The author contrasts a 53% jump in S&P 500 earnings with household squeeze: tomatoes 40% year-on-year, gas over $4.50, rent 54% vs 2017, homes 60% vs 2019, electricity $120 this year, card debt 63% since 2021—plus fees and shrinkflation; Conference Board confidence slipped in August.

Cause one: concentrated markets (Walmart ~¼ of groceries; Amazon ~80% of e-books / 71% of online print; four packers ~85% of meat; four airlines ~70–80% of domestic flights). Response: stronger antitrust and breakups.

Cause two: the top 1% own ~half of stocks, top 10% over 90%, while Gene Ludwig’s “true unemployment” (jobless involuntary part-time discouraged working poor) hit 24.9% in July. He wants $20 minimum wage, UBI, and a job guarantee. Cause three: tariff refunds boosting Q3 growth (~4% of it per WSJ) stay with firms—require price cuts. Midterms framed as the affordability fight.

The earnings of America’s largest corporations — the S&P 500 — surged by an astounding 53 percent over the past year. 

But most Americans are losing ground. Wages have barely risen — yet a tomato today costs 40 percent more than it did just a year ago. Gas now costs an average of more than $4.50 a gallon. Renting an apartment is 54 percent more expensive than it was in 2017. Housing prices are up 60 percent since 2019. Families will spend $120 more on electricity this year than last year. Credit card debt is up 63 percent since just 2021. Add in so-called “convenience fees” popping up everywhere, along with “shrinkflation” where companies deceptively shrink product sizes while charging the same or even more — and what do you get? An economy that’s clearly, wildly, unambiguously unaffordable. 

A widely watched measure of consumer confidence slipped in August as consumers fretted about future economic conditions, the........

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