It’s hard to miss.

Our country is quickly becoming two Americas.

An America is made up of fewer than a thousand billionaires who wield unprecedented levels of wealth and power and have never sat so well before.

President-elect Trump and Elon Musk (Getty Images)

The other America, where the vast majority live, is made up of tens of millions of families who struggle to put food on the table, pay their bills and worry that their children have a lower standard of living than they do.

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In the first America, the super-rich buy $500 million yachts with helipads, $270 million 30-bedroom mansions, private islands, a fleet of jets to take them around the world, and rocket ships that go to the edge fly to the outside world. Space. They receive the best health care money can buy, send their children to the best schools, and can expect to live very long lives.

In this America, the three richest men (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) own more wealth than the bottom half of our society – over 165 million people. And their wealth is increasing rapidly. Musk alone is now worth over $450 billion and these three men combined are worth $955 billion.

And it’s not just these three men. The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 90% – and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is widening every day.

In the other America, the working class struggles alone to provide for the basic necessities of life. In this America, over 60% of our population lives paycheck to paycheck, millions work for starvation wages, 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, more than 20 million households spend more than half of their limited income on rent or a mortgage, and over 60,000 die at any given time year because they cannot afford to go to the doctor on time.

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In this America, 25% of our seniors are trying to survive on less than $15,000 a year, and parents are trying to raise their children in a country that has the highest child poverty rate of almost any major country in the world. And because of stress and inadequate health care, working people live far shorter lives than the rich.

In this America, workers are deathly afraid that if their car breaks down, if their child gets sick, if their landlord raises the rent, if they get divorced, if they get pregnant, or if for some reason, they will Reason to lose your job You are in the middle of a financial disaster.

But let’s be clear. Not only is our country experiencing unprecedented levels of income and wealth inequality. Today we also have greater concentration of ownership than ever before.

In one sector after another—healthcare, agriculture, financial services, energy, transportation—a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we as consumers pay for their products. Incredibly, just three Wall Street firms (BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street) control more than $22 trillion in assets. These three Wall Street firms are the major shareholders in approximately 95% of S&P 500 companies and exercise enormous control over the world’s largest companies.

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And that’s not all.

Never before in American history have so few media conglomerates, all owned by the billionaire class, had so much influence over the public. It is estimated that six major media conglomerates now own 90% of what the American people see, hear and read. These handful of corporations determine what is “important” and what we discuss, and what is “unimportant” and what we ignore.

If you use a social media account to get your news, chances are it belongs to billionaires Musk, Zuckerberg, or Trump. If you read the Washington Post, Fox or the Los Angeles Times, your news belongs to billionaires Bezos, Murdoch or Patrick Soon-Shiong.

But it’s not just the billion-dollar ownership and control of the economy and the media that should worry us. The super-rich are also buying our government and undermining American democracy.

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Never before in American history have we seen a ruling class with so much political power. Because of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, billionaires and their super PACs can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.

And that’s exactly what they do. During the 2024 election cycle, just 150 billionaires spent nearly $2 billion to buy politicians who support their agenda and defeat candidates who oppose their special interests. Billionaires, who make up just 0.0005% of our population, accounted for 18% of total campaign spending.

This is not a democracy. This is not one person, one voice. This is not what this country should stand for. In his Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke of “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Well, today we have a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.”

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We are at a pivotal and unprecedented moment in American history. Either we fight to create a government and an economy that works for everyone, or we continue to move rapidly down the path of oligarchy and rule by the super-rich.

The choice is clear. We must stand up together for democracy and justice.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. BERNIE SANDERS