Echoes of Feudalism, America's Economic Reality; Middle Ages, Rigid Hierarchies, Peasants in Debt, Powerful Lords

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'Echoes of Feudalism, America's Economic Reality,' Daily Kos, Jan. 9, 2025.
- Lack of social mobility, property ownership, large class of bound tenant-renters in debt, few artisans, merchants, very small middle class.
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To grasp the stark realities of income inequality in the United States, let’s step back into the Middle Ages—a time of rigid hierarchies, bound peasants, and the unchecked power of lords.
Strange as it may seem, the social and economic structure of feudalism offers a compelling metaphor for today’s America. While we pride ourselves on progress and mobility, the parallels are unsettling.

Consider this: what if the “poor” and “working poor” of modern discourse were instead labeled as “serfs,” tied to their debts and dependent on the wealth of others? Such terminology is provocative, but it strips away the veneer of polite euphemisms to reveal the harsh inequities of our economic model. After all, Jesus himself said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11)—a phrase often used to excuse systemic inequality as inevitable, even natural.

But is it really? Or have we allowed a modern form of feudalism to emerge, where wealth and power are concentrated at the top, leaving the majority with limited mobility and little say over their economic destiny?

In her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson describes the entrenched hierarchies that shape American society, particularly in racial terms. This essay broadens that lens to examine how class divides mimic the economic disparities of the medieval era. The similarities are chilling. Then, as now, the elite owned vast resources while those at the bottom toiled to survive. Nobles held the land; today, landlords and corporate elites control housing and employment. Social mobility was rare, and for many in the United States, it remains a mirage...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/9/2296005/-Echoes-of-Feudalism-America-s-Economic-Reality

- Debt Bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

- Enclosure Acts. The inclosure acts created legal property rights to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_acts

- Medieval West Virginia.. The coal operators’ system usually kept the miners in debt to the company store, so they could never get ahead and there was no where else to work.“..“To keep the miners’ union out of the fields…the operators employed 6 principal methods of defense and attack: (a) injunctions; (b) martial law; (c) suzerainty over county government; (d) elaborate espionage and spy systems; (e) coercion and intimidation of workers by the use of mine guards; and (f) blacklisting all miners who favored the union... The miners asserted that they sought only to maintain their legal right to join their trade union...
http://www.wvgw.net/wvcoal/essays/med3.htm