When Donald Trump threw a "Great Gatsby" party featuring bikini-clad bimbos cavorting in a giant cocktail glass at his palatial Mar-a-Lago estate just as he was cutting SNAP benefits for hungry Americans, it highlighted the obscene disparity of wealth in our nation, worse now than it was a century ago when the novel was first published.

This chart from the U.S. Federal Reserve details how the rich got richer over the last fifteen years, with the top one-tenth of one percent Americans now owning more than quadruple the wealth of the bottom half of the population.

According to the Fed, thirty-seven percent of Americans say they don't have cash to cover an unexpected expense of $400; repairing a cracked windshield, for them, means taking out a title loan. An even larger percentage report having medical debts they can't repay. Meanwhile, just last week Elon Musk, the world's richest man, was awarded a one trillion dollar pay package by Tesla.

The average American worker, making $62,000 annually, would require 17.24 million years on the job to earn that sum.

Numbers that big are hard to comprehend and, in fact, the average citizen doesn't understand how lopsided the equation has become between the ultra-rich and everyone else. Yet they know that billionaires take joy rides to outer space and can rent Venice (the whole city) for their weddings. They know that tycoons like Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Elon Musk have all managed to avoid paying taxes in recent years (Donald Trump still refuses to release his own IRS returns). And they are beginning to see how money rigs the game, with a recent Harris poll indicating that over half of all Americans believe the super-wealthy are a threat to our democracy.

In contrast to a democratic government, where the majority rules, an oligarchy constitutes rule by the few and the well-heeled, a state of affairs that increasingly typifies the United States, where it's pay to play. For example:

Media giant Skydance received FCC permission to buy Paramount after the latter agreed to pay $16 million to Donald Trump for allegedly doctoring a 2024 Sixty Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

Tax cheat Paul Walczak, who bought himself private yachts with money he stole from his employees' Social Security payroll contributions, received a Trump pardon after his mother attended a $1 million per plate fund raising dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

SpaceX donated $276 million to Donald Trump's 2024 reelection campaign and months later received a $5.9 billion contract to build new security satellites for the U.S. Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense).

Examples could be multiplied of favors to wealthy friends and special deals for corporate insiders. Money talks but deep pockets whisper, as the real power behind the throne.

Long ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned that "We can either have a democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."

Is it time to take our nation back from the billionaires? Money talks. But the people can still roar.