Tag Archives: Economy

The Bad Fortune Restaurant

Posted on by The Old Wolf

… and how it feels in America, right now.

Recently a cousin of mine posted this on Facebook:

Image of a fortune cookie with a bad fortune inside it.

This put me in mind of something I once saw years and years ago, and have never again been able to find. On June 8, 2007, artist Norm Feuti published this strip on his now – tragically – ended webcomic, “Retail:”

Cooper and Val, from Norm Feuti's comic strip "Retail." Cooper is complaining that his Chinese take-out order didn't contain a fortune cookie.

I only discovered this wonderful webcomic a few years before its end, but thanks to Feuti’s preserving the entire run, I was able to go back and peruse the entire archive. In 2021 I commented:

At some point I read about a Chinese restaurant – it may have been in Canada – that drew customers by having fortune cookies with awful fortunes. The two I remember were “Dental work will be done poorly, and you will have to go back,” and “Your fetish for rubber underwear will cause you great embarrassment in public.” I would pay to eat at a place like that, but I guess the schtick was only effective for a while.

What a hoot. I wish the Internet could remember the original article I saw, and provide information about where that place was. But my opinion remains the same – I would drive miles to eat at a restaurant like that, just for the gallows humor. “Circling the drain” is an insufficient metaphor for what is happening in America right now – we’re already past the P-trap and halfway to the sewage treatment plant. In addition to the “Hands Off” protests of April 5, 2025 and more planned demonstrations on April 19th, and writing and calling representatives in Congress, sometimes a good dose of dark humor helps to ease the pain of a nation’s Democracy going up in flames.

While the restaurant I mentioned – and it was a real thing, because otherwise where would I have learned of these “bad fortune cookies” – is no more, you can get some evil fortunes of your own over at FAL.net, and some New Year’s-themed (for 1998) versions here.

  • This year, people will stop judging you by your appearance and dislike you for who you are on the inside.
  • You will be reminded of your historic visit to the Oval Office by painful rug burns.
  • Your long time skin problems will be corrected by an ordinary cheese grater.
  • Success will never change you. You’ll always be a bastard.

These are so great. But all kidding aside, it is my sincere hope and prayer that somehow, enough people can rise up to throw off the yoke of hateful ChristoFascist autocracy that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, MAGA, the Heritage Foundation, and the Freedom Caucus in Congress is imposing upon our government, for the exclusive benefit of the “broligarchs” – the white, wealthy, Protestant, male, cisgendered minority who want to control our nation with an iron fist for their own enrichment, keeping Liberals, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, immigrants, Jews, and other “undesirables” in their “proper place:”

Apologies to the Harry Potter franchise

Our nation deserves better. Its citizens deserve better. We must absolutely keep fighting, because as someone (attributed to Ben Franklin, but probably not) observed, “We must hang together, or we will assuredly all hang separately.”

To end on a less grim note, a thought from Kate Allan (@thelatestkate):

The Old Wolf has spoken.

This is not a world that works for everyone.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

According to an article by by David Cay Johnston posted at Taxanalysts.com, the average adjusted gross income for 90% of American wage earners grew only $59.00 from 1966 to 2011, while the top 1% of the top 1% saw income growth equaling $18.4 million dollars. Put that in a graph, and it looks like this:

Income Gain

Screw whole bunches of that.

From the article:

“In 2011 entry into the top 10 percent, where all the gains took place, required an adjusted gross income of at least $110,651. The top 1 percent started at $366,623.

The top 1 percent enjoyed 81 percent of all the increased income since 2009. Just over half of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and 39 percent of the gains went to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.

Ponder that last fact for a moment — the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, those making at least $7.97 million in 2011, enjoyed 39 percent of all the income gains in America. In a nation of 158.4 million households, just 15,837 of them received 39 cents out of every dollar of increased income.

That extreme concentration, however, is far from the most jaw-dropping figure that can be distilled from the new Saez-Piketty analysis. That requires a long-term comparison of those at or near the top with the bottom 90 percent.

In 2011 the average AGI of the vast majority fell to $30,437 per taxpayer, its lowest level since 1966 when measured in 2011 dollars. The vast majority averaged a mere $59 more in 2011 than in 1966. For the top 10 percent, by the same measures, average income rose by $116,071 to $254,864, an increase of 84 percent over 1966.

Plot those numbers on a chart, with one inch for $59, and the top 10 percent’s line would extend more than 163 feet.

Now compare the vast majority’s $59 with the top 1 percent, and that line extends for 884 feet. The top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, whose 2011 average income of $23.7 million was $18.4 million more per taxpayer than in 1966, would require a line nearly five miles long.”

These numbers show without equivocation that the rich truly are getting richer at mind-boggling speed, while the rest of us are getting poorer by the year. It almost makes me want to support forced redistribution of wealth, but even these disgusting statistics can’t quite get me there. But somehow the playing field needs to be leveled, because inequalities of this nature in the land of the free and the home of the brave will not long endure without some sort of massive social upheaval down the road.

I’m not an economist, so I don’t have the answers. I can only hope that there are people out there who still believe in a world that works for everyone, with no one left out, and who have the skills and insight to make a difference. For all of us.

The Old Wolf has spoken.