There was a time when the architectures of greed were at least pleasantly straightforward. One could stroll down to the riverfront, observe the soot-choked brick factories, and point a gloved finger directly at the man with the loudest watch and know exactly who was shortening his lifespan for a nickel. It was a dreadful arrangement, Read More …
Tag: gilded age
The Prison Boom Nobody Talks About Enough
There’s a story hiding in plain sight in America, and it’s one we should probably be talking about a lot more. Start with some numbers. In 1972, around 330,000 people were behind bars in the United States. By 2008, that figure had ballooned to 2.3 million, an increase of over 700 percent. Even today, in Read More …
The Gospel of the Scarcity Hustle
The wind comes off the lake cold sometimes, even in June, whistling through the gaps in the elevated train tracks down on Wells Street. It’s the kind of morning where people duck their heads, hurrying to get inside, some to the high-rise trading floors with the panoramic views, others to the windowless cubicles where the Read More …
The Captains of Phantom Industry
It has been brought to my attention through the standard digital pipelines, which I understand are powered by invisible currents and the tireless labor of folks sitting in cubicles under dimly lit fluorescent lights (to save on the electric bill, Bob Cratchit) , that we are on the precipice of welcoming our very first trillionaire. Read More …
The Altar of the New Gilded Age
The algorithms hum in the deep neon of the Chicago evening, ticking away like a million little telegraphs from a future we didn’t ask for. Down on LaSalle Street, the margins are up. Goldman Sachs reports that corporate markups have doubled since the late eighties, a cold ten percent of pure extraction built on the Read More …
A View from the Pavement
They still shout about the Dream, you know. They shout it from the floors of Congress, which has fast become the most lucrative country club in the modern world, a place where a slick tongue and a reliance on campaign money can secure a lifetime of wealth and comfort. Don’t forget the pension and free Read More …
The Golden Calf in the Cloud
It has always been a theory of mine that if you want to know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom He gives it. But these days, one doesn’t even have to look very hard; the details are delivered directly to the glowing little glass bricks Read More …
A Hidden cost of DOGE
The mid-June heat hangs heavy over the Chicago skyline, thick with the ghosts of the stockyards and the lingering echoes of Haymarket. Out on the prairie and across the desert Southwest, another kind of heat is rising. The flesh-eating screwworm, a parasite unfelt in our livestock for sixty years, has broken through our southern defenses, Read More …
The Golden Calf in the Radio Box
I was once told by a man of the cloth, one of the old-fashioned kind who still believed the Red Letters were more than just a stylistic choice by the printer, that the quickest way to lose your soul is to find a way to sell it at a profit. Now, I’ve seen many a Read More …