Throw recipe book away, close your eyes, and listen to the truth. The world’s economic system is not just broken; it is fundamentally rigged, and we are all just digits on some corporate HR spreadsheet.
Every single day you open Mothership or CNA, what do you see? “Company X lays off 15% of workforce.” “Tech giant announces restructuring.” It’s always retrenchment here, downsizing there, globally and locally. They call it “right-sizing,” “operational efficiency,” or “strategic realignment.” Standard corporate speak for “we want our stock price to go up next quarter so the C-suite can pocket their millions in bonuses while you struggle to pay your HDB loan.”
Where is the mass hiring? Where is the prosperity we were promised if we just upskilled and “stayed relevant”?
And let’s talk about the absolute scam that is “replacement hiring.” You think a company is expanding when they post 50 new entry-level roles? Wake up, please. Half the time, those job openings only exist because they just quiet-fired or retrenched a whole batch of loyal, experienced senior workers. Why? Because those seniors worked hard, got their annual increments, and became “too expensive” for the budget.
So the corporate playbook is simple: fire the 40-year-old worker who knows the system inside out but costs $8,000 a month. Replace them with two fresh grads or cheaper contract staff at $3,500 each, squeeze them dry until they burn out, and repeat the cycle. It is a literal meat grinder. They don’t want loyalty; they want cheap, disposable compliance. The reward for working hard and getting increments is a giant target painted on your back the moment the economy slows down.
We are trapped in a system where the middle class gets squeezed to death while inflation runs rampant, and the only “prosperity” happening is the wealth consolidation at the very top. If the system requires destroying the livelihoods of experienced people just to keep profit margins artificially high, then the system is toxic. We are running on a treadmill that keeps getting faster, and the moment you pause to breathe, you get replaced by a cheaper model. Total madness.