The Almighty Dollar-The God of the U.S.A.
How the U.S. worships Mammon
The Almighty Dollar-The God of the U.S.A.
How the U.S. worships Mammon
If you live in the U.S., every single aspect of your life is profited off by someone. Everything. From the moment you’re born to the moment you die, and even after, you’re part of someone’s quarterly earnings report.
The system is designed to squeeze every last dime out of you, and then blame you when you’re broke. If wages go up? So does inflation. Rent spikes. Groceries cost more. Gas creeps up. You’re not actually gaining anything, you’re just chasing your own tail on a treadmill built by Wall Street.
America is a massive labor camp with really good marketing. Yes, it’s fine to make a profit off a product, art, or a service, but there should be a line. And that line has been completely obliterated. There are some industries that should never be for-profit. But they are. And it’s killing us, literally.
Birth: Pay to Exit the Womb
The average birth in the U.S. costs around $30,000. Even a no-frills birthing center will run you close to $8,000. In most developed countries, birth is free. Even many developing countries give free prenatal and birth care. Here? Unless you qualify for Medicaid (and that depends on your state and whether you make just a little too much), you’re on the hook for a bill bigger than your first car.
Even recommendations to circumcize your baby have a profit motive behind them.
Grade School
Public schools in poorer districts are a joke. Because schools are funded by property taxes, the richer the zip code, the better the education. Poorer kids get overcrowded classrooms, outdated textbooks, and crumbling buildings. Richer kids get iPads, STEM labs, and AP classes.
Charter schools? A scam. They siphon taxpayer money away from public schools and pump it into privately-run institutions with little oversight.
Private schools? Even worse. They teach Jesus rode a dinosaur and the Earth is 6,000 years old.
The long game for Evangelical Republicans seems to be turning the country into a Christian theocracy, Handmaid’s Tale-style. Libertarians just want to defund everything and let the rich send their kids to school while the poor get funneled into Amazon warehouses.
College
Want to get ahead in life? Great, here’s a $100,000 loan you’ll never pay off. Student loans are the one kind of debt you can’t escape, not even in bankruptcy. That’s not an accident. It’s intentional. The government profits off your dreams.
And guess what? Wages haven’t kept up with the cost of a degree in decades. You’re told to go to school to avoid flipping burgers, only to end up with a degree and still flipping burgers because your degree is “too advanced” for entry-level and not enough for anything else. Our country literally has people who get their disability or social security garnished to pay on their defaulted student loans…
Rent
Rental rates in the U.S. are unregulated in most places, which means landlords can, and do, raise rent as much as they want. Cities like New York and San Francisco are unlivable unless you make six figures. And thanks to investment firms like BlackRock buying up housing stock, even small towns aren’t safe anymore. Houses are snatched up and rented back to you at double the mortgage cost. Home ownership? That’s a boomer fantasy now.
Medical Care
Before Obamacare, insurance companies could deny you coverage for having a “preexisting condition”, like asthma or being born. Now they can’t drop you, but they can make sure your premiums, deductibles, and co-pays are so high that you’ll avoid going to the doctor anyway.
And the language, premiums, co-pays, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket maximums are intentionally confusing. In countries with single-payer systems, people just… go to the doctor. No haggling with insurance, no bills months later, no GoFundMes to survive cancer.
Big Pharma
An inhaler that costs $10 in the UK? $300 here. Why? Because pharmaceutical companies literally bribe lawmakers to keep prices high.
Martin Shkreli became infamous when he raised the price of Daraprim , a 65-year-old drug used to treat AIDS , from $13.50 a pill to $750. And he got away with it. This happens constantly with insulin, EpiPens, and countless other life-saving meds.
Doctors get kickbacks for prescribing expensive new drugs instead of generic ones. I’ve seen it firsthand. People were prescribed drugs they didn’t even need, just so someone could meet their quota and buy a second vacation home.
And then there’s the opioid epidemic. Purdue Pharma pushed OxyContin on the public, knowing it was addictive. Reps told doctors it was “less addictive” (it wasn’t), and then flooded poor, rural towns with millions of pills. Entire communities got addicted. And when the prescription well dried up, people turned to heroin. Thousands died. No one of consequence went to prison.
Hospitals and Doctors
Hospitals charge $20 for a Tylenol and $1,000 for a bag of saline, and even charge for “skin to skin” contact between a mother and her newborn. Doctors are paid insanely high wages if they go into specialties that cater to the rich. It’s no wonder so many people go into medicine for money, not healing.
Meanwhile, insurance companies lowball hospitals, pharma companies overcharge everyone, and you’re caught in the crossfire. The whole system is a chaotic bidding war that leaves patients broke, confused, and most often untreated.
Nursing Homes
At the start of my career, I worked in a number of nursing homes. They’re horrifying. Residents pay thousands a month, often draining their life savings, only to be warehoused in understaffed facilities run by corporations cutting every corner.
Directors get bonuses for slashing budgets. That means cheaper supplies, fewer staff, and more neglect. Patients end up sitting in their own waste because there aren’t enough aides or nurses. Food gets worse. Care declines. But sure, that administrator got their Christmas bonus, so it’s all good, right?
Food
You’d think with all the food we produce, no one would go hungry. But that’s not how capitalism works. The U.S. has an obesity crisis and a hunger crisis. Ultra-processed junk food is cheap and addictive. Healthy food is expensive. Grocery stores in poor neighborhoods are rare. School lunches are trash, but the only meal many children even get in a day.
In the U.S., we throw away 30–40% of our food supply. That’s billions of pounds of food tossed out every year, yet we still have millions of people going hungry. Why? Because feeding the hungry doesn’t turn a profit. There are entire laws against “food rescue” — that is, grocery stores and restaurants donating unsold goods, because liability risk and “brand perception” matter more than starving people.
Meanwhile, food prices are constantly manipulated by agribusiness giants who get subsidies from your tax dollars. They overproduce corn and soy and turn it into junk food, then sell it back to you in ten thousand forms that cause diabetes and heart disease… which, wouldn’t you know it, are great for the healthcare industry. How convenient.
Guns
America has more guns than people. Mass shootings are a regular event. Kids do active shooter drills instead of fire drills. And any time someone proposes the most basic gun control laws, half the country screams “tyranny!”
The fact that companies have made bulletproof backpacks should tell you enough.
The U.S. is the main supplier of weapons for Mexican cartels, creating a problem that allows for more taxpayer funding to go into law enforcement rather than actually investing in its citizenry.
Gun manufacturers are protected, untouchable, and highly profitable. Politicians get paid to do nothing. Meanwhile, we bury children. Over and over.
You Can’t Even Leave
The U.S. is one of the only countries that taxes you even if you don’t live here. (the only other is Eritrea) You could be sipping sangria in Spain, never setting foot on U.S. soil again, and the IRS will still want their cut. It’s not about “paying your fair share.” It’s about keeping you tethered to the system. There is no escape from Mammon, not even in exile.
Think you’ll just say “screw it” and live off-grid? Not so fast. In many states, it’s actually illegal to fully disconnect from utilities. Want to harvest rainwater? That might be restricted. Install solar panels and store the power? Some states charge you a fee or tax for that too. Want to build a tiny house or compost toilet? Zoning laws and code enforcement will come knocking. And if you do manage to build a tiny home on your own land, some county official will show up and tell you it’s “not up to code.” Slap you with fines, and if you stand your ground, likely foreclose/seize your property, yes, even in red states. Why? Because you’re not consuming. You’re not feeding the beast. And the beast does not like that. The U.S. doesn’t just worship Mammon, it enforces devotion with an iron fist.
Churches
These institutions were originally tax-exempt because they were supposed to serve the community. But that ship has long sailed. Today, churches, especially the mega ones, operate like corporations. They rake in millions, pay no taxes, and spend it on jet planes and designer suits for their preachers. And while they’re legally barred from political involvement, they preach voting guides from the pulpit, push right-wing policies, and pretend Jesus was a capitalist. Meanwhile, they do the bare minimum for the poor and marginalized. It’s all showmanship, smoke, and mirrors. Worshipping God in name, but Mammon in practice.
Prisons
Ah yes, the “Land of the Free.” With the highest incarceration rate in the world. Over 2 million people behind bars, many of them serving excessive sentences for non-violent crimes, disproportionately Black and Brown. Private prisons profit off of every head in a cell. Prison labor is often paid mere cents an hour, and companies like Victoria’s Secret, Whole Foods, and even the military-industrial complex have benefited. And the system ensures a steady supply, through cash bail that punishes poverty, school-to-prison pipelines, and harsh sentencing that favors punishment over rehabilitation. Even after serving time, good luck getting a job or housing. You’re marked for life, and that mark lines someone’s pockets.
With the bail system, if you’re rich, you can walk the same day. If you’re poor, you rot. Even if you’re innocent. It’s not about justice, it’s about who can afford it. Courts rely on bail bond companies to profit off desperate families. They use threats, coercion, and shady contracts. Bail reform is talked about, occasionally attempted, but always watered down or reversed when the prison-industrial complex starts missing their labor force.
All of this is just slavery with extra steps.