The Census Bureau just released the numbers for 2025, and the headline practically writes itself:
The rich got richer.
But I think the real story is more complicated—and frankly, more important.
Because by some measures, 2025 was actually a pretty good year.
Median household income in America rose to about $87,000.
Poverty went down.
Child poverty went down.
So you could look at those numbers and say, “See? America is doing fine.”
And technically, you’d have a point.
But then you start peeling back the onion.
Look at who is getting what.
The top 20 percent of American households now receive more than half of all household income in the country.
The bottom 20 percent?
About 3 percent.
Think about that.
Imagine America as a dinner table with 100 people sitting around it.
Twenty people are getting more than half the food.
Twenty other people are splitting about three percent of it.
And then we’re surprised when somebody at the other end of the table says:
“Hey, anybody gonna pass the potatoes?”
This isn’t necessarily a story about rich people doing something wrong.
If you built a company, invented something, worked your ass off and became wealthy—good for you.
That’s capitalism.
The question isn’t whether people should be allowed to succeed.
The question is:
Can everybody else still participate?
Because there’s another number that tells an enormous part of this story.
Back in the 1990s, the typical American house cost roughly three times the typical household’s annual income.
By 2025, it was approaching five times household income.
That’s a completely different economic world.
And you can see it everywhere.
Housing.
Insurance.
Childcare.
Healthcare.
Education.
Groceries.
Transportation.
You can make more money than your parents did and still feel like you’re falling behind because the things necessary to build a life have become so damn expensive.
And that’s especially important when we’re talking about younger Americans.
We Boomers love telling young people:
“When I was your age, I worked hard.”
Yeah.
We did.
But let’s acknowledge something.
The playing field changed.
A young person today isn’t buying a house in the economy of 1975.
They’re buying it in the economy of 2026.
They’re not paying 1975 tuition.
They’re not paying 1975 rent.
They’re not paying 1975 healthcare costs.
So telling somebody who’s 27 years old to simply work harder isn’t an economic policy.
It’s nostalgia.
And this is where I think America keeps having the wrong argument.
We argue about capitalism versus socialism.
Republicans versus Democrats.
Left versus right.
Meanwhile, millions of ordinary people are asking a much simpler question:
Can I afford a decent life?
Can I afford a place to live?
Can I afford to raise a family?
Can I afford healthcare?
Can I save some money?
Can I take my kids on vacation once in a while?
Can I retire someday without eating cat food?
That’s the economic conversation I’m interested in.
Because I don’t want to tear capitalism down.
Capitalism has created extraordinary innovation and prosperity.
But capitalism only works politically over the long term if enough people believe they’re participating in it.
You can’t have an economy where somebody owns twelve houses and somebody working full time can’t afford one apartment and then act shocked when people start questioning the system.
And here’s the part of the Census report that I actually find encouraging.
Median income went up.
Poverty went down.
That means this isn’t hopeless.
The American economic machine still creates an enormous amount of wealth.
The question is what kind of economy we want that machine to create.
Not an economy where everybody makes exactly the same amount of money.
That’s ridiculous.
Not an economy where success is punished.
I want people starting companies.
I want entrepreneurs.
I want millionaires.
Hell, create billionaires.
But I also want the person cooking your breakfast, teaching your children, repairing your streets, taking care of your parents and stocking the grocery store to be able to participate in the community they’re helping build.
That’s not radical.
That’s a functioning society.
And this is where local government matters too.
Washington isn’t going to solve every problem.
Cities can’t solve every problem either.
But cities can ask:
What does housing cost here?
What does transportation cost?
What does childcare cost?
What does somebody actually need to earn to live here?
And then we can start building communities around the lives people actually live instead of economic theories somebody wrote on a chalkboard.
Because there’s one thing those Census numbers can’t measure.
They can measure income.
They can measure poverty.
They can measure inequality.
But they can’t measure hope.
They can’t measure whether a 25-year-old believes she’ll ever own a house.
They can’t measure whether a 35-year-old believes he can afford children.
They can’t measure whether somebody working two jobs believes there’s actually a finish line somewhere.
And ultimately, that’s the economic statistic I care about.
Do people believe tomorrow can be better than today?
America has more than enough wealth to make that possible.
The challenge isn’t figuring out how to create prosperity.
We’ve already figured that out.
The challenge is making sure enough people can actually participate in it.
Because if the rich get richer while everybody else gets a genuine opportunity to build a good life, that’s one conversation.
But if the rich get richer while millions of working Americans conclude the American Dream has become something they can see but never touch—
that’s an entirely different conversation.
And it’s one we ought to start having.
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