ECONOMISTS ANNOUNCE NEW ‘INEQUALITY CENTER’ TO STUDY WHY YOUR JOB SUCKS AND THEIRS DOESN’T
MIT professors receiving millions to investigate the shocking mystery of why some people are poor while others have f@#king yachts
BREAKING ECONOMIC NEWS FROM THE FRONT LINES
In a move described by insiders as “irony so thick you could spread it on avocado toast,” MIT’s Department of Economics announced the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, where wealthy academics will spend their days contemplating why everyone else is so goddamn poor.
TENURED PROFESSORS SHOCKED TO DISCOVER INEQUALITY EXISTS
The center will be led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu and co-directors David Autor and Simon Johnson, three men who collectively earn more than the GDP of a small island nation, as they investigate why wealth inequality might possibly be a problem in America.
“We’re extremely passionate about understanding why some people make $14 an hour while others make $14 million,” said Acemoglu from his office that’s larger than your entire apartment. “It’s truly one of life’s great mysteries.”
GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH TO COST JUST SLIGHTLY MORE THAN SOLVING ACTUAL INEQUALITY
Thanks to a generous donation from the Stone Foundation that could have housed approximately 500 homeless families, the center will instead produce PowerPoint presentations explaining why those families can’t afford rent.
Dr. Captain Obvious, the newly appointed Chief Research Officer, explained: “Our preliminary findings suggest that people who don’t have money are significantly poorer than people who do have money. We’ll need about $5 million more to confirm this hypothesis.”
EXTENSIVE PIPELINE OF SCHOLARS TO STUDY PIPELINE OF WORKERS
The center promises to create a “pipeline of emerging scholars” to study why there’s no pipeline of emerging workers with living wages, health benefits, or job security.
“We’re extremely concerned about the declining labor market for non-college workers,” said Johnson while sipping from a mug that reads ‘My Economic Theory Is Worth More Than Your Actual Labor.’ “That’s why we’re hiring seventeen new PhDs with zero work experience outside academia to explain why plumbers should learn to code.”
FUTURE TECHNOLOGY FOCUS TO EXPLAIN WHY ROBOTS DESERVE YOUR PAYCHECK
The center will place special emphasis on the intersection of technology and inequality, exploring how Silicon Valley billionaires might require an additional yacht or two for inventing the algorithm that replaced your entire accounting department.
Professor Ima Compleetelydetached, a fictional expert we invented who sounds exactly like the real ones, noted: “Our studies show that 87.2% of workers displaced by technology simply weren’t trying hard enough to be born into wealthy families who could send them to elite universities.”
THE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT NOBODY ASKED FOR
The Stone Center plans aggressive public outreach to explain inequality to people who are literally living it every day.
“We’re excited to share our findings with the unwashed masses,” said an unnamed administrator while planning the center’s launch gala with a $1,500 per plate dinner. “Did you know that being poor is statistically correlated with having less money? Fascinating stuff.”
According to internal documents obtained by making them up entirely, the center’s first major research paper will be titled “Have You Tried Not Being Poor?: A Macroeconomic Analysis of Why the Lower Classes Should Just Inherit Better.”
In a final statement from the press release, MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart summed it up perfectly: “This generous gift advances our pioneering economics research on inequality,” which experts translate as “We’ll take several million dollars to explain why other people can’t have several million dollars.”
At press time, the Stone Center was reportedly considering a groundbreaking study on why people who can’t afford food don’t simply eat their research papers.
