Episode 5: How to Fix Things
In the previous episode, we examined how extreme wealth concentration took hold in the United States—and how the same mechanisms that concentrated wealth also eroded living standards and damaged mental health for ordinary people.
In this final episode, I want to focus on solutions. Specifically, how we can correct the policy mistakes of the past 45 years and move toward an economy that works for people across the income spectrum. Because when wealth pools at the top, the bottom loses stability, opportunity, and dignity—three things that are essential for mental health.
The good news is: fixing these problems does not require dismantling capitalism or reinventing our entire economic system. Capitalism can work. It has worked before. We simply need to put the guardrails back on.
Capitalism was never meant to be unregulated. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, wrote in The Wealth of Nations:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
What Smith understood—centuries before modern economics—is that markets left entirely to themselves do not stay competitive. They consolidate. They exploit. And they harm the public.
In other words, capitalism only works when governments actively prevent monopoly and exploitation. The last episode explained what happens when those protections are removed, contradicting the ideology popularized by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School in the 1980s.
We need to be honest about where we are now. For millions of Americans, the economic foundation has already collapsed. History shows that people tolerate this only for so long before demanding change. If conditions continue to deteriorate, the consequences will affect everyone—regardless of political beliefs or personal wealth.
So let’s talk about what fixing this actually looks like.
1. Restore Real Antitrust Enforcement
The first issue we must address is the near-total collapse of antitrust enforcement in the United States. Monopolies and oligopolies suppress wages, raise prices, and accelerate wealth concentration. Laws designed to prevent this—the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and Federal Trade Commission Act—still exist. But beginning in the 1980s, enforcement largely stopped. Courts started interpreting antitrust law narrowly, focusing almost exclusively on whether consolidation raised consumer prices. Even then, many companies were allowed to merge despite clear harm.
After 45 years of legal precedent, simply “enforcing the law again” is no longer enough. Congress must step in with statutory clarification. Antitrust law must explicitly recognize that harm includes loss of small businesses, weakened labor markets through monopsony, reduced innovation, and concentration of economic and political power.
2. Stop Wage Suppression and Restore Worker Leverage
Next, we must address wage suppression. Companies have developed a wide range of tools to weaken worker bargaining power, including non-compete clauses, mandatory arbitration, wage-fixing through benchmarking software, and misclassification of employees as independent contractors. These practices prevent workers from negotiating fair pay—even in competitive labor markets.
Passing laws is not enough. These laws must be enforced by regulators with the political will to challenge powerful corporations.
3. Fix Regressive Tax Policy and Tax Wealth
The United States has one of the most regressive tax systems among advanced economies. Lower-income Americans pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the wealthiest households. To correct this imbalance, we need to raise top marginal income tax rates, remove the income cap on Social Security taxes, and introduce a real wealth tax. Currently, the only meaningful wealth tax in the U.S. is the estate tax—and even that is largely optional due to strategies like “buy, borrow, die,” which allow the ultra-wealthy to avoid paying it altogether. (I will explain how this strategy works in a future article.)
Taxing wealth is the single most effective way to reduce wealth concentration. And reducing wealth concentration doesn’t just improve economic statistics—it reduces chronic stress, instability, and hopelessness, which are major drivers of mental illness. Economist Thomas Piketty has proposed a modest annual wealth tax ranging from 2% to 10% on very large fortunes. Even implementing only this single reform would significantly reduce wealth concentration and stabilize living standards.
About two-thirds of Americans support a wealth tax. But even if you oppose it ideologically, the math is unavoidable: without reducing wealth concentration, living standards will continue to fall and mental illness will continue to rise.
4. The Myth That Wealthy People Will “Flee”
A common objection to wealth taxes is that wealthy individuals will leave the country. This concern has been studied extensively. Nobel laureate Peter Diamond and economist Emmanuel Saez developed models examining how sensitive high earners are to taxation. Their findings are clear: they are not very sensitive at all. The top marginal tax rate that maximizes revenue without triggering mass tax avoidance is estimated to be between 70–80% on the highest incomes. In other words, wealthy people are not going to pack up and leave simply because taxes increase.
5. Fix Housing
Housing insecurity is one of the strongest predictors of chronic anxiety. Today, the top 10% of Americans own about 45% of the housing stock. This speculative ownership increases competition and drives prices up. There are many ways to address this. These include banning corporate ownership of single-family homes, taxing vacant housing units, restricting interest-only loans, and discouraging speculative hoarding. If we implemented a wealth tax, many investors would be forced to liquidate housing assets, naturally reducing prices and increasing supply.
The exact policy matters less than the goal: housing should be a place to live, not a vehicle for infinite asset appreciation.
6. Restore the Minimum Wage to Its Historical Role
The minimum wage once stood at about 45% of the median full-time income. Today, it is far below that. Research shows that restoring the minimum wage to this level has minimal impact on employment while significantly improving living standards for low-wage workers. In 2025 dollars, that would mean a minimum wage of about $13 per hour—not a radical idea, just a return to historical norms.
7. Reform or Ban Stock Buybacks
Stock buybacks function as a wealth transfer from workers to wealthy shareholders. They don’t improve productivity or innovation—only stock prices. Some things we could do to fix this would be to re-classify stock buybacks as a form of illegal market manipulation, or increase the buyback tax from 1% to 5% (or higher). This would push companies to invest in workers, wages, and productive capacity rather than financial engineering.
8. Invest in Public Goods
Once wealth concentration is reduced at the top, the next step is to rebuild opportunity at the bottom. Key investments include:
Family Stability
Universal or subsidized childcare improves child outcomes and allows parents to stay in the workforce. With current annual childcare costs around $12,000 (per child), this alone would dramatically improve family finances.
Housing Stability
Publicly built, mixed-income housing—done well—can increase supply without undermining private construction. Countries like Finland have proven this works.
Education
Free or subsidized community college and state universities improve lifetime earnings while eliminating one of the biggest financial stressors facing young adults.
Healthcare
Healthcare costs are one of the largest drivers of financial stress. While single-payer reform is complex (but still worth doing), expanding subsidies would immediately reduce financial harm.
Infrastructure
Upgrading aging infrastructure and expanding broadband internet creates good jobs and improves long-term productivity—a modern version of New Deal–style investment.
Why All This Matters for Mental Health
Taken together, these policies would significantly reduce wealth concentration, stabilize living standards, and reduce the social conditions that drive depression and anxiety. This series has focused on economics because mental health cannot be separated from material conditions.
Therapy matters. Medication matters. Access to care matters. But focusing only on treatment while ignoring economic policy is like bailing water out of a boat with a hole in the bottom. You can keep people afloat for a while—but unless you fix the hole, the boat keeps filling.
What Now?
The good news is that we live in a democracy. We can choose to fix this. The challenge is that democracy only works when people understand what’s happening—and most people don’t. If you care about mental health, justice, or the future of young people, your role is to educate others. Talk to your friends. Engage locally. Ask questions. Invite discussion instead of argument.
We all want the same things: meaningful work, stable housing, food to eat, and a reason to be optimistic about the future. That foundation is what young adults—maybe your children—need to build mentally healthy lives.