Stop Pretending This System Works
The measure of a society isn’t what it builds, but what (and who) it allows to break.
When a government program like SNAP becomes a political bargaining chip, while a single billionaire is positioned to earn a trillion-dollar compensation package, the economy is broken.
Roughly one in eight people depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In more than half of these households, people are working, but their income doesn’t stretch far enough, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s enough food and money in our country to go around. Yet our economy keeps ordinary people in precarity while celebrating “visionaries” who extract value from our collective labor and public investment.
And every day that I go to work, or log my Seamless order, or pay our childcare provider, I participate in this system.
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Jasmine Rashid’s book is The Financial Activist Playbook. She joins me in the studio this week.
This reality has been sitting heavy with me recently. I am 22 years into a career in business journalism. I spent the first 15 of those years reporting on the rise of social software startups before shifting my attention to the impact that software has had on people’s careers. I’ve always understood that the American Dream of a just reward for hard work doesn’t apply equally to everyone.
The gap continues to widen between the wealthy and those who cannot climb out of poverty within our system. We call it the economy, but what we’re really describing is a value system. It’s one that measures worth in accumulation, not contribution.
I participate in it.
I don’t like it, but I benefit from this system. I teach my kids how to move inside it. This leads to a dissonance I can’t quite shake.
This week on Hello Monday, I talk with Jasmine Rashid. Jasmine calls herself a financial activist, and here’s how she defines it: “how everyday people radically reimagine money as a tool for widespread well-being, instead of a weapon of absurdly increasing inequality.” Her work starts from the premise that we can’t wait for the system to self-correct. Her book is The Financial Activist Playbook.
What I like about her work is that it’s practical, it offers strategies for contributing to systemic change, but it also provides a foothold for those of us hoping to take moral actions now when it comes to how we earn, save and spend. She says change begins with how we each move our money, our attention, our care.
🤓 Worth it: what’s happening to work
Depth Is the New Luxury - Fiogiuseppe
“Depth has become a luxury. Not because it’s rare, but because it requires presence, something few can afford in a culture built on acceleration.”
Tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are disappearing as AI starts to bite - Wall Street Journal
The headlines sums up the news here. This past week brought a lot of layoff announcements at companies ranging from Amazon to Target. The employment market these workers face is bleak.
What’s this newsletter about again?
I’ve spent 20+ years covering tech from the inside for BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Wired. My mission is to close the gap between the people building the future—and those of us living it.
