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