The Truth About Money Mindset: Why It’s Not You—It’s Capitalism

This might sound like a bold or even radical statement, but I’m going to say it anyway:

Money mindset is an outgrowth of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism.

Let’s be clear: the idea that your relationship to money is purely a personal, internal issue, a mindset problem, is a dangerous lie. It’s a lie designed to make you focus on your thoughts and beliefs instead of asking harder questions about power, theft, and exploitation.

If land hadn’t been stolen and enclosed for private profit...
If Indigenous ways of relating to land and resources hadn’t been violently erased...
If people had been paid a living wage instead of being enslaved or exploited...
If profit was shared rather than extracted...
If wealth wasn’t hoarded by a few at the expense of the many...

We wouldn’t be talking about your money mindset. Because it wouldn’t be necessary.

The concept of “money mindset” insists that not having what you need to live well, whether it's safety, housing, food, health care, or rest, is the result of personal failure. That if you just thought about money differently, or spoke more abundance into your life, or healed your inherited scarcity wounds, your material conditions would magically improve.

This is an incredibly convenient narrative for those who benefit from the existing system.

It conveniently forgets that some families have never had the opportunity to build wealth because their ancestors were enslaved, their wages stolen, or their land taken.
It conveniently ignores the centuries of policies and practices that have locked entire communities out of the economy, from redlining to Jim Crow to mass incarceration to the racial wealth gap that persists today.
It conveniently pretends that universal access to safety and care is a mindset issue, not a systemic one.

What would happen if we told the truth?

What if we stopped asking, “How can I improve my money mindset?” and instead asked:

• What would my life look like if land was returned and cared for collectively?

• What if profit was shared equitably among those who created it?

• What if everyone earned a living wage—enough to truly live, not just survive?

• What if universal healthcare and education weren’t privileges but rights?

• What if housing was affordable and safe for everyone, not just the wealthy?

• What if wealth and power were redistributed, not hoarded?

Would we still need to heal our money mindset, or would there be nothing to heal from?

This isn’t to say that personal reflection has no place. But healing from scarcity is not the same as gaslighting ourselves into ignoring how that scarcity was created in the first place.

A truly liberatory approach to money isn’t about bypassing the truth…it’s about facing it. It’s about refusing to internalize blame for conditions we didn’t create. And it’s about imagining and building a world where abundance is collective, not contingent on mindset.

If you're struggling with money, the problem is not your mindset.
The problem is the system.

And you’re not broken.
The system is.