Abundance Vol. III

A Variety Program for the End of Accountability

SCENE: A television studio in New York City, which contributes $1.8 trillion to the GDP of the United States, or approximately the combined economic output of detaining every man, woman, and child in the state of Ohio. The set is beautiful. It cost $4.2 million to design and build. The designer won an award for it. The award ceremony was catered at $200 per head and generated, in the aggregate, more economic activity than a month of Edgar’s labor, though no one at the ceremony knew Edgar’s name, or that he exists, or that without him the set would be ankle-deep in dust and crumpled call sheets by the second week of taping.

Edgar is the janitor. He earns $31,000 a year. This is less than the set’s annual flower budget, which is $45,600, because the flowers must be fresh, because the cameras are high-definition, because the audience deserves beauty, because this is America, because abundance.

We won’t learn Edgar’s name for a while. He is, at this point in the broadcast, economically invisible, which is the correct state for a janitor. The visible janitor has failed.

I. COLD OPEN

HOST: (to camera, smiling, immaculate, his teeth a $47,000 monument to cosmetic dentistry, a man whose face has been optimized for trust the way a landing page is optimized for clicks) Good evening. The US economy is booming. GDP has never been higher. Corporate earnings are extraordinary. And yet — recent polls show that the average American citizen has no appreciation for this booming economy that’s been handed to them. Gifted to them.

(The gift in question is a number. The number lives on a screen in Washington, D.C. It is updated quarterly. When it goes up, men in suits appear on television and say the word “growth.” When it goes down, the same men appear and say the word “adjustment.” The number does not know about Edgar, who is currently replacing a trash bag in the hallway outside Studio B. Edgar does not know about the number. They exist in the same economy the way a barnacle exists on the same hull as the captain.)

HOST: Here to help us understand this economic bounty are the authors of the new bestseller Abundance Vol. III — because yes, it’s the third book called Abundance in recent years, which is itself proof of the abundance we’re all apparently refusing to acknowledge. Please welcome Prescott Kroll and Tad Renner!

(Applause. The applause sign is controlled by a technician named Wei who earns $22 per hour, which is less than the per-hour cost of detaining a migrant in a CoreCivic facility in Dilley, Texas, but more than the per-hour wage of the migrant’s labor if the facility subcontracts it out, which it does, at $1 to $4 per day, which is legal.)

(PRESCOTT KROLL and TAD RENNER walk on stage. Prescott is tall, silver-haired, wearing a watch that costs more than Edgar earns in a year. Tad is shorter, rounder, and laughs before he speaks — to let you know whatever comes next is not serious, which is how he gets away with meaning it.)

II. THE AUTHORS

PRESCOTT: Thank you for having us. This is such a beautiful studio.

(It is. Edgar mopped the floors at 4 AM. He arrived by bus — the 4:12 on the M66, which runs every twenty minutes at that hour and which smells, at that hour, of bleach and the particular exhaustion of people who have not yet earned the first dollar of the day. The bus fare was $2.90. This is less than the per-minute cost of airtime in this studio. It is more than a kitten earns in an hour on the island, but we haven’t gotten to the island yet.)

HOST: So, Abundance Vol. III. What’s the thesis?

PRESCOTT: The thesis is simple. America is richer than it has ever been. The GDP is at an all-time high. Corporate earnings are extraordinary. Productivity is up. The stock market — I mean, look at the stock market.

TAD: (laughing preemptively) It’s incredible.

PRESCOTT: And yet — and yet — you ask people on the street, “How’s the economy?” and they say, “Terrible.” They say, “I can’t afford groceries.” They say, “I’m working two jobs.” And you have to ask — respectfully — are you looking at the same numbers we’re looking at?

(They are not. Prescott is looking at the Bloomberg Terminal in his office, which costs $24,000 per year to subscribe to. The person on the street is looking at the price of eggs, which has increased 65% in two years. These are different numbers. They live in different economies. But the GDP counts both of them, and the GDP says everything is fine.)

TAD: The problem is vibes. People are going on vibes instead of data.

HOST: And your book corrects this.

TAD: Our book shows, empirically, with data, that abundance is everywhere. You just have to know where to look.

(You have to know where to look. The abundance is in the quarterly earnings reports of private equity firms. It is in C-suite compensation packages. It is in the real estate portfolios of family offices. It is on private islands. It is not in the grocery store. It is not in Edgar’s apartment. But it is somewhere, and therefore the economy is booming. QED.)

(Edgar pushes his mop bucket past the studio door. The wheel squeaks. No one hears it over the applause.)

So it goes.

III. AN EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT

HOST: Now, before we continue — we’ve prepared a brief educational segment for our viewers at home. Because here at Abundance, we believe in empowering the public with knowledge. Roll tape.

(A pre-taped segment begins. It is shot in warm lighting with a soft-focus lens that makes everything look like a pharmaceutical advertisement for a drug that treats the vague feeling that something is wrong. The production budget for this segment was $14,000. The information it contains is worth considerably less.)

ECONOMIST: (seated behind a mahogany desk, books behind him, none of which he has read, all of which he has blurbed) Let me explain how the Gross Domestic Product actually works.

CITIZEN: Please. I’m a janitor. I clean the floors of a school. I earn thirty thousand dollars a year. Am I productive?

ECONOMIST: You are. Your labor contributes thirty thousand dollars to the Gross Domestic Product.

CITIZEN: And the man in the detention center on Route 9 — the one who sits in a cell all day, who does nothing, who produces nothing — is he productive?

ECONOMIST: He is more productive than you.

CITIZEN: I don’t understand.

ECONOMIST: His existence in that cell generates one hundred and forty-three dollars per day in revenue for the facility operator. Over a year, that is fifty-two thousand, one hundred and ninety-five dollars. You generate thirty thousand. He generates fifty-two thousand. By the measure that matters, he is more productive than you by a factor of 1.7.

CITIZEN: But he doesn’t do anything.

ECONOMIST: He doesn’t need to. He exists, and his existence has been monetized. You exist also, but your existence has merely been compensated. There is a difference.

CITIZEN: What is the difference?

ECONOMIST: The difference is twenty-two thousand, one hundred and ninety-five dollars.

CITIZEN: I see. And if I were to stop cleaning floors and instead commit a crime —

ECONOMIST: You would become more valuable to the economy. Yes. Though I would prefer you phrase it differently in public.

CITIZEN: How should I phrase it?

ECONOMIST: You might say you have been “transitioned from the labor economy to the containment economy.” It sounds better in a quarterly report.

CITIZEN: And if everyone did this?

ECONOMIST: Then GDP would increase enormously. We would be the most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

CITIZEN: And the floors?

ECONOMIST: (pause) The floors would be very dirty.

CITIZEN: Whose floors?

ECONOMIST: The detainees’. But they wouldn’t notice. They are too busy being productive.

(The segment ends. The studio audience applauds politely. They are applauding knowledge. The knowledge is that a man in a cage is worth more than a man with a mop. The audience nods. They move on.)

(Edgar is wiping down the vending machines, which sell water for $3.50 per bottle. The water is the same water that comes from the tap in the janitor’s closet, filtered once and marked up 1,400%. This is called “value-added.” Edgar drinks from the tap.)

So it goes.

IV. THE ISLAND

HOST: Now Prescott, I understand you recently visited a certain private retreat in the Caribbean?

PRESCOTT: I did. I did. (He leans back. He is about to tell a story. He has told this story before, at dinners, on yachts, in the back seats of cars that cost more than houses.) I was down visiting the Galt’s Gulch private island — a retreat for certain like-minded individuals — and I can tell you, there was certainly an abundant supply of youthful kitties.

(The HOST laughs. TAD laughs. The audience laughs. The laughter is genuine. This is a joke among men who understand each other.)

(The island is real. It is in the Lesser Antilles. It was purchased in 2019 for $63 million by a consortium whose holdings are in private detention, private healthcare, and private education — three industries that share a business model: take a public need, restrict access to it, charge the government to provide it badly.)

(The “kittens” are real. They are between the ages of —)

(We are advised by counsel not to complete this sentence.)

(Instead, here is an economic fact: the island employs 340 staff. Their average wage is $6,200 per year. The annual operating budget is $41 million. The ratio of operating budget to total staff compensation is 19:1. The remaining 18 parts go to imported wine, helicopter maintenance, and things paid in cash to people who do not file taxes because they do not, in the legal sense, exist.)

(Edgar is not on the island. He is polishing the brass handrails on the audience stairway. He has never been to the Caribbean. He has been to Coney Island twice.)

So it goes.

V. THE APARTMENT

TAD: (laughing, always laughing) Oh, I can top that. Abundance is certainly the word for my weekend at the Galt’s Gulch New York City apartment!

(The Galt’s Gulch New York City apartment occupies the top two floors of a building on East 66th Street. It is technically owned by a holding company registered in Delaware, which is owned by a trust domiciled in South Dakota, which is administered by a law firm in Geneva, which represents a client whose name appears on no document that any journalist has ever obtained. The apartment has fourteen rooms, a private elevator, and a guest book that has been subpoenaed twice and produced never.)

(What happens in the apartment is, legally speaking, a matter of conjecture. What is known: young women enter. Young women leave. Cars arrive at night. Cars depart before dawn. The doorman’s salary was recently doubled and a confidentiality clause was added to his contract. The flowers in the lobby are fresh. A janitor keeps the hallway clean. He is not Edgar. His name is Tomás, and he has learned not to make eye contact with the men who arrive after 10 PM, because eye contact is a kind of witnessing, and witnessing is expensive.)

PRESCOTT: (grinning) Yeah. Let them eat youthful kitties!

(The audience ROARS. It is the biggest laugh of the evening. Somewhere in the building, Edgar pauses. He has heard the roar through the walls. He does not know what is funny. He will never know what is funny. He is separated from the joke by a soundproofed wall and an annual income of $31,000 and the fundamental architecture of who is inside the room and who is outside it, which is also the fundamental architecture of a detention center.)

(The joke is: powerful men can say what they do, out loud, on television, and it is received as humor. The confession is the entertainment. The audience’s laughter is the acquittal.)

(This has always been true. The only thing that changes is the set design and the thread count of the host’s shirt.)

So it goes.

VI. THE NUMBERS

(A brief intermission, during which the following facts are displayed on screen in a clean sans-serif font, because facts look better in sans-serif, which is another thing no one can explain and everyone believes.)

1. The average annual cost to detain one person in a private facility in the United States is $52,195.

2. The average annual salary of a janitor in the United States is $31,990.

3. The janitor cleans. The detainee sits. The detainee is worth more.

4. The GEO Group, Inc., which operates private detention facilities, reported $2.4 billion in revenue in 2023. Its stock price increased 187% between 2024 and 2025.

5. The increase was attributed to “favorable policy environments,” which is a way of saying that more people were being put in concrete rooms, which is a way of saying the product was selling well.

6. The CEO of GEO Group earned $5.3 million in total compensation in 2023.

7. This is the equivalent of 165 janitors.

8. Or 101 detainees.

9. But only one CEO.

10. The CEO does not mop floors.

11. The CEO does not sit in a concrete room.

12. The CEO sits in an office, and people bring him things, and the things they bring him are numbers, and the numbers go up, and when the numbers go up the stock goes up, and when the stock goes up the CEO’s compensation goes up, and this is called the economy, and the economy is booming.

13. The janitor’s wage, adjusted for inflation, has decreased 4.2% since 2019.

14. The cost of detaining one person has increased 23% in the same period.

15. This means that the gap between the value of a free man cleaning a floor and a confined man sitting in a cell has widened.

16. Freedom is becoming cheaper. Confinement is becoming more expensive. The market has spoken.

17. Abundance.

18. On the island, the “kittens” serve drinks that cost $43 each. They are paid $3.10 per hour. The ratio of drink cost to hourly wage is 13.9:1. This means that a kitten must work approximately 14 hours to afford one of the drinks she serves. She does not drink them. She is not invited to drink them. She is invited to smile.

19. Nobody asks the kittens about abundance.

20. Nobody asks the janitor about abundance.

21. Nobody asks the detainee about abundance.

22. The people who are asked about abundance are the people who have abundance, which is like asking a man who has eaten a seven-course meal whether hunger exists.

23. He will say no. He will say it with conviction. He will write a book about it. It will be the third book with that title.

24. Abundance.

VII. THE PROPOSAL

(We return to the studio. The lighting is warm. Everyone is comfortable. Comfort is a product, like detention. You can sell it to some people by taking it from others.)

HOST: So what do you say to the critics? The people who claim this abundance isn’t reaching the average American?

PRESCOTT: I say: open your eyes. Look around you. This studio — this beautiful studio — do you think this exists in a poor country?

(The studio exists because Edgar mopped the floor at 4 AM. But yes.)

TAD: (laughing) I always say, if you can’t see the abundance, you’re not looking hard enough. Or you’re looking in the wrong places.

(The wrong places: grocery stores, hospitals, schools, apartments, bus stops, pay stubs, bank statements, the inside of a detention cell, the janitor’s closet, the island employee dormitory, the kitchen where the kittens eat their meals standing up.)

(The right places: Bloomberg Terminals, stock tickers, private islands, the apartment on East 66th, earnings calls, the inside of a yacht.)

HOST: Now, I understand you’ve also been working on some policy recommendations. Something from Chapter 12 of the book?

PRESCOTT: We have. And I want to stress — this is not ideology. This is arithmetic.

(He produces a slide. The slide has a graph. The graph goes up and to the right, which is the only direction graphs go in presentations given by men who own graphs. If a graph went down and to the left, you would fire the analyst who made it.)

PRESCOTT: We’ve identified a threshold — a line below which a citizen’s economic output is, frankly, a drag on the national accounts. A janitor earning $31,000 generates less GDP than a detainee costing $52,000. This isn’t opinion. It’s math.

TAD: (laughing, nodding) It’s just math.

PRESCOTT: So we’re proposing — and this is all in Chapter 12, laid out with full data appendices — a Bureau of Productive Containment. A modest initiative to transition low-output citizens into high-output containment structures.

HOST: Walk us through it.

PRESCOTT: Gladly. You identify citizens below the productivity threshold — say, $40,000 in annual economic contribution. You offer them the opportunity to be monetized rather than merely compensated. The net gain to the nation is roughly $22,000 per year per transitioned citizen, minus the now-unnecessary salary, which need no longer be paid.

(The janitor need not be troubled by any change in his daily routine. He will still mop floors. The floors will simply be those of his own containment facility, and his labor will now be valued at $0.47 per hour rather than $14.50, a savings which must gladden the heart of any fiscal conservative. His hours will be longer. His floor will be larger. His mop will be the same mop. Everything will be the same except the door, which will be locked, and the wage, which will be theoretical, and the word for what he is, which will change from “employee” to “detainee,” which is a lateral move, economically speaking, in the way that falling off a roof is a lateral move for a man who was already on the ground.)

HOST: (nodding, as hosts do) And you’re confident this is feasible?

PRESCOTT: I anticipate the objection that this proposal is monstrous. I assure the viewer it is nothing of the sort. It is merely arithmetic.

(The audience applauds. They are applauding arithmetic. In the hallway, Edgar wrings out his mop. He does not know that the arithmetic has been applied to him specifically, to the exact dollar figure of his annual contribution, and that by the arithmetic he is worth more in a cell than on this floor, which he has cleaned every night for eleven years, which is longer than the host has been on the air, which is longer than the flowers on the set have ever been allowed to live before being replaced by fresher flowers, because the cameras are high-definition, because the audience deserves beauty, because abundance.)

So it goes.

HOST: Prescott Kroll and Tad Renner, authors of Abundance Vol. III. The book is available everywhere books are sold.

(Everywhere books are sold. Not everywhere abundance is claimed. Those are different everywheres.)

PRESCOTT: Thank you.

TAD: (laughing) Thank you.

(They stand. They shake hands. They leave the stage. They will go to dinner at a restaurant where the cheapest entrée costs $62 and the waiter earns $2.13 per hour plus tips, which is less than the per-hour cost of detaining a human being but more than the per-hour wage of a kitten on the island, which positions the waiter, economically speaking, somewhere between a prisoner and a child. This is where most people are.)

VIII. THE FLOOR

The studio empties.

The cameras turn off. The lights go down. The set, which looked so expensive in high definition, looks like what it is in the dark: plywood and paint and cable and dust.

Edgar comes in with his mop.

He starts in the back corner, the way he always does. He works toward the door. His mop makes a sound on the floor — a slow, rhythmic swish. It is the only sound in the building. It is not recorded. It is not broadcast. It generates $14.90 per hour in economic activity, which is less than the cost of a single drink on the island, less than the per diem of a single detainee, less than the per-minute cost of airtime in this studio.

Edgar does not know about the island. He does not know about the apartment. He does not know about the kittens. He does not know that a man sitting in a cell in Texas is worth more to the economy than he is. He does not know that a proposal has been drafted, with charts, to reclassify him from the labor economy to the containment economy. He knows the floor is dirty. He knows how to make it clean. He knows that tomorrow it will be dirty again, and he will clean it again, and this will continue until he retires or dies, whichever comes first, and neither event will be noted in any quarterly earnings report.

The floor is clean.

Nobody sees it.

Somewhere in Texas, in a facility operated by a company whose stock price has increased 187%, a man lies on a thin mattress in a concrete room. He has not committed a crime. He is being held pending a hearing that has been delayed nine times. His detention generates $143 per day. He is, in the language of economics, productive. In the language of everything else, he is a man on a mattress in a room he cannot leave.

He stares at the ceiling. The ceiling is clean.

A janitor cleaned it.

The janitor was paid less than this man’s daily cost of detention.

The man does not know this.

The janitor does not know this.

The CEO knows this. The CEO knows all of it. The CEO is on the island.

The drinks are $43.

The kittens are smiling.

The economy is booming.

On the island, at this hour, the staff are clearing plates. The kittens are being driven to their quarters in a van with no windows. The caretaker is feeding the actual cats — rescue tabbies that roam the property and appear in the brochure photographs. The cats in the brochure are better-lit than the staff.

Nobody photographs the staff. Nobody photographs the man in the concrete room. The photographs are of abundance: blue water, white sand, silver platters, golden light. Everything that glows. Nothing that mops.

Edgar finishes the floor. He puts his mop in the bucket. He wheels the bucket to the closet. He takes off his coveralls and hangs them on the hook. He puts on his jacket — the thin one, the one with the broken zipper that he holds closed with his hand in the cold months. It is February.

He walks through the lobby. Past the security desk, where a guard nods without looking up. Past the glass doors. Past the awning that says the name of the network in letters three feet tall.

He walks outside.

He can see the sky.

This contributes nothing to GDP.