They zip-tied seniors in wheelchairs.
Just let that one sink in. That sentence should be enough to stop traffic. To end careers. To force a moral reckoning.
But it didn’t, and it probably won’t because we are so used to seeing the vulnerable treated like criminals, that even this, a row of elderly people with disabilities, protesting to keep their Medicaid, being zip-tied by Capitol Police, barely registers as shocking.
This Is What Economic Inequality Looks Like
It makes me sick to witness how economic inequality drives such inhumane treatment.
These people weren’t storming the Capitol. They weren’t threatening violence. They were protesting the inescapable violence of Medicaid cuts that would pull the rug out from under millions of people already balancing on the edge. Cuts that aren’t necessary unless you’re trying to keep the tax cuts flowing upward.
And that’s exactly what’s happening.
We must stop pretending that “budget shortfalls” are random or unavoidable. They were created by deliberate choice, primarily as massive tax breaks for the wealthy. The U.S. deficit has ballooned in part because of massive tax cuts handed out like candy to the ultra-rich. According to the Tax Policy Center, more than half of the benefits from extending the Trump-era tax cuts in 2025 will go to households earning over $450,000 per year. The top 1% is expected to save an average of $61,090 per year from these policies. The bottom 60%? They get about $500, which may be enough to fill one prescription.
And guess what those corporations did with their savings? Did they raise wages? Offer better benefits? Hire more workers?
Of course not.
They used it for stock buybacks and executive bonuses. Between 2018 and 2022, companies spent over $6.4 trillion buying their own shares, which artificially boosts stock prices and directly enriches investors, aka, the top 10% who own 89% of all stocks.
This is planned economic inequality in its rawest form. But they want you to believe it’s just “economics.”
This isn’t a spreadsheet problem. It’s a values problem. It’s theft wrapped in policy language.
Meanwhile, people are being evicted, choosing between insulin and groceries, or sitting on GoFundMe begging for help. A major new study shows that 60% of Americans cannot afford a minimal quality of life. Not luxury. Not comfort. Just the basics. Researchers defined that line as around $67,000 a year, enough to cover food, rent, healthcare, transportation, and a sliver of stability. Most people fall below it.
Lest we believe in our own moral superiority, Canada is not immune, either.
In Ontario, Doug Ford likes to wave around charts showing increases in healthcare spending, but when you factor in inflation, population growth, and rising healthcare needs, it’s flat, or even declining. His government’s push to privatize healthcare through Bill 60 lets for-profit clinics siphon public dollars through the back door. And where public money goes, public accountability vanishes.
CityNews reported in 2023 that even as budgets technically grew, emergency room closures, staff burnout, and longer wait times proved the system is bleeding out. That’s what “innovation” looks like under this model: underfund the system, let it rot, then tell people they should be grateful there’s a private clinic that costs them extra.
This is the Canadian version of the same affluenza, economic inequality ratified into law.
Affluenza Is Eating the Soul of Our Society
We were told fairness meant having a fighting chance. But I think the game’s been rigged for a long time – now they’re just not bothering to hide it! If you can’t survive on minimum wage, they tell you to “learn to code.” If you’re too sick to work, you’re suddenly a “burden.” If you rely on social safety nets to survive, you’re treated like you’re robbing the system, even though those same systems were designed to help people exactly like you.
I think it’s morally reprehensible to demonize social programs while designing an economy that forces people to rely on them. You can’t tell someone to work harder when rents are rising faster than wages, and groceries are doubling. We can’t keep pretending this is “just the way the world works” when the people benefiting most are the ones pulling the strings.
We don’t have a free market. We have a rigged market. The cost of living keeps climbing not just because of inflation, but because the ultra-wealthy know they can squeeze more out of the bottom 80%. Landlords jack up rents. Grocery chains raise prices while raking in record profits. Pharmaceutical companies price life-saving meds out of reach, then call it “business.” That’s not competition. That’s abuse. That’s economic inequality by design.
This is not just politics. This is a moral emergency.
It’s Not Broken – It’s Built This Way
Take “Rosa” – she is 72. She worked at a plastics factory for 35 years. No pension, because the company declared bankruptcy and restructured under a shell corporation. Now she lives on Social Security and stocks shelves at Walmart part-time. When her insulin went from $35 to $90 a vial, she started stretching doses. One day, she collapsed on the bus. When the ambulance came, she was mistaken for intoxicated and woke up in a hospital bed, restrained. They didn’t know she was diabetic. She didn’t have the money for a medical bracelet.
How many Rosas are there? In America. In Canada. Everywhere?
We are not failing as a society; we are being extinguished by a system built to extract, discard, and blame. This isn’t the result of “bad luck” or “personal choices.” This is the predictable outcome of decades of policy choices made to protect the powerful and punish the poor.
It’s economic violence perpetrated by soulless bastards.
When you take away healthcare, slash housing supports, underfund schools, and then tell people they just need to work harder, it’s not policy – it’s state-sanctioned neglect. When you criminalize homelessness and poverty instead of taxing billionaires, it’s economic violence. When you zip-tie seniors in wheelchairs for demanding the right to live, that’s state-sponsored cruelty.
And what are the elites getting out of it? Everything.
They get obscene wealth, tax loopholes, luxury real estate, private jets, VIP clinics, and zero accountability. They use their wealth and influence to shape policy, buy media narratives, and dodge consequences while lecturing the rest of us about “fiscal responsibility.”
What do we get? We get the zip ties.
And rising rent, collapsing safety nets, empty promises, waitlists, co-pays and the feeling that no matter how hard you work, it will never be enough. Because in this system, it isn’t supposed to be.
That’s the ugly truth about economic inequality: it doesn’t just happen. It’s built.
If you think it can’t happen to you, just wait. One bad diagnosis. One layoff. One accident. That’s all it takes to find out just how disposable you really are in a society that values wealth more than life.
So no, I’m not surprised they zip-tied seniors. And that, my friends, scares the hell out of me.
When the hell are people going to wake up and realize that this uncontrolled version of capitalism is deadly?
