Nothing broke. It’s working exactly as intended.

There have always been two distinct economies.

• There is their economy (meaning the billionaires economy of venture capital, real estate investment firms, speculative markets, etc…) It’s a market that exists on paper only. Theoretical billionaires with assets instead of bank accounts, capital instead of paycheques. Money isn’t a real concept in that economy, it’s simply a measure of profit and loss. It’s just a score keeping device and something used to leverage power.

• Then there is our economy. (meaning the rest of us, who get a paycheque, spend that paycheque, etc…) Maybe we’d be able to put something aside for retirement or college for the kids. . Money itself has a real, tangible impact in our lives. It’s not theoretical.

Maybe we have enough to play in the paddling pool of the speculation market, telling ourselves that “we’re shareholders!” like our 10 shares means squat against the 10,000 shares owned by the investment firms and LLCs run by the billionaires. Employers like to do things like offering you stock options, selling it as “you’ll be an owner and have a say in the company”. Yeah…no…you’ll have a piece of paper and a sense of self-importance because you “dabble in stocks”.

The idea being that if we invest hard enough, and risk enough, we’ll make enough to jump us from one economy into the other. But we won’t. That’s the lie they tell to keep us mollified.

Because the truth is that their economy, only works at the expense of our economy. Profit in their economy, only comes from loss in ours. A corporation can’t make more profit without taking it from somewhere. And that somewhere invariably is us; our health benefits, our cost of living, the quality of the products that we use, our lack of raises, etc…