Currently working people are inveterately distracted with attacks on the Constitution by MAGA gangsters, thugs, and reprobates.

Another distraction is the heinous protection of the international cabal of rich men guilty of exploiting young girls in the Epstein criminal network.

A third distraction is indoctrinating working people into supporting a glutted military budget while cutting programs for working people.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned working people in 1961 of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

The root cause of unemployment, underemployment, and inflation is the wage and salary component of our economic model.

It results in violations of international laws to protect corporate profits in foreign countries like Venezuela; that includes the murder of innocent civilians in cruising boats.

However, a not so obvious din of these distractions is designed to numb Americans from zeroing in on the foundation of their chronic economic adversity and anxiety.

That foundation is the wage and salary construct of our economic model.

Economic Model Decline

The symptoms of the decline of our economic model are well documented.

The Ludwig Institute of Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) reported a functional unemployment rate in November 2025 of 24.8%. LISEP reported a real inflation rate of 9.4%.

Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, (ALICE) reported that 42% of households in the US were below the ALICE threshold of poverty.

The underemployment rate reported by the Burning Glass Institute in February 2024 was 52% for college graduates.

These are chronic symptoms of an economic model that cannot provide an equitable and moral distribution of employment opportunities. If you harbor the belief that anyone here can become rich or wealthy, think again.

Progressives recognize that the Republican Party has devolved into a fascist cult. The evidence is Project 2025 and screams daily that our government is being replaced by rich con artists inside the Trump administration swamp.

However, polls do suggest that working people are becoming more aware that our economic model is failing them.

Regrettably, this increasing discontent stops at addressing the symptoms rather than the cause cemented into our economic model.

Many progressive politicians, scholars, academics, and journalists go to the water's edge of the cause, but cravenly avoid a discussion of the that cause.

Upton Sinclair’s assertion in 1935 is applicable:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. (“I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked”)

The root cause of unemployment, underemployment, and inflation is the wage and salary component of our economic model. To understand how that model is inherently exploitative and inequitable, the basics must be understood.

The following is a simplified example on that process.

The primary purpose of our economy is to return a private profit to the business owner.

The basic opportunities for a contented lifestyle are decreasing.

There are two types of investment that the business owner must spend.

First is expenditures on space, plant, machinery, tools, hardware, software, technological advances, and raw materials. This includes legal registrations, licenses, permits, and financial services. Often, the business owner inherits the business so this expenditure may be minimized.

Next, the business owner must purchase the physical or mental efforts of the employees. It is realized in the form of wages and salaries.

The employees create the products or services that the business owner sells in the market. In spite of the delusions of many business owners, no business owner creates those products or services alone. It is a social process.

If the business owner paid the employees the salary and wages equal to the value of the products or services created by them, there would be no profit.

Hence, there would be no reason to continue the business. Moreover, the business owner must compete with other business owners to sell as much as possible and minimize costs. Parenthetically, layoffs and recessions crushing working people are the usual remedy for the business owner.

The........

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