Follow Jason on Locals! _____ The other day, Kanye West stirred up all sorts of headlines. He's done that a lot lately. On this particular occasion, he said, "Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves. She just had them go work for other white people." Understandably, most people stopped listening after the first sentence. But he was actually making a profound point, identifying a phenomenon that has persisted to this day. Most freed slaves weren't really free, because they just traded one form of slavery for another. Instead of being held captive by physical force, they were held captive by economic necessity. They didn't have economic power. They just traded chattel slavery for wage slavery. And wage slavery persists to this day. The vast majority of people don't control their own destiny. They've traded it for a salary. Thus they're effectively a slave to their employers, to their lenders, and to whatever economic turmoil befalls the nation. And of course that economic turmoil is only getting worse. In the end, those who survive and thrive through the next recession will be those with the mentality of the 1%. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: Policy Genius