I've heard modern US politics described like the following:
A rich man, a blue-collar worker, and an immigrant are sitting around a table. In the center of the table is a plate of a dozen cookies. The rich man takes 11 of them, then leans in and whispers to the blue-collar worker "hey, I think that guy wants your cookie."
The most insane are the science minded who understand it’s made up social gossip but role play sycophant nonetheless.
All our best thinkers, the propaganda goes. Their best idea for the economy is submit the status quo.
Their biology lives the experience every day that as a knowledge worker with little real world skill at providing for themselves, it’s actually they who are the most easily manipulated and kowtowed.
Wall Street is built on looting the pensions of retirees.
The American economy has always been “already absurdly rich person takes 9 of the widgets worker produced and leaves workers 1 to share.”
In the money printer era this allowed big salaries for some compared to the norm but the rich still took their 9 too.
We wrapped mafia like thug behavior of the pre and post war world into empty semantics.
The only option for unlocking a massive amount of liquidity for the public to stabilize their individual situations is taxing the rich.