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To live in 2025 is a blessing. But, it is also a strange time to be alive, particularly when it comes to wealth.
When you think about wealth and what it does for someone and their quality of life, there are a few ways to view it. Certainly wealth “buys” freedom and flexibility, which is arguably the most important role of wealth.
But, at a micro level, measuring wealth for many Americans is about day-to-day quality of life. On one hand, wealth should grant access to wants — goods and services above and beyond your day-to-day needs.
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Wealth is also supposed to be a shield against the stresses tied up with money, reducing worry over covering basic needs and feeling like you have financial breathing room from day to day and month to month.
Today in America, at a practical level, we live with a wealth paradox.
We have access to luxuries that people of hundreds of years ago couldn’t have dreamed.
We have access to ground-breaking medicines and lifesaving procedures. We have technology, including portable tech that we can carry in our pockets, with access to just about all the information ever created. We have creation tools as well.
We have cars with incredible functionality (probably too much, in my opinion). We are able to jet across the country or even around the world. Many of us have closets full of clothing, shoes and accessories. Our grocery stores are filled with food, aisles lined with overwhelming choices.
We are living with everyday luxuries that, if you step back, are in many ways hard to believe.
So, while we can access wants, much of the working and middle class still live with the stress of affording basic costs of living.
Housing is difficult and expensive to come by. Even if one can afford a house and interest payments, the carrying costs, including property taxes and insurance, as well as maintenance, eat up a larger percentage of wages.
Healthcare costs, particularly for those who don’t have corporate employer-sponsored health benefits, are skyrocketing. Just the insurance portion alone, separate from any care costs paid out of pocket, is a heavy burden on families.
Education, particularly higher education, is also a stressor, saddling young people with five or even six figures’ worth of debt, while in many cases not providing an appropriate return on investment.
And while we have an abundance of food, Americans’ dollars buy less. Even eating in restaurants at every level, from fast food to sit-down dining, has exploded in cost.
Yes, in 2025, the working and middle class may have access to more, but the stress of basic living has increased exponentially. And that makes it harder to feel “wealthy.”
Are we truly wealthy, as individuals and as a nation, if a key tenet of wealth, that shield from financial stress, has been pierced?
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If we look at the culprits, from housing to healthcare to education, all are areas where the government (and government-adjacent policy) has increased costs. It is up to them to start removing barriers and making Americans truly wealthy again.
Moreover, the Fed’s policies, including around 15 years of zero and near-zero interest rate policy, quantitative easing, suppressed real rates, and then whipsaw tightening, structurally created a world where asset owners have seen their wealth increase and those without assets fell behind. This has underscored today’s wealth paradox: Americans enjoy luxury consumption but can’t afford the “entry ticket” to wealth because the cost of the foundational asset — that is, a home — has been financialized far beyond incomes.
A healthy economy needs to be balanced with a healthy society, and you can’t have that if individuals don’t have peace of mind. Financial stress is cited as a reason in almost one out of every four divorces. It correlates with anxiety, depression and physical health issues.
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Of course, some of that is self-inflicted, but looking at the percentage of income that basic needs are accounting for today, something is wrong.
Our wealth paradox is one that can be solved with action. We need real reform on getting the government to stop sucking up the wealth of hardworking Americans. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness hangs in the balance.