Even that's Odd

Category: Broken By Design

  • Broken By Design Part 1: USA! USA! USA!

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    We’re #1!Are we though?Where Does America Actually Rank? The Complete Scoreboard America is the greatest country in the world. We hear it constantly. Politicians say it. We chant it at sporting events. We believe it. But what if we actually kept score? What if we ranked ourselves against other developed nations on the things that…

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  • Broken By Design Part 0: What’s Going On Here? (@ eventhatsodd)

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    We’ve gotten a little off track from what we normally write about here—our travel adventures, home projects where mistakes are inevitably made, and our odd obsessions. So I figured I should explain what happened. I’ve been concerned about the direction and polarization of this country for some time. I consider myself open-minded and not on…

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  • Broken By Design Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking: How Language is Weaponized to Keep Us Fighting Each Other Instead of Those in Power

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    This is Part 2 in a series. Part 1 showed where America actually ranks. Now, before we follow the money, we need to talk about why you’ve been trained to stop listening the moment certain words appear. How I Realized We Needed This Post I was working on the next piece in this series – the…

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  • Broken By Design Part 3: Follow the Money: How the System is Rigged Against 90% of Us.

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    This is Part 3 in a series. Part 1 showed where America ranks among developed nations (spoiler: badly). Part 2 explained how language is weaponized to keep you from noticing. Now let’s follow the money and see exactly who’s picking your pocket while you argue about Dr. Seuss. Now That You Can See Through The Language Game… Remember in…

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  • Broken By Design Part 4: The Healthcare Trap: What Congress Gets vs. What You Get (And Why That Matters)

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    This is Part 4 in a series exploring how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: The Rankings | Part 2: Language Manipulation | Part 3: Follow the Money Let’s Talk About Congressional Healthcare Remember in Part 3 when we documented that Americans pay $12,555 per person for healthcare (#1 in the world) but rank 36th in life…

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  • Broken By Design Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom

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    This is Part 5 in a series exploring how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: The Rankings | Part 2: Language Manipulation | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: Congressional Healthcare The Most Brilliant Trap Ever Designed Imagine if your grocery store access was tied to your job. You work at your current employer, you can shop…

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  • Broken By Design Part 6: Healthcare Solutions That Actually Work (And Why We’re Told They Won’t)

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    This is Part 6 in a series exploring how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: The Rankings | Part 2: Language Manipulation | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: Congressional Healthcare | Part 5: Employer Insurance Trap We’ve Documented The Problem. Now Let’s Fix It. Over the past five posts, we’ve shown: Now let’s talk solutions. Not vague “we…

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  • Broken By Design Part 6B: How Universal Healthcare Would Save American Business (And Why Some Fight It Anyway)

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    This is Part 6B in our series on healthcare reform. Part 6: Healthcare Solutions covered the big picture. Now let’s talk about why universal healthcare is the most pro-business policy we could implement – and why some large corporations oppose it anyway. The Current System Costs American Business $1+ Trillion Annually Let’s start with a simple truth…

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  • Broken By Design Part 7: The Housing Trap: How Zoning Laws and Investment Firms Stole the American Dream

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    This is Part 7 in our series on systems rigged against regular people. Part 1: Rankings | Part 2: Language | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4-6: Healthcare Series The Numbers Tell The Story 1980s: Median first-time homebuyer age: 29 2024: Median first-time homebuyer age: 38-40 (depending on survey) 1985: Home cost 3.5x annual income 2024: Home costs 7.6x annual income Since 1960: Median home price increased 121% (inflation-adjusted) Since 1960: Median household income increased 29% (inflation-adjusted) Translation: Homes have gotten…

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  • Broken By Design Part 8: The Education and Childcare Cliff: $1.8 Trillion in Debt + The Childcare Crisis That Starts It All

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    This is Part 8 in our series on systems rigged against the 90%. Part 1: Rankings | Part 2: Language | Part 3: Follow the Money | Parts 4-6: Healthcare | Part 7: Housing The Full Lifecycle of Extraction Have a baby: Need childcare to work → Costs $13,128/year (35% of single parent income) Kid turns 18: Need college to get good job → Graduate with…

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  • Broken By Design Part 9: Immobility Nightmare: How Three Failed Systems Killed the American Dream

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    Part 9 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% Here’s something we haven’t talked about yet: why these systems work so perfectly together. We’ve covered healthcare. We’ve covered housing. We’ve covered education and childcare. And each one, individually, is extractive enough to keep most of us trapped. But here’s what makes…

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  • Broken By Design Part 10: The Incarceration Industry: How We Built a System That Profits From Failure

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    Part 10 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% Before we start, let’s address the elephant in the room: when we talk about criminal justice reform, we are NOT talking about “defunding the police” or “cashless bail.” These are real proposals that some activists made, and they’re bad ideas. But opponents…

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  • Broken By Design Part 11: The Military-Industrial Complex: $968 Billion in Wealth Extraction

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    Part 11 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% The U.S. military budget for 2024 is $968 billion. That’s more than the next 10 countries combined. More than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine combined. And here’s what makes this the perfect example of…

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  • Broken By Design Part 12: The US Political System: The Republican and Democrat Consensus You’re Not Supposed to Notice

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    Part 12 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% We’ve covered healthcare, housing, education, prisons, and military spending. Billions—trillions—extracted from the bottom 90% and funneled to the top 10%. Different industries. Different mechanisms. Same result: wealth flows up. And here’s what should be obvious by now: both parties perpetuate every single…

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  • Broken By Design Part 13: U.S. Politics: Not Functioning As Founders Intended—And How We Can Fix It

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    Part 13 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% We’ve established that the political system maintains wealth extraction through bipartisan consensus. Both parties take corporate money. Both parties vote to protect extraction. The system works exactly as designed—just not for us. But here’s the good news: this isn’t how the system…

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  • Broken By Design Part 14: Rooting For The Wrong Team – How Culture Wars Keep Us Fighting While They Rob Us Blind

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    How Media Ecosystems and Broken Norms Divide Us A number of years ago, watching news coverage of conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, and various African nations, I remember having a thought that now fills me with embarrassment: No wonder there are always conflicts in those parts of the world—they’re still organized around tribal…

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  • Broken By Design Part 15: In Whose God Do We Trust?

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    Religion as the Ultimate Control Mechanism Let’s start with a question that makes people uncomfortable: Which god is the real one? Christians say Jesus Christ is the son of God and the only path to salvation. Muslims say Muhammad is the final prophet and the Quran is God’s literal word. Jews say the Messiah hasn’t…

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  • Broken By Design Part 16: In Our Greed We Trust

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    When God’s Representatives Want Private Jets In Part 15, we established that religion can’t be questioned without risking damnation. It’s God’s will. Divine authority. Absolute truth. Now let’s talk about what happens when you combine unquestionable authority with zero financial accountability: the biggest, most profitable con in American history. Kenneth Copeland has a net worth…

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  • Broken By Design Part 17: The Systemic Theft Of Our Retirement

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    How Wall Street, Corporations, and Both Political Parties Dismantled Retirement Security for the Bottom 90% Meet Barbara. She worked as an administrative assistant at a manufacturing company for 38 years. In 1985, when she was hired at age 25, her offer letter promised a pension: after 30 years of service, she’d receive 60% of her…

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  • Broken By Design Part 18: The Rigged Tax Code

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    Taxation Without Representation (For the Bottom 90%) Why Billionaires Pay Less Than Teachers, and How We Let Them Write the Rules In 2007, Warren Buffett—then the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $52 billion—made a bet with his office staff. He offered to pay anyone $1 million if their tax rate…

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  • Broken By Design Part 19: The Corporate Tax Dodge

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    How Corporations Profit from Our Tax Investment While Avoiding Theirs You’ve heard the story a thousand times: we need to cut corporate taxes to incentivize job creation. Lower the rates, reduce regulations, and watch the jobs flow. The “job creators” need their freedom and their profits, and if we just get out of their way,…

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  • Broken By Design Part 20: Corporate Socialism

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    The Monopoly Scam Everyone Hates (But Both Parties Protect) You know what socialism looks like? It’s when the government picks one company to serve your area, eliminates all competition, and you’re forced to pay whatever they charge. You can’t shop around. You can’t choose. You can’t leave. You take what they give you or go…

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  • Broken By Design Part 21: Coordinated Sabotage—How They Break Public Services Then Blame Government

    Let me start with the USPS example as the opening, since it’s the clearest case of deliberate sabotage. In 2006, a Republican Congress and a Republican President did something remarkable. They passed a law requiring the United States Postal Service to do something no other government agency, and no private company in America, has ever…

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  • Broken By Design Part 22: Media Consolidation and Capitulation – Why You Don’t Know Any Of This

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    We’ve spent 21 parts documenting how the bottom 90% are systematically extracted from: • Healthcare monopolies charging you double what other countries pay (Parts 1-6) • Housing financialization pricing you out of homeownership (Part 7) • Student debt trapping you in economic servitude (Part 8) • Employer-based insurance making you afraid to leave your job…

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  • Broken By Design Part 23: The Efficiency Lie – How Technology Could Make Public Services Better Than Private (And Why They Don’t Want You To Know)

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    “Government is inefficient.” You’ve heard this your entire life. From politicians, from think tanks, from media, from your uncle at Thanksgiving. “The private sector does it better.” “Government can’t run anything efficiently.” “DMV wait times prove government doesn’t work.” “Only competition and profit motive create efficiency.” This has been repeated so many times, by so…

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  • Broken By Design Part 24A: The Environmental Extraction – They Profit Today, We All Pay Forever

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    How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% In 1977, Exxon’s own scientists warned executives that burning fossil fuels would cause catastrophic climate change. The company had some of the best climate research in the world. They knew. In 1988, they stopped their climate research program and started funding climate denial instead. Not because the…

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  • Broken By Design Part 24B: Rebuilding Worker Power – Why Unions Are the Key to Everything

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    We’ve spent 24 parts documenting how the bottom 90% are systematically extracted from: Healthcare, housing, education, prisons, military spending, taxes, monopolies, public service sabotage, media manipulation, environmental destruction, gig economy exploitation, financial system predation, and trade deals that ship jobs overseas. Every system is rigged against workers. Now here’s the question: How do workers fight…

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  • Broken By Design Part 25: The Bottom 90% Agenda – How We Fix This

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    We started this series with a simple question: What is wrong with us? Why does the richest country in human history rank 44th in life expectancy? Why do we spend twice as much on healthcare as other developed countries but get worse outcomes? Why can’t people afford housing even though we have more vacant homes…

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