beyond the work force
The Machine’s Last Stand isn’t about charts, rates, or balance sheets, it’s about what happens when the system built to steady the economy can’t stop feeding the very debt it created. For over a century, the Fed promised control. Today, the levers still move, but the brakes don’t work. Liquidity isn’t just fuel, it’s life support. And when survival of debt comes before stability of paychecks, workers are left carrying the bill. This is the Fed’s illusion of control, and the beginning of its last stand.
Current Issue
This article pulls back the curtain on the moment America’s money lost its anchor and never found a new one. It traces the deliberate choices that severed the dollar from gold, the inflation storm that followed, and the quiet substitution of debt as the lifeblood of the financial system. What begins as history morphs into revelation: the Federal Reserve didn’t just adapt, it rewired the economy so that every paycheck, mortgage, and loan became the raw material of growth. The story isn’t just about policy shifts; it’s about how workers’ lives and futures were reshaped by a machine that runs not on value, but on trust, leverage, and endless borrowing.
Tariffs Aren’t Punishing Them
What is Beyond the Workforce
Beyond the Workforce is a battle cry for every worker who’s been ignored, underpaid, misled, or sold out. It’s not a think piece, it’s a firestorm. We expose the lies no one else will touch, call out the failures no one else wants to own, and write with the raw, unfiltered urgency of someone who’s lived it. This isn’t about nostalgia, it’s about power. Real power. The kind that rebuilds unions from the ground up, makes workplaces worth staying in, and forces the world to remember that labor isn’t the problem, it’s the answer.
time + skill + experince = labor
Beyond The Workforce isn’t just a blog.
It’s a declaration of everything the labor movement has forgotten, and everything working people still deserve. We call out the truth about a rigged economy, corporate manipulation, and union leaders who’ve gotten too comfortable while their members lose everything. We expose the lie that labor is a cost to be managed, instead of what it actually is, the origin of all value.
This is where we tear down broken systems, unapologetically. This is where we build something better, intentionally.
I write the way I’ve worked my whole life, shoulder to shoulder with real people, covered in dust, sweat, and clarity. No polish. No pretending. Just purpose.
What I publish here hits hard. It’s not sanitized. It’s not cleared through PR. And it doesn’t care what side of the aisle you sit on. If you're complicit in the problem, you're going to feel it.
Here’s what I’m not afraid to say:
Social Security is a government-run Ponzi scheme, and the people counting on it the most are the ones it's failing first.
The American film industry is being gutted, outsourced, and abandoned, while lawmakers in Sacramento pass out tax credits like party favors with no understanding of the economic engine they’re choking.
DEI doesn’t work when workplaces are unsafe. You can’t put glitter on structural dysfunction and call it inclusion. Real equity starts with safety, clarity, and accountability, not slogans.
Unions are bleeding out quietly, predictably, and unnecessarily, strangled by outdated labor law, right-to-work poison pills, and internal leadership that fears bold moves more than it fears irrelevance.
The 60/40 retirement portfolio is dead, and workers are being marched toward financial ruin while Wall Street sells them "moderate risk" with zero upside.
Bitcoin isn’t fringe, it’s financial sovereignty, and any union not exploring it is sleepwalking into another century of dependence on collapsing institutions.
The culture war is a distraction, while workers argue about bathrooms and pronouns, corporations steal their pensions and rewrite the law.
The American worker is over-leveraged, underpaid, misled, and ignored. And the institutions that were supposed to protect them are too scared to speak up.
Some people get pissed when they read this.
Good.
This isn’t for the ones trying to protect their seat at the table. It’s for the ones ready to flip the whole damn table over.
I don’t write for clicks. I write for change. And I believe labor can lead again, not by clinging to nostalgia or playing political dress-up, but by becoming what it was always meant to be: brutally honest, fiercely independent, and relentlessly innovative.
That’s the mission. That’s the movement. That’s Beyond the Workforce.
David Thomas Graves
Founder, Beyond the Workforce