How to Reset the Board: Fixing America's Rigged Monopoly Game

Alright, let’s get real. We’ve reached a point where the top 1% owns more than the bottom 90% combined. That’s not a bug in the system—it’s the system working exactly as designed. The game is rigged, and if we don’t flip the board, the house (owned by the billionaires) is gonna keep winning every time.

So, how do we actually fix this mess? How do we stop this endless funnel of wealth into the pockets of a few and create an economy that works for *everyone*? 

Here’s how:

1. Turn Giant Corporations into Worker-Owned Businesses
Right now, a handful of CEOs and stockholders hoard the wealth while the people actually doing the work barely scrape by. If a business pays anyone over $1 million a year, or if it has more than 100 employees, it must transition into a worker self-directed enterprise (WSDE)—meaning the workers own and run the company democratically. If you're making a fortune off hundreds of workers, they should have a say in how the business is run and where the profits go. No more corporate monarchs. 

2. Cap CEO Pay—For Real This Time
Enough with the CEO-to-worker pay ratio being 400 to 1. That’s robbery. Any company with more than 100 employees must cap executive pay at *no more than 20 times the lowest-paid worker*. If the lowest-paid employee makes $50,000, the CEO can make $1 million max. Want to raise your salary? Then *raise everyone’s salary.*

3. Break Up the Monopolies
Amazon, Google, Apple, the big banks—they’ve all become too powerful. Any corporation that controls more than 25% of a major market (retail, social media, food production, banking) must be broken up into smaller, worker-owned businesses. Real competition means *no more robber barons* calling the shots.

4. End Stock Buybacks—Use Profits for Workers, Not Wall Street
Corporations are hoarding money and driving up stock prices while cutting jobs and wages. Ban stock buybacks, and force companies to use profits to reinvest in *workers*—higher wages, better benefits, and stronger communities.

5. Wealth Cap at $999 Million—No More Billionaires
Nobody needs to be a billionaire. Period. If you hit $999 million, congratulations, you won capitalism. Now, any wealth beyond that gets reinvested into society—housing, healthcare, education, climate action. You don’t get to sit on a dragon’s hoard of cash while people starve.

6. Free Healthcare, Education, and Housing for All
Wanna know how the rich keep getting richer? They make the rest of us desperate. If we’re drowning in medical bills, student debt, and rent, we’ll take any job, any wage, any abuse. Universal healthcare, free public college, and housing as a human right mean no more desperation economy. This means people have more freedom to choose jobs that don't exploit them, and aren't desperate to accept whatever they can get. 

7. Public Banking—End the Private Banking Cartel
Right now, Wall Street banks gamble with our money, crash the economy, then get bailed out while we lose our homes. Enough. Let’s create publicly owned banks that reinvest money into communities, not corporate shareholders. If the government can print money to save Wall Street, it can print money to save Main Street.

8. Tax the Ultra-Rich Like It’s 1945 Again
Back in the 1950s, the top tax rate for the ultra-rich was *90%*. And guess what? America thrived. Bring it back. Tax wealth, tax capital gains, tax corporate profits that aren’t reinvested into workers. If the rich want to play games with the economy, they can pay their way back into the real world.

9. End Corporate Welfare and Political Bribery
The rich don’t just hoard money—they buy the rules. Ban corporate lobbying, get big money out of politics, and make elections publicly funded. If we don’t, they’ll keep buying politicians who rig the system in their favor.

10. Make Labor Unions a Fundamental Right
The biggest weapon against wealth hoarding? Unions. The reason wages have stagnated while CEO pay skyrocketed is because unions got gutted. Every worker should have the right to organize, and any company that busts a union should be taken over by the workers—no exceptions.

The billionaires and corporate elites aren’t gonna give up their power willingly. They’ll throw money at politicians, the media, and even the police to keep things exactly as they are. But history shows that when enough people stand up and demand change, the board gets flipped.

We don’t need to burn everything down. We just need to stop letting a tiny handful of elites rule the world like feudal lords. 

Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action, an online library for people who want to change the world. He lives in Lawrence, KS.