Billionaires are running America. The current shutdown proves it.

"Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Inequality Watch Report. I'm Taya Graham, your inequality watchdog. Now, these past two weeks, Washington didn't just shut down the government. It shut down equality because when the government stops working, inequality doesn't take a break. It actually cashes in. Now Republicans are saying that the shutdown is about bad policy from Democrats, but we see something different that it is fundamentally about inequality and we can prove it right, Stephen?"

"Yeah, absolutely. This is what I think we are going to start calling the first full throated inequality shutdown. It's not just about politics. It's not just about who has different policy proposals. I think we're seeing something really, really different. It's been evolving and it's been on the horizon for a long time, but walking around Capitol Hill, we are seeing a different force here that is kind of defining the moment. I think it has a lot to do with economic inequality."

"Nothing basically. Well, because there's no one there because Johnson has shut down Congress. Now, generally speaking, in the past when you have shutdowns, you'll have both sides sort of eating a lot of pizza, staying up late, negotiating at least being around. But Johnson has said absolutely no one's going to be there, so there's no way anything can happen. So they have literally thwarted any kind of exchange between the two parties. So really that's what makes it to me somewhat different."

A recent government shutdown halted congressional operations and left Capitol Hill largely empty. Congressional leadership, particularly Johnson, enforced an absence of staff and members, preventing in-person negotiation and exchange. The absence eliminated typical shutdown behaviors like overnight negotiations and informal interactions. The shutdown functioned to entrench inequalities by blocking policy exchange and allowing actors benefiting from economic inequality to capitalize. Political parties offered competing explanations, with Republicans framing the shutdown as Democratic policy failure while others framed it as driven by inequality dynamics. Observers describe the event as a new, full-throated inequality shutdown shaping the political moment.

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