Tuesday, June 16, 2026
78% Say The American Dream Is Harder To Achieve Today Than In The Past
The chart above is from the NBC News Poll -- done between May 29th and June 7th of a nationwide sample of 3,000 adults, with a 1.8 point margin of error.
Today's Oligarchy Is Worse Than The One In The "Gilded Age'
Nobel Prize-winning economist compares today's oligarchy with that of the Gilded Age (which led to the Great Depression):
Many people have compared our current era to the Gilded Age. But that analogy is deeply unfair to the Gilded Age. Like the robber barons of yore, today’s oligarchs are immensely wealthy — even wealthier, relative to the economy as a whole, than their predecessors. And extreme wealth corrupts our democracy. But the corruption is deeper and more destructive now than it was then: The mitigating factors that once put some brakes on the harm done by excessive wealth concentration are now mostly gone.
About wealth concentration: The standard source for information on extreme wealth is the Forbes 400 list. Forbes only began compiling that list in its current form in 1982, but it published its first listing of America’s top fortunes in 1918. The chart above compares the wealth of the richest 5 Americans in 1918 with that of the richest 15 in 2025 — 15, not 5, because the total U.S. population more than tripled over that period. I scale their wealth both as a percentage of total wealth and as a share of GDP.
Either way, the concentration of wealth at the very top is much higher now than it ever was during the Gilded Age. And these are numbers from last year, before the SpaceX IPO. The robber barons were pikers compared with today’s oligarchs.
This level of wealth brings with it immense political influence. A New York Times analysis found that 300 billionaires accounted for 19 percent of political contributions in the 2024 election. And since the election the power of money has grown even stronger.
In part this reflects the way great wealth has been used to corrupt the media. Elon Musk bought Twitter, not as a financial investment, but to turn it into the right-wing fever swamp it has now become. Larry Ellison, America’s second-richest man, purchased CBS basically to destroy it as an independent news source and convert it into Fox News 2.0, a goal he is achieving — and he is now on track to do the same to CNN.
On top of this, the presidency is now more or less openly for sale. “Donald Trump,” writes Forbes, “has presided over the most lucrative presidency in history,” adding $4.2 billion to his personal wealth since regaining the White House.
There were many corruption scandals during the Gilded Age, but none on this scale.
What do today’s uberrich do with their political power? Much of what they push for involves their own self-interest. In 2024 Mark Zuckerberg basically used his financial clout to kill bipartisan legislation that would have tried to protect children from psychological harm due to social media and, of course, put some restrictions on Meta. The Koch family has spent decades doing everything it can to prevent action against climate change and keep America burning fossil fuels.
Beyond this, some megabillionaires use their power to push political extremism.
True, Elon Musk is something of an outlier; you have to go some ways down the list to find someone comparably extreme (Peter Thiel is #40.) And he isn’t the first incredibly wealthy man to be deeply bigoted and an avid consumer of conspiracy theories: Henry Ford was a rabid anti-Semite who published and distributed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery probably concocted by the Russian secret police.
Still, it’s remarkable that the world’s richest man has passionately embraced the “Great Replacement” theory of a sinister conspiracy to replace whites with nonwhite immigrants.
And it’s equally remarkable that our political system accepts it as a fact of life that such a person should command such power, even leaving on one side the dubious roots of his wealth. Where’s the outrage?
Obviously some Americans are outraged, but the backlash against a highly corrupt, rigged system is far weaker than one might have expected. Why?
I’ll return to this question in later posts, but it’s clear that modern America suffers from a combination of cynicism — “everybody does it” — and fatalism — “that’s just how the world works” — far worse than anything we experienced in the robber baron era.
You can see this moral malaise in the shrugs with which all too many politicians, especially but not only Republicans, greet each new revelation of presidential scandal. You can also see it in the behavior of the ultrawealthy themselves.
Make no mistake: the men on that 1918 Forbes list were, without exception, ruthless businessmen. The term “robber barons,” popularized in the 1930s by the historian Mattew Josephson, was apt. The great fortunes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were accumulated by men who functionally played the same role as feudal warlords extorting tolls from travelers passing their castles. In particular, John D. Rockefeller, the world’s richest man, in effect controlled an essential economic choke point, a sort of financial Strait of Hormuz, through his monopolization of oil refining.
Yet many of the robber barons also possessed a sense of noblesse oblige, believing that they should deploy some of their riches on behalf of the public good.
Many of the robber barons gave huge sums to philanthropy. These included large donations to cultural institutions, which continue to enrich our society to this day.
Mention Andrew Carnegie or Henry Clay Frick to a modern New Yorker and the first things they think of will probably be Carnegie Hall and the Frick Collection of fine art.
No doubt this was in large part a public relations exercise, but the fact that the robber barons believed that this PR effort was necessary was itself a symptom of a society less cynical than it is today. And the Gilded Age wealthy left a lasting legacy of good deeds to set against the history of their ruthless business practices.
By contrast, today’s oligarchs spend very little on good works, according to Forbes. Musk and Ellison have both given away less than 1 percent of their fortunes.
And Musk in particular is the opposite of a philanthropist. Not only doesn’t he spend any of his own money to help others, he used his power when running DOGE to cut off aid to poor countries, condemning hundreds of thousands of children to avoidable death. And he was gleeful about it:
Again, where is the outrage?
So, are we living in a second Gilded Age? If only. We surpassed Gilded Age levels of income and wealth inequality decades ago. We’re now in an era of oligarchy in which the power of great wealth and the abuse of that power by a tiny elite eclipse anything we saw in the late 19th and early 20th century. And the super-wealthy themselves are far more lacking in redemptive qualities than their predecessors.
Meet the new bosses, worse than the old bosses.
Trump's "Agreement" With Iran Is Not A Victory - It's A Terrible Failure
Does Trump's agreement with Iran represent a victory? Robert Reich says it's more likely a failure. He writes:
Trump again claims victory in Iran. He’s claimed victory before, but now he has a so-called “agreement” with Iran.
That agreement, which appears to be no more than a memo of understanding — that is, a set of principles to which Iran and the United States have agreed — stops the fighting and reopens the Strait of Hormuz but it does not deal with the issue that caused Trump to initiate the conflict: Iran’s nuclear program.
Keep that in mind as you hear various renditions of what’s been decided. Recall that the Strait of Hormuz was open before Trump began bombing Iran. At best, the agreement Trump is touting restores the status quo to where it was when he commenced hostilities. Remember also that Iran had agreed to limit its development of nuclear-grade materials in its treaty with the Obama administration, which Trump revoked in 2018.
So what has been accomplished? Iran now is under the control of a more extremist regime than when Trump started this war. Oil prices are far higher, and will take some time to return to where they were before it began (if they ever do). Meanwhile, Trump has caused the United States to be more dependent on fossil fuels than we were prior to his inauguration for a second time, and the high oil prices brought on by his war has enriched Vladimir Putin’s regime.
The war with Iran has cost the United States an estimated $90 billion, and that’s a conservative estimate. It has caused widespread suffering throughout the Middle East. It has put Israel in a more precarious situation than it was before — and much of that is due to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not a party to, and has not approved, the agreement.
This doesn’t look like a victory. Compared to where the United States and the Middle East were on February 28, when Trump began this war, it’s a terrible failure.
Monday, June 15, 2026
Trump Didn't Ruin The World Cup - But He Hurt America's Hosting Of It
The following post is by Roey Hadar at MS NOW:
American soccer fans have suffered many indignities over the years: waking up before dawn to watch games overseas, enduring the men’s national team’s failures and listening to Alexi Lalas on television broadcasts.
But this year’s FIFA World Cup was supposed to make up for all that.
More than 1 billion people watch the World Cup final, making it the biggest event in sports. It is a global celebration. And in 2026, that celebration was finally supposed to be coming to our backyard.
Then President Donald Trump got involved.
Through a mix of manufactured crises and an apparent desire to make every major event revolve around him, Trump managed to turn the World Cup into a fiasco. It’s the biggest disappointment for American soccer fans since the men’s team failed to qualify in 2018 by losing to Trinidad and Tobago.
The trouble began in June 2025, when the Trump administration imposed travel restrictions on multiple countries, signaling to fans that the United States might not be a friendly place to visit. From there, longer lines at airport security, a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, threats to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the World Cup, an explicit threat to pull customs officers from airports in some host cities and visa restrictions and denials to some teams all played a part in hurting the tournament.
The World Cup was supposed to be a melting pot of global soccer lovers, drawing visitors from all 48 of the participating countries. But fans from four countries whose teams are in the World Cup — Haiti, Ivory Coast, Iran and Senegal — won’t be allowed in thanks to Trump’s refusal to even temporarily suspend those countries’ travel bans.
One of the tournament’s top referees – Omar Artan – said he was denied entry to the U.S. and held by Customs and Border Protection for 11 hours. The Trump administration said CBP denied him for ties to “suspected members of terror organizations,” but Artan already had a valid visa issued by the State Department.
Iran, currently facing attacks from the U.S. military in a war that Trump entered with no congressional approval and little public support, is set to participate in the World Cup. But even a week from kickoff, the team was still struggling to get visas to let its players get to their matches, forcing it to relocate its base to Mexico.
Even players for ostensible U.S. allies are struggling to get in. Switzerland’s star striker, Breel Embolo, one of the team’s most recognizable players, faced a temporary block on his travel authorization as the U.S. looked into a conviction he had for his role in a fight in 2018.
And the problems are not limited to other countries. American fans hoping to enjoy the matches also have run into corporate greed.
Ticket prices have become so bad that New York and New Jersey’s attorneys general are investigating FIFA for its ticket practices. Asked about similarly high four-figure ticket prices for the NBA Finals, which he attended on taxpayers’ dime, Trump was blasé.
“They can watch it on television. It’s semi-free to watch it on television,” he said. “But that’s the way life goes.”
And for those fans willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a ticket, Trump’s attacks on public transit subsidies and his chummy relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino mean fans will not have an ally in their corner to fight for increasingly awful game-day experiences.
NJ Transit’s decision to put the cost of travel entirely on soccer fans means matches in the New York area could cost close to $100 for round-trip transportation that would normally be less than $15.
For fans who have the money for the tickets and transit, Trump could theoretically be leaning on FIFA to rein in its practices seemingly meant to nickel-and-dime customers. Last week, FIFA reversed course and banned fans from bringing water bottles into stadiums despite many matches being played in temperatures above 80 degrees. The organization also plans to ban tailgating at venues.
But soccer fans will tell you that even if they have qualms about the leadership of a host country, they can still enjoy the game.
The 2018 World Cup in Russia held under the iron fist of President Vladimir Putin did not stop fans from appreciating the ascendance of France’s breakout star, Kylian Mbappé.
Despite the horrors of the construction of facilities and the repression of support for LGBTQ rights at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, there was still space to appreciate Lionel Messi finally lifting his first FIFA World Cup trophy for Argentina.
The difference in 2026 is the disruptions are not happening in the background. They are shaping who can attend, how fans travel, what they pay and, in some cases, whether teams can fully participate at all.
The World Cup was supposed to be a celebration of soccer’s ability to bring the world together. Instead, the Trump administration has turned it into a reminder of how quickly politics, bureaucracy and self-inflicted chaos can diminish even the world’s biggest sporting event.
Some Of The Things Trump Has Ruined As He Turns 80
In honor of the occasion, here is a brief and incomplete accounting of what the 47th president of the United States has done to this country, its institutions, its landmarks, and its people in the past 18 months.
He started a war with Iran that is now in its 103rd day, has cost at least $29 billion, killed 13 American troops, injured more than 400, pushed inflation to a three-year high, sent gas to $4.32 a gallon, closed the Strait of Hormuz, and killed 3 Indian sailors in a strike on a tanker this week. He said he loves the inflation. He said he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation. He said he doesn’t care about the midterms.
He tried to put his name on the Kennedy Center. A judge said no. His name came off at 3am Friday behind white tarps while crowds chanted “take it down.” He tried to close it for two years. A judge said no. He fired the board and replaced them with loyalists. A court restored voting rights to the members he tried to silence. The Washington National Opera is now suing for $17 million in donations never returned.
He created a $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund by suing his own agency, settling with himself, and directing taxpayer money to his allies. A judge permanently blocked it. He still calls it a great idea. He gave himself permanent IRS audit immunity in the same deal. That part is still in place.
He installed Bari Weiss at CBS News. She fired Scott Pelley for refusing to inject falsehoods into his reporting. She fired the executive producer. She let Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega go. She cancelled Colbert. She installed a tech blogger to run 60 Minutes. His DOJ just approved her taking over CNN too.
He appointed a housing finance regulator with no intelligence experience to run all 18 US intelligence agencies. Seven Republican senators blocked the FISA surveillance program over it. He backed down and nominated someone else. He told the original pick to start firing people and described him as “less shackled”because he had not been confirmed.
He said he loves the inflation. He said he could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty. He tried to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American flag blue” for $14 million. It grew algae the next day. He wants to build a “Trump Promenade” at the Lincoln Memorial. He proposed a 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. He is building a six-story underground fortress beneath a ballroom on the White House lawn.
He fell asleep at the NBA Finals. He fell asleep in the Oval Office during a coal briefing. He fell asleep at a Wisconsin farmers roundtable while they were praising him. Marco Rubio denied under oath that Trump falls asleep in meetings. Rubio was then shown video of Trump falling asleep in a meeting. In the same meeting where Rubio was praising him.
His family made $2.3 billion from crypto ventures while retail investors lost the same amount. His son-in-law is building a $1.6 billion luxury resort on protected Mediterranean wetlands in Albania backed by Saudi money while simultaneously serving as Middle East envoy. His son’s drone company received a $620 millionPentagon contract. He bought TKO stock before announcing the White House UFC fight.
He said the Kennedy Center was dying. He ruined it. He said the reflecting pool was broken. He painted it and it grew algae. He said Iran would be dealt with in weeks. It has been 103 days. He said a deal was coming in two or three days 38 times.
He turns 80. His friends say he can hear the clock ticking. Many of us can too.
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