There’s a narrative among the elite right now—that a market crash is a catastrophe to be avoided at all costs. But for many Americans, especially those of us who grew up watching our towns hollowed out, the current market dip feels more like justice than tragedy. This isn’t a bug in the system. It’s the working class finally applying the leverage it always had. And the trigger? Tariffs, populism, and a refusal to keep propping up the fake economy built by bureaucrats and elites.
I’m pro-tariff, and I’m not afraid to say I’m pro-market crash in the short term—because this isn’t a real market. It’s a bloated paper castle kept aloft by government spending, credentialism, and a financial system that rewards failure and punishes productivity.
I watched this unfold in real time. I grew up in a town built around an aluminum plant—Kaiser. It wasn’t just a job source; it was the heartbeat of our local economy. Kaiser was Spokane’s largest employer for 50 years. Our high school had over 2,000 students—we were 4A in sports, booming, full of life. Then China entered the picture. Subsidized aluminum undercut us. Tariffs were non-existent. Our plant shut down in the year 2000. The high school dropped to 2A, enrollment plummeted to below 1,000. Over 1,000 people lost their jobs. Crime in Spokane skyrocketed. Addicts took over the streets. Families moved. Dreams died.
No one bailed us out.
Instead, Washington and Wall Street told us that outsourcing was good for GDP. That we’d transition to a “knowledge economy.” That we just needed more education. So the factories closed, and the jobs went to the government class—the grant writers, compliance officers, and college administrators. While the towns that built America bled out, the ruling class inflated itself on degrees, fellowships, and subsidized mediocrity.
Take a look at the stock market today. It’s wobbling because for the first time in decades, someone had the guts to stand up for American workers. Tariffs on China, stricter immigration, an end to endless globalism. Of course the market’s crashing—because it was never built on solid ground. It was built on our pain.
Every time a plant like Kaiser closed, the federal government doubled down—not on rebuilding industry—but on funding academic “research” and bureaucratic expansion. Billions went to the NIH and other agencies not to cure disease or fuel real innovation, but to keep tenured professors busy writing grant proposals that led nowhere while our parents lost pensions and our neighbors lost homes.
We’ve been gaslit for decades.
We were told that free trade was sacred, that tariffs were outdated. But now, with tariffs back on the table and the S&P tanking, we see who really benefited from that “free” trade: multinational corporations, not Americans.
We were told that “education is the way out.” But what they really meant was: get yourself into debt for a piece of paper that lets you join the bureaucracy propping up this fake economy. College didn’t save the Midwest. NIH grants didn’t replace factory jobs. They just concentrated wealth and influence in the hands of people who never get dirt under their fingernails.
And here’s the part no one wants to talk about: while American towns were gutted, our universities rolled out the red carpet for Chinese nationals—many tied to the CCP—giving them access to advanced research, elite institutions, and government-funded labs. Recognizing this exploitation, Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) introduced the Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act (Stop CCP VISAs Act) to halt the issuance of student visas to Chinese nationals. Moore stated, "We’ve literally invited the CCP to spy on our military, steal our intellectual property, and threaten national security." This legislative push aims to curb the CCP's infiltration of our academic institutions.
These weren’t just students looking for a better life. They were foot soldiers in China’s strategy to leapfrog us economically and militarily, and our “knowledge economy” gladly let them in—because to the credentialed elite, foreign tuition checks and global prestige mattered more than national security or blue-collar dignity.
The truth is, the working class has always had leverage—it just took someone willing to use it. And when that happens, the house of cards shakes. That’s what you’re seeing right now. And it’s terrifying the people who’ve gotten rich off our decline.
Let it crash.
Let the system that shipped jobs overseas, enriched Ivy League technocrats, and told us to learn to code while our communities collapsed finally get what’s coming.
This market correction isn’t an economic catastrophe—it’s a cultural correction. The elites bet on a system where America stopped making things, and now the bill is due.
If media outlets want to talk about the real causes behind the crash, they shouldn’t just call Wall Street analysts. They should call people like me—people who lived the decline and are watching, for the first time in a generation, signs that the tide might finally be turning.
The next step is clear. Double down on tariffs. End the obsession with credentialism. Redirect NIH-style grants away from abstract theories and into real R&D that creates jobs here, not publications abroad. And most importantly, admit that the pain we’re seeing now is a necessary cleansing. You don’t build a better house on a rotten foundation. You tear it down, and you start again.
And this time, we build it with steel, not paper.
Dr. Isaiah Hankel, Ph.D, is a 3X Best-Selling Author and CEO of Overqualified.com
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