When a Booming Economy Doesn’t Improve the Life of the Working Man... Western Civilization is Fast Approaching Its Imminent Fall
(source)
With some states fully re-opened after months of government economic restrictions, and the rest at least partially reopening their economies, the US economy is finally getting back on its feet so to speak, but not without a number of phenomena that should serve as red flags that something is seriously not right about the situation. For just one example that the mainstream media has pointed out (more will be discussed below), there are currently millions of job openings across the country that employers are strangely struggling to fill, despite unemployment still resting at record high levels, while a larger number of people than ever before - since the Great Depression at least - are unable to afford their rent or mortgages (at least without financial aid and moratoriums, the combination of which has created a ticking time bomb that at any day could explode, causing a massive explosion in homelessness). Something is indeed not right, but although the Covid lockdowns did cause much irreparable economic harm - such as the permanent closure of tens of thousands of small businesses - the underlying problems that are only now becoming too visible for the masses to ignore have been here for decades.
In his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, author and talk show host Thom Hartmann notes that when the income and wealth of the richest reaches 20 times the income and wealth of the poorest in any civilization, that civilizations’ fall becomes both inevitable and imminent. This observation is not a mere hypothesis, it is based upon the events and economic disparity leading up to the fall of every major empire and civilization in the recorded history of humanity; the pattern of them all was eerily similar. And that threshold was already being approached and even reached at some levels two decades ago in 2,000 when Hartmann wrote his eye-opening book of warning about the coming collapse of the US empire (and likely the entirety western civilization along with it), and has by now been far exceeded. Such extreme and continually increasing wealth disparity now permeates all of society, from the individual institutional level - with university professors making many times more than the janitors at the same school - to the societal level, where a handful of the country’s richest billionaire’s now hold more wealth than the poorest 50% of Americans combined, with some two dozen or so (a constantly fluctuating figure) of the richest owning more wealth than 160+ million Americans combined! Meanwhile even before the year 2020, it was widely reported that a staggering 80% of Americans were already living paycheck to paycheck, with economic and living conditions for the average American only declining throughout the course of the so-called pandemic and associated oppressive measures.
Like many of the apparent effects of the Covid lockdowns and related ‘pandemic’ measures, the wealth disparity between working class Americans and the ultra-rich has increased at an unprecedented rate of speed during the so-called pandemic, with the rich consolidating more wealth than ever before in such a few short months, and working class Americans - both middle and lower class - taking a larger collective economic hit than has ever before been experienced in a single year, at least since the Great Depression. The reality of the situation, however, is that we are simply seeing the extreme acceleration of a decades-long problematic trend rather than an entirely new phenomenon as things may initially appear on the surface.
Why a ‘good’ economy is not necessarily a good indicator of the health of a nation
For decades, the state of the US economy has been the standard measure of the health of the nation; a ‘good’ economy is good for all of us, they say, and a struggling economy harmful to everyone. In reality nothing could be further from the truth, and this reality is becoming more evident now than ever in the post-Covid - recovering, and in some places booming - economy. But before addressing the current state of the economy, and the nation, it is worth diving a little deeper into the underlying causes behind the growing wealth disparity and related economic problems responsible for landing us in the situation we now find ourselves, as well as the idea we’ve all been sold that a ‘good’ economy is a useful indicator of the true health of a nation, and somehow equates to a better standard of living for the masses when the stable trend for decades has been the poor steadily getting poorer while the rich just keep on getting richer - good economy or bad.
Let’s first look at how the health of the economy is measured, and what a ‘good’ economy actually means. This is a pretty simple formula: when the stock market is up, jobs are plentiful and unemployment is low, the economy is considered to be in good shape - the more economic growth, the better the economy. But more jobs and less unemployment doesn’t necessarily translate to a better standard of living, as more jobs doesn’t mean higher pay, and even higher pay doesn’t necessarily mean better standard of living depending on the ever-rising cost of living; low unemployment generally just means there is a thriving workforce of low-wage debt slaves as opposed to those same low-wage workers being unemployed. Meanwhile the stock market is really only a good indicator of the health of Wall Street, not your average American.
In other words, a ‘good’ economy is really only a measure of the oppressive economic system responsible for creating the wealth disparity and widespread poverty now beginning to be seen on a too-large-to-ignore scale. A ‘good’ economy means a healthy Corporate America, but Corporate America was built on the backs of the same poor working class Americans now being trampled on by various government and corporate policies.
In reality, we live in an incredibly sick society, and the health of the economy is really only an indicator of the health of that sick society. Take for example the fact that America is one of the economically richest nations in the world with one of the highest standards of living, and yet we also boast some of, if not the highest rates of chronic disease, depression, suicide, violent crime, drug abuse, and incarceration on the planet. We live in a society that has a love affair with violence, an addiction to debt, and which is driven by greed, whose government spends over half of its entire budget on its imperial war machine while many of its own citizens are homeless and hungry, a Military Industrial Complex that has become the cornerstone of the US economy.
So no, a good economy is not a good indicator of the health of the nation - unless by ‘nation’ one means the corporate-banking-goverment hierachy that feeds the rich by starving the poor - it is only an indicator of the health of the oppressive and destructive debt-based consumerist imperial Matrix system that has enslaved the nation, and by nation here I mean the People.
A trip down memory lane, and look at the long train of abuses leading up to the present economic situation and underlying causes of all our economic woes
The underlying causes of this economic oppression that has led to the insane and fast-growing wealth disparity and increasing poverty among the working class are few, and easily seen for those who look with open eyes.
The first major cause is the private Federal Reserve Bank and fractional reserve banking system, whereby the endless printing of debt notes out of thin air creates a constant inflation of the currency which steadily devalues it. By controlling this process, and working with the US government to which this fiat currency is lent to at interest (interest which is paid back by the taxpayer via income taxes), the bankers and their corporate and political partners are able to slowly but steadily consolidate the wealth of the nation into their hands, a process which began when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law in 1913 and has not ceased since. As the average American’s income and small savings are ever devalued through this process of inflation, the bankers and their buddies use their monopoly on currency creation and arbitrary control of interest rates - a large scale Ponzi scheme in its truest sense - to consolidate the nation’s true wealth, that being real tangible property, into their hands.
There are a variety of often complex ways this is done, and this end is further accomplished through orchestrated economic booms with low interest rates incentivizing the handing out of loans and mortgages to the common people which would ordinarily be considered far above and beyond their means to repay, followed by orchestrated economic crashes during which the bankers foreclose on countless loans the people can no longer afford the payments on, taking into their possession large swaths of real property in very short periods of time, drastically increasing their own wealth at the expense of the poor and middle class who were conned into taking out the loans and mortgages that they did during their short lived economic ‘prosperity’. In this way, the bankers and their corporate partners are able to orchestrate and facilitate massive wealth transfers from the working class to themselves, and two such notable recent occurrences of this grand theft took place in the 2008 housing crash and then again in 2020 amidst the so-called pandemic. In both cases the economic downturn facilitating the massive wealth transfer was pre-planned and intricately orchestrated, and both were accompanied by massive government ‘bailouts’ that further devalued the currency by a massive amount all at once while at the same time funneling the billions and trillions of new created fiat dollars responsible for this inflation into the hands of the bankers, the Military Industrial Complex and Corporate America at large.
The second way the banking system oppresses the masses is by further fleecing the poor and middle class Americans with all of the collected interest on all of the private debt, on top of the interest collected by the IRS via income taxes on the debt notes themselves which are first loaned to the US government before making their way into private hands, primarily by being loaned out once again. The practice of charging interest, also known as usery, has long been known as one of the most evil and oppressive practices on the face of the earth; it is the reason that Jews have historically been banned from so many countries (because they engaged in this oppressive practice, not because the world is inherently anti-Semitic’ as the Zionist bankers would have us believe), and the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel in the Jewish scriptures themselves denounced the lending money at interest as an evil on par with murder, robbery and adultery. It is all that much more corrupt and evil a practice when the money being lent at interest is itself not true money at all, but fiat currency or debt notes! The people are being loaned ever de-valued notes of debt that are endlessly printed out of thin air and being forced to repay that debt and the interest on the debt with the proceeds of their time and labor, that is their life force; the debt issued came at no cost, effort or time to speak of on the part of the banking system, but must be repaid with the life of the debt-holder, both the debt and the interest on that debt. This has to be the most corrupt and oppressive institutionalized scheme of usery the world has ever seen, and its effects are finally being felt and seen to a degree that can no longer be ignored.
This aspect of the banking system’s economic oppression of the masses is of course only effectual if large numbers of the people are willing to take out sizable loans, and so the second major cause of the economic disparity and oppression we are seeing the effects of is a culture of debt, and the nation of debt slaves it has created. This in turn was only accomplished by the creation of a greed-based materialistic society built upon a foundation of rampant consumerism. And this in turn could not have been accomplished without the decades-long indoctrination of a nation, a psychological operation aimed at programming the minds of Americans, primarily through television (sponsored by rampant corporate advertising), in order to create a nation of consumerist worker debt-slaves whose time and energy would feed the system setup to only to work for its creators who sit at the top of the pyramid - the bankers, their government servants, the ultra-rich oligarchs and billionaire technocrats, and Corporate America; primarily consisting of the Military Industrial Complex which includes the US war machine and all its foreign beneficiaries, weapons and military equipment manufacturers, the CIA and all of its gun- and drug-running operations, and Big Oil tycoons; alongside the following industries: Big Food and the corporate agriculture industry, Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Tech, the Media, Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and the Prison Industrial Complex.
There are many more key components of the system, such as public schools (government indoctrination centers), universities, lawyers and the entire corrupt [In]Justice System rigged against the People, the lobbying industry which ensures that elected politicians are bought and sold for the industries that perpetuate the system, and so on and so forth, but these are the major industries responsible, for creating and perpetuating a system that was, is and always will be rigged against the people, a system responsible for perpetuating war, a culture of violence and also the mass imprisonment of nonviolent offenders, debt and poverty, chronic disease, rampant consumerism and the insane increasing wealth disparity between the rich and absolutely everyone else.
But possibly the biggest cause of the systematic economic disparity and oppression of all is human greed, without which neither the culture of debt nor the culture of rampant consumerism which fueled it could have arisen, and which is at the heart of the reason there are a handful of the richest men in the world who have more than they could ever need for 100 lifetimes, and yet who continue to collect more and more wealth into their hands at the expense of the masses; and who, instead of using their wealth and power to help fight poverty and end the injustices responsible for creating that poverty, use their wealth and power to actively support and perpetuate those injustices and the oppression of the poor.
Without the ingredient of greed, bankers would not be lending out fiat currency at interest, but would be giving it to those in need at no interest and no demand for repayment, just as Jesus taught his disciples to do. It is only because of greed that an economic system can exist that enriches a handful of corporate executives at the expense of thousands of workers. It is the reason so many thousands of nonviolent offenders (90% of prison inmates) are locked up in private for-profit prisons while the corporate media and Hollywood glorify violence and praise warmongers at the very same time. Greed is why this country has both the highest cost of healthcare in the world and also such a high rate of chronic disease despite boasting one of the most technologically advanced healthcare systems in the world. It drives the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor, and it is the driving force behind the rampant consumerism of society responsible for creating and maintaining a nation of subservient debt slaves.
Greed is the reason why the vast majority of Americans, from the very richest to the poorest among us, whenever they have any ‘extra’ money on hand, the first thought on one’s mind if the cash is not dumped into one’s savings is generally either how to leverage that money to make even more money or how it can be used for entertainment and pleasure, and the very last thought on one’s mind is how to use that extra money to help those who are less fortunate than themselves. Greed is why millions of innocent animals are consigned to live out their entire lives in more cruel and inhumane conditions on factory farms than even the most hardened violent convicted criminals must endure in high security prisons, and it is the reason that an entire third of our food production is thrown away while billions in the developing world are starving.
Greed has become so fundamental for the functioning of our modern society that we have been taught it is a necessary virtue instead of a destructive vice, as we are systematically indoctrinated into a belief system which teaches us that the meaning of life is essentially to collect as much money and as many material possessions as we can before we die, so as to get as far ‘ahead’ as we can in this materialistic rat race we call modern civilized society; and this ideology has become so ingrained in our us that most never think twice about the fact that for every one of us who does ‘get ahead’ in such a system hundreds more must be left behind.
Of the three main tools utilized by the tyrants who seek to rule humanity - fear, deception, and greed - although fear is no doubt the most powerful, greed appears to have been the most useful, without which such a system could have never been built and could not be maintained. It is more clear now than ever before that we live in a society that is fueled by human greed, and sustained through deception and fear, although there are many forces for good doing much behind the scenes to change that. This change is slow, however, for beliefs and thought systems so ingrained into the mind and heart of a society that they form its very identity are not so easily abandoned, even when many millions are hungry for such a change.
Indeed, this is especially true when the greed has been so ingrained into the minds of men that most are not even aware it is there, and I would wager that the vast majority of Americans are not consciously acting out of heart of greed, but still it lies buried just beneath the surface of our conscious daily thought, deeply ingrained in our subconscious mental programming and thus driving the majority of our decision making and actions - for psychologists have found that approximately 95% of our daily routines, habits, and ‘choices’ are subconscious. We as human beings are acting upon the mental programming within our minds, and for most of us, those programs have been programmed in large part by the very greed-based society that is destroying our civilization from the inside out.
Most of us do not walk around consciously choosing to spend our money on mostly harmless but totally unnecessary pleasures because we hate the poor or wish for starving children in Yemen to die; we simply do not think about the fact that every dollar spent on our personal pleasure above and beyond our basic survival is one less dollar being spent to help alleviate the suffering of a neighbor in need, and yet for the vast majority of us there are so very many people who are our brothers and sisters in humanity who find themselves in far more unfortunate situations than we are, indeed millions around the planet are going hungry as I write this. Likewise most of us never stop to think for even a second that our taxpayer dollars are being spent to fund the US-backed Saudi genocide of Yemenis and starvation of innocent Yemeni children or the radical Jihadists slaughtering peaceful Syrian men, women and children, or the Israeli blockade and systematic bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure in the impoverished ‘unlivable’ Gaza Strip; and despite not consciously supporting any of this and being utterly horrified when we hear of US guided bombs being dropped on school buses full of young children in Yemen or Israeli bombings of Gaza that wipes out entire families in a single night, still we go on supporting the madness in deed that we condemn with our hearts and mind, feeding the system perpetrating these evils with our own life blood (for most, a quarter to third of their working lives). When the average American buys a diamond ring for his fiancé, or buys a happy meal at McDonalds, he doesn’t do so because he consciously supports the blood diamond industry or because he seeks to actively support the rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforests so integral to the balance of the entire earth’s ecosystem, and yet in action there’s a pretty good chance that he does. And when the homeowners who are able to ‘get ahead’ and get a second or third home to turn around and rent out for a little extra income, I don’t imagine most do so because they consciously hate the homeless, and yet every second home that is rented out to increase the wealth of one who is already living a comfortable life is a home that could house a homeless family - at no real ‘loss’ to the homeowner beyond depriving him of his ability to amass even more unnecessary debt notes than he already has in the bank. And those who have multi-million dollar vacation mansions nicer than the single home of even an upper middle class family, that sit empty most of the year while the homeless are starving, these are people who are utterly infected with greed, whether they know it or not.
A simple answer to the extreme economic disparity and problem of human suffering and inequality is found in an oft ignored but universal spiritual and religious principle found in the following words long written down: “Let the man who has two tunics share with him who has none; and let him who has food do likewise.”
It is such a simple principle that does not even ask us to sacrifice anything we need or even our creature comforts, but only to share any extra goods out of our abs dunce with those who are in need; and if applied to even most aspects of our lives by only half of us, and even if only a quarter of Americans were to begin living by this principle, we could change the world on a scale and in ways never before seen in modern history overnight! The problem is that the real answer to our societal problems, although it does not ask us to sacrifice anything but our addiction to greed, is found in a revolutionary principle that is so at odds with our consumeristic societal norms that most of us dismiss it out of hand as ‘unrealistic’ and patently absurd, and it is so revolutionary that in many churches, if a preacher were to begin admonishing those in his congregation who had multiple cars to give one to those who had none and urging those who had two homes to even just begin to ‘rent’ their second home to a homeless family at no cost instead of renting it out for pay (not even demanding they part with ownership), hw would be thrown out of the church before he could finish his sermon!
The ultra-rich need not take part in the implementation of such a revolutionary principle for it to alleviate, if not eradicate most of the physical suffering in this country. Even if just a sizable chunk of the middle class were to begin living by this principle, poverty, hunger and homelessness would soon be eradicated without a single one of the ultra-rich billionaire oligarchs lifting their finger in the aid of the poor. But we’ve all been programmed to believe we always ‘need’ more, always, and so we compulsively buy, consume, work, repeat, until the day we die, many of us never stopping to ask ourselves why we have this compulsive urge to constantly accumulate more and more and more stuff that we don’t need, often don’t use, and certainly can’t take with us when we go...
The problem is not that our intentions are not good and true, it is that most us are entirely unconscious of the greed that drives the vast majority of our choices and actions in this society, we are unconscious of our role in causing and perpetuating the very suffering we consciously wish to eradicate, and it is the jobs of the societal programmers of the Matrix system to ensure that we stay unconscious. And so it is that the media, institutionalized education, the politicians and the corporate spokespeople do absolutely everything in their power to hide the connection between our societal habits that feed the system and the evils in society that we all consciously condemn, and to glorify and normalize greed by sugarcoating it and calling it ‘The American Dream’ - a dream that is and always has been a lie.
The fact remains that if it were not for the seeds of greed planted and cultivated in the hearts of humanity over the course of the past century, the economically oppressive system we see today that has given rise to the most extreme economic disparity possibly ever witnessed on the face of the earth could never have sprouted and grown in to the monster that it has become, and without greed implanted in the hearts of humanity it couldn’t last a week.
After all, no system can survive without the support of the people, for all systems are created, run and fueled by the people; and without the people engaging in the rampant mindless consumerism which fuels corporate America, eagerly buying up products that are the spoils of imperial wars and oppressive foreign policies, being willing to consign themselves to a life of debt slavery and thus guaranteeing the perpetuation of this banker-imposed economic oppression, and remaining plugged into the programming that perpetuates it all, neither this oppression nor the system which gave rise to it could endure for much longer than a day, and the resulting wealth disparity could be no more. Without the support of the people, this system would immediately collapse, and without a nation of citizens infected by greed, this greed-based paradigm which has now spread across much of the earth would shatter to pieces in a matter of days.
And so the solution to the problem is not to fight the system, for the system is already destroying itself from the inside out and will inevitably fall; the answer is simply to become conscious, to awaken from our slumber and re-program our subconscious into alignment with our conscious desire for peace, harmony and the end of human suffering through the practice of compassion and mindful living. In practical terms, this means withdrawing our support from all systems - both internal and external - that work against our own best interests and the highest human ideals.
The problem is that, despite more and more people becoming waking up and becoming aware of the underlying problems and corrupt nature of the system, too many are still reliant upon it for their livelihood and sense of security, and are either too afraid, too ignorant, or too busy working their lives away just to make ends meet to invest the time and energy necessary to figure out a way to withdraw their support from that system; and this, too, is by design. But people are rapidly waking up, and more and more of us are actively taking steps to withdraw support from the system and energy from the old paradigm that gives it life, and far more are awakening to the true nature of this beast. For just as it is is inevitable that when the wealth disparity in a society reaches such an extreme, that the civilization’s collapse is imminent, it is also inevitable that the people will begin to wake up to the reality that the system(s) responsible for causing such oppression and injustice - both the physical ones in the world and the ones programmed into our minds (as our beliefs and the resulting collective worldview which shapes our external reality is but a collection of dominant thought systems) - are inherently corrupt and do not in any way serve the interests of collective humanity or the individual, but only a select few - those sitting at the top of the pyramid.
So not only has the past two decades leading up to the 2020 economic fallout and the resulting situation seen a rapidly increasing consolidation of power and wealth by the power elite and acceleration of extreme wealth disparity, it has also seen an unprecedented Great Awakening taking place among the people, with the acceleration of this awakening appearing to roughly mirror the speed of the growing wealth disparity, the consolidation of wealth and power by the power elite, and the growth and expansion of the system upon which these are dependent.
This Great Awakening seems to have been sparked around the turn of the century, with the 9/11 false flag playing a key role in waking humanity up to the evil and deception high government officials are willing to engage in simply to advance a geopolitical agenda. It was in full swing within a decade; the housing crash and resulting banker bailouts in 2008 combined with the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul for president that same year and again in 2012 and the associated widespread dissipation of information regarding the true workings of the US banking system and the unholy alliance between the bankers and the imperial war machine had, by the end of that year, pretty much woken up a majority of the nation to the true nature of the Federal Reserve System, before which time a majority of the people still believed was a public rather than private entity - and this unprecedented surge in the spread of suppressed information, anti-establishment sentiment and revolutionary thinking was thanks in large part to fast-growing social media platforms that had not yet institutionalized the strict communist-style censorship policies implemented today combined with a population hungry for truth and real change. This awakening now seems to have reached somewhat of a tipping point in the wake of the Covid scamdemic and related tyrannical government measures, deceptions, and the beginning of the rise of the global technocracy being advanced by the very same power elites responsible for the creation and perpetuation of the old system that kept the people in chains - both visible and invisible - for an entire century.
There are no doubt a number of other important factors responsible for sparking and fueling this Great Awakening, not least among them the rise of the Information Age and the growing wealth disparity and other corrupt and unjust features of western society becoming far too obvious and extreme to ignore. But to document them all would take the space of an entire post, if not an entire book; but suffice it to say that the birth of a spirituality that seemed new to the western mind brought to this country by a number of eastern masters and western spiritualists alike, combined with the rise of a new view of science and medicine - thanks to a number of paradigm-shattering discoveries made by leading quantum physicists and brave alternative medical practitioners during the 20th Century laid the foundation for and created the necessary conditions for the coming Great Awakening in the hearts and minds of the People.
Scientific and medical evidence was beginning to seriously challenge the long-held traditional scientific view that molded the belief systems of the western materialist mind - that matter gave rise to consciousness as opposed to consciousness giving rise to matter and that the primary source of physical disease is outside the body rather than in the mind, when in fact the emerging body of evidence indicates the opposite; while a liberating, self-empowering, unifying and enlightening spirituality rapidly spreading across the land was beginning to challenge the long-held traditional religious views that had also helped mold the belief systems of the western materialist mind. As the first two decades of the 21st Century unfolded, these two major sets of discoveries and the resulting movements challenging a number of traditional beliefs largely responsible for perpetuating the Matrix system and associated old paradigm both spread like wildfire, and increasingly began to merge into one sprawling unorganized movement with spirituality at its core, a growing body of scientific and medical evidence at its defense, and a message of peace, healing, unity and freedom for the oppressed, sick and conflicted masses.
These are the conditions in which the so-called pandemic and associated measures arose out of, which led to the ensuing economic fallout we are still witnessing today. As the Great Awakening fast approaches the tipping point necessary to liberate humanity, and thus threatens both the power of those sitting comfortably at the top of the pyramid of power and the system upon which that pyramid-paradigm is built, the power elite move faster than ever before in an attempt to consolidate all of the remaining wealth and power that they possibly can into their hands before the shaky house of cards this fragile economic system has become comes crashing down.
Back to the present, when a booming economy signals the imminent fall of a broken civilization
Enter the present moment, complete with the strange new state of the nation and of the economy. I recently returned to Bozeman, Montana, which is an excellent representation of how the post-Covid booming economy seen across much of the nation is anything but normal, and far from a force of good for the common working man (and woman). Like most red states by now, the economy here has been fully re-opened and all Covid restrictions have been withdrawn. People are out and about, businesses that survived the lockdowns are busy, the town is rapidly growing, and the economy is booming - and when I say booming, it is really BOOMING. On the surface it really is the picture perfect example of a ‘good’ economy, and things are relatively back to ‘normal’. But lurking just beneath the surface are a multitude of signs that things are anything but normal, and more so than ever before this flourishing economy is doing anything but creating better conditions for the average resident.
Like much of the west, and now many other more sparsely populated and/or conservative states across the nation, this once small town is seeing a surge of new residents, and the resulting growth is unprecedented. Bozeman has been the fastest growing small town in America for several years now, so this is not a new phenomenon, but like many red state small towns and cities in the west, the current surge of growth is no doubt the biggest yet. This is in large part due to a mass exodus of residents mainly from big cities in California and other blue states that featured the strictest economically devastating and anti-freedom ‘pandemic’ measures, which spurred this mass exodus. Many mainstream news outlets have covered this phenomenon over the past six months, but although this mass exodus is unprecedented in size, it is not a new phenomenon.
Like so much of what is being witnessed today, this is only an acceleration of a well established pattern, with what has for years been a slow trickle of new residents from California and other big cities around the country now having become a steady stream of those fleeing the very conditions which, ironically, their mass migration is beginning to create in the places they are arriving to escape. Having traveled throughout most of the west over the past two years, I have been informed by locals and news reports alike that this influx of out-of-staters to places like Bozeman - predominantly Californians and almost exclusively the rich and wealthy hailing from big cities - is far from isolated, but was already even before the so-called pandemic also taking place in Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Texas, among other places. Colorado likely being the best example where this has had the largest impact and effect. Everywhere I go the story is the same: rich Californians (and other big-city out-of-staters) moving to neighboring rural areas en masse has driven the price of land and housing up so high that the locals can no longer afford the cost of living.
Now this is taking place on a scale that is unprecedented, in all of these places aor easy experiencing this phenomenon and many more, and the cost of living is likewise skyrocketing to levels that are unsustainable for working class Americans. The influx of money drives the prices up, and big-city rich folk bring big-city rich folk attitudes that eventually translate into big-city flavored policies that inevitably favor the rich. Housing cannot be built fast enough to keep up with the growth, resulting in a constantly climbing and highly unaffordable cost of housing, nor can the road expansions keep up with the traffic growth, resulting in big-city rush hour style traffic at almost all hours of the day, in a town that just a decade ago hardly had a rush hour to speak of even at ‘rush hour’.
Wages may appear pretty good on the surface compared to more impoverished rural areas (Walmart and other entry-level jobs starting pay at $15-$17+/hr), but the ever increasing actual minimum wage levels (already far above the legal ‘minimum wage’) cannot keep up with the high cost of living that is increasing at an even faster rate. Housing costs have doubled to tripled over the past decade here, while wages have only gone up about 30%. And already before the Covid-era economic mayhem, cost of living far exceeded low-mid level paying wages, as a local study found two years ago that, as reported on the local radio station, that a Bozeman resident working full time (40 hrs/wk) would have to make $22.50/hr in order to afford cost of rent and utilities alone! This didn’t factor in the cost of gas to get to that job, or food or phone bills or internet or auto maintenance, or any credit card, automobile or student loan debt payments, or anything else at all. At that time $25/hr was a typical going rate for skilled construction worker, and Walmart and other corporate chains were not starting employees off at no more than $15/hr!
Now that disparity between wages and cost of living is even higher, and the effects can be clearly seen. When I arrived at my current campsite up what used to be a very low-use area in the Gallatin Canyon in mid-June, hardly peak season, I was a little surprised to see more campsites filled than would typically be the case on a busy peak-season holiday such as July 4. This area is near Big Sky, boasting the highest pay of the area and a haven for the ultra-rich, with the Yellowstone Club being home to some of the most expensive vacation homes in the country, owned by celebrities such as Tom Cruise. And what I soon came to learn was that the area (this national forest road and others nearby) was filling up with full-time summer residents living in campers, tents and vans, taking advantage of the free ‘housing’ (despite living on public land technically being illegal), while working full time in Big Sky. This is a new, Covid-era phenomenon, I’ve been told by several locals, but seeing the bigger picture,one can hardly say ‘Covid19’ is to blame. There is now an entire class of people around here who can be classified as the working homeless, and I suspect this is a growing trend around the country. Indeed, there was already a large population of working class homeless in big cities such as Los Angeles all the way back in 2018, and now this aspect of big-city California, too, is spreading to the rural areas in which the Californians are fleeing.
The Californians should not be blamed, of course, as this is just a reflection of the growing economic disparity first manifested in the biggest cities of the nation, now spreading to smaller towns and cities across the country.
Meanwhile some of the other strange post-Covid phenomena include a four-five fold increase in cost of lumber and other construction materials across the entire nation (it was the case in Arkansas when I passed through two months ago, and has been widely reported across the entire country), as well as a spike in cost of food, with minor food shortages even being reported from time to time in a few places. In the months during and following the lockdowns, food banks across the nation have reported longer waiting lines and more ‘business’ than ever before, an effect of both the rising cost of food and high unemployment and unsustainable labor rates. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if cost of lumber has gone up four to five times, then cost of housing will inevitably do the same, and this will make the now unaffordable cost of housing for many unaffordable to almost all of us, even the upper middle class. And indeed, the effects of this lumber cost spike spike are already being witnessed.
One area local, for example, a medical doctor practicing natural medicine that my mom saw during my parents time in Bozeman and still talks to from time to time, was one of the unfortunate people to have their homes burned to the ground in hot and fast-moving but short-lived forest fire in the local Bridger Mountains late last summer, which destroyed over 100 homes. The cost of new construction is now so high, that not even this relatively well off medical doctor could afford to rebuild, with the insurance of course only covering the value of the previous home, which is far lower than the cost to build a new one with the current price of lumber and construction labor. And it is an ominous sign when even the land-owning, relatively high-paying white collar class of workers among us such as a doctor (or lawyer, professor, or anyone else in any other ‘high paying’ white collar profession) cannot even afford to build a house on their own property. Instead of seeking a massive loan, the subject of this story made the decision to move to Anchorage, Alaska, apparently still more affordable than much of Montana - although one can only imagine that it is only a matter of time before this phenomena has no left one corner of the nation untouched.
The strangest part of the insane lumber cost spike is that around here, and no doubt throughout much or most of the forest-dense part of the country, there is actually no shortage of lumber, and therefore no clear reason for the drastic rise in cost of this particular commodity. Local sawmills in Montana, in fact, have plenty of excess lumber at the moment, despite the record amount of new construction, and are not struggling to keep up with the housing boom. When asked by a local builder that I worked on a gig with for a couple weeks helping to finish the construction of a Tipi camp in the area, regarding the massive jump in cost of lumber, he was informed by a local supplier that although there was by no means any shortage of lumber (for them at least), they ‘had to raise their prices’ to match the rising national cost.
One can only wonder just how many lumber suppliers raised their cost only to follow this national trend, and speculate as to what exactly initially set off this insane price spike if not an actual shortage of lumber. Maybe there is a clear cause, surely there must be some cause; however I am unaware of what that real cause is, and suspect that it is a number of factors not being talked about in establishment circles. A flu-like sickness was certainly not responsible, however, and the lockdowns seem like an unlikely culprit as most sawmills were among those businesses deemed ‘essential’ that remained open, even in California which boasted some of the strictest and most devastating lockdown measures of the entire nation. I know this as a matter of fact, as I was in California in November and December during the second major lockdown push during which many small businesses were put out of business, the local sawmill was pumping out lumber daily even as the masses reeled under the economic tyranny imposed by Governor Newsome’s dictatorial edicts and homelessness in the state reached unprecedented high levels. But even in California where the Covid lockdowns were some of the most destructive, the upsurge in homelessness was only the acceleration of a patter already long in place, as even before 2020, LA had one of the biggest and fastest growing homeless population in the nation.
It goes without saying that when the price of living - price of housing, price of food, and price of gas - skyrocket at a rate that far exceed the rate of wage increases alongside a rapidly increasing wealth disparity between rich and poor, the complete collapse of the economic system currently in place, and fall of the civilization built upon it, is both certain and imminent. Price of housing and food is already skyrocketing, gas is on the rise although not skyrocketing (yet), taxes are on the increase, national and collective individual debt is at an all-time high, employers such as restaurant owners hiring low-wage workers struggle to fill positions despite raising entry level pay and despite high rate of unemployment and homelessness even in states whose economies are fully re-opened, the number of working (and non-working) homeless continues to increase, while government and corporate policies are not being implemented to curb the national slide into third-world status, while the policies that are being implemented are in fact fast-tracking it. Governments and corporations take full advantage of such a ‘good’ economy by raising taxes, the cost of building permits, and high-level government and corporate executive pay, while the whole nation pays the price.
As the economy gets back on its feet after a year of being stifled, and things begin to return to a semblance of normal, things may look pretty good on the surface compared to the insanity of the previous months, but look can be and often are deceiving. Like any well-organized Ponzi scheme, things continue to look great, even grand, on the surface, with an extravagant high-rise building outfitted with lavish furniture as its center of operations, complete with a well-paid crew of executives dressed in expensive coats and ties filling its halls - and for a time, happy investors ; and this appearance can be preserved until the day the scheme collapses under its own weight and is suddenly gone - the orchestrater(s) of the elaborate scheme walking away with the millions he has swindled from overly eager investors, the vast majority of which are left without a penny to their name, at which point everything that appeared to indicate a healthy business operation is suddenly gone and the illusion is finally seen for what it really was - an elaborate, well orchestrated scam designed to enrich its operator at the expense of anyone ignorant or greedy enough (or both) to join the scheme as an investor.
Our fractional reserve banking system that has over the course of a century hijacked the entire US economy IS a massive, elaborate, well orchestrated Ponzi scheme, and it WILL collapse, as Ron Paul and all Austrian economists have accurately predicted; it is inevitable; the only question is how long can the outward appearance of a ‘good’ or even booming economy continue to hide the reality of the massive scam being perpetrated behind the scenes, because the day of this system’s fall is fast approaching; and when that day arrives it will likely be sudden and even unexpected to most, just like the collapse and sudden disappearance of any good Ponzi scheme, at which point absolutely everyone but maybe the bankers and a handful of chosen elite who sit at the very tip top of the pyramid of power will be left hanging/ From Wall Street to Hollywood and DC too, none of those whose lifeblood feeds the beast and so think the system will always be on their side will be left unscathed when that day arrives. Stripped of its body (the system’s machinations), and abandoned by its mind (its orchestrators), the heart of the empire will stop beating almost instantaneously, and the vast majority of the rich and the powerful who gave their life to serve a system that enslaved humanity and which for a time served them will be left with next to nothing; indeed, they will most certainly feel the brunt of the pain of the economic collapse while the poor, having already become accustomed to life in poverty and being the least dependent upon a system that never gave them more than a few scraps from the system’s dinner table, will be the ones most likely to be least affected by it.
The signs of this fast approaching, impending implosion of our economy are everywhere one looks, and indeed all the signs indicate that the collapse of the whole empire is imminent, and in fact its fall has already begun. These signs include not only the many economic signals that have been warning us for years that this day was inevitable and approaching faster every year, but also society’s (or at least the system’s) embrace of immorality on a scale comparable to Ancient Rome in the last few decades of the Roman Empire before its sudden collapse; increasingly unsustainable foreign military expansion and occupation; blatant lies being sold (but increasingly not bought into) by the establishment becoming so pervasive that the deception itself is now eating away at the establishment; wholesale suppression of truth and freedom of speech/thought alongside wide scale censorship of dissidence of any kind; the greed of the most greedy among us only increasing by the day; skyrocketing national debt; increasing frequency and intensity of riots and street violence; talk of revolution in the air; and a growing division between people on almost all levels, from class division to political division to religious division, and probably most important but also commonly ignored, the divide between those defecting from the establishment and those insisting on clinging to it in defense of the empire of lies and the wicked web of deception, greed and fear it has woven.
I could go on for hours listing observations and stories to further prove my point, but it is obvious from just the relatively few casual encounters I have had everywhere I’ve been over the course of the past year that most Americans see through the facade, at least to some degree or another.
For those into hip hop, I leave here an insightful look into what’s about to happen, and more importantly why, by the lyrical genius K-Rino, who managed to sum up what took me hours of writing to make this piece in just 5 minutes worth of powerful lyrics. And while it comes from a black Muslim perspective, and paints a picture of the most violent potential scenario of the coming collapse, it is chalk full of truth and well worth a listen. I tend to personally believe that due to the progress of the Great Awakening, the most violent scenario featuring a world war is no longer an inevitable aspect of the empire’s fall as depicted herein, although it’s always still a possibility of the people do not stay vigilant for peace and truth; but apart from that disagreement in vision of the future, an amazing look into What’s About to Happen - and indeed, much of it has already begun...
All of us feel the sting of the oppression to one degree or another, whether we are willing to admit it or not, and all of see the signs of a civilization being torn apart from within, whether we cling to the old and now slowly shattering paradigm or embrace the slowly emerging new one ready to replace it. Like it or not, our civilization is tearing apart at the seams, and as ugly and painful as it may look (or may not look for those who don’t yet see it), it’s about time that this empire and the old fear/greed-based paradigm which gave it life falls, to make way for the completion of humanity’s shift into a new love-based paradigm and the dawning of a new civilization built on the ideals of honesty, freedom, peace, and justice for all.
It is clear, as can easily be seen simply by observing the present reality all around us, that we are quickly racing towards the inevitable fall of a system that will bring their precious empire of lies collapsing to the ground; and by refusing to let go of their power and allow a peaceful transition to a new system that embraces the universal brotherhood of man over the perpetual division that has kept us in chains for centuries, the powers that be seem intent on ensuring that this economic collapse will be abrupt and violent as opposed to gradual and relatively peaceful. And by violent, I do not necessarily mean violence in the streets, I mean a destructive implosion of the economic system that will likely be extremely painful for just about everyone, as opposed to a more slow and steady burning to the ground. One can only wonder if those whose greedy and power-hungry actions are driving the system very quickly to its inevitable collapse are fully aware that by refusing to let go of their power, they are only ensuring the speedy fall of the very system that gave them that power in the first place.
Get ready, because if the signs all around us are any indication, it is going to be one wild ride. The less attached one is to this system, and to the material world and one’s physical possessions, the easier and less painful this transition will be, and once it is complete those of us who live to see that day will look back and wonder why it took us so long to get there. My advice: Get out of the Matrix now, before the shit really hits the fan, and instead of mourning for the suffering of humanity associated with the coming collapse and worrying about an apocalyptic end-of-world scenario, rejoice that the days of an empire responsible for causing a bulk of this human suffering is numbered, and focus on building the new world of peace and freedom we all wish to see that can rise in its place when the day of its inevitable fall arrives - if only humanity is ready and prepared to embrace it. Because if we aren’t ready, the powers that be have an even more tyrannical system prepared to take its place in the form of a global technocracy, and they stand ready for its rise.
As the prophet Jeremiah once pleaded with his own people: “Come out of her, my people.” The modern beast system of today is not much different than the Babylonian empire of old, of which Jeremiah spoke of over two millennium ago; it has nothing to offer humanity but endless lies, suffering, and a life of perpetual slavery; and the global technocracy they would foist upon the world in its place is but new version of the same old beast, a new and updated version of the same Matrix system responsible for enslaving the minds of humanity and causing the perpetual suffering that has plagued our planet for generations.
As J. Krishnamurti aptly noted, “It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” and so it is not surprising that those who are the most well adjusted to this incredibly sick society we find ourselves living in today are the most likely be plagued by physical chronic disease, and are most certainly to some degree spiritually and/or psychologically ill. And as this sick civilization lays on her deathbed, nearing the inevitable day when she breathes her last breath, it is those who are the most well adjusted to it who will most likely be destroyed along with her, and if not destroyed then to feel the most pain from the system’s collapse.
There is an old Native American prophecy that says when the greed and hatred and general insanity of the people of the earth and their destruction of the planet and of each other and all life on earth has become so great that it threatens to destroy both itself and the planet, a Great Shaking will come to shake humanity out of her slumber, to remind her of her true spiritual identity as a being of compassion and love, rather than one of fear and greed as our ‘leaders’ have programmed us to believe, and to remind us that we are One - one with ourself, our Creator and the planet that sustains us - in order to steer us off of the destructive path we now find ourselves and guide us to the path of light and peace that leads to the birth of a new world - not the New World Order that the power elite are scheming to erect, but a new world in which all human beings will be treated fairly with love and compassion, where freedom and peace will reign supreme as we learn that it is both easier and far more beneficial to live in a state of inner peace and harmony than in a state of perpetual fear and division.
From where I stand it looks like just such a Great Shaking is now upon us, and it is shaking our society to the core, sifting the wheat from the chaff, the true from the false, the real from the unreal, true knowledge from ignorance, the strong from the weak, the truly powerful from those whose power is but an external facade, and the brave and loving souls from the fearful ones who have yet to learn that the world and its Matrix system upon which they so wholeheartedly cling to and depend upon for their safety and survival is their greatest physical enemy and will even sacrifice all of its own most loyal servants to preserve itself, until it has fully destroyed itself, eaten up by the very greed and fear that once gave it life.
A Great Shaking is upon us, and it looks like things will probably get a lot uglier before they get prettier, but all who survive it - like the trees that survive the strongest windstorms and hottest wildfires - will stand stronger and taller for the experience, ready to walk into a new age of peace. And if humanity is not yet ready, history will be destined to repeat until we finally learn our lesson that trusting in those who sell us fear, greed, deception and division will never bring any true and lasting form of peace and harmony to earth, no matter how shiny the veneers painted over their packages of poison may be and how wonderful their promises of a better future may sound.
I should probably also note, regarding the cover photo, that although I do not necessarily agree with the notion that the Queen of England sits at the top of the pyramid, apart from that it seems to me to be an accurate depiction of the global power structure and hierarchy of worldly power controlling the planet as things stand today.