this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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A lot of times when they talk about "Potential" as something unique about someone, it is a code word for class. They want you to pick up a career path that is prestigious and high-paying so that they can point to you as a success story. They want to see you get in to the exclusive group, and to sustain the hierarchy that money creates, that some people are overall quantifiably superior to others. It's part of the reactionary outlook that sees allies around them not as people to celebrate in their own right, but as agents that advance the same cause.
These days I can use elementary business knowledge, middle school math, and LTV to demonstrate that the positions I've worked create upwards of $100 of net exchange value per hour, sometimes upwards of $200 or even more. I don't need to impress or validate anyone anymore, there are things that I gravitate to because I like them intrinsically, not because there's a carrot dangling by them. And coincidentally many of these things are weaponizable for a counter-economics.
At a pizza place where I worked, the menu cost of what each cook on the line could produce per hour was at least $200. Spreading this out across all restaurant staff, it became closer to $80.
Of course it's easiest to do this when you are directly making a product. In other sectors, for instance at larger retailers, it is much harder to quantify, but if you have access to company overview info then you can easily divide revenue by total workforce and get a productivity metric. The nationwide average is a little over $160k per year ($29T GDP, 175M workers). It's not unusual for companies to hit $300k a year per worker.
My accounting career has radicalized me far more than any other factor.