Kitchen Table Realities
The jobs report says one thing, but the kitchen table says another
I’ve been thinking for a while about how to explain our current financial situation and where it’s headed. The jobs report came out on Friday, and the very next day Max @UNFTR—part of the MeidasTouch Network, one of my trusted news sources—put together a breakdown that hit exactly the balance I’ve been looking for. Max used the right financial terms but then translated them into plain language, so even without a higher education degree, you can understand what’s happening.
Let’s not sweet-talk this — things are bad, and it’s going to get worse beyond just the politics.
The jobs report doesn’t stand on its own—when you line it up against months and years of prior data, the picture sharpens, and not in Trump’s favor. Instead of leveling with the public, his administration has already tried to bury or distort the truth, even firing officials in charge of labor statistics when the numbers didn’t flatter him. That manipulation hasn’t erased reality—it’s only compounded the issue, creating deeper confusion while families on the ground feel the squeeze.
Meanwhile, Trump’s pundits keep parroting that everything is fine. But step outside their Fox News bubble, and the reality looks very different: markets continue spiraling downward, and the hardest-hit families are those making under $100,000 a year.
For a family of four, the so-called middle-class range is approximately $50,000 to $150,000 per year — but in today’s economy, that span barely covers the basics once housing, food, and healthcare are factored in.
One of the starkest indicators came not from a think tank or a data chart but from McDonald’s itself. When the CEO, Chris Kempczinski, admits that regulars are now skipping meals, you know the squeeze has reached the kitchen table.
This isn’t an abstract debate—it’s about whether people can afford to eat. And it’s exactly where the cracks in the “all is well” story start to show.
Wages That Never Kept Up
This is only a portion of the story behind why we find ourselves in our current situation. Several other forces have shaped this moment. It has been decades in the making — rooted in underfunded education that left workers less prepared for a shifting economy, the refusal to raise the minimum wage, and the constant push from those who believe there is never enough money in their pockets.
Since 1968, the federal minimum wage has lost more than 30% of its purchasing power, leaving today’s workers with far less buying power than their parents or grandparents had.
“The minimum wage has not kept pace with our economy. Workers deserve a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”
— President Joe Biden, Remarks on the American Rescue Plan, 2021
Lessons From the Great Depression
Partially, this mindset is inherited. It comes from parents and grandparents whose own grandparents survived the Great Depression.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, 1937
Reagan’s Blueprint
However, in broad strokes, our current situation can be traced back most directly to 1980, when Ronald Reagan took office with his “trickle-down economics” blueprint. From that point forward, policy choices steadily tilted wealth upward, leaving working families exposed.
“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
— Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, 1981¹
Citizens United and Billionaire Power
And let’s be clear: what’s happening now isn’t just history repeating itself. It is being driven by the current state of those in power—and amplified by tech billionaires who are actively shaping the market. They are doing so under the protection of Citizens United, which keeps the flood of money in politics flowing.
“The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.”
— Justice Anthony Kennedy, Citizens United majority opinion, 2010
Continuity, Not Creation
What often gets overlooked is that our financial crisis didn’t start with Trump. The core policies that favor the wealthy at the expense of working families have been in place for decades. What Trump has done is carry those policies forward. The difference is in how clumsy and obvious the process has become.
Past leaders at least cared enough to try modest reforms, or at the very least, allowed Congress to adjust policies and departments to keep the system credible. Even minor course corrections mattered. Government agencies responsible for reporting data once operated with a degree of independence from the White House — and, when needed, from congressional interference as well — giving the public some measure of trust in what they were told.
Trump isn’t inventing new policies — he’s exploiting the ones that were already in place. The difference is, he doesn’t care about guardrails, appearances, or stability. And while the ultra-rich have always supported their candidate of choice, with Trump, they’ve pushed further than ever, backing him precisely because he’s willing to strip away even the thin cover of accountability that once existed — tearing through the last restraints that kept greed from becoming outright sabotage.
What looks like recklessness is really design, a deliberate drive to bend the system until it serves power itself rather than the people it was meant to protect.
A Note Before the Video
Finances are much more complex than what is stated above. Global finance in general is one of the most complicated systems we deal with—it is considered a subspecialty that draws from accounting, mathematics, statistics, law, political science, and the social sciences. It also requires an understanding of trade flows, labor markets, central banking, and even behavioral economics, because money is not just numbers—it’s people, power, and politics.
The video below addresses only a small subset of finance and socioeconomics. As more events unfold, I will continue to comment on them as they surface in the market. But I want to be clear about where I stand: I am a writer with a background in social sciences, technology, and marketing. That gives me the tools to connect patterns and explain impacts, but it does not make me a financial analyst. Nothing in my background qualifies me to address the deeper technical details of finance.
That’s why I highly recommend following Max @ UNFTR, who specializes in breaking down financial news as it happens, and the MeidasTouch Network for broader context. They provide the current, expert-level reporting. What I offer is my non-expert interpretation of the data—filtered through politics and lived experiences that affect us all.
Here’s Max’s video, published right after the jobs report:
Support Max @ UNFTR and his work for sharp financial insight. — and look to the MeidasTouch Network for the broader political landscape.
¹ This one needs a future article—let’s just say the party has wandered off the Reagan reservation.
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➡️ This isn’t my first time calling out shaky financial spin. Back when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was on ABC’s This Week (April 27, 2025), talking about “Game Theory,“ I wrote You Pull It, You Tank It, pushing back on his narrative. That was my first dive into financial issues, and the same instincts apply here.