THE SYSTEM OF GREED
Threads
Threads trace structural stories — the systems, pipelines, and legal frameworks that enable billionaire power at scale. Where dossiers document individuals, threads document the machinery.
290×
CEO / worker
Featured thread
The War on the Working Class
The reality and the way forward.
Instead of reidentifying the problem, let's identify the solutions. The lordbarons of the world need to start behaving.
Sources: EPI · OpenSecrets · ProPublica IRS Files · HUD · Redfin · Gallup · The Negotiator (original infographic)
20,150
additional deaths
The Private Equity Healthcare Machine
Healthcare extraction · PE acquisition · Structural manslaughter
Private equity bought the hospitals. Loaded them with debt. Cut the nurses. Filed for bankruptcy. Left. JAMA 2023: +25% adverse events, doubled surgical site infections. Nursing homes: 20,150 additional deaths over 17 years. Steward Health Care: 33 hospitals, $9B in debt, 5 permanently closed. KKR/Envision: $10B acquisition, $7.7B bankruptcy. All legal. Zero prosecutions.
Sources: JAMA (Kannan/Bruch/Song, 2023) · NBER/JAMA Health Forum (2021) · Private Equity Stakeholder Project · Bain & Company
346
killed
The Boeing 737 MAX: Financialization Kills
Corporate safety failure · Aviation · Structural impunity
346 people died in two preventable crashes. Boeing concealed the design flaw from pilots. No executive was charged. The CEO got a 45% raise. Workers went 16 years without a real contract. Two whistleblowers are dead. This is what financialization looks like when it kills people.
Sources: House T&I Committee (2020) · KNKT/AAIB crash reports · DOJ DPA · Boeing DEF 14A · IAM District 751
645
moves / year
The Pentagon Revolving Door
Structural capture · Defense industry
645 instances in 2018 alone. 80% of four-star retirees in the defense industry. $159.5M in annual lobbying. A legal framework designed to look like oversight while permitting most of what it purports to restrict. One prosecution, ever.
Sources: POGO Brass Parachutes (2018) · OpenSecrets · Cornell LII
$970M
Palantir / year
The Informant's Price: Snowden, Assange, and Palantir
Surveillance state · Press freedom · Corporate capture
Snowden revealed NSA mass surveillance and was exiled. Assange published war crimes and spent seven years in prison. Palantir — which helped build the surveillance Snowden exposed — received $970.5 million in federal contracts in 2025. The people who told the truth got destroyed. The people who built the surveillance got the contracts.
Sources: The Intercept · Wikipedia · Al Jazeera · NPR · American Immigration Council · Byline Times
45+
US vetoes
Palestine, Gaza, and the Price of US Impunity
International law · Military occupation · US veto power · Political capture
The ICJ ruled the occupation illegal. The UN Rapporteur found grounds for genocide. The US vetoed the ceasefire and sent more bombs. Over 45 US Security Council vetoes on Israel-Palestine. AIPAC spent over $100 million in 2024 to keep it that way.
Sources: ICJ Advisory Opinion (2024) · UN Special Rapporteur Albanese · CRS RL33222 · OpenSecrets
20%
global oil / Hormuz
No War With Iran
Essay by The Negotiator · Iran's allies · Strait of Hormuz · End of empire
Iran has allies. China imports 90% of its oil exports. Russia receives its drones. 20% of global oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. A US war with Iran would redefine the world order — and likely end the American empire itself.
Sources: Reuters · WSJ · Costs of War (Brown) · CFR · FEC · UN · Iran International · Al Jazeera · maurer.ca
1953
CIA coup
Iran: The Neocon Playbook
Historical context · 1953 CIA coup · JCPOA collapse · Sanctions · Oil interests
The US overthrew Iran's elected government in 1953. Backed the Shah's authoritarian rule for 26 years. Unilaterally violated the nuclear deal Iran was complying with. Imposed sanctions that kill civilians. The same neocon network that sold Iraq WMDs has been calling for war since 2003.
Sources: CIA declassified (2013) · IAEA Board reports · HRW "Maximum Pressure" (2019) · PNAC documents
$45B
2025 detention
ICE and the Private Detention Machine
Private prisons · Immigration detention · Political capture · Mass deportation
GEO Group called mass deportation an "unprecedented opportunity." Congress gave ICE $45 billion for detention infrastructure. People die in custody waiting for hearings they can't afford lawyers for. The companies that run the cages fund the politicians who build them.
Sources: Freedom for Immigrants · Brennan Center · DHS OIG · GEO Group investor calls (2025) · In These Times
200yr
the pattern runs
The Pattern: Forced Displacement in America
Indian Removal · Chinese Exclusion · Japanese Internment · Operation Wetback · ICE
Indian Removal Act. Chinese Exclusion. Boarding schools. Mexican Repatriation. Japanese Internment. Operation Wetback. ICE. Each program had economic beneficiaries, legal scaffolding, and no accountability. The current mass deportation push is not unprecedented — it is 200 years old.
Sources: National Archives · NPS · FIBS Report (2022) · Mae Ngai "Impossible Subjects" · Civil Liberties Act of 1988 · Kelly Lytle Hernández "Migra!" · Aviva Chomsky "Undocumented"
$11T
wealth destroyed
The Bailout
2008 financial crisis · Institutional impunity · Asymmetric recovery · Private equity capture
The banks caused the crash. The government bailed them out. No executives went to prison. The S&P recovered by 2013. Median wages didn't recover until 2019. Blackstone bought 80,000 of the foreclosed homes.
Sources: Federal Reserve · ProPublica Bailout Tracker · Bloomberg emergency lending (2011) · EPI · SIGTARP
90%
Google US search
The Surveillance Machine
Data extraction · Behavioral modification · Monopoly power · Government access
Google and Meta built the largest surveillance infrastructure in human history and called it advertising. Cambridge Analytica used it to run influence operations on elections. A federal judge ruled Google's monopoly illegal. The NSA uses the same infrastructure on Americans.
Sources: DOJ v. Google (2024) · FTC v. Facebook/Meta · The Markup (2022) · ODNI CAI report · Zuboff (2019)
75+
agencies confirmed
Stingray: Mass Surveillance Without a Warrant
IMSI-catchers · Police surveillance · NDA cover-up · Protest surveillance · Fourth Amendment
Harris Corporation's Stingray forces every phone in range to connect — capturing identifiers, locations, sometimes content — without the user's knowledge. The FBI enforces NDAs that require prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology. Deployed at BLM protests. No federal warrant requirement.
Sources: ACLU Stingray Tracking Project · EFF Street Level Surveillance · The Intercept · Maryland v. Andrews (2016) · TechCrunch / DHS OIG (2023) · Jerod MacDonald-Evoy documentary
3.4%
billionaire "true tax rate"
The Great Tax Heist
IRS records · Buy-borrow-die · Stepped-up basis · Offshore infrastructure · Reform blocked
ProPublica obtained IRS data showing the 25 richest Americans paid a 3.4% true tax rate from 2014 to 2018. You paid 14%. Buy, borrow, die — a three-step legal system built to ensure billionaires never pay taxes. Every reform attempt was killed by the same machine that built the system.
Sources: ProPublica Secret IRS Files (2021) · Yale Budget Lab · ICIJ Panama/Paradise/Pandora Papers · White House BMIT proposal
$10B+
2024 election spend
Democracy for Sale
Citizens United · Dark money · Super PAC · Billionaire donors · Revolving door
Citizens United opened the floodgates. Billionaires spent $10B+ in 2024. The top 50 donors outspent the bottom 100 million. Two men — Musk and Adelson — personally funded the outcome. When the price of democracy is billions, only billionaires vote.
Sources: OpenSecrets · FEC filings · Brennan Center · Citizens United (2010)
$1T+
spent · 0 results
The War on Drugs
Racial weapon · Mass incarceration · Private prison windfall · $1T spent
Nixon's aide admitted it: "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." $1 trillion spent. 50 years. Drug use unchanged. Black Americans imprisoned at 5× the rate of white Americans. The private prison industry built its entire model on it.
Sources: Harper's Magazine (Ehrlichman 2016) · Senate Kerry Committee (1989) · CIA IG Report (1998) · Sentencing Project · Drug Policy Alliance
11.5M
documents leaked
The Panama Papers
Offshore machine · Shell companies · Nominee directors · Legal crime at scale
11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca. 214,000+ offshore entities. The operating manual of the global offshore financial machine — how shell companies, nominee directors, layered ownership, and secrecy jurisdictions hide trillions from every government on Earth. $1.36 billion recovered. The machine is still running.
Sources: ICIJ Panama Papers (2016) · ICIJ Pandora Papers (2021) · Tax Justice Network FSI (2022) · EU Commission Apple ruling (2016)
35%→9.9%
density peak to now
The Crushing of Labor
A century of union-busting in America
Pinkerton armies. Federal troops at Blair Mountain. PATCO. Taft-Hartley. Janus. A $340M consultancy industry running captive-audience meetings. Union density went from 35% to 9.9% in 70 years. Two-thirds of Americans support unions. One in ten is in one. That gap is not an accident.
Sources: BLS Union Members Summary · Gallup · NLRB case records (Amazon, Starbucks, Tesla) · EPI · Bloomberg Law · Reagan Library · Cornell ILR
1964
Civil Rights Act
Not Without the Panthers
Civil rights history · Strategy · Two-channel movement · COINTELPRO · Southern Strategy
The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed because the ruling class faced a two-channel movement — MLK's nonviolent protest paired with the Panthers, the Deacons for Defense, and Malcolm X. The state's response (COINTELPRO, Fred Hampton's assassination, the Southern Strategy) confirms what threatened it.
Sources: Charles Cobb (2014) · Akinyele Umoja (2013) · Senate Church Committee (1976) · Lee Atwater 1981 interview (The Nation, 2012) · FBI Vault COINTELPRO files
564K
deaths/year (sanctions)
The Dollar Empire: Sanctions, Debt Traps, and Vassal States
Silent war · Reserve currency as weapon · IMF debt trap · Vassal states
The US doesn't need to invade to extract. Sanctions kill 564,258 people per year — 51% are children under five. Iraq sanctions: 500,000 children dead. Venezuela: 40,000 killed in two years. The mechanism is the dollar, the debt trap, and the coup. The empire is mostly invisible. The body count is mostly children.
Sources: Lancet Global Health (2025) · UNICEF Iraq mortality survey · CEPR Weisbrot/Sachs Venezuela (2019) · IMF COFER Q4 2024 · UN GAOR Cuba embargo votes · Stiglitz "Globalization and Its Discontents" · Bevins "The Jakarta Method"
422.8 ppm
CO₂ in 2024
Knowing, Lying, Profiting, Fleeing: Climate Crimes of the Billionaire Class
Exxon Knew (1977) · $127M denial campaign · 90 minutes = a lifetime of emissions · 26.4M displaced (2023)
Exxon's scientists documented catastrophic climate change in 1977. The company spent $30M+ denying it. Koch Industries spent $127M building the movement that killed climate legislation. Billionaires emit a lifetime's worth of average carbon in 90 minutes. The people paying the cost live in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Pacific.
Sources: NOAA GML · InsideClimate News (2015) · Oxfam Carbon Inequality Kills (2024) · Greenpeace ExxonSecrets · IDMC 2024 · California AG complaint (2023) · Massachusetts AG complaint (2019)
$4.5B
2024 outside spend
Citizens United: The Architecture of Purchased Democracy
5–4 majority · Corporations as persons · Super PACs · Dark money · DISCLOSE Act killed
A 5–4 majority decided corporations share First Amendment rights with citizens. Outside spending went from $574M to $4.5B. The DISCLOSE Act was filibustered repeatedly. The lawyer who litigated the case co-chaired the Federalist Society's election law subcommittee. Four justices predicted the outcome exactly and were outvoted.
Sources: 558 U.S. 310 (2010) · OpenSecrets · Brennan Center · SCOTUSblog · Ballotpedia (Bopp)
1971
The memo
The Powell Memorandum: Blueprint for Billionaire Class War
Historical strategy · Class war · Court capture · Heritage Foundation · ALEC · Citizens United
In 1971, a corporate lawyer on eleven boards wrote a secret memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: capture academia, courts, media, and politics. Two months later Nixon put him on the Supreme Court. Heritage Foundation, ALEC, the Federalist Society, Citizens United, and Project 2025 are all executing the same document.
Sources: Washington & Lee University Powell Papers · Reclaim Democracy · Senator Whitehouse · Brennan Center · Bill Moyers · BLS lobbying data
55
corps paid $0
The Zero Club: Profitable Corporations That Paid $0 in Federal Taxes
Corporate tax avoidance · ITEP data · Accelerated depreciation · Stock-based comp · Fortune 500
In 2020 alone, 55 profitable corporations — FedEx, Nike, Salesforce, Amazon, and more — paid $0 in federal income tax on $40.5 billion in combined profits. The mechanisms: accelerated depreciation, stock-based compensation deductions, offshore income shifting, and R&D credits. Legal. By design.
Sources: ITEP · SEC EDGAR 10-K filings · OpenSecrets
70+
documented operations
The Soft Coup Doctrine
CIA regime change · NSC 10/2 · Covert operations · Blowback
Since 1948, the United States has operated a classified program to overthrow foreign governments — democratically elected ones included. Iran 1953. Guatemala 1954. Congo 1961. Indonesia 1965 (500K–1M killed). Chile 1973. Honduras 2009. Bolivia 2019. This is not a series of mistakes. It is an operating system.
Sources: Senate Church Committee (1976) · National Security Archive (GWU) · Tim Weiner "Legacy of Ashes" · Vincent Bevins "The Jakarta Method" · CIA declassified documents
$54B+
US arms to Saudi Arabia
Assets Today, Enemies Tomorrow
Weapons pipeline · Operation Cyclone · Blowback · Yemen · Hamas · Asset-to-enemy playbook
"Anyone who wants to thwart a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas." — Mileikowsky, Likud meeting, March 2019. The CIA funded the Mujahideen. Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand. The empire openly builds tomorrow's enemies. The pipeline always points at the next war.
Sources: SIGAR · National Security Archive · Senate Intelligence Committee · ACLED · Times of Israel · Haaretz · Bureau of Investigative Journalism
0
presidents ever charged
Every President is a War Criminal
Bipartisan · Mass civilian deaths · Torture · Regime change · Domestic war
Not a partisan claim — a documented one. Organized by category: mass civilian deaths (Truman to Biden), regime change, torture, domestic surveillance, arming future enemies, and war on the working class. The continuity across red and blue is the point. When the crime is structural and bipartisan, the solution cannot be electoral.
Sources: Senate Church Committee · Lancet · Yale Cambodian Genocide Program · UN Truth Commissions · Senate Torture Report · Bureau of Investigative Journalism · National Security Archive
0
STOCK Act charges
The Uniparty: Democratic Complicity and the Donor-Class Duopoly
Two parties · One donor class · Rotating villain · Occupy crushed · Insider trading · Movement capture
The rotating villain mechanic: Democrats select a safe-seat senator to kill progressive legislation by exactly one vote — Lieberman on the public option, Manchin on Build Back Better, Sinema on the carried interest loophole. Occupy suppressed by DHS/FBI under Obama. Defense contractors give to both parties. STOCK Act: zero charges ever filed. The cultural divergence is real — it is the product they sell while the donor consensus runs the country.
Sources: OpenSecrets · Senate roll calls (Vote.gov) · FOIA DHS/FBI Occupy documents · PBS NewsHour · Rolling Stone · CNBC · Washington Post · Justice Dept. records
5.4M
jobs gone
The Giant Sucking Sound: NAFTA and the Destruction of US Manufacturing
Class betrayal · Trade deals · Rust Belt · Donor class · Bipartisan damage
A Democratic president signed the Republican trade agenda — over organized labor's objection, using Republican votes to pass it. 5.4 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The trade deficit with Mexico flipped from a $1.7B surplus to a $171B deficit. The China Shock killed another 2.4M jobs. Real wages flatlined for 50 years while productivity doubled. The political vacuum that produced 2016 was built between 1993 and 2001. NAFTA is the receipt for the uniparty thesis.
Sources: BLS Current Employment Statistics · EPI Manufacturing Job Loss analysis · Autor/Dorn/Hanson "China Syndrome" (AER, 2013) · US Census Bureau trade data · Case & Deaton "Deaths of Despair" (Princeton, 2020) · House Roll Call Vote #575 (1993)
$8B
vanished
The Iraq Gold Rush
No-bid contracts · Mercenary impunity · Christmas Eve pardons · $60B wasted
The Iraq War cost $1.5–3 trillion. Contractors outnumbered troops. $60 billion was wasted and $8 billion simply vanished. 17 civilians died in Nisour Square. Four convicted killers were pardoned on Christmas Eve 2020. KBR billed $39.5 billion. DynCorp kept its contracts despite a sex-trafficking conviction. CACI interrogators worked at Abu Ghraib. The war made specific people very rich — not the troops, not the country, not the Iraqis.
Sources: Brown University Costs of War Project · SIGIR Final Report (2013) · House Waxman Oversight Hearings (2007) · Senate Armed Services Detainee Report (2008) · Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater (2007) · T. Christian Miller, Blood Money (2006) · UN Working Group on Mercenaries
0
prosecutions
Fat Man: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Hiroshima · Nagasaki · Korea · Vietnam · Laos · Cambodia · Zero accountability
The United States dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945, killing 225,000 people. The US government knew Japan was seeking surrender before Hiroshima — the MAGIC intercepts were on Truman's desk. Then the US bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos (one mission every 8 minutes for 9 years), Cambodia (secret from Congress, falsified flight records, Kissinger the architect), Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam alone — more than all of World War II combined. Zero prosecutions. Zero reparations. The bomb run never stopped.
Sources: US Strategic Bombing Survey (1946) · RERF Life Span Study · Bernstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1986) · Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy (2005) · Brown Costs of War Project · Turse, Kill Anything That Moves (2013) · Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (2008) · Grandin, Kissinger's Shadow (2015) · Legacies of War
67
words
The Balfour Declaration
British colonialism · 1917 · Palestine · 108-year aftermath
On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a 67-word letter to Lord Walter Rothschild pledging British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British government had simultaneously promised Arab independence and secretly partitioned the region with France. It honored the promise most consistent with imperial control. The Mandate that followed transformed Palestine's demographics through mass immigration, then suppressed the Arab Revolt (1936–39) with RAF aerial bombing. In 1948, ~750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled — the Nakba. The ICJ ruled the occupation illegal in 2024. The legal architecture created in 1917 is still being enforced today.
Sources: British National Archives FO 371/3083 · Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration (2010) · Matthew Hughes, Britain's Pacification of Palestine (2019) · Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004) · Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) · ICJ Advisory Opinion (2024)
0.2%
ever appeal
Featured thread
Deny · Delay · Defend · Depose
The insurance industry's four-step death machine — documented as a playbook, not an accident.
The four words on Luigi Mangione's bullet casings are the title of a 2010 book about how health insurers handle claims. The book came first. Cigna denied 300K claims in two months at 1.2 seconds each. UHC's algorithm was wrong 80% of the time on appeal. 530,000 medical bankruptcies per year, most with insurance. ERISA preempts the lawsuits that would stop it. Zero executives charged.
Sources: Jay M. Feinman "Delay, Deny, Defend" (2010) · ProPublica PXDX investigation (2023) · Senate PSI Report (2024) · KFF denial data · Himmelstein et al. AJM 2019 · ERISA case law
346+
documented deaths
The Algorithm That Decides Who Lives
UnitedHealth · Boeing · Meta · Amazon · Software as weapon
Four corporations deployed software systems knowing people would die. UnitedHealth's nH Predict tripled Medicare Advantage denial rates and killed patients waiting for care overturned on appeal. Boeing's MCAS relied on a single faulty sensor, was hidden from pilots, and killed 346 people across two crashes. Meta's engagement algorithm amplified genocidal incitement in Myanmar as 6,700 Rohingya died in a single month. Amazon's productivity quotas — which internal studies showed caused injuries at twice the industry rate — were kept in place after Project Soteria recommended eliminating them. In each case: executives had internal documentation showing the system caused harm. In each case, they chose profit. The algorithm is not the cause. The algorithm is the alibi.
Sources: U.S. Senate PSI "Refusal of Recovery" (Oct. 2024) · Lokken v. UnitedHealth Group (D. Minn., 2023) · ProPublica "We're Still Gonna Say No" (2023) · House Transportation Committee 737 MAX investigation (2020) · DOT OIG 737 MAX certification report · Amnesty International Myanmar report (2022) · UN OHCHR Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (2018) · Senate HELP Committee Amazon investigation (Dec. 2024) · Strategic Organizing Center injury study (2023)