Pandemic Relief Ends: Long-Term Structures Still Overwhelm Lower-Income Families

While brief, temporary relief measures, such as pandemic-related subsidies, offered a momentary pause, the long-term structural economic forces in the US still overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest. This framework is responsible for the deep inequality that persists.
This structural bias is why the US extreme poverty population remains high, with over four million people living on less than $3 a day—a crisis that has tripled over 35 years. The policy architecture ensures that national prosperity bypasses the working class.
The result is that the poorest 10% of Americans receive a mere 1.8% of total national income, a statistic that ranks them worse than low-income groups in developing nations like Nigeria and Bangladesh, confirming the policy-driven nature of the wealth gap.