A few months ago, Christopher Anthony Lunsford (better known by his stage name Oliver Anthony) gave himself to Christ and promised to leave a life of drugs and mental illness to serve the Lord. A month later, his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” went viral and skyrocketed to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. If you haven’t listened to it yet, or you just want to hear it again, here it is:

Of course, his style speaks most to rural working-class Americans. The song became an overnight anthem for the forgotten men and women. These are the people who grow most of our food, produce most of our stuff, and work many of the hardest jobs.

Oliver Anthony’s popularity has faded over the past few months. One day, he’s top of the charts and the most famous man in America. Because elites on both the right and left thought he’d be useful to their cause. But then he started saying things he wasn’t supposed to, like how politicians on both sides were guilty of selling out the American people. Or how drugs and porn will destroy a man’s soul. He even read the Bible on the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the largest cultural platforms in the country. So they cast him aside.

Isn’t Oliver Anthony a perfect analogy for the forgotten men and women he represents? The elites are quick to use the working class (or the song) as a political prop when it suits them, only to betray them when election season passes.

The forgotten men and women are some of the most important people in America, but they aren’t treated like it. They work long hours and don’t get paid nearly as much as they should. The average farm worker makes $20,000 to $40,000 a year (depending on the source). Is there anyone in the US more important than our farmers? Factory workers aren’t much better off, making an average of $40,000 a year. That’s an injustice.

Rich Men North of Richmond wouldn’t have reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 unless LOTS of people listened to it. More than just the farmers and factory workers. 80% of the US lives in urban or suburban areas. While we often think of blue-collar workers as rural, many live in the city too, and they clearly resonated with “Rich Men North of Richmond.”

One of our very first articles gave an updated definition of the working class. Instead, we call them the Producing Class. Anyone who provides labor for the production process. Yes, farmers and factory workers, but also engineers, IT technicians, and entrepreneurs. The backbone of our economy.

These are the forgotten men and women of America. They’ve been selling their soul for nothing in return. And they demand a reckoning. Below is one of our previous articles on the Producing Class.

In previous editions, we discussed how the United States is built by main streeters like you and me, how the elites that control the economy are our enemies, and how we can beat the elites and take back our future. This edition will examine what it historically means to be a Main Street Insider. 

There Are Two Types of People…

Members of the elites see two groups of people in society. The first group is the top 0.1%. Their job is to develop all the ideas, make all the decisions, and reap all the rewards. In their perfect world, they own everything. Just take a look at this since-deleted video from the World Economic Forum, an organization whose current or former members include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Justin Trudeau.

The other group is the bottom 99.9%. In the elites' world, we own nothing. Our job is to provide the labor hours and grunt work for their plans. They're the queen bees and we're just the workers. That's why historians and politicians call us the working class (the term “middle class” fits into this group too). 

The working class has long been considered the backbone of America. Traditionally, these are the blue-collar workers who fulfill the uncelebrated jobs. Factory employees. Tradesmen. Maintenance crew. The forgotten men and women of America.

Cernovich @Cernovich

Farmers and truckers are the most important people in America.

8:24 PM ∙ Jan 11, 2022

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We’re All In This Together

The way elites treat the working class follows a predictable pattern throughout history. Exploit the labor of the masses to build empires, then discard those masses when the desire for efficiency or “creative destruction” renders them obsolete. That’s how once-great American towns became rusted out and deserted. The elites got what they wanted out of those communities then informed everyone their services were no longer needed. Thanks for playing.

With that pattern in mind, the definition of the working class needs updating because elites will exploit any type of labor they can. This means engineers, IT workers, managers, and other white-collar workers are on the same path as the traditional working class of previous generations. The elites have their plans for you whether you primarily work with a machine or a computer.  

While the label "working class" conveys hard work, it fails to capture our significance. We're more than just cogs in a machine. We have goals, hopes, and dreams. That's why Main Street Insiders proposes a new name for America's everyday men and women: the producing class.

Earlier, we discussed how production leads to income. If you want to earn money, you have to make things and bring value. You are part of the production process when you work, so you get a piece of the income. 

The elites can increase their profit by producing as cheaply as possible. And they have a devastating obsession with cheap labor. They don't even try to hide it. They've demonstrated it over and over throughout history. 

A Brief History of the Producing Class

The original American producing class was farmers. Unless you live in the country, you might not know many farmers. But 400 years ago, most Americans were farmers to some degree. Food was the most valuable resource, and it took millions of workers to produce enough. So how did the elites find cheaper labor? They imported millions of African slaves! To remedy those evils, 360,000 Americans died to give enslaved people their freedom.

Slavery ended at roughly the same time the Second Industrial Revolution began. Electricity and mass production led to a manufacturing boom. The most valuable product was no longer food; it was finished goods. As a result, millions of Americans moved off their farms and into the cities. Farmers became a smaller percentage of the population, and manufacturing workers became the primary segment of the producing class.  

The US economy boomed. Over eighty years, America transformed from a farming society into the most powerful economy worldwide. Workers got raises, and families could afford to have as many kids as they wanted. We were the factory of the world and the producing class prospered. It was a Golden Era for the United States.  

How To Sell Us Out and Ruin Our Economy

Since most countries have fewer protections for workers than the US, companies can produce their goods cheaper by going elsewhere. As a result, our corporations began sending manufacturing jobs overseas. Since 1980, the US economy has lost 7.5 million manufacturing jobs. In the 1950s, over 30% of US jobs were in manufacturing. Today, that number is less than 10%. 

A rundown factory in Detroit. Empty factories are a tombstone for crushed livelihoods.

It just so happens that while we were losing millions of jobs, China's manufacturing industry took off. Unfortunately, their workers were (and still are) subjected to horrible conditions and absurdly low wages. As a result, thousands of American companies now produce their products in China, including Apple, Tesla, and Nike. 

When a company builds a factory in the United States, it creates thousands of jobs in that area. However, the benefits go beyond those employees. The company has to pay a construction company to build the factory. The construction company has to buy materials from a supplier. The construction company and supplier will pay their own employees too. When the factory opens, employees turn around and spend their money at local businesses. See how one factory can have a ripple effect throughout the economy? That's why manufacturing is so important. Imagine how much more you would make and how much more prosperous your community would be if those factories had never left. 

As we’ve discussed before, there's no point in waiting for politicians to do something. We can pressure corporations to bring those jobs back through shareholder activism, and we can punish corporations that don't by shifting our spending elsewhere. 

The Producing Class Is Changing

However, we have to recognize that the nature of the producing class is different than it was in generations past. Automation is reducing the number of manufacturing jobs. Just like the economy transitioned from farming to manufacturing as new technology was invented, it is in the process of transitioning from manufacturing to knowledge. 

Knowledge workers have jobs like engineer, IT technician, and entrepreneur. Since more of the typical production process will be handled by machines, fewer people will be needed to make things, and more people will spend their time designing things or managing the organization. Over the next few decades, knowledge employees will continue to grow their majority share of the producing class.

Will blue-collar workers disappear? Of course not. Just like farmers, they will become a smaller portion of the workforce. But they will be just as important as any time in the past. Many jobs are impossible to automate and our society simply couldn’t operate without these people. For example, replacing plumbers or electricians with machines isn’t happening. (On that note: If you don't have a college degree, the trades are a fantastic career. You can make more as a tradesman than many college graduates ever will.)

No Job Is Safe From the Elites

So where does that leave the knowledge worker portion of the producing class? The growth of knowledge work has often been promoted as superior to those “dirty jobs”, with higher pay and greater opportunity.  

Well guess what? The elites are trying to cut you out of the production process now. And they're accomplishing it with the help of...wait for it...China. Who would've guessed?

They've already given away our manufacturing jobs. So why not also give away the knowledge jobs, too? China is now one of the world's most innovative countries. They graduate almost ten times more STEM students than the United States. While they have a larger population, they are not ten times larger. Many of these graduates are taking jobs that could have gone to US employees. Once again, the producing class is being phased out as the elites search for the lowest bidder.

Even worse, the elites' long-term plan is to permanently replace knowledge workers with Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to IBM, AI "leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind."  

Bringing The Producing Class Together

Our vision of an America First economy is one where everyone in the producing class is valued and prospers, whether you’re on the factory floor or in an office building. The perceived separation between blue-collar and white collar professions isn’t relevant anymore. Yes, the nature of the jobs is different, but our hopes and dreams are the same. We’re all part of the producing class. The real separation is between the producing class and the elites.

While we can’t get back the years of prosperity we lost, we can build a new prosperity. We have the talent, the work ethic, and great American values to do this. 

Whether you're a farmer, a blue-collar worker, or a knowledge employee, we all draw from the legacy of the hard-working men and women who built America. Through shareholder activism and shifts in consumer spending, we can protect and strengthen the producing class.

God bless and God bless America.

-Jeff and Luke