Hi ,

With the American election today, how much is the American inequality crisis contributing to it? Few countries have created a pro-inequality system like the UK has – but the US stands alone in the extreme wealth and power wielded by a few. While the top 1% in the UK own more wealth than the bottom 70% of our population, the American 1% own more wealth than 90% of the population. This is heavily encouraged by the American system, which has aggressively shifted taxation from the rich and from capital towards taxes on work, consumption, and the middle and working classes. The income distribution, meanwhile, gives America the worst Gini coefficient in the OECD and the most inequality in income since the peaks in the early 1900s – historical comparisons get more difficult before that.

The results have been a shocking increase in the wealth and power of the very richest in America. Since 2017 alone, the combined wealth of American billionaires has nearly doubled from $2.9 trillion to $5.8 trillion in 2024. The speed at which this is happening is staggering. The effect this money is having on American democracy is also staggering.

According to the organisation Americans for Tax Fairness, the 150 richest people in the US have given nearly $2 billion to candidates in today's election; three quarters to Republicans, and one quarter to Democrats. Elon Musk is the most visible, putting around $130m into Trump's campaign and offering money to volunteers and voters if they back Trump, but big money has been mobilised everywhere to shape the future of both the Republican and Democratic parties, picking off representatives that question wealth and boosting friendly candidates.

It manifests in other ways, too. The billionaire owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, claimed never to interfere with the reporting of the paper beyond appointing the CEOs. But that's not how power works, and Bezos has made clear the kind of political issues he's interested in: pushing back hard against rhetoric about taxing the rich. The Washington Post has followed, amplifying and elevating one billionaire's preferences; soft power backed up by the knowledge that their billionaire owner could chose to interfere – which he did last week when he prevented the paper endorsing Harris.

Although everyone's anxiety is focused on the presidential election, the election today will see hundreds of congressional, state, and local candidates elected. These more local elections are often where the inequality of power in the US is wielded most brutally. Several states have had successful referenda to expand voting, protect rights, or introduce new taxes on the richest, but have had legislatures outright refuse to implement them, followed by attempts to restrict future referenda. Politicians like New York Mayor Eric Adams, backed by big money, have wielded horrific power over life and death for Americans excluded from the political system, preventing imprisoned Americans accessing basic rights, ensuring Federal Monitors can't supervise prisons, and overseeing an expansion of state violence against unhoused and racialised New Yorkers.

So if you're already feeling anxious about the American elections, apologies, this probably hasn't helped.

However, there are also a lot of reasons to be hopeful. Americans have organised enormous movements against the super-rich, led a new wave of union activity and unionisation, and are rapidly changing attitudes towards wealth and inequality. Community organisers are doing incredible work outside of the headlines – in Montana, a housing activist successfully ran for mayor in Bozeman, a city of 60,000, and has begun a participative commission to reform how their democracy works. Activists hope to expand who gets to be involved in the political future of their city, and credit efforts to organise the local working class as a key reason their efforts might be successful.

If activists in Montana can organise themselves to win against the most unequal and unfair system in the developed world, we can win here!

What would you have liked to see in the Budget? You said:

• "An admission that the economic model we have been living under for the past forty years has failed, and that to advance, we have to look to a wholesale change in what is actually important, which is human lives and the quality of those lives."
  
  
• "Much more to help social welfare as well as taxing the mega rich. Also removing the cap on two child benefits."
  
  

• "Fairer distribution of wealth including land & property ownership."
  
  

• "I think it is a good first step."
  
  

• "A serious green new deal scheme funded by fossil fuel linked corporations including banks."