The $79 Trillion Lie: RAND Exposed the Theft—I Show What It Cost You

A Pentagon-backed study says the bottom 90% lost $79 trillion. But that’s just the total. Here’s how many years of your life were stolen—and how.

The problem isn’t just that things have gotten worse—it’s that Democrats still pretend they haven’t. I feel it. You feel it. Out paychecks don’t go as far. Debt never stops growing. But every time we ask for change, the Democrats tell us everything is great and getting better.

When I was a kid growing up in East Tennessee, I’d hear stories from my uncles and grandparents—tales about working at A&P as a teenager and still affording an apartment and a brand-new Camaro. About Papaw growing up in a family of sharecroppers one of 13 kids and later owning his own 40-acre farm, working union jobs, raising cattle, and handing his kids houses when they got older.

Back then, one job was enough. You could raise a family, buy a home, send your kids to school, and retire with dignity.

Now? You need two jobs, a side hustle, and a miracle.

I used to think maybe it was just nostalgia talking. Rose-colored memories. But I watched it happen with my own eyes. The factories that powered our towns shut down. The industrial parks emptied out. I saw raillines that once hauled parts in and finished goods out go silent. And while all this was happening, the media kept telling us how good things were. Wages up. Productivity up. Economy strong.

None of it matched what we were living.

While we’re still trying to lay track in Fresno, China is launching flying freaking taxis! That’s where we are. They’re building. We’re decaying—and being lied to about it.

Recently, I started digging. I created something I call Years of Work—a simple way to measure how much of your life you trade for essentials: housing, healthcare, education, transportation, childcare, food, utilities. No inflation voodoo. No statistical gymnastics. It's just straight math.

What I found challenges everything we've been told: Official statistics claim Americans are getting richer—that real wages are up 252% since 1950. But when measured in life-years required to afford basics, we've lost 61% of our buying power. Links to the study, the methodology, and the data set.

Important: These aren't inflation charts.

If the economic story we've been told were true—that real wages were rising or even stagnant—then every line on the following charts should be flat or trending downward. Instead, they're all climbing dramatically. These lines represent years of your life required at median income to afford basic necessities. The steeper the climb, the more of your life you're trading away compared to previous generations. This isn't about prices or inflation it’s about the BIG LIE. It's economic collapse disguised as growth.

Years of Work required for essentials should be going DOWN as technology and productivity improve. Instead, they've nearly quadrupled since 1970.

This chart says it all: The blue line is what the government tells us is happening to wages. The red and orange lines show what's actually happening to our purchasing power. Official statistics claim we're 252% richer than in 1950. Reality shows we've lost 61% of our buying power.

Official stats say real wages are up 252%—but buying power has collapsed by 61%.

Another way to see it:

Again, this line should be flat or trending downward if what mainstream economics tells us we're true. This is the line that shows why Trump keeps getting reelected. This is the line that shows why we feel so insecure about our economic state. This is the line that explains a lot of frustration and anger.

Years of Work required to afford essentials has nearly quadrupled since 1970.

The $79 Trillion Lie

Then along came the RAND Corporation. Not exactly a lefty think tank—these are folks who work with the Pentagon. And they ran the numbers too. Their question was simple: What if we had kept sharing economic growth the way we did from WWII to 1975?

Their answer: The bottom 90% of Americans would have made an extra $3.9 trillion in 2023 alone.

That’s $13,000 stolen from every man, woman, and child in the bottom 90%—just last year.

Cumulatively, since 1975? The theft totals $79 trillion (RAND 2025 Study).

That’s not a typo. Seventy. Nine. Trillion.

So I did the math. I asked: If you were born into this system—how much have they taken from you?

• Born in 1975? over $318,000 has been stolen from you.

• Born in 1990? $290,000.

• Born in 2005? You’re just getting started—and you’re already down $200,000.

They didn’t take it with guns. They took it with charts, and formulas, and policy tweaks. With tax cuts, deregulation, offshoring, union-busting, and a thousand little lies baked into the numbers we use to measure the economy.

And if you want to know how billionaires bought their yachts and private jets? How are they shoot themselves into space wearing cowboy hats?

That’s how. They steal from us.

How They Cook the Books

They say real wages are up 252% since 1950. My calculator says we’ve lost 61% of our buying power.

Both can’t be true.

How do they get away with it?

They tweaked the math. They invented things like "owners' equivalent rent." Instead of measuring what people actually pay in housing costs, they called homeowners and asked them to guess what their house might rent for. That number, based on pure speculation, is used to calculate inflation.

Our grandparents needed just over 3 years of median income to buy a home in the 1950s. Today? A house costs more than 10 years median of income. It’s not the latte’s preventing or delaying homeownership.

Buying a home takes 5x more work now than it did in the 1950s.

They claim today’s $48,000 car costs less than our grandfather’s $860 sedan—thanks to features like Bluetooth and backup cameras. But try explaining that math when you’re struggling to make monthly payments.

A new car now costs over twice as much work as it did in 1980—and more than any time since WWII.

College in the 1960s cost about 5-6 weeks of full-time work annually - basically a summer job. Today? It takes over 26 weeks - half a year's wages - just for tuition. No wonder millions start their careers buried in debt. A 5x increase in work-years required for the same degree.

Education costs have risen 5x in work-years since 1970.

So how do families survive? Xanax, SSRIs, and Debt. Crushing DEBT.

In 1950, household debt was only $47 billion. Today it exceeds $17.1 trillion. When measured in years of work required at median wages, each person's share of the total debt burden has grown from eight weeks of work in 1950 to 63 weeks today—a 670% increase in the human time-cost of debt.

And then there’s what they tried to do with U.S. manufacturing stats. The Census Bureau, under pressure from industry, almost changed the definition so that any good produced overseas by a company that owned the design would count as American manufacturing. So if Apple makes iPhones in China? That would’ve counted as U.S. manufacturing. Not a joke. (BLS)

That’s not economics. That’s gaslighting.

Why Trump Keeps Winning

Donald Trump didn’t invent this crisis. He exploited it.

He looked out at a country being stripped for parts, saw the anger and despair, and said the words no one else would say: You’re right. The system is rigged. The elites have failed you.

And for millions of Americans, that was enough.

The media mocked him. The experts rolled their eyes. Democrats clung to a fantasy that everything was fine—that wages were rising, that GDP meant prosperity, that Americans were better off than ever.

They weren’t. They aren’t.

When working people said they were drowning, Democrats handed them a spreadsheet. Trump handed them a story that felt true.

His solutions? Garbage. But his diagnosis? It resonated.

And if Democrats don’t start offering an alternative that actually reverses this theft—not manages it more politely—then they’ll keep losing.

Where We Go From Here

We won’t fix all that ails us by tweaking a few formulas or electing better decline managers. This isn’t just a numbers problem—it’s a power problem.

For decades, both parties worshipped the same god: the free market. They told us government should get out of the way, that corporations would lift all boats. Instead, they sank the middle class and handed $79 trillion to the top.

We need more than better policy. We need a revolution in what government is for.

That means a government that doesn’t just regulate failure—it replaces it. That builds public housing when the market fails. That expands public healthcare when insurers extract and deny. That competes directly—on energy, rail, housing, and health—not just begs.

That’s what America’s Undoing is about. Not just naming the theft—but building something strong enough to take it back.

Years of Work shows the collapse. RAND shows the scale of the theft. The only question now is: What are we going to do about it?

If you’ve been told you’re doing fine—when you know damn well you’re not—share this. Because the only way out of this mess is through a new movement.

And it starts right here.