The rich may be richer today. Guess what, the poor are a lot richer too. Would you rather be poor in the US or poor in Venezuela? It isn't a perfect system but it is much better than most if not all. What changes do you propose to make the system better?
This is a false dichotomy. It also fails to recognize what poverty in the USA really looks like. There are no shortage of people in this nation, regardless of color, who are less than one paycheck away from homelessness. If fais to recognize our economic system that enables the subjection of people by sucking up all of their meager earnings just to scrape by w/ a roof over their heads. That's the same in the projects as it is in the hollers of Appalachia.
If you're a single mother working 4 part time jobs with no health benefits or retirement and you're still below the poverty line, is that the fault of the person, or the system that creates this kind of servitude?
As I've said, return to a nation where we don't love money more than our fellow countrymen, work towards a better system for all Americans, not just the ones who can afford the best lobbyists, and bring back Eisenhower's tax structure if you want to maintain pure capitalism.
If you want to lessen the burden to small business owners and increase their ability to pay the hired help a decent wage, then give us a nationalized health service so the employer isn't footing the bill for healthcare and 1/3 of Medicare/medicaid. There are plenty of studies and conservative cases for a NHS that bear out that this is the fiscally conservative approach to healthcare.
If you want to spur innovation and also increase wages, then tax cap gains at the same rate that you tax income. That alone will shift money into the hands of the workers and middle-class.
If you want to reduce welfare spending, then increase school funding. Provide a path forward for people in poverty in trades, work-programs that fund education, etc. Free secondary education isn't free. it's an investment in our nation for future productivity and strength. Focusing on low taxes for corporations is why we end up with the deficit spending we have now, on top of the largest inequality of wealth that the world has seen since the middle-ages.
Right now, we have corporations who want to subjugate us, while hiding trillions of dollars off-shore to avoid being actual citizens. We spent decades sending our manufacturing overseas because Chinese plants could make it cheaper and increase profits, rather than focus on quality and a strong nation.
Capitalism can save us, but we need to take it back from the looters and grifters.