Tag: economy

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 11: Who Profits?

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    Part 11 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The ten installments before this one traced where the money goes — the categories where household spending has grown, the mechanisms by which it has grown, and the structural reasons for the growth. This one is about who…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 25: The Bottom 90% Agenda – How We Fix This

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    On September 3, 2025, a bunch of people who do not agree with each other about anything stood on a stage in the Capitol and unveiled a bill. The lineup was the tell. A Texas Republican from the hard right. A Rhode Island Democrat. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fist-bumped a Tennessee Republican from the Freedom Caucus on…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 19: The Corporate Tax Dodge

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    One morning in late January, Tesla released its annual report, and up where the shareholders look was the number the company wanted them to see. Almost $5.7 billion of income earned in the United States in 2025. Roughly double what it had earned here the year before. A very good year, told the way a…

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

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    There’s a food pantry on a base near you. There’s a food pantry on most of them. Operation Homefront, the Armed Services YMCA, the local Feeding America affiliate, sometimes the chaplain’s office running a closet out of a side room. The volunteers know which weeks are bad — paydays, PCS moves, deployment gaps that didn’t…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 1: USA! USA! USA!

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    The first time I really clocked the USA chant in the wild was at a NASCAR race. Flags everywhere — not just flying, but as bandanas, t-shirts, full Stars-and-Stripes jeans, patches sewn onto things that did not previously have patches. (Aside: the U.S. Flag Code technically prohibits using the flag as clothing, bedding, or drapery.…