What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. Credit card rewards feel like free money, right? Those airline miles, cashback bonuses, that premium lounge access you didn't pay for!

But here's what they don't tell you: Every point you earn is funded by someone else's financial misery. Someone making minimum wage just subsidized your business class flight through overdraft fees and 24% interest payments.

This isn't an accident. It's the business model.

So this week…

• 🏆 The Big Play: How America abandoned ownership for a rental economy that profits from financial confusion

• 💪 The Power Move: How you can reclaim real ownership in a rigged system

• 💵 Follow the Money: How Mexican Drug Cartels are infiltrating the Ukrainian military for drone training

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

Why The Subscription Economy Is Making You Poor Forever

After World War II, America ran on ownership. Strong unions, broken-up monopolies, and fierce competition created what economists called the golden age of capitalism.

Workers and businesses both thrived. And if you tried to screw customers, competitors would steal your business.

But then came the 1980s pivot that changed everything:

1. The Great Ownership Heist

In 1981, the United States entered the Reagan era, which was marked not just by its tax cuts. It unleashed a consolidation wave that turned competitive markets into corporate playgrounds:

• Top tax rates on the richest fell. Corporate taxes dropped. Capital gains got friendlier, so owning assets started beating earning wages.

• Stock buybacks were legalized, so profits flowed to shareholders instead of paychecks.

• Most importantly, the government stopped breaking up big companies and started letting them merge instead.

• Big banks gobbled up small regional ones, and airlines went from dozens of competitors to just four controlling 80% of flights.

The result was financial engineering on steroids.

Assets exploded in value while wages stagnated. We went from an economy of ownership to one where you rent permission to use everything.

But what emerged wasn’t capitalism. It was corporatism with a capitalist mask.

2. The Stupidity Tax Collection System

Wall Street discovered something more profitable than productive investment: the financially illiterate American consumer.

Credit card companies now extract $120 billion annually in interest and fees. The average APR hits 24%, higher than what Tony Soprano would charge for a loan.

But they mask these rates behind "courtesy services" like overdraft protection, where a $5 mistake costs you $35.

• Payday loans carry 300-600% effective APRs, generating $2.4 billion yearly in fees

• Buy-now-pay-later options exploded 970% in two years, with people financing groceries in installments

• Credit card rewards transfer $15 billion annually from low-income cardholders to high-income ones

Your business class flight funded by points? Someone making minimum wage indirectly paid for it.

This system works because it's designed to profit from financial confusion, and it barely exists outside America. Europe caps credit card rates and limits fees, so massive reward programs don't exist there.

3. Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for Everyone Else

When you make bad financial decisions, you pay the consequences. When Wall Street makes bad financial decisions, taxpayers bail them out.

The 2008 financial crisis established the precedent: big banks get implicit government insurance worth $80 billion annually. They can take bigger risks and charge lower rates than smaller banks without safety nets.

For instance, Airlines got $50 billion in pandemic bailouts while small businesses waited months for loans that never came.

• 55 Fortune 500 companies paid zero federal income tax in 2020

• Nike made billions in profit and got a $109 million tax rebate

• Walmart and McDonald's pay wages so low that their workers need food stamps, making taxpayers subsidize their labor costs

Meanwhile, billionaires like Musk avoid taxes entirely by borrowing against stock instead of taking taxable salaries. They use debt to fund lifestyles while paying lower tax rates than their secretaries.

Also, the revolving door between corporations and regulators ensures these arrangements stay legal.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

How You Can Reclaim Your Ownership

America made a choice: unlimited innovation and economic freedom at the cost of extracting wealth from the financially confused.

The culture encourages bad financial decisions on purpose. Financial literacy isn't taught in schools because financially savvy consumers would collapse our consumption-driven economy.

Understanding this system gives you two paths: You can subsidize everyone else's wealth, or you can build your own using the same rules that benefit the wealthy.

• Get credit card rewards funded by other people's interest payments.

• Use debt strategically like billionaires, borrowing against assets instead of paying taxes.

• Invest in companies profiting from their government relationships.

The Takeaway:

The uncomfortable truth is that once you see how money and power actually work, you face a choice about which side of the extraction you want to be on.

The rules aren't changing.

The only question is whether you'll master them or become another revenue source for those who already have.

💵 Following the Money

Three of the wildest financial and corruption stories from around the world.

#1 - How Mexican drug cartels found their way to drone training in Ukraine

#2 - Meta removes Chicago ICE tracking Facebook group after DOJ request

#3 - Digital IDs are being introduced in the UK. Here’s why they’re controversial

✨ Poll time!

📰 Keep Reading…