Thanks to Trump, the Cruel Hand of Exploitation is Invisible No More

The First Troops in Homestead. Thure de Thulstrup, Public domain, via Wikimedia.

We’ve always had inequality. Go back to feudal Europe — the peasant bound to the lord’s land, the serf who could not leave, the villager whose labor fed a castle he would never enter. The hierarchy was absolute, brutal, and barely concealed. But it was also local. The feudal lord and the peasants he exploited breathed the same air and walked beneath the same trees. Even the most distant king knew that peasants had pitchforks...