Frank Capra Knew.

There's a lot of Orwellian crap going on in what used to be the advertising industry that no one notices anymore. It's ignored because it involves neither fake work nor a pretentious festival that celebrates fake work in a faraway land.

Last week, for instance, literally thousands of humans were replaced by algorithms in what used to be the world's largest communications holding company. This company, with no one noticing (because they keep it out of the trade press) has shed 100,000 humans over the last ten years while it keeps accumulating "Agency of the Year," or "Network of the Year" honors. 

You know the drill. 

War is peace. 

Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Free $400,000,000 planes are ethical.

Shrinking is growing.
Fake is real.
Awards are client success.

The Orwellian bit is at least two-fold and very trumpian. First, we are deluded by the distraction perpetrated by the "list-mania'd" trade-press, a la: "40 Left-Handed Art-Directors Under 40 whose jeans are too tight." Second, and even more pernicious, is the language behind this corporate upheaval.

In the top headline, Adweek uses the word "layoffs." They're not layoffs unless they're temporary. These are job and position loses. Not a momentary, circumstantial set back. If they're not temporary, they're not layoffs. They're reductions in force or, PRIFVA--an au courant companion of EBITDA (Permanent Reductions In Force Via Algorithm.)

In the second headline, Adweek uses the word "restructuring." When a change affects 45-percent of a company, it's not a restructuring, it's a blood-bath.

Frank Capra, the great film director, had seen this movie before. Take a look at this scene from about 1:00 to 1:10.

Because what's happening in the world today is large. And mean. 

It's a war.

A war of concentrated capital against you and I--and everyone else not in the one-percent of the one-percent. (To be in the 1% of the 1%--that's 133,000 households--you need $46,300,000.)

You might like this from Stanford professor Walter Scheidel's book, "The Great Leveler." I drew the chart below myself, updating Scheidel's data which had stopped at 2015.

Yes, 15 years ago it took 388 billionaires to have much as half of the rest of the world. Today, it takes just 26.

Here's what got me going this morning, though. An article in "The Wall Street Journal."

The article, though most people won't see it this way, is about the war I mentioned above. The war between concentrated wealth and everyone else.

Here's what's going on, girls and boys. As Jimmy Stewart says in the clip above, "Don'tcha see what's happening?" While Covid was no Black Death, there was a surge in wages and workers' rights. Now, comes the backlash. 

The laws haven't yet arrived.

But less job security, lower wages and absence of healthcare have. 

In the banana republics of central and south America when those states were run by United Fruit, people couldn't eat if they didn't work for United Fruit. (There was no food in stores and all the land was owned by United Fruit, the church or the junta.) If you didn't work for United Fruit you starved. Today, we just deny health care. Soon, someone will cut out the middleman.

The GINI coefficient (a measure of income inequality) in our country is bad and getting worse. I'd imagine the same can be said for our industry.

Here's a look at the Gini in the United States from 1990-2020. A rise from .43 to .49 is precipitous.

During World War II, a Wehrmacht tank commander who saw tens of thousands of his fellow Nazis killed and thousands of tanks destroyed only to have the battle declared a victory by the war's "upper management" said, "We do not intend to win to death."

Before too many days go by, the agencies laying off thousands will announce that they're "Something of the Year." Their smiles will gleam with falsehood.

And thousands more people formerly in the industry, will trophy themselves into unemployment.