I was sitting in a diner off the Ike recently, watching a man in a grease-stained union jacket argue with a fellow in a crisp button down. They weren’t arguing about the score of the game or the price of a ham sandwich. They were arguing about “identity”, who’s taking whose “spot,” who’s “woke,” and Read More …
Tag: mathias
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 of Gold and Gadgets
There is a particular brand of comedy being staged in the higher echelons of our society, and though I am told it is a drama, I simply cannot stop laughing through the tears. We find ourselves trapped in an era dominated by a “Technological Totalitarian State”, a delightfully sterile phrase for what is essentially a 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 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 …