Category: Money, Work & Retirement
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Do the Math Before You Leap Into a Side Hustle
We live in an age where the side hustle has been elevated to near-religious status. Everyone, it seems, is encouraged to “monetize their passion,” whether that means flipping furniture, driving rideshare, or selling used books online. The glossy success stories make it sound effortless: just turn your spare time into extra income, and maybe one…
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DOGE Bro Leakage: A National Disease Best Treated by Freezing
There are few phrases less reassuring than “a former DOGE software engineer allegedly had Social Security databases on a thumb drive.” According to a whistleblower complaint now under investigation by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general, a former Department of Government Efficiency employee reportedly told coworkers that he possessed two highly restricted databases and intended…
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The Boomers and the Retirement Mirage: Doomed, or Self-Sabotaged?
By any measure, the Baby Boom generation was handed both the greatest economic expansion in modern history and one of the most treacherous financial landscapes to navigate. Whether they were “doomed” to retire broke—or simply failed to manage their good fortune—is a debate that defines their legacy. The Case for Structural Doom The economic timeline…
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A Government of Retirees
In the national debate about retirement security, attention almost always zeroes in on Social Security. And rightly so—56 million Americans draw those monthly checks. But if you zoom in on the landscape of retirement itself, there’s another story: nearly one-third of all U.S. retirees are receiving a government pension of some kind—federal, state, or local.…
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The Billionaire’s Bargain: How America’s Ultra-Wealthy Pay Less and Take More Than the Poor
In American folklore, wealth is earned, poverty is a sign of laziness, and government support flows generously downward. The story is neat. The story is false. The truth is more unsettling: America’s richest citizens often enjoy lower tax rates and more generous government handouts than the very people who struggle to get by. The redistribution…
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The Quiet Power of Email: Why Writing to Create a Record Matters
In a world where texts vanish, calls are forgotten, and conversations evaporate into thin air, one medium stubbornly endures: the email. To some it feels old-fashioned, but when the stakes involve law, employment, contracts, or bureaucracies, the humble email remains a weapon of both civility and self-defense. The truth is simple: in any situation where…
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Retirement Planning for the Children of 2000: A New Playbook for a Different Century
A person born in 1935 entered the workforce in the 1950s, when retirement meant a gold watch, a pension check, and maybe some Social Security. Someone born in 1960 came of age just as pensions were fading, 401(k)s were arriving, and the idea of “you’re on your own” became the new normal. Now come the…
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Why the Average American Life Span Misleads Us About Aging and Retirement
We love numbers because they feel solid. They seem to offer certainty in a world that is anything but certain. Among the most quoted numbers in American public life is the average life span. Ask a journalist, a doctor, or even a politician, and you’ll hear it: “Life expectancy in the United States is seventy-six…
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Department of Economic and Agricultural Development (DEAD)
Directive 47: Termination of the Family Farm The Department of Economic and Agricultural Development (DEAD), in pursuit of national unity, economic strength, and total food security, decrees the following: 1. Abolition of the Family Farm Effective immediately, the family farm ceases to exist as a legitimate economic entity. Sentimental attachment to ancestral land is no…
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When More Becomes Less: How Wealth Shrinks the Meaning of Money
Money is a curious invention. It can be everything—food, shelter, medicine, dignity—or it can be nothing more than an abstract number glowing on a screen. Its power is not fixed; it bends and stretches depending on how much of it you have. The great paradox is this: the more money you make, the less money…
