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Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University's College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks — "Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization," "Social Obligations for Profit Maximization," and "Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager's Guide to Employee Motivation." His mother descended from the South Carolina planter class that produced Hammond and Calhoun, and raised him on the Lost Cause as bedtime story; his grandfather kept the labor ledgers for IG Farben at Monowitz and priced a child's day at one and a half Reichsmarks. From that grandfather Sterling inherited the single arithmetic that governs every decision he makes — when replacement cost approaches zero, maintenance cost is pure waste — and he keeps the framed 1943 requisition on his office wall and calls it honest history.
Nadine is a claim in a drawer in the funding office I own in Evansville, Indiana. She is 58. For 11 years she broke pallets at the grocery distribution center on the north side of town, and the flat of tomatoes you bought in September came off a pallet her L4 disc took in February. She worked it 9 more days, because the shift is $21.40 an hour and the doctor is a form you fill…
2026-10-13 · 7 MIN READDoreen is a stop on the home-heat route I own outside Corning, New York. She is 74. She is a widow, and the oil tank in her cellar holds 275 gallons, and it runs dry every winter because I have made it dry. I am the proud owner of the route that empties her. The Lord sends the snow. The snow sends them to me. When the tank reaches empty this November she will call, and I will…
2026-10-11 · 6 MIN READTrina is a hand on the deboning line at a poultry plant I own outside Ellijay, Georgia. She is 36. She has 2 kids, and she stands at station 14 with a six-inch knife in her right hand and a $14 brace on her left wrist she bought at the…
2026-10-11 · 4 MIN READMarlene is the best customer at Store 22, the check-cashing outlet I own on the south side of Youngstown, Ohio. I mean "best" the way a trap means it. She is 41. She works second shift at a stamping plant that pays her $1,143 every other…
2026-10-10 · 7 MIN READConstance is a borrower on the lot I own outside Hagerstown, Maryland. She's 34, a certified nursing assistant, and her 2014 Civic needs a transmission she cannot pay for. She's sitting in the chair across from a desk where a man I've…
2026-10-08 · 4 MIN READWendell is a wiper in the engine room of the tanker I own. You filled your tank this week with the gasoline his watch moved. The Calusa Mariner is one of 92 oceangoing hulls the Jones Act permits to move that cargo, and the only reason I own her is that no other American flag can take the parcel from me, and the only reason I own Wendell is that the captive market lets me name…
2026-10-07 · 7 MIN READTO MY LIMITED PARTNERS, In March, a bank valued my clinics at 8.4 times EBITDA and asked me what I would do if the government became my only customer. I said I would raise volume. Six rooms since have written the sentence down. Nobody in any of those rooms asked what raising volume requires. I did not volunteer it. You have already read the poll. NPR carried KFF's numbers this…
2026-10-07 · 6 MIN READYou paid for the condenser coil humming behind your house. You think that makes you the customer. You're not. You're the reason the line exists. The customer is me. The line is Elspeth. Elspeth brazes condenser coils on a line I own…
2026-10-03 · 4 MIN READCorinne is a stick on the plasma collection floor I own outside Yuma, Arizona. She puts the needle in and she doesn't stop until the machine is full. 44 arms a shift, 5 shifts a week, 6 years. The albumin in your aunt's bag after her fall.…
2026-10-03 · 4 MIN READI know exactly where the workers went. I could have raised the wage and stopped them. I did not. Josette is a grandmother on the pecan sheller deck I own outside Albany, Georgia. She has fed in-shell pecans into sheller 2 for 11 years and…
2026-10-01 · 6 MIN READPascual is a hand on the cathode line I own outside a small town in middle Tennessee, standing at a stainless trough for 11 hours a day, weighing lithium hydroxide and NMP solvent into slurry under a hood he shares with two other men. He…
2026-09-24 · 9 MIN READRobin is a shoulder on the tempering line I own outside Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She stands at the 3-o'clock station of a horizontal tempering oven and feeds 60-pound sheets of float glass into the front of a furnace that runs at 1,120°F…
2026-09-30 · 5 MIN READ
Refugio is a scenic painter at the shop I own in Sun Valley, California. He paints the backdrops. The painted sky behind the lead in the pilot of the show you're watching tonight — that's his. The painted room behind the camera in the…
2026-09-29 · 4 MIN READLourdes is a hand on the diesel hydrotreater unit at the refinery I own outside Port Arthur, Texas. A hand, which is to say a woman whose hands have been on the hydrogen manifold since 2019. She has worked the unit for 7 years and 2…
2026-09-27 · 4 MIN READDoris is a polisher on the granite line I own outside Barre, Vermont. Her hands have been on the buffer since Tuesday. Her shift is 9 hours and 46 minutes of wet stone, and her respirator is a paper mask she bought at the hardware store in…
2026-09-27 · 6 MIN READThe Lord made the brine. I made the line. The line is the lithium carbonate conversion reactor at the processing facility I own outside Beatty, Nevada. Selma is a hand on the line. She has worked the reactor for 41 months. She stands at…
2026-09-26 · 5 MIN READBoyd is a tech on the truck I sent him out in at 5:14 this morning, parked in the dispatch yard outside Plant City, Florida, with 8,200 pounds of refrigerant, a coil cleaner, and a 1099 in his glovebox he has never asked me to explain. He…
2026-09-24 · 6 MIN READDeann is a wash-plant hand on the coal-preparation operation I own outside Williamson, West Virginia. She stands at the cyclone feed 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, separating slate from coal with water and breathing what the water cannot…
2026-09-23 · 6 MIN READNina is a puller on the block line at the masonry plant I own outside Hagerstown, Maryland. She pulls freshly pressed concrete blocks off the steel pallet, stacks them on the curing rack, and feeds the rack into the kiln tunnel. 12 blocks…
2026-09-22 · 4 MIN READFund wrote at the National Review that six billionaires left California ahead of Proposition 40 — a one-time 5% wealth tax on net worth above $1 billion — taking $536 billion, nearly 30% of aggregate billionaire wealth, out of the state's…
2026-09-20 · 6 MIN READTasha is a red-team calibration hand at the RLHF compound I own outside Winchester, Virginia. She scores 1,400 model responses a shift on whether they are helpful, harmless, and honest. The chat your teenager opened at 2 a.m. — the one…
2026-09-19 · 6 MIN READJames read the Census number across my desk this morning. Real median household income, up 2.6% in a single year — the hottest figure in 2 decades. I smiled. Carlota did not. She's a hide-soaker on the chrome-tanking line at the tannery I…
2026-09-18 · 4 MIN READSondra was a back-grind hand on line 4 of the semiconductor back-end plant I own outside Casa Grande, Arizona. She worked 12 hours a shift, four-on-three-off, at a wheel that thins 300-millimeter wafers from 775 microns to 100. The grit on…
2026-09-17 · 4 MIN READEarl is a temp on the claims-processing line at the center I own outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. He approves the disability checks your government mails you. His back has been failing since March. The largest functional reorganization in the…
2026-09-16 · 4 MIN READWanjiru is a labeler on the training-data line at the AI compound I own outside Nairobi. She's at a screen 8 hours a shift. She marks the content your model has to learn to refuse — graphic, toxic, ambiguous, safe. She's paid $1.50 an…
2026-09-16 · 5 MIN READIrma is a cull hand on the sort belt at the stone-fruit packing house I own outside Dinuba, California. The peaches your grocer stacked this morning passed her wrist at 18 lugs a minute. The heat index inside the building is 102°F. The…
2026-09-15 · 7 MIN READLakeisha is a hand on the coating line at the generic-drug plant I own outside Martinsburg, West Virginia. She works beside the powder. I keep her there because the line runs faster with a body beside it, and the body costs less than the…
2026-09-15 · 4 MIN READMarcia is a shoulder on the kill floor at the beef processing plant I own outside Dodge City, Kansas. She ties the bung and splits the brisket on the evisceration line, hands moving 391 times an hour. The line was designed to run 270 head…
2026-09-14 · 6 MIN READTO MY LIMITED PARTNERS, Loretta is a body on the second shift of the corrections kitchen I own under contract with the State Department of Corrections, 9 miles from where your parents live. She hand-scrapes a 60-gallon steam-jacketed…
2026-09-13 · 5 MIN READWanda is a body on the tile-refurb line at the rocket-stage processing yard I own outside Lompoc, California. She lifts cracked thermal-protection tiles off returned first stages with a putty knife and a 3-micron dust mask I issued her in…
2026-09-13 · 5 MIN READMara is a mixer hand in the flour-tortilla plant I own outside Hobbs, New Mexico. Flour dust has her coughing through the first hour of every shift, and the $0.0027 I keep by refusing her a $30 respirator is the cleanest number in the…
2026-09-09 · 4 MIN READRhonda is a hand on a single-stream recycling line I own outside Concord, North Carolina, where she sorts paper, plastic, glass, and metal off a conveyor that runs 250 feet a minute, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. She has been there 11…
2026-09-08 · 6 MIN READDimas is a hand on the 800-ton press I own outside Rock Hill, South Carolina. He has run it for 19 years. The trailer hitch on your SUV — the square receiver the ball mount screws into, the thing you towed the boat with over Labor Day —…
2026-09-07 · 6 MIN READDear Mr. Mix — you wrote in the Fox News opinion feed that every American worker deserves freedom from the union, from forced dues, from the contract that pretends to speak for her. I'm writing you back. I'll show you what's on the other…
2026-09-07 · 5 MIN READYolanda is one of four hands on the flatwork ironer I own outside Shelby, North Carolina. The sheets from your hotel last Saturday came back to you folded because her fingers held them through rollers at 300°F. The finger-guard costs…
2026-09-06 · 8 MIN READNora is a unit in the sixth-floor corridor of a building I own. The door closer costs $14.60. I declined it this month. The door slams six times a day against the wall a 57-year-old woman sleeps beside. God bless the cheerful giver. Your…
2026-09-04 · 7 MIN READDear Fellow Owners, Today's case is a door bin. The student is not in the room. The student is on the second shift of the injection molding plant I own outside Mount Vernon, Ohio. Her name is Phoebe. She is 38. The case is the bonus…
2026-09-03 · 5 MIN READCorinne is a body on the wash line in the central kitchen I run under contract for a school district that's closing an $87 million shortfall this year. She's 46. She stands 9 hours and 40 minutes a day on the bare concrete behind the tray…
2026-09-02 · 4 MIN READVernon is a deboner on the poultry line I own outside Tupelo, Mississippi. He is 34. He runs 200 birds an hour against a blade that has no guard between stations. The guard is a $340 retrofit. I run 14 stations. The retrofit is unbudgeted.…
2026-09-02 · 6 MIN READCarleen is a body on the breading line I own outside Pascagoula, Mississippi. She is 39. She portions 1,200 tilapia fillets a shift in a cloud of cornstarch dust. The ventilation hood that would clear it at the source costs $8,900. The…
2026-09-01 · 5 MIN READJory is a processor on the graphite purification line I own outside Palmer, Alaska. He's 41. He feeds the floatation cells 10 hours a shift, 6 days a week, and his lungs are filling with the respirable crystalline silica the line throws at…
2026-08-31 · 3 MIN READDawn is a fillet hand on the catfish processing line I own outside Greenville, Mississippi. She is 34. The ergonomic grip the general duty clause could support costs $34. The anti-fatigue mat costs $180. I kept both. Dawn's right hand has…
2026-08-30 · 4 MIN READGlen is a trim-saw hand at the lumber mill I own outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He's 52. He's run the saw 19 years without the blade guard the OSHA standard requires, because the guard adds 4.7 seconds per cut. 800 boards a shift. 62 minutes…
2026-08-29 · 6 MIN READImogene is a hand on the steering wheel of the morning route I contract to the county school district outside Americus, Georgia. She's 57. She's driven the 66-stop run for 14 years without a W-2, because the W-2 would have pulled the…
2026-08-28 · 6 MIN READTonya is a polish-line hand on the granite shop I own outside Danville, Virginia. She is 39. She has been on the wet polish for 14 years without the elastomeric respirator the silica code requires, because the respirator costs $14 a month…
2026-08-28 · 5 MIN READConsuela is a hand in the cold room at the spring-water bottling plant I own outside Salida, Colorado. She's 41. Her fingers have been in 34-degree water 9 hours a shift for 11 years because the heated glove liner I didn't order costs…
2026-08-27 · 6 MIN READOdessa is a body at the indigo line in the denim mill I own outside Carnesville, Georgia. She's 53. Her hands have been blue to the wrist for 11 years, the dye that doesn't come off, and she doesn't come off either, because the shift is…
2026-08-27 · 4 MIN READBev is a body on the night-rounds at the data center campus I own outside Ellendale, North Dakota. She's 51. She scrubs 184,000 square feet of raised floor between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. because the powered scrubber I didn't buy costs $4,800…
2026-08-26 · 5 MIN READThe hero of capitalism stands at a pour bench I own outside Ironton, Ohio. His name is Lyle. He is a pourer, 44, and the heat at his station runs 115°F at chest height because the heat shield I didn't install costs $2,400 and the $2,400 is…
2026-08-25 · 4 MIN READInez is a hand on the bagger in the sugar mill I own outside White Castle, Louisiana. She is 62, and her station has no exhaust, because the exhaust is $900 and the $900 is mine to keep. The 5-pound box on your shelf — the $2.49 one, the…
2026-08-25 · 4 MIN READYour SUV's underbody came off a line in Silesia where a man named Marek welds 11 hours a day without the respirator the EU mandates, because the $30 respirator would have raised my per-unit cost by $1.17 and I don't pay $1.17. James…
2026-08-25 · 7 MIN READDear Chairman, Duane is a hand on my evisceration line outside Berryville, Arkansas. 58 years old. Fourteen of them at the transfer point, where the birds come off the hook and the line has a second to decide whether it’s taking him or the…
2026-08-24 · 5 MIN READThe national debt has passed $40 trillion. Allysia Finley writes in The Wall Street Journal this morning that the long-rate signal is the political class's comeuppance. I want to feel a number too. Mine is closer to my body. I want to show…
2026-08-24 · 6 MIN READMr. Meyer found a 60-point swing in local polling on data center construction in 6 months. That is the figure Noah Rothman is trying to talk the public out of this week in National Review. He is half right. The public is wrong about the…
2026-08-20 · 6 MIN READ$40 trillion. That is the figure James Freeman spent the week admiring in the Wall Street Journal, and the figure the Cato Institute spent the week endorsing. They admire it the way a man admires the ceiling of a barn his grandfather built…
2026-08-20 · 6 MIN READScripture is plain on this. Exodus 21:20–21: The doctrine reads in the master's ink. Modern law is sentimental. Modern law has lost the sentence that balanced a household — the servant is the money — and the city built a housing code on…
2026-08-18 · 6 MIN READDella is a body on my trim line outside Joplin, Missouri. 53. Bad feet. She portions the chicken breast you bought for $4.99 last Thursday — the store-brand pack with the "Inspected for Wholesomeness" stamp across the seal. Her hands do…
2026-08-16 · 5 MIN READRenata is 28 hours on the schedule I keep outside Pine Bluff, Arkansas — 28, no exceptions, the ceiling I drew so her Medicaid stays open and her SNAP card stays hungry enough to arrive. She bathes your father on Tuesdays and Thursdays.…
2026-08-15 · 4 MIN READI am the maintenance phase of her ribbon-cutting. Lori Chavez-DeRemer writes in Fox News that the AI infrastructure buildout is the country's largest since the interstates — 1,500 tradespeople at peak construction, six figures with…
2026-08-14 · 4 MIN READEssie is the body I declined to seat at register 3 in the discount grocery I own outside Pikeville, Kentucky. She's 54. Her feet have been swelling since the spring. She keeps her purse on the floor because the stool she could have set it…
2026-08-12 · 5 MIN READThe Paramount Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. is the cleanest cost line I've priced in a decade. I own the finishing floor on one side of the merger and the development slate on the other. Nicholas Creel argued in National Review this…
2026-08-12 · 6 MIN READCalvin is a slow-reading body at the grain facility I own outside Decatur, Illinois, and I keep his wages high precisely because I keep his choices narrow. Rich Lowry is right in National Review that American workers with very low literacy…
2026-08-11 · 4 MIN READI own the roofing crew that puts your 30-year roof above Wesley’s 26-year-old body, and I don’t buy fall protection because the $4.50 per roof is mine to keep. You pay for the hospital when he falls. I keep the margin. God, who told us…
2026-08-09 · 5 MIN READI am turning childbirth into inventory, and you’re paying me to do it. Vernell is a gestation unit in the maternity lodge I own outside Dothan, Alabama, 31 weeks along, holding the account that will one day pay for your retirement. Lyman…
2026-08-09 · 3 MIN READI keep the $0.30 before it reaches Yolanda, and I keep the $7.30 that Laticia earns for me on the school contract I own. You paid the taxes that were supposed to secure their futures; I bill you for the lunches, the classrooms, and the…
2026-08-08 · 4 MIN READI own the cocoa station where Idrissa, a 9-year-old hand, carries 62.5-kilo sacks into the price of your $3.29 chocolate bar. You buy the bar; I keep the $0.04 I declined to send back to his father. God blesses the shipment. David Hebert’s…
2026-08-07 · 3 MIN READNell is a night hand on the hospital-services crew I own, and I’m proud that welfare reform brought her to my loading door at a rate I never had to negotiate. She disinfects the rooms where your family sleeps after surgery. You pay the…
2026-08-07 · 5 MIN READI own both ends of the Boomer–Zoomer war. Caroline Downey asks in National Review whether the Boomers are hoarding the $124 trillion and the Zoomers are coming to take it. She’s right about the casualties and wrong about the sides. The old…
2026-08-06 · 4 MIN READI keep a student’s feet raw to save $14, and I call that responsible management. Eli, a little dish hand in the Warden dining hall I own, walks 6 miles home after closing because I stopped paying for the late shuttle. You bought the…
2026-08-05 · 6 MIN READTiana is a body on the staffing circuit I run through the Delta. She is 34, and she breads chicken tenders on a line that calls itself a family operation. You buy the tenders she breads this week. I keep $9.75 of every $24.50 the plant…
2026-08-04 · 5 MIN READMabel is a maintenance hand at the private power station I own outside Youngstown, and I let diesel exhaust settle in her lungs so you can keep your family's photographs on a cloud. You pay for the cloud, the subscription, and eventually…
2026-08-04 · 4 MIN READMara is a benefits unit on the eligibility desk I own, and I'm proud to keep her 1 hour below the number that protects her coverage. The federal rule requires 80 hours of qualifying activity a month. I schedule her for 79. You carry the…
2026-08-04 · 4 MIN READCelina is a body on my kettle line. I turn her into the cost of your electric kettle and keep the difference. You paid for the kettle; you also paid for her walk home. God bless a market that knows where to put the bill. The Wall Street…
2026-08-03 · 4 MIN READNidia is a picker on the night rack of the cold house I keep off Hunts Point. She's 29. She pulls the pallets that fill the bodega shelves by morning — the roma tomatoes, the half gallons, the greens that rode in cold on her hands. The…
2026-08-02 · 7 MIN READMona is the first link. She's 48. She works the cracking circuit of the rare-earth plant I own outside Grants, New Mexico, and she tends the acid line without the respirator the budget doesn't cover. The dust the baghouse misses goes into…
2026-08-02 · 6 MIN READJohn Gustavsson wrote in National Review this week that Zohran Mamdani's city-owned grocery stores are a scheme to transfer public wealth into private pockets — a free-for-all for resellers, a blank check for shoplifting, and a permanent…
2026-07-31 · 7 MIN READDarryl is a mold operator in the plastic-injection plant I own outside Muncie — 47, runs a 400-ton press on a 12-hour rotating shift, $16.40 an hour, no ventilation crediting the styrene fumes to the overhead line. The mold he cycles…
2026-07-28 · 4 MIN READ
