You Can You Be Too Thin, But Can You Ever Be Too Rich?

  

You Can You Be Too Thin, But Can You Ever Be Too Rich?

The Ever-Widening Income/Wealth Gap

“President Trump is working 24/7 to Make America Great Again and make the world a safer place… Nobody works harder than President Trump who has delivered a record number of historic achievements in only a year.” 

 White House spokesperson Davis Ingle

As a Republican-controlled Congress has refused to extend ACA healthcare subsidies and, under the “Big Beautiful Bill” cut taxes trillions of dollars (almost all to the benefit of the richest Americans… increasing the deficit accordingly) while slashing Medicaid by almost a trillion dollars, reducing SNAP food subsidies for the working poor, sending taxpayer-funded soldiers into blue cities to reduce an already-falling crime rate but also reducing aid to local police forces… and now freezing federal childcare support… you have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to get the whole picture: Trump supports his rich supporters, pays lip service to his MAGA regulars without giving them anything in return (from a full release of the incriminating Epstein files to meaningful support for their regional [mostly small town or rural] hospitals that are closing in droves), and seems committed to representing only the interests of the top 5% to 10% of earners.

Echoes of the extent that Donald Trump and his entourage are out of touch with the financial strains facing most Americans, claiming costs and inflation are down and jobs are plentiful and stable when the reverse is clear to almost everyone, are everywhere. To those he promised an end to “endless” entanglement in endless foreign wars, his actions in bombing Iran, blowing “narco-terrorists out of the water without congressional or judicial authority, bombing purported anti-Christian terrorists in Nigeria and continue to draw out the failed ceasefire in Gaza by continuing to supply arms to Netanyahu’s military used to kill civilians and to abandon Ukraine to Putin’s lies by withholding essential weapon systems to Kyiv that could actually end that conflict.

But let’s get back to understanding how the United States has become a kleptocracy run by the rich, for the rich and literally to the benefit of no one else. Let’s start with how the rich prioritize their proclivity to play and enjoy life, no matter the cost and no matter how absurd the play. I’m talking about more than naming everything in sight for yourself, building a royal ballroom and making your family billions off your presidency. We need only look to Donald Trump’s foot-wedge obsession with golf… specifically to Sarah Ewall-Wice’s jaw-dropping analysis, in the December 31st The Daily Beast: “President Donald Trump spent a quarter of the days in his second term at a golf club [, visiting] golf clubs 88 times over the course of this year since he returned to office in January… The total was compiled by the Trump Golf Tracker, based on the president’s public schedule and a tally of all the times his motorcade arrived at his golf club in December…

“The tally of 88 visits to golf clubs is one more day than Trump played golf during the first year of his first term. Tracking indicates he played golf an estimated 87 times during his first year in office… It was the most of any year of golf Trump had during his first term. In 2018, he played golf 67 times; in 2019, it was 84 times; and in 2020, during the global coronavirus pandemic, he golfed an estimated 47 times.

“The Trump Golf Tracker estimates that the president’s golf trips have cost taxpayers some $110,600,000 so far in 2025. But that estimate, which was based on a 2019 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on four golf trips during his first term, doesn’t even take into account the month of December… All of Trump’s golf trips this year were to his own properties, including to Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach, Trump National Doral Miami, and Trump National Golf Club, Jupiter in Florida, as well as the Trump National Golf Clubs in Sterling, Virginia, and Bedminster, New Jersey.” Hey, the richest 10% are buying half of all consumer goods and own 90% of publicly traded stocks. We need to be nicer to them, right?

But by US billionaire standards, Trump is just a piker. Single digit billions family wealth just does not begin to compete with his crony capitalist buddies, whose ranks are swelling due to Trump’s one-sided legislative manipulations, and a Republican controlled Congress that refuses to act like a bona fide branch of government. Who are these “billionaires,” and where are the coming from?

Writing for Forbes, appropriately on Christmas Eve, Chase Peterson-Withorn tells us: “In all, the world added new billionaires worth a combined $876 billion over the past 12 months, roughly 5% of total global billionaire wealth. Nearly 40% of 2025’s newcomers are Americans, but the billionaire bash has spanned 32 countries in all, including 35 new Chinese citizens, 15 new Indians and 15 new Russians…

“Two-thirds of this nouveau riche set created their own fortunes, including 11 new self-made billionaires under 30, bringing the worldwide total to a record 13. But others—including three daughters of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay (d. May), five heirs of Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani (d. September) and five members of the family behind medical supplies giant Medline’s year-topping IPO—joined the billionaires list this year the old fashioned way: inheritance… And the thing about those who get this wealth is they tend to stay wealthy. Even with all these fresh faces, nearly 85% of current billionaires began the year already a billionaire. Four-fifths of them are heading into 2026 as rich or richer than they were a year ago—leaving the billionaire class well positioned for yet another year of many happy returns…

“All this wealth has translated into plenty of power. Some 135 billionaires pumped money into the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and many of them spent the past year lining up behind America’s billionaire president. They donated millions to his inauguration—where billionaires like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai scored prominent seats usually reserved for the likes of the president’s family, past presidents and other top government officials. They donated millions more to his White House ballroom project. Some of them even joined his Cabinet, the richest in U.S. history. Last week, billionaire Jared Isaacman was confirmed as head of NASA, the day after billionaire megadonor Miriam Adelson quipped that she’d give Trump another $250 million to run for a third term.” They are trillions richer from just 2025.

Writing a tongue-in-cheek editorial for the December 31st USA Today, Rex Huppke, embellishes: “One of the biggest struggles billionaires will face in 2026 ‒ aside from the possibly being eaten thing ‒ is finding a way to own the most impressive superyacht. Everyone who’s anyone in the billionaire community has a giant yacht that has an elevator, several pools, a forested field for hunting humans, a room to host galas, a helipad and, unless you’re cheap, a second, slightly smaller superyacht attached to the side.

“A key New Year’s resolution is to obtain the super-est of superyachts. The most logical choice would be a superyacht that includes its own onboard ocean, upon which there is another superyacht. The days of low-brown ‘superyacht with smaller superyacht attached to the side’ are over… If there was one billionaire failure in 2025, it was this: Eternal life remains a bit elusive. While billionaires may have luxurious pillows stuffed with the hair of freshly shorn orphans and a different helicopter for each day of the week, they are still mortal, and that is unfortunate.

“In 2026, the wealthy must resolve to find the key to immortality, allowing them more time to enjoy the money they could never possibly spend. This might require the blood of some healthy nonbillionaires and perhaps a bit of experimentation conducted on private islands. But as we learned well in 2025, the super-rich are never held accountable for anything. So I’m sure it will all be just fine.” Are you throwing up yet?

What do you think of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the man who ceded more authority to a president than any before him, stating that “the founders chafed at the crown’s control of colonial courts and ‘corrected this flaw’ by setting up a judiciary that would operate without interference from the other branches… ‘This arrangement, now in place for 236 years, has served the country well,’ Roberts wrote in the report, which was released by the Supreme Court hours before the start of the new year.” CNN, December 31st.

I’m Peter Dekom, and since Trump and friends killed my appetite, I had nothing to throw up.