The leading object of the form and substance of government is
“to elevate the condition of men – to lift artificial weights from
all shoulders – to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all –
to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
– Abraham Lincoln, 1861–
For decades, the damaging consequences of our national social service policies – which have taken already vulnerable populations and forced them into a devastating cycle of long-term dependence – have mounted. Many Americans remain captive to our misaligned social systems, ones that establish detrimental patterns that are impossible to unilaterally break.
Certainly, there was an enormous need for social and economic programs after the Great Depression. President Roosevelt’s New Deal provided relief for the poor and unemployed, greatly aided economic recovery, and established reforms to prevent another depression. But some of these programs ignited and fueled a devastating cycle of generational poverty.
When poverty goes generational – meaning a family has lived in poverty for at least two generations – it becomes about far more than how much money they have in the bank. Every single day that someone has no job, for example, they experience a tremendous loss of hope and self-esteem, along with increased stress and depression.
In fact, poverty can literally shrink the brain. One study, led by neuroscientists from Columbia University and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, found that children in households earning less than $25,000 per year had, on average, a brain surface area 6 percent smaller than those from families earning more than $150,000. The study also discovered that children in the poorest households not only had lower scores on tests measuring cognitive skills (i.e., reading and memory ability), there were significant differences in the actual structure of the brain, particularly in areas of the brain that handle language and decision-making skills. Take a minute to really think about what that means.
To add insult to injury, the tone often used in any conversation having to do with inequality and vulnerable Americans is incredibly paternalistic and condescending. And often hateful.
Undoubtedly, there are those on all income levels who engage in self-destructive behavior, and it’s important these individuals recognize and take responsibility for their actions. However, when speaking of those trapped in the lower brackets, there is plenty of blame to go around as the sins of the past haunt us. We can scream personal responsibility until we are blue in the face, but our government ensured long ago that many bound by its social policies have no idea how to even remotely begin to claw their way out – or even what that really means.
Out of everything the Democratic and Republican parties have gotten terribly wrong, vulnerable American families are the number one tragedy. As our leaders in Washington increasingly shift their focus to poisonous politics, our most imperative systems – everything from health care to education to those that help lower-income Americans – have slipped further into total chaos.
We honestly can’t decide which is worse: Democrats who act like they give a damn but fail to appropriately act or Republicans who don’t even pretend to give a damn. Both major parties have proven to be consistently inept at confronting these challenges.
To be fair, social justice isn’t simple. For one thing, it’s not easy to reconcile social justice and capitalism. On one hand, we have the American Dream, which promises every American the opportunity to achieve success and prosperity, regardless of their originating circumstances. On the other hand, we have statistics that reveal a shocking level of income and wealth inequality in the United States.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an inter-governmental economic organization that has 38 member countries. Out of these 38 countries, only Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Turkey have more income inequality than the U.S. In June 2025, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported that, in America, the “top 10 percent of households by wealth had $8.1 million on average. As a group, they held 67 percent of total household wealth. The bottom 50 percent of households by wealth had $60,000 on average. As a group, they held 2.5 percent of total household wealth.”
These numbers are startling. Quite frankly, it just doesn’t seem fair. However, to succeed we must build strategies within the context of the realities of our situation, not what we wish the realities were.
The reality is that America’s economic system is capitalism. This is a universal fact that isn’t going to change and for this we should be exceedingly grateful. As the old saying goes, capitalism is the worst kind of economy until you try all the rest.
The great irony about capitalism is that, although a competitive market operates at its best when capital is widely distributed, a well-functioning free market doesn’t care who gets what as long as it’s operating efficiently. This means that, basically, the who gets what as well as the when, where, and how they get it is largely left up to us… and on so many levels we’ve been doing this horribly wrong.
Okay, we get that some of you may already be calling us the quintessential bleeding heart, but that’s not necessarily accurate. True, we love and care deeply about people in general, but our social justice views and recommendations are not merely a sympathetic call for charity or even compassion. Our overriding argument to Americans is not that we address income imbalance, for example, simply to be nice to our fellow man (although that would, in and of itself, be an awesome thing to do!). Rather, rising inequality is increasingly strangling our economy and impeding our economic growth – big time!
We have arrived at a point where empathy must be applied as an intellectual exercise. If I can’t appeal to your heart, let me appeal to your wallet. In 2019, pre-pandemic, analysis by McKinsey & Company found that the racial wealth gap has a “dampening effect on consumption and investment” and will “cost the U.S. economy between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion between 2019 and 2028 – 4 to 6 percent of the projected GDP in 2028.” That’s a lot.
Two years later, they estimated that “the median annual wage for black workers was approximately 30 percent, or $10,000, lower than that of white workers – a figure with enormous implications for household economic security, consumption, and the ability to build wealth. Black workers make up 12.9 percent of the U.S. labor force today but earn only 9.6 percent of total U.S. wages.” They also estimated that there could be a “$220 billion annual disparity between black wages today and what they would be in a scenario of full parity, with black representation matching the black share of the population across occupations and the elimination of racial pay gaps within occupational categories. Achieving this scenario would boost total black wages by 30 percent and draw approximately one million additional black workers into employment.”
That’s incentive enough, but it goes deeper than that. In December 2023, they warned that, “if we don’t correct long-standing patterns,” generative AI < a type of AI that can create new content, like text, images, music, and videos > “has the potential to widen the racial economic gap in the United States by $43 billion each year. Annual global wealth creation from gen AI is projected to be about $7 trillion, with almost $2 trillion of it expected to go to the United States, given its share of global GDP. U.S. household wealth captures about 30 percent of U.S. GDP, suggesting the United States could gain nearly $500 billion in household wealth from gen AI value creation. This increase would translate to an average of $3,400 in new wealth for each of the projected 143.4 million U.S. households in 2045. Black Americans capture only about 38 cents of every dollar of new household wealth despite representing 13 percent of the U.S. population. If this trend continues and projections of the growth of black households are accurate, by 2045, racially disparate distribution of new wealth created by gen AI could increase the wealth gap between black and white households by $43 billion annually.”
Most of us probably agree that it doesn’t seem like massive income inequality is a particularly positive thing for a society, and obviously the Americans trapped at the bottom of the income ladder are more than ready for us to bridge the divide. But why should the middle and upper classes care about this? Well….
First, this should matter to all of us because inequality is a creeper. In the past, the devastating consequences of considerable income disparity was largely confined to those on the margins of society, but now it’s quickly enveloping the middle class. The Pew Research Center discovered that the growth in income in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households while the middle class, which once comprised most Americans, is shrinking. In 1971, 61 percent of Americans lived in middle-class households, but by 2023 that share had fallen to 51 percent.
They continue, “As a result, Americans are more apart than before financially. From 1971 to 2023, the share of Americans who live in lower-income households increased from 27 percent to 30 percent and the share in upper-income households increased from 11 percent to 19 percent.” In fact, “the middle class has fallen behind on two key counts. The growth in income for the middle class since 1970 has not kept pace with the growth in income for the upper-income tier. And the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged.”
Second, rising inequality strangles our economy and impedes our growth in a big way. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 191 member countries, says “a 10 percentile decrease in inequality increases the expected length of a growth spell by 50 percent.” That’s huge!
These numbers show just how fundamental social justice is to our position on the world stage. In this relatively new era of globalization, an uneducated, unskilled and unprepared workforce equals an unparalleled disaster for this country. To survive in this still rapidly emerging environment, we must do whatever it takes to ensure a flexible, dynamic labor market and a well-educated, adaptable workforce. This means we must fully invest in our people… all our people.
We have a great idea! To operate at our very best, let’s start thinking of America as a team instead of factions divided by race, money or social class. Think of the entire world as the Global Nation League, which, in our imaginations, is kind of like the NFL. Every country in the world is its own team, and every team in the league competes against all the other teams.
To win this global game, it’s going to take every single one of us playing at our very best. All successful teams understand that every player on the team needs the very best resources available to play at the highest level, and successful teams make sure every single player has those resources – which ultimately makes the entire team stronger. < cue: the song We are the Champions by Queen >
Therefore, to be successful, every player on Team America needs to make sure every other player has access to the very best education, health care, and job opportunities, and that other things – like housing and wages, for example – are fair and equitable.
If we begin to operate like this, America will be unstoppable.
(We are the champions, my friends…And we’ll keep on fighting
till the end. We are the champions, We are the champions,
No time for losers, 'Cause we are the champions of the woooorld!)