A Letter to James Forten (September 2, 1766 – March 4, 1842)
Dear Mr. Forten,
In 1776, America was not yet rich.
But strangely enough, many Americans were comparatively prosperous.
At least some of them.
The colonies, despite their roughness, possessed one of the highest standards of living in the world at the time. Average incomes for free white colonists often exceeded those in Britain itself.
Land was more available.
Wages were relatively high.
Food was abundant by European standards.
A thriving middle class already existed in ways that astonished many visitors accustomed to rigid aristocratic hierarchies overseas.
The average free white colonist earned roughly £16 annually, with regional differences shaping outcomes dramatically.
Southern landowners often earned more.
New Englanders somewhat less. Indentured servants survived on lower wages.
Enslaved Africans, of course, were denied wages entirely while generating immense wealth for others through stolen labor.
America’s early prosperity rested partly upon freedom.
And partly upon exploitation.
Those truths arrived together.
Still, compared to Europe’s entrenched aristocracies, colonial America appeared unusually economically fluid. Wealth inequality existed, certainly, but the top 1% controlled a far smaller share of income than today’s elite concentrations. Many ordinary white farmers owned land, which fundamentally altered economic independence.
Ownership changes psychology.
A person owning land possesses leverage against desperation.
And unlike modern America, there were no income taxes, payroll taxes, or corporate taxes in 1776.
Governments funded themselves largely through tariffs and excise taxes.
Cash remained scarce enough that barter systems still flourished.
Farmers traded goods.
Labor exchanged informally.
Taverns extended credit constantly.
Economic life moved through personal relationships as much as currency.
Income itself was less abstract.
More physical.
A successful harvest meant prosperity.
A failed crop meant fear.
And then there was you, Mr. Forten.
Born free in Philadelphia, you became a successful sailmaker and one of the wealthiest Black men in early America despite existing inside a society determined repeatedly to deny Black citizens equal opportunity.
Your success stood as both inspiration and indictment: proof of extraordinary capability trapped inside systems designed deliberately to limit it.
American income has always carried race quietly inside the math.
Then came the 19th century, and America’s economy exploded like a boiler running too hot.
Industrialization transformed income from largely agricultural production into wage labor on a massive scale.
Factories multiplied.
Railroads stitched together continents.
Cities swelled with immigrants and workers chasing opportunity through smoke-filled industrial corridors.
And fortunes became monstrous.
By the late 1800s, industrial workers earned perhaps $450 to $650 annually, enough for survival but often little more.
Laborers worked brutal hours under dangerous conditions while crowded tenements swallowed entire families into urban exhaustion.
Meanwhile, the Gilded Age elite accumulated wealth so extreme it bordered on royal absurdity.
By 1897, four thousand wealthy families controlled as much wealth as millions of ordinary Americans combined. Men like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie built fortunes so vast they permanently reshaped American capitalism itself.
The nation generated staggering prosperity.
It simply distributed it with all the tenderness of a cannon blast.
And yet millions still came.
Immigrants flooded factories because even harsh American wages often exceeded opportunities elsewhere.
Cowboys earned ten to twenty-five dollars monthly.
Factory workers survived week to week.
Child labor flourished.
Women earned significantly less than men for similar work.
Labor unions emerged because workers realized individually they possessed little leverage against concentrated industrial power.
Income became battleground.
Then the 20th century arrived carrying both catastrophe and possibility.
Early-century inequality remained extreme.
By 1928, the top 1% captured nearly 24% of all pretax income.
Then came the Great Depression, collapsing confidence and exposing how fragile economic systems become when wealth concentrates too heavily at the top.
And suddenly America changed course.
The New Deal era,
World War II mobilization,
union growth,
progressive taxation,
and postwar industrial expansion
created what historians sometimes call the “Great Compression.”
Between roughly the 1940s and 1970s, income inequality narrowed dramatically while the middle class expanded.
This became the golden age of broadly shared prosperity.
Factory workers bought homes.
Single incomes supported families.
College became more accessible.
Pensions existed.
Productivity gains translated more directly into wage growth.
The famous “American Dream” solidified during this era because millions genuinely experienced upward mobility simultaneously.
Not equally, of course.
Black Americans remained systematically excluded from many housing, education, and employment opportunities through redlining, discrimination, segregation, and unequal access to wealth-building tools. Women’s labor remained undervalued and restricted. Entire communities were locked out of prosperity while others accumulated generational wealth.
But economically speaking, the middle class flourished in ways now almost mythological.
Then the 1970s arrived.
And something shifted.
Manufacturing declined.
Globalization accelerated.
Automation expanded.
Union power weakened.
Corporate consolidation intensified.
Productivity continued rising steadily while wages stagnated for much of the working and middle classes.
The economy kept growing.
But the growth increasingly floated upward.
From 1980 onward, inequality surged again. CEOs earned vastly more than workers.
Stock ownership became increasingly concentrated.
Housing, healthcare, and education costs climbed faster than wages.
Two-income households became increasingly necessary not for luxury, but stability.
The American Dream did not vanish.
It became more expensive.
And now we arrive in 2026, Mr. Forten, where income in America feels simultaneously enormous, insufficient, and psychologically exhausting.
The median household income hovers around $89,000 annually. Average salaries sit near $66,000. On paper, these numbers appear historically extraordinary compared to previous centuries.
But modern expenses devour income differently.
Housing costs exploded.
Healthcare costs expanded relentlessly.
Childcare resembles ransom negotiations.
College tuition metastasized into generational debt.
Even groceries now inspire small existential crises beside self-checkout kiosks.
And perhaps most importantly:
Many Americans no longer measure income against survival alone.
They measure it against instability.
Can they afford retirement?
Medical emergencies?
Homeownership?
Children?
Unexpected layoffs?
A future not permanently balanced on the edge of financial anxiety?
Modern income often feels less like prosperity and more like defensive positioning against collapse.
At the same time, inequality reached levels rivaling the Gilded Age.
The top 10% of households now hold enormous shares of wealth and income while the middle class shrinks proportionally. Billionaires accumulate fortunes so vast they distort politics, media, housing markets, and even space travel.
Meanwhile, millions of working Americans still live paycheck to paycheck despite full-time employment.
That contradiction may define modern capitalism more than any statistic.
And beneath it all sits another uncomfortable reality:
Work itself changed psychologically.
In 1776, labor was physically exhausting.
In 2026, labor is often mentally exhausting.
Americans answer emails at midnight.
Gig workers juggle multiple jobs without benefits.
Remote work blurred boundaries between labor and life.
Productivity apps monitor performance relentlessly.
Entire careers now depend upon maintaining digital visibility inside systems optimized for constant engagement.
People are not merely earning income anymore.
They are managing perpetual economic vigilance.
And yet, despite everything, Americans still believe deeply in upward mobility, perhaps because the national mythology remains emotionally irresistible.
Hard work.
Opportunity.
Reinvention.
Hustle.
The possibility of building something larger than your origins.
That dream still flickers.
Even when the math gets uglier.
Mr. Forten, if you could witness America in 2026, you would probably marvel at the sheer scale of wealth surrounding ordinary life:
smartphones containing more computational power than entire governments once possessed,
climate-controlled homes,
endless consumer goods,
global commerce moving instantly through digital systems.
But We suspect you would also recognize something painfully familiar:
A nation still wrestling with who gets full access to prosperity.
Because after 250 years, income in America remains about far more than money alone. It touches dignity, freedom, security, race, opportunity, education, geography, inheritance, and power itself.
With admiration, concern, and one aggressively overpriced carton of eggs,
—The Radical Left 💰🖤
And dear reader, perhaps this is the deeper question income asks us after 250 years: what does a fair economy actually look like?
Should prosperity primarily reward ownership, investment, innovation, labor, or luck? At what point does inequality begin threatening democracy itself?
And how can a society grow wealthier overall while so many individuals still feel economically fragile?
Because from colonial barter systems to billion-dollar tech fortunes, America has always been trying to solve the same impossible equation:
How to balance ambition with fairness.