URGENT: The Peasants Have WiFi Now
Emergency Meeting of the “We’re Not Oligarchs, We’re Job Creators” Society
TO: All Members of the Totally-Not-a-Cabal Club
FROM: Your Crisis Management Team (The ones you pay NOT to call it a crisis)
RE: DEFCON 1 — They’re Using Our Own Numbers Against Us
DATE: The Day TikTok Started Explaining Tax Policy
Greetings, Fellow Definitely-Not-Overlords!
Remember when we could crash the economy and people would blame… each other? Those were simpler times. Now they’re out here doing math and asking uncomfortable questions like “where did all that money actually go?” and “why can’t I afford groceries if the economy is so great?”
Spoiler alert: They figured out it went to us. Awkward.
Houston, We Have a Problem (And It’s Not in Space)
Our beautiful system, where we extract wealth faster than a crypto rug pull while convincing everyone it’s actually good for them, is facing what the kids call “being exposed.”
Bernie Sanders has gone complete anime villain with his “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” drawing massive crowds who apparently didn’t get the memo that politics is supposed to be boring. Even worse, a 33-year-old named Zohran Mamdani just beat our guy, Andrew Cuomo, in NYC, despite us dropping millions like we’re trying to buy a Twitter alternative.
His campaign slogan? “Afford New York.” Not “Make New York Great Again” or “Hope and Change” — just “please let me exist here without selling a kidney.” The audacity! Don’t they know poverty builds character?
The Maya MacGuineas Problem: When Nerds Attack
That troublemaker from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has been going around with spreadsheets — our kryptonite! She’s explaining how we’ve rigged the game so perfectly that:
- We’re borrowing $2+ trillion annually (going straight to us, naturally)
- Every 1% interest rate bump costs $300 billion (coming out of their pockets)
- Social Security goes bust in 2033 (not our problem, we have private islands)
- Debt is growing faster than the economy (almost like that was intentional 🤔)
- They are talking about a simplified tax code. That alone could wreck us!
The worst part? People are starting to connect the dots between their student debt and our education profits, their housing costs and our real estate portfolios, their medical bankruptcies and our pharma dividends. It’s like they think everything is connected or something!
The “60% Problem” (AKA Most of America)
Bernie dropped this bombshell: 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That’s 200 million people who might start asking why they’re struggling while we’re buying sports teams for fun.
The AI Situation: So Close, Yet So Far
We were this close to replacing all human workers with robots who don’t demand “living wages” or give us judgmental looks when we eliminate their healthcare. However, our AI timeline hit a snag: people noticed that when robots do the work, we reap all the profits, while they receive “learn to code” memes.
Turns out mass unemployment without universal basic income makes people angry. Who could have predicted this? (Besides literally every economist not on our payroll.)
Emergency Action Plan: Operation “Nothing to See Here”
Phase 1: Maximum Distraction
Get them fighting about literally anything else — pineapple on pizza, which superhero movie is best, whether hot dogs are sandwiches. Deploy the culture war bots at maximum intensity. And remind them that their neighbors are the real enemy, not us.
Phase 2: Controlled Opposition
Fund some “progressive” candidates who talk about inequality but never mention wealth taxes. Create think tanks with names like “Institute for Economic Justice” that somehow conclude billionaires need more money. Get Joe Rogan to interview someone who blames everything on aliens
Phase 3: The Hail Mary
Rush through that $3–4 trillion tax cut before people realize it eliminates all fiscal flexibility for the next crisis. Accelerate the robot timeline — we need those AI servants operational before the pitchforks come out. Perfect our “we’re actually the good guys” messaging (focus groups suggest this needs work)
The Stakes: Everything We’ve Built
Let’s be real about what we’re protecting. We’ve created the most sophisticated wealth extraction machine in human history. While productivity skyrocketed, we kept wages flat and convinced everyone that the problem was government spending, spending that flows right back to us through contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks.
But if they figure out that the “deficit crisis” is really just us laundering money through the government… if they realize their kids can’t buy houses because our Fed policies inflated every asset we own… if they connect student debt to our education profits…
Well, the French had some creative solutions for oligarchy problems. And they didn’t even have TikTok to organize their activities.
The Bottom Line
The good news is that we still control most politicians, media outlets, and economic institutions. We’ve got this!
The bad news: Gen Z doesn’t watch our TV, doesn’t trust our politicians, and learned economics from memes that are surprisingly accurate. Also, they have nothing to lose, which historically makes people… unpredictable.
We either accelerate our timeline for full economic capture, or risk the peasants remembering there are way more of them than us. And they all have smartphones now, which wasn’t part of the original plan.
Time to earn those consulting fees, people. Democracy dies in darkness, but unfortunately, everyone has flashlights now.
Stay rich (and stay hidden),
The Definitely-Not-Oligarchy Management Team
P.S. — If you’re reading this and you’re NOT a billionaire, congratulations! You’ve just discovered why you’re 30 and still living with roommates, despite having a college degree and two jobs.
The revolution will be livestreamed, and unlike our media companies, we don’t yet control the algorithm. Maya MacGuineas has the receipts. Bernie has the rallies. You have the votes.
Welcome to the resistance. Population: Everyone who’s tired of being gaslit about the economy while we buy our third yacht.
Now back to your regularly scheduled oligarchy. Please refrain from searching for “wealth inequality statistics” or “where did COVID relief money go.” Trust us, you don’t want to know.