When socialist muckraker Upton Sinclair dropped his gonzo exposé on the abysmal working conditions of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, the public was enraptured and horrified by the serial that eventually became known as “The Jungle.” However, the outcry wasn’t over the dangerous and destitute conditions faced by Chicago’s laborers, but rather the appalling sanitary and health handling of the meat itself. Sinclair didn’t spur a socialist revolution, but disgust with the safety of America’s meat culminated in the creation of what became the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
A similarly florid and semi-fictionalized piece by portfolio manager Michael W. Green at the Free Press has instigated a similar reaction. Though Green’s thesis is that $100,000 is the new poverty line, audiences on the social media site X have obsessed over Green’s tangential illustration of public benefits cliffs and how the welfare system disincentivizes the working class from, well, working.
