hand me my shovel, i'm going in!

DEATH FROM ABOVEE!!!

Drew a fav piece by Steve Purcell in my style for my own birthday (Bonus points cuz it doubles as celebration art for Max's birthday too so HELL YEAH) (⁠☆)ˎˊ˗

https://www.investopedia.com/the-american-economy-is-growing-but-workers-are-getting-a-shrinking-slice-12006070

Key Takeaways:

Wages and salaries for U.S. workers make up the smallest share of economic output in history, according to records going back to 1947.

Researchers have proposed many explanations for the decline in the labor share since the late 20th century, including rising corporate profits and technological change.

The U.S. as a whole gets more prosperous every year—but less and less of that prosperity is showing up in workers' paychecks.

That's according to fresh analysis by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In a blog post on Wednesday, the researchers highlighted the declining share of the nation's economic output going to workers in the form of wages and salaries, as opposed to corporate profits and capital.

The "labor share" has been on a downward trajectory since the second half of the 20th century and has continued to plunge in the post-pandemic era, reaching an all-time low in 2026, according to records dating back to 1947. Meanwhile, the overall U.S. economy has continued to expand, meaning workers are getting a smaller slice of a larger pie.

Here's how those two statistics, the labor share and the real GDP, have changed since 2017:

Why have workers taken home a smaller and smaller share of economic output in the U.S. and other advanced economies? Many researchers have landed on different answers, including rising profit margins for businesses, the decline of unions, the rise of China as an economic power and technological change, for starters.

Whatever the cause, the trend seems to be firmly on its former trajectory after being interrupted by the pandemic's economic upheaval and follows a pattern similar to past recessions, the New York Fed researchers found.

what does this have to do with boiling your surgical tools? well look, the boiling water releases bubbles of steam which carries the malign influences up to heaven. you boil a knife, you send all the miasmic particles off with the steam to heaven. if you rinse the knife off in a bucket the water isn't hot enough, the particles go into the water and then right back on to the knife. you gotta boil it to get the particles all the way away. how can a tool or rag or a bed have miasmic particles on it when you can't smell them? humans have a lousy sense of smell. look at your dog on the hunt. are there no rabbits in the woods just because you can't smell them? we know that miasma is carried on the air, and is what makes stench so dangerous, and we know that humans can't smell worth a damn compared to dogs cats horses etc. a dog can smell if a rat died in a corner of the room last week. you can't. do you think licking the spot where the rat died is going to go well for you? luckily, what humans lack in snout we make up for in brains. we have extra brains where our sniffers should have been. God set that up for a reason.

and why does a rinse with wine spirits work? man, look how fast alcohol evaporates. my guess is that because wine contains a lot more vice than water, it evaporates a whole lot faster, in sort of an equal and opposite way that a rock falls faster than a feather. if you want the miasmic particles to get off there FAST, you dunk it in something that's going back to heaven at a gallop.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.