1776 – 2026250Years

★ The Semiquincentennial Progress Report ★

America turns 250. How's it actually going?

Built for the working class, the backbone of America.

The big questions

Honest answers, same yardstick for every president

Everyday life · your paycheck

We're working harder than ever. Is it actually paying off?

We're producing more than any generation before us. Here's whether that shows up in our lives, measured the same way for every president, Republican and Democrat.

The backbone of America

We produce far more than we did in 1979. Our paychecks barely moved.

If our pay had kept pace with what we produce, a typical worker would earn about $16 more an hour today.

MEASURED · Economic Policy Institute ↗ · start and end points shown; the gap widened steadily across the years between.

3.4%

Unemployment hit a 50-year low in 2023, finding a job got easier.

BLS

~0%

A typical family's paycheck has barely beaten prices in 40 years, running in place.

Census / FRED

$7.25

The federal minimum wage, frozen since 2009, worth about a third less after inflation.

DOL / BLS

So, is it paying off? Mostly not the way it should. We're producing more than ever, but for 40 years, those gains have flowed past the typical paycheck to the very top.

See the everyday-life breakdown →

Your government · the question behind the question

Are politicians working for the people?

When 100+ policies have majority support from both parties yet never become law, it's fair to ask who the system actually answers to. Two forces stand out, and we separate what's provable from what's only strongly suspected.

1 · The money flood

$143MOutside spending in 2008…

$4.5B…ballooned by 2024, a roughly 30× jump, as Citizens United (2010) and a wave of related rulings loosened the limits.

Dark money, spending with donors hidden, exploded alongside it. Source: OpenSecrets

2 · Manufactured division

49% → 4%Share of the other party approving of the president, collapsed since the 1950s.

Facebook's own research (the Haugen disclosures) showed its algorithm amplified divisive content. Cambridge Analytica harvested 87M profiles to micro-target voters.

Sources: Gallup; Meta internal research; UK ICO

What we can prove

✓Outside & dark-money spending exploded after 2010
✓Trust in government cratered; polarization accelerated
✓Facebook knew its algorithm amplified division
✓Cambridge Analytica harvested and micro-targeted 87M profiles

What we suspect (but can't prove)

~That Citizens United directly caused the polarization, it's a major accelerant, but social media, cable news, and geographic sorting all pushed too
~That the division is fully “manufactured” vs. partly organic, intent is hard to prove; the profit motive is real

Read the money & power breakdown →

What we share · the good news

Do we actually agree? Far more than we're told.

The loudest fights get the airtime, so it's easy to miss how much we share. On issue after issue, most Democrats AND most Republicans already want the same thing.

112

policies majorities of BOTH parties support, from drug prices to term limits.

Program for Public Consultation, 2026

of those clear more than two-thirds of both sides, the truest common ground.

Program for Public Consultation

2×

how much more extreme we imagine the other side is than it actually is.

Take the full progress report

The World

★

Every number shows its work. Each chart names its federal source right there, and we separate what the data proves from what we only suspect.

Sources & methodology →