Satirical Opinion by Kevin Bartini, Odd News.
A full year has passed since Donald Trump retook the White House. The effects of the ensuing chaotic economic destabilization have only begun to be felt. While the mainstream media has focused on the plight of the farmers, hoteliers, and distillers, there are countless other industries struggling with newfound burdens, lower profits, and the looming threat of bankruptcy.
There is one underreported struggling demographic that yields a fascinating snapshot of the American citizenry: Thieves. From the lowliest pickpocket to the most brazen stick-up man, the prosperity of the everyday American thief has depended on the availability of resources from the average American worker.
In these uncertain economic times, even crime doesn't pay. (Milkos/depositphotos)
Odd News sat down with a panel of ne’er-do-wells recently to discuss the trickle-down effect of a sagging economy on various elements of the underworld. What we found was a group of dedicated craftsmen and women struggling to put food on the table, no different than you or me.
“I take pride in my work,” says James Macmillian. “I don’t just break into homes on a whim. I stake the place out, I study the area and plan out the entire operation first. Robbing houses is a lot more time-consuming than you would believe.” Mr. Macmillan, known professionally as “The Gentleman Burglar” in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, has been particularly burned by the community’s lack of excess discretionary funds.
“My father was a thief, his father was a thief,” Macmillan continued. “It used to be that a fella could slip into a home or two every week and make enough to buy a four-bedroom house, raise your kids, and retire comfortably. That’s how it went for my old man. Last month I broke into twenty condos, and I am still behind on my credit card payments.”
The veteran second-story man lamented. “Nobody seems to be buying much more than the bare essentials anymore, just what they need to get by. What is there to steal? Everyone seems to have an empty wallet.”
“If they have a wallet at all,” Phineas Whalen, a lithe and dexterous man who has been a long-time fixture on the Las Vegas Strip, interjected. “When I pick a pocket these days, I’m more than likely to grab nothing more than a stranger’s a**.”
Indignantly, he added, “I’m a pickpocket, not a pervert. There’s no money in being a pervert.”
“I’m a pickpocket, not a pervert.” – Phineas Whalen (Bartini/Spaghetti Images)
Safety concerns and backlash against Trump’s tariff spree have caused formerly foreign allies, including Canada and Western Europe, to cease nearly all recreational travel to the USA. Las Vegas, like many American cities that depend on both domestic and international tourists, has suffered a drastic reduction in visitors. Once mighty cities have begun to resemble ghost towns. Speaking of which, nobody seems to be able to afford the admission price to visit actual ghost towns, so they are suffering too.
The most sinister-appearing of the group, a petty thief named Gary O’Donnell, a bald-headed man with hunched shoulders and a scar above his right eye, observed, ”It’s like we are vultures, circling above looking for easy targets. We wait until we see something dying, wait for our moment to swoop in, and we eat roadkill and dead carcasses. In prosperous times, when the leaves are green, the rivers flow quickly, and the fields are flush, the rodents are fat and slow, easy high-yield targets. But when times are tough, and there has been a long drought and the pickings on the ground are slim, what they do find to eat is emaciated and leathery.”
The 2025 Weekly Economic Index of the USA. (Statista)
“We are working way harder than we ever have before and are only just scraping by.” Carmine Antipasta, who oversees a crew of five men, is surprised by the recent hit to business. “This thing of ours is supposed to be recession-proof, not idiot-proof. I’ve made my living off of these loading docks all my life. Now these damn tariffs have emptied the shipyards.”
Louise McCoy, an unassuming car thief, has found herself dipping into her own pockets just to do her job. She explains, “Last week, I jacked a Toyota pickup truck. There was hardly a drop of gas in the tank. I coasted into the Mobil station on fumes and had to buy a gallon of gas just so I could drive it to the chop shop. Can you believe that? I had to spend my own money to fuel someone else’s car! Just so I could bring it to someone else to harvest and resell its parts. Why is it always the middleman who gets screwed over?”
“I see signs of a recession, if not an outright depression, going on,” opines Gary O’Donnell. “People think porch pirating is easy. I was this close to getting bitten by a dog this morning. And what for? All for a lousy pair of tube socks. Who is so broke that they have to buy their socks one pair at a time?”
As Americans spend more while buying less, one thing they are not doing is saving money for the future. This is the aspect that most troubles Romero Santiago. A home health aide, Santiago witnesses day in and day out the horrors of aging and dying in this country without proper assets to fall back on.
“Being a hospice nurse is a depressing job,” says Santiago. “The one perk of the job was the chance to fleece the elderly. The problem now is that people don’t have enough money to make it all the way to the end of their lives. By the time I get there, they have already sold off anything of value.”
As our round table interview wrapped, once again the plight of the little guy arose. Phineas Whalen, the pickpocket, summarized, “The problem is that we are craftsmen, we take pride in our work, and we want to do it right, we are hands-on. We aren’t like the corporate raiders who steal your life savings with the click of a button from a thousand miles away. We are local. You see us every day.”
“Exactly!” House thief, James Macmillian, exclaimed. “I’m local, my family has been robbing from this community for generations. I don’t want to get bigger, I don’t want to have to move away. If things don’t start improving soon, what’s a thief to do? I may have no other choice than to run for Congress.”
