Broke, or broken?

We’re told Social Security is running out of money.

We’re told food stamps are for lazy people who don’t want to work—even though many recipients hold two or more jobs and still can’t afford to eat.

We’re told health care is a privilege, not a right. So if you can’t afford food, how the hell are you supposed to come up with thousands of unavailable dollars for insurance companies that care more about their bottom line than a patient’s life?

Schools, teachers, infrastructure—why aren’t our tax dollars being spent on what actually matters?

Right here in Miami, where I live, try renting a two-bedroom apartment—if you’re lucky, about 750 square feet—for under $2,000 a month. And if you’re fortunate enough to own your home outright, the product of a lifetime of work, you may still find yourself weighing whether you can afford to keep it, as property taxes climb to punishing levels.

So once again, I ask: Where are my tax dollars going?

Let’s take a closer look—right here at home.

According to an analysis of Miami-Dade County payroll data, approximately 6,598 county government employees earn more than $100,000 a year across all departments. That’s about 22 percent of the county workforce, out of roughly 29,400 employees.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that some county employees don’t deserve six-figure salaries. Many surely do.

But nearly 7,000 people making more than $100,000 a year?

I recently wrote that one out of every five children in Miami-Dade lives in poverty—about 67,000 children who may miss one or more meals a day because their parents cannot afford food.

So while roughly 20 percent of county employees earn six figures, that same percentage of children may be going hungry. And too often, those children appear to be treated as collateral damage in a society that slowly turns its back on those most in need.

$600 Million, Wasted So Far

Now let’s turn to Washington, D.C., where a vainglorious man as mean as the devil is wasting millions of dollars a day in the Caribbean.

For what?

We awoke to news of a military assault on Venezuela and the abduction of the country’s president in the early hours of Saturday. This followed months in which Donald Trump—listening closely to the whispers of Secretary of State Marco Rubio—deployed more than 15,000 troops to the region, despite no credible signs of instability. Estimated total cost to U.S. taxpayers so far (as of late 2025): $600 million+.

He also dispatched the USS Eisenhower, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, at a reported cost of $18 million per day, only to later boast that he had “captured” Venezuela’s president.

Captured—or kidnapped?

As CounterPunch put it plainly: “People in the U.S. go hungry as Trump spends millions to invade Venezuela.”

How long are we going to allow this to continue?

Governments in the United States no longer listen to their people. And the people, in turn, are not reacting. The reasons are many: exhaustion from working nonstop just to survive, a profound loss of faith in political leaders, and a growing tendency to shrug off corruption as just another part of daily life.

Which leads to the inevitable question: Is this really the democracy we were sold? Or are we being duped—content to accept injustice as “just the way it is”?

The rabbit hole keeps getting deeper. And if history teaches us anything, it is that when people are ignored long enough, the pressure does not simply disappear.

If the only way out becomes violent upheaval, it will be a tragedy of our own making.