By Terry Manning
It’s a common saying among poor and middle-class Americans that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
There’s the old quote, “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”
Then you hear about people “born with a silver spoon in their mouth” (spoofed by former Texas Gov. Ann Richards in her famous takedown of President George H.W. Bush: “He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”)
I always thought that was an unnecessary bit of class envy. But maybe I was wrong.
I recently learned of the Matthew Principle, and despite my best efforts, I struggle to find a flaw with its premise. To summarize, when you already have an advantage, your advantage tends to increase over others who lack that advantage, and at their expense.
Supposedly, it comes from the Bible, specifically Matthew 25:29. By the time the current administration is out of the White House, they’ll be calling it the Trump Trajectory. He seems determined to make sure he and his rich buddies get richer at the expense of the poor and middle class, even if some of them are his supporters.
If there’s anything that keeps him from a third term, I hope it includes the viral video of him explaining to a couple of NASCAR drivers in the Oval Office that they were in the presence of Charles Schwab (“It’s not just a company; it’s actually an individual”), and that Schwab had made $2.5 billion in a single day.
How? By pouring money into the stock market after Trump’s tariff threats caused a slump. “Buy low, sell high” is supposed to be an investment strategy that pays off over time, but when you have a rich suckup in the White House telling you when to buy, the time frame can be a lot shorter.
Trump seems to epitomize the Matthew Principle, boasting about how he’s a self-made billionaire despite inheriting at least $413 million of wealth from his deceased father’s real estate empire. Don’t forget his father was so notoriously racist that folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song about him titled, what else, “Old Man Trump.”
“I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate / He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts / When he drawed that color line / Here at his Beach Haven family project.”
I guess racism can be a legacy, too. Doesn’t mean he had to accept it.
But while the price of eggs is still climbing and we’ve not yet seen the worst price increases caused by his ongoing tariff shenanigans, Trump’s wealthy buddies are raking in the bucks.
The Washington Post reported some countries are trying to circumvent the tariffs by cutting deals with Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet business. A half dozen other nations are mentioned, likely following the lead of Lesotho, citing a memo plainly stating the small country hoped the agreement with one of the president’s associates would cause them to be favored generously in tariff negotiations.
Mind you, Musk has already profited from his investment in the Trump campaign. The estimated $300 million he spent has paid off in spades, from dropped federal investigations into shady business practices to taking over government contracts previously signed with competitors to DOGE’s seizure of high-value government data on American citizens.
All this is happening as the president downplays the impact his efforts are having on regular working Americans.
“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl … needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable,” he told reporters in justifying his tariff war.
So there you go, Little Suzie. Doing more with less is patriotic and good for you!
That might sell if we were in actual wartime, but the biggest opponent we face now is the guy who’s supposed to lead us. Instead, he’s like a firefighter turned firebug who sets buildings ablaze so people can praise him when he shows up with the hose and water.
He’s only setting poor people’s homes on fire, though, while he and his fat-cat pals get relief from the flames’ heat by fanning themselves with cold, hard cash.
The biggest flaw I see with applying the Matthew Principle in this case is the Bible parable isn’t about rewarding those who have because simply they have. It is about rewarding people who use their blessings wisely versus those who don’t.
Trump uses his money like a billy club. If he were judged on how wisely he used his fortune, he would be just another tramp on the street.
Terry E. Manning worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
