I have been observing with breathless awe the latest triumph of our grand Republic’s economic engine. We are told by the public prints that the government has appointed its first Chief Design Officer, a gentleman of immense private fortune and impeccable aesthetic taste, whose solemn patriotic duty is to “modernize the internet-facing portions” of our Read More …
Tag: Gilded Pew
From the Assembly Line to the Golden Ticket
I have lived long enough to watch the soil of the Midwest turn from something we plowed into something we paved over for data centers. I see the world through a window pane that is cold, clean, and increasingly expensive. Being a man of quiet habits and a fair amount of book-learning, I spend long Read More …
A Dream Deferred by a Dollar Sign
There is a peculiar kind of weather in America today. It is a season where the rain falls only on the pavement, leaving the gardens of the ordinary man to bone-dry dust, while the glass towers of corporate high-rises are washed clean every morning by the sweat of people they never see. If we look Read More …
The Gospel According to San Jose
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 …
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 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 Gilded Pew: A View from the Street
Channeling the Spirit of Studs Terkel The tape is rolling. It’s 2026, and the air in Chicago is thick with the same old promises, just wrapped in newer, shinier digital foil. We’re talking about faith today folks. Not the kind that moves mountains, but the kind that moves poll numbers. I’m sitting here thinking about Read More …