In 1879, JP Morgan paid a man to invent the lie that is the foundation of modern economics.
A billionaire who helped start Amazon just exposed the whole thing on Diary of a CEO, and once you hear it you will never look at paychecks the same way again:
146 years ago, a guy named Henry George wrote a book called Progress and Poverty.
It was the first mainstream book about the rich systematically stealing from the poor, and It literally became the bestselling book in the history of the United States at the time.
The working class was reading it everywhere, and the people at the top of the economy completely lost their minds.
So JP Morgan personally brought a man named John Bates Clark to Columbia University, which was essentially the intellectual headquarters of Wall Street, and told him to fix the problem.
Clark wrote a book called The Distribution of Wealth. In it, he invented something called the "theory of marginal productivity," which claims that because markets are perfectly efficient, the amount of money you earn reflects EXACTLY the value you contribute to the economy.
If you make $15,000 a year, that's because you're providing $15,000 of value. If a hedge fund manager makes $500 million a year moving money around, that's an accurate reflection of the value he creates in the world.
And Clark literally said the quiet part out loud IN HIS OWN BOOK.
He wrote that they had to prove to working people that no matter how much they make, whether it's a little or a lot, it accurately reflects their value, because if workers ever concluded that their labor was worth more than they were being paid, they would revolt and destroy the entire system.
That was the whole point. The theory was built to prevent a revolution.
And it worked so well that it got absorbed into mainstream economics and is STILL taught as a foundational principle to this day.
Every time a CEO tells you "the market decides your salary," they're repeating a framework that was literally commissioned by JP Morgan in the 1800s to convince you not to ask for more.
Nick Hanauer, the billionaire who told this story, also shared the numbers that prove why it matters right now:
The median full-time worker in America earns about $60,000 a year. If that same worker had maintained the same share of GDP they held in 1975, they wouldn't be making $60,000. They'd be making $120,000. That gap goes all the way up to the 90th percentile. If you earn $180,000 today, you'd be earning $250,000 under the old distribution.
The ONLY people who benefited from 50 years of economic growth were the top 10%, and the vast majority of that went to the top 1%. That is trillions of dollars every single year that used to be wages for ordinary working people and now sits in the accounts of the wealthiest people on the planet.
This happened because of policy. Tax cuts for the rich, deregulation for the powerful, and wage suppression for everyone else, all justified by an economic theory that was invented specifically to make you believe you deserve exactly what you're getting.
And the craziest part is that GDP growth rates in America were 4 to 4.5% for decades when workers were included in prosperity. As soon as the neoliberals took over in the mid-1970s and implemented these policies, GDP growth fell to 3% and eventually to 2%.
Including people in the economy doesn't slow growth down. It's literally the thing that CREATES growth. And the theory that convinced the world otherwise was a hit job paid for by one of the richest men in history to keep workers quiet.
What do you think?
59 years ago today, Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters. 34 crew members were killed and 174 were wounded by the IDF.
Today, I spoke on the House floor to honor the fallen and to recognize the survivors who were present in the gallery.
They always draw communism as an empty fridge and capitalism as a full one.
They never draw the homeless person outside the capitalist supermarket, the farmer dumping food because selling it isn’t profitable, or the hundreds of millions who go hungry despite a world that produces more than enough food to feed everyone.
Under capitalism, the fridge is full if you can pay. Under socialism, the goal is that nobody is denied food because they’re poor.
Gold miners in Ghana working barefoot, shivering, covering themselves with bags against the rain
Capitalism isn't your iPhone. It's this. It's always been this
Join us. https://t.co/Vldj51DtMj
Goosebumps. In the chronicles of this era, Iran will be remembered as a righteous, fearless defender of humanity, in an ocean of useless, servile cowards
When Joseph Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union, Western elites called it tyranny.
When cobalt is extracted in Congo under conditions like these to fuel Western corporate profits and consumer electronics, they call it the free market.
HOT TAKE: the Cultural Revolution was necessary for rooting out treacherous elements, even if it went too far at times
Had it not been for the Cultural Revolution, traitors would've come to power and sell out the PRC, like Gorby did to the USSR or Delcy is doing right now to VZ
Nick Maynard: "Let me tell you about Zainab, a 7mth old girl.. we had run out of formula feed.. she died whilst I was there.. 4 days before she died a group of US drs had brought in formula feed.. they had every bottle deliberately removed by the Israeli border guards"
Sept 2025
There has never been a war in history where 80% of the country has been destroyed, 100% of the population displaced, and 50% of the deaths children.
Call it what it is: GENOCIDE.
"Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. ... If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality." - Mao