Economic Policy Selling the Poor on Spending Like They're Rich

How plutonomy, premiumization, and social media squeeze the middle class

by Emma Janssen
December 1, 2025


We are living in a new Gilded Age. The first, from roughly 1870 to 1890, was marked by dramatic inequality: Wealthy monopolists like bank tycoons and railroad barons saw their fortunes boom as the country industrialized, while the poor, particularly in the post-Reconstruction South, continued to suffer. A cast of corrupt men controlled the flow of capital and political power, shaping the country around their will. Thus it was not a golden age, but a gilded one—a veneer of prosperity hiding the real economic and social rot below.

Today, with a president obsessed with gold and material wealth, the Second Gilded Age metaphors write themselves; just look at the literally gilded add-ons to the Oval Office. Tens of millions of Americans rely on government food and medical assistance that Republicans have voted to cut; some Americans use “buy now, pay later” apps to pay for their rent and groceries; and wages can’t keep up with inflation. But the wealthy are doing just fine. The stock market is up 48 percent since 2022; luxury-brand purchases are holding strong; and Elon Musk is about to get a $1 trillion pay package. Our country is dramatically unequal, and it’s only getting worse.

The rich have a gravitational pull on the economy, dragging it in their direction. According to economic researchers at Moody’s Analytics, the top 10 percent of Americans earners are now doing almost half of the spending. Even those economists who dispute this specific number concede that the wealthiest Americans are doing an outsized amount of consumer spending. The wealth of the top 10 percent is up to $113 trillion, up $5 trillion just between April and July, according to Federal Reserve data. The top 1 percent holds $52 trillion in wealth, a new record.

That matters for several reasons. First, it produces an unclear picture of the economy. Even though the majority of Americans are feeling the squeeze of inflation and rising unemployment, the ultra-wealthy are doing well enough to keep spending, which makes it look like everyone has kept spending.

https://prospect.org/2025/12/01/premiumization-plutonomy-middle-class-spending-gilded-age/?vgo_ee=87eFrugQOhKpkfRuCp7Og1xUDQYRE07eLQ0TS8lBghmbLHkivNph%3A7s6kxAvDiymTO6wZ3%2F6OfkAtEjJfFY%2B%2B