The Debt Machine Was Built for You Specifically

My husband and I were doing what couples do a financial check-in. Nothing dramatic. Just going through the numbers, the bills, the debt. Normal stuff.

Except the longer we talked, the more something started rising in my chest. Not stress. Not anxiety.

Anger.

Real, hot, specific anger. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I should have been this mad a long time ago. And so should you.

Let's Talk About the Math

Let's say you bring home $3,500 every two weeks. Decent money. Before that check even hits your account, the government already took their cut. Fine. Taxes exist. I understand the concept.

But then you go to the gas station. Taxed.

You buy deodorant. Taxed.

Your favorite lotion. Taxed.

You go out to eat. Taxed.

Take a vacation. Taxed.

Pay your gas bill. Taxed -- with fees.

Pay your light bill. Taxed with fees.

Your cell phone bill. Taxed, with charges that shouldn't even legally exist.

You are being taxed on money that was already taxed. Multiple times. On basic survival.

Here's what that actually looks like on paper: a working-class person earning $50,000 a year pays an effective federal tax rate of around 12%. That's before you layer on Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%) both taken directly out of your paycheck before you see a dime. Then add state taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes, and fees. By the time it's all added up, working Americans are handing over a significant chunk of every dollar they earn to a system that is simultaneously asking them to do more with less.

And nobody's screaming about this.

Meanwhile, Billionaires Figured Out How to Pay Less Than You

This is the part that should make your blood boil.

In 2018, U.S. billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans for the first time in history. Economist Gabriel Zucman's analysis found that billionaires paid an average effective rate of 23% while the working class paid 24%. And that's using the generous definition of income.

When you factor in all the wealth they accumulate that never gets taxed at all the 25 wealthiest Americans paid just 3.4% of their actual income in taxes between 2014 and 2018. 3.4%. You paid more than that at the gas station last week.

How? They don't take a salary. They borrow against their stock holdings. Stock gains aren't taxed until you sell and billionaires don't sell. They just keep borrowing, living, and building wealth that the tax code doesn't even see.

You don't have that option. Your paycheck is taxed before you touch it.

The Debt Machine Was Built for You Specifically

Here's the part that really gets me.

They took away affordable education. Then handed you a loan with interest to go get it. Then moved the jobs that education was supposed to get you, or replaced them, or quietly eliminated them. But they still want the money back. With interest.

The receipts: Americans now owe $1.84 trillion in student loan debt. The average borrower owes over $39,000. And it takes close to 20 years to pay off. The federal Pell Grant -- supposed to help low-income families pay for college -- only covered about 31% of public university costs in 2024. The rest? Loans. With interest.

And it's not just education. The average American household now carries $152,000 in total debt. Credit cards with interest. Cars with interest. Medical bills with payment plans that also charge interest.

This isn't just how things are. This is a system designed to keep you perpetually behind. A system where the finish line moves every time you get close.

And you're being asked to work harder. Grind more. Give more time away from your family, your health, your actual life for what? To keep running a race that was never designed for you to win?

That's not ambition. That's a trap dressed up in motivational quotes.

The Companies Running This Game? They Barely Pay a Dime

You want the receipts on corporate America? Here they are.

In 2023, General Electric earned nearly $7 billion in profit -- and instead of paying taxes on that, received a $423 million refund. Meta spent nearly $20 billion on stock buybacks -- four times what it paid in taxes.

In 2025, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla collectively reported $315 billion in U.S. profits and paid just 4.9% of that in federal taxes. Tesla paid exactly zero. That's $51 billion in taxes they avoided -- in a single year.

Over a five-year period, 23 major corporations paid zero federal taxes every single year -- despite being profitable every year. 109 corporations paid zero in at least one of those years.

You couldn't do that. You don't get that option. They call it "legal tax strategy." If you tried it, they'd call it fraud.

They're Taking the Money You Paid Them and Doing What With It?

I need you to sit with this for a second.

The same politicians who won't raise the minimum wage who let prices balloon while wages stayed flat are allowed to take unlimited money from corporations and super PACs. Then they come back around and say they deserve a raise.

You paid for that raise. You paid for it in taxes, in inflation, in the gap between what things cost and what you actually make.

And that money is going somewhere. It is not coming back to your neighborhood, your school, your hospital, or your paycheck.

You are literally funding your own oppression and genocides and calling it patriotism.

and no one wants to say their name because they have their hands up America's ass and using us as a puppet

Aren't you mad yet?

The Saddest Part of All of This

I drive past homes sometimes. Run down. Leaning. Cars in the yard that haven't moved in years. Dogs on chains. Barely surviving by every visible measure.

Trump flag out front.

And I don't say that to be cruel. I say it because it is the single most heartbreaking thing I witness in this country on a regular basis. People who are being actively destroyed by a system cheering for the people running that system because somewhere along the way someone convinced them that their team was winning and they can stay comfortable in their racism because they want to see a group of people suffer.

Your team is not winning. Your team is using you as a prop and you will be the one that suffer the most and thats to funny not so funny part about it all.

The ones with real money and real power? They are not at the rally. They are at the dinner. They are in the meeting. They are signing the paperwork that makes sure their taxes stay low while yours stay high. And they are laughing not at the other side. At you. For showing up every single time.

You cannot vote your way onto the winning team when the winning team wrote the rules to keep you out.

Black Folks We See It Coming. We Always Do.

I'll say what I say every time: Black people in this country have a particular kind of sight that comes from having to read the room for survival for generations. We've been watching this coming for a long time.

The ones who aren't seeing it right now are the ones finding their seat at a table was never built for them, I don't have a lot of grace left for that. You'll figure it out eventually. Just don't come looking for a soft landing when you do.

For everyone else: we know. We've known, and the frustration of watching it unfold, shouting into platforms owned by the very people we're shouting about, is its own particular kind of exhaustion.

So What Do We Actually Do?

Here's the thing I keep coming back to. And I mean this with everything I have:

Nothing moves without our money.

Not companies. Not platforms. Not politicians. Not wars. Not any of it.

We talk about power like it's something they give us. It's not. The power is already in our hands. It's our dollars. Our attention. Our labor. Our loyalty to platforms and brands and systems that do not give a damn about us.

The most radical thing you can do right now is be intentional about where every single dollar goes. Stop feeding the machine that's eating you.

I know that's uncomfortable. I know we're attached to convenience, to comfort, to not wanting to sacrifice anything else when everything already feels like a sacrifice. But comfortable has gotten us here, and here isn't good.

I'm Not Just Angry. I'm Awake.

I feel the weight of everyone who came before us every single time I think about this. Every person who fought, who marched, who bled, who built something only for this generation to be handed another version of the same theft, the same system, the same promise that gets snatched back the moment we get too close to actually having something.

The anger I feel isn't destructive. It's clarifying.

It tells me exactly what matters. Exactly who I'm building for. Exactly why none of this is optional.

The question isn't whether the system is broken. It's not broken it's working exactly as designed.

The question is: what are you going to do about it?

Are you mad yet?

Because I am. And I'm not shutting up about it.

Keyanna Harper is the founder of Obsidian People Company , a cultural brand rooted in Black art, Black history, Black life , Black excellent and the truth nobody else wants to say out loud. New posts drop every other Monday.