“We live in a situation where people in the lower 50 percent are angry. The middle has been completely eroded in this country and fallen out,” Posobiec said during Monday's episode.
He pointed out that while productivity in the US has risen drastically over the past few decades, wages for everyday Americans have remained stagnant: “We know productivity has gained in the US over the last few decades but real wages for the working class have barely budged since the 70s, and that means, while executive pay and investment income for the rich have absolutely soared."
Posobiec noted that in 2008 and 2020, it was Wall Street—not average Americans—that got the bailouts. “In 2008, who got a bail out? Wall Street. 2020, Wall Street. And what did you get told? You got told that you have to be in lockdown, that your school had to shut down, that you had to put on masks, that you had to get vaccinated, all this stuff,” he said. “By the way, many of which was supported by the same covidians who are against the tariff policy, and totally keep the benefits of the massive money printing that went in. Funny how that works.”
Posobiec then compared today’s economic disparity to historic examples of unrest: “Well this is similar to what a place you might call Tsarist Russia, where the serfs and laborers saw no share of economic growth. In imperial China, peasants faced crushing taxes and rents that enriched the gentry.”
He said these moments of instability often followed major technological shifts, and pointed to history: “A lot of this came as a result of the industrial revolution—the first wave of communist uprisings. So, you have a massive technological or industrial revolution, it leads to wealth concentration which then if not properly dealt with leads to massive uprisings. This has happened in France, Spain, go through the rest in our book 'Unhumans,'" he said, referencing his popular book.
According to Posobiec, the US managed to avoid such uprisings in the past thanks to reformers who listened to the working class. “The United States avoided this type of destabilization because we actually had people like Teddy Roosevelt come in, other entrepreneurs,” he said. “We walk through the National Cash Register Company and their story out of Dayton, Ohio… What did they do? They started listening to the workers. They started saying, maybe we can find some ways to actually make your lives have better conditions. Maybe we can give you the weekend, we can give you an eight-hour work day, a five day work week."
He continued: “John Patterson of the cash register company said, ‘how about we put some windows on the factory so we can let some light in, then you open the window and maybe even have some airflow from time to time.’ That’s how bad things were in the late 1800s and early 1900s.”
Once these policies were put into place, Posobiec said, the economy and worker conditions improved. “And guess what, there was no massive uprising in the United States like that.”
He ended with a stark warning: “So, the question is, which do you want? Do you want Main Street to finally get a piece of the pie? Do you want the American people to stop being forgotten and hollowed and lost out? Or do you want the Luigis and the Karmelos and the Tesla terrorists to be the ones that show a completely different path for the American people to walk down?”
“Because I’m telling you, the bottom 50 percent, they want an answer and they’re tired of waiting.”
