Welcome to "Go Bake Some Apples."
I look at the world the way I’ve always looked at complex architectures: I track the inputs, the processing, and the outputs. When an entire class of people is struggling to stay above water, I don't believe it's an accident. When a system fails its people, it is usually by design.
This album is a dark folk satire that deconstructs the central, public-facing myth of modern American capitalism: the "infinite pie". First formulated to justify free-market inequality, this myth asserts that the economy always grows, creating more for everyone, and framing any call for wealth redistribution as economically ignorant. The most poetic version of this lie is the idea that a "rising tide lifts all boats".
But when you look at the raw data, the mechanics of this system tell a devastatingly different story. Instead of lifting all boats, the last forty years have been a story of rising yachts and sinking rowboats. Since 1989, the top 1% has gained $21 Trillion in net worth, while the bottom 50% has lost $900 Billion.
"Go Bake Some Apples" follows the psychological and economic journey of a single protagonist. He begins as a true believer in the trickle-down gospel, convinced that if he just keeps his head down and works hard, his slice of the pie will manifest. He scoffs at hand-outs and trusts the system. But as reality collides with the myth—through medical debt, wage stagnation, and ultimately job loss—his life is systematically dismantled by the very people he was taught to revere.
He discovers that while the working class is kept busy "baking apples," the elite are playing a ruthless, zero-sum "finite game" of extraction and power. He sees the massive 2008 bank bailouts that handed ~$250 billion to banks while disbursing a fraction to struggling homeowners. He sees the 2017 tax cuts that handed the top 1% an average cut of $61,090 while tossing the bottom 20% a mere $70. He watches corporations spend 94% of their profits on stock buybacks to inflate CEO bonuses rather than paying living wages.
To keep him from fighting back, the system performs a "systematic erasure of the economic," feeding him a manufactured culture war. He is trained by billionaire-owned media to aim his valid anger at his neighbors, teachers, and marginalized groups rather than the architects of his poverty.
Through twelve tracks of Americana, folk-blues, and aggressive industrial-folk, this album traces his path from false consciousness to bitter, furious emancipation. It is a story about turning off the television, unmasking the merchants of outrage, and realizing that we don't need to beg for a slice of their finite pie. We need to play the infinite game. We need to build a new table entirely.
Listen closely. Question the bakery.
- The Bard
