PM's Self Reliance Tools: economic inequality

Showing posts with label economic inequality. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Inequality for All

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

www.poormansurvivor.net

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

The American Government has become a bureaucratic tumor, no longer does it work for the people. It is sucking the lifeblood and freedom from the people it is supposed to be serving. It's only a matter of time before it self-destructs. >the Poor Man

Inequality for All

An economist walks past a hundred dollar bill om the sidewalk and doesn't pick it up. His friends ask why. “If it were worth something, someone else would have grabbed it already.” And that kind of sums up how many people today think about Obama's efforts at helping the middle class.

Fewer people are spending any real real money but they are going into debt again and the layoffs and retail store closings are starting again and cities are still languishing...It's happening in China and in Europe too.

No sooner had Mr. Trump become the presumptive GOP nominee and the kindergarten antics began. Former GOP presidents refused to support Trump because their boy didn't get the nod, GOP big shots wouldn't add their support offering a wait and see promise [hoping perhaps Bernie would pull off a miracle against Clinton] and some groups are urging advertisers such as Coca Cola to withhold support of the GOP convention in Cleveland this summer.

In recent years the GOP has become notorious for its impotence and it refuses any kind of Viagra. Trump, an outsider, using his own cash, managed to thumb his nose at the political elite and managed to break the sound barrier of politically incorrect sound bites by tapping into the anger and frustration of the middle class feels against career politicians who have screwed them and the nation while serving their corporate master.

If you're a political outside the two parties make it especially difficult to run-they've designed it that way on purpose. Just ask anyone from the Libertarian Party or other third party.

Ironically, polls indicate the majority of Americans do not trust either Clinton or Trump and as usual, it will boil down to choosing the lesser of the two evils but it is interesting to finally see someone outside of the political mainstream achieve what Trump did.

Some Democratic Party members, even rank and file Democrats, have grown sick and tired of the Clintons. There's even a rumor floating around that hints that she'll make Obama her running mate! If something were to happen to Hillary, Obama would become President again.

If that were to happen, our freedom would further erode, especially in the area of gun rights and it is speculated that Hillary would nationalize retirement accounts under the so-called Guaranteed Retirement Accounts [GRAs] first mentioned by Obama in a State of the Union speech.

Trump was further chastised on a Yahoo news story for a potential plan to wipe out the national debt with a semi-bankruptcy plan. The response was immediate and harsh as to be expected from the ill-informed. Think about however, both parties have been bankrupting this nation for past 50 years. Our income tax system is a bad joke and our spending power is has eroded by 45% in just the past 15 years! The Fed [which is a bunch of bankers Thomas Jefferson warned us against] has done a great job of denigrating the value of our dollar already thank you.

In either case, should Trump and Clinton become the nominees, I predict we'll see one of the dirtiest races ever waged between the two parties. The Clinton's in particular, are no strangers to dirty politics.

In the Grip of Greed

Thanks to former President Clinton financial markets are now akin to casino only most people don't seem to get it. The game is rigged by the Fed, the banks and high-frequency traders. Clinton' elimination of the 90-year-old protective Glass-Steagall Act allowed Wall Street unrestrained gambling with virtually no government oversight which led to the crash which nearly wiped out America and which the average American is still paying for. [Why do you think Hillary got paid more than $640K from Goldman-Sachs...to keep the Act from being reinstated should she be elected to the oval office, of course]. Many economists are already predicting a repeat of our earlier crash – only worse and much of it can still be blamed on the revolving door between officials in DC and Wall Street.

The regulatory state in DC is nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street.

There have always been booms and busts but as the Fed continually introduces more artificial unknowns and as the government continually introduces more job choking red tape and regulation [at the state and federal level] these recessions become worse and we become less competitive. According to Shadow Stats, for instance, our jobless numbers hover more closely around 22% versus the 5.65% number Obama gives us [The government is famous for its verisimilitude].

Trump is right...the system is rigged but it is not just elections. The economy is rigged against working people. The income gap in America has grown under every President since Clinton's second term creating a sluggish, unequal and crisis-prone economy because of tax giveaways, financial sector deregulation, lack of oversight and more.

American capitalism has become a sort of crony capitalism more akin to a third-world autocracy than a supposedly free-market system.

The system is rigged because we have the most expensive government can buy...

The headlines look good now but if you dig deeper you'll find trouble. Unemployment has dropped partly because a huge number [something which Trump and others have pointed out] have given up looking for a job. The labor participation rate dropping to a 38-year low. Household income for the average American family, meanwhile is still $4,000 lower than when Bill Clinton left office. This has been the weakest recovery in the postwar era, said the Wall Street Journal in an editorial recently.

America has seen a wage stagnation and a decline in manufacturing plus a failure to find a new source of middle class jobs to replace it. [sources: Robert Reich's InequalityforAll.com and Bruce David's How to Survive the War on the Middle Class].

Pity the young, said Rich Miller in Bloomberg.com – A coming collapse in investment returns means 30-year-olds starting to put aside money today will have to work seven years longer or save almost twice as much to build up the same nest egg as their parents. That bleak finding indicates the golden era for investors is ending.

The Tax Foundation, a non-profit think tank released their annual report last month and it contained some sobering realities about the cost of government.

>In 2016, Americans, will pay over $3.3 trillion in federal taxes and $1.6 trillion in state and local taxes or 31 percent of the nation's income.

>Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2016 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined!.

If you're bummed about your income, join the crowd Impatience with income has led to a wavering sense of financial insecurity in the U.S. How safe do you feel?
John Williams of shadowstats.com tracks what the official government numbers would be if honest numbers were actually being used, and according to him U.S. GDP growth has been continuously negative since 2005.

I know it's a challenge for many of us to save money today, especially if you have children. That's why I frequently write about part time income strategies [you can get my Escaping the Rat Race CD ROM for only $5 ppd. at our storefront]...further, I always urge folks to grow their own food, and to buy their own home with at least an acre or more so you can grow food and perhaps have a bit of livestock. This I feel, makes an ideal wealth preserving tool and is something you can hand down to your children.

Yours for better living,

Bruce, 'The Poor Man'

Additional Resources

Cheapest and Easiest Ways to do a Will (Clark Howard): "What are the odds you don't have a will? The best guess is that 50% of people don't have one. If you don't have children and have very little in the way of assets, that may be OK for you. But if you do have children, you need a will for the simple fact that if you don't have one, the state will decide who raises your kids."

The $15 Retirement Plan (The Simple Dollar): "All you need is $15 a day to retire very nicely if you start when you’re young. That’s just a bit of pocket money most days. Let’s run through the math."

The Money Boss Manual: A Brief Guide to Financial Independence (Money Boss): "I’m pleased to announce that, at long last, A Brief Guide to Financial Independence is available to download. This free 70-page PDF collects all of the material from my “financial independence crash course” into one convenient document."

Normally I charge $14.95 for this collection, however I feel it is so important I am going to share it with you free of charge and I urge you to share it with your family and friends while it is still available. Your donations are appreciate however!

How to Survive the War on the Middle Class

14 of the best reports I’ve assembled on protecting your freedom…Here is the download link.

http://1drv.ms/1d9kfiU

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Friday, July 18, 2014

The Illusion that Defeats Us

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

http://PoorManSurvivor.net

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

"Democracy and liberty are not the same.
Democracy is little more than mob rule,
while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual."
-- Walter E. Williams

Without massive compliance from citizen drones, there would no longer be government that strangles our freedom and bankrupts our nation…even many big corporations, such as Walgreens, are giving up their US citizenship to avoid our unfair tax system.

Governments Wage War on their Own Citizens

In 1928, Edward L. Bernays, the “father of public relations,” wrote in his book, Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …

[I]n almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind…

There is a trap in the mind of the average person, like a steel box or a great wall, which prevents him from rationally considering the premise of organized evil. For one reason or another, it is far easier for him to process the darker actions of men and governments as random consequence, as merely a symptom of wild greed, ignorance, stupidity, miscalculation, jealousy and confusion. Destructive tendencies and institutions are seen as nothing more than a chaotic afterthought of the self-centered human ego. Our ailing society is viewed as a victim of its own malicious nature, a self-deprecating edifice. In the minds of the unaware and uneducated, the world is a cannibalistic beast, rather than the crippled victim of a foreign parasite.

This mentality is a product not only of naivety, but of fear. If people fear anything more than death, it is the idea that the reality they have always known is just a thin veneer, a deceptively simple wallpaper covering something eternally complex and potentially horrifying. The common mind is not prepared to handle the unrecognizable. Normalcy bias becomes god, and blind assumption becomes truth.

It is in this vast fog of the unrecognizable that a cabal of power cultists thrive, a cabal that many people in our culture refuse to believe exists.

They feed on prejudice and bias. They are empowered by apathy and nihilism. They revel in the condescension of the academic. They are invigorated by the arrogance of the self-serving. They twist facts, manipulate world views, hold humanity back from its better potential and terrify or kill the defiant. They do this in concert. They do this as a choir. They see themselves as almighty engineers, as architects with a “pure insight,” as philosopher kings. They are often referred to as “globalists.” And their goal is, and has always been, a “New World Order.”

If you do not understand that this directed and organized effort exists, then you cannot possibly comprehend why global events happen the way they do. If you really believe all tragedy and so-called triumph is random, then you become nothing but debris in the wake of a massive tsunami of time and tide. For the most part, the overwhelming firestorms of history are nothing more than plot points in a carefully crafted screenplay. If you know how the writers of our global theater think, then it becomes much easier to predict how they intend our story to progress. Even the tales of “philosopher kings” become contrived as they attempt to force an obsessive narrative.

These men (and women) are not necessarily ingenious. They don’t have to be. They are born into a world of stolen wealth and philosophical nepotism, and they are bound together by fear as much as zealotry. They are a hive of insects who believe themselves to be gods. And though deluded by theirown hubris, such organized malevolence is still a terrible force to be reckoned with.

Here are just a few of the strategic methods they commonly use to survive, thrive and keep the masses in the dark.

The Illusion Of Separation

In Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and mentor to Bill Clinton, wrote:

It must not be felt that these heads of the world’s chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers (also called “international” or “merchant” bankers) who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks.

Labels and titles are often designed to deceive. The insidious lie that many people, including some in the liberty movement, have been led to believe is that a concrete separation exists among international bankers along the lines of nationality.

I find it fascinating that some otherwise insightful researchers still cannot grasp the fact that there is no distinction between different central banks or globalists acting within various governments. All central banks are front organizations for private international banks. All central banks act in concert with each other. All central banks are centrally tied to the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements. This includes the central banks in countries like China and Russia. Any country infested with a central bank is dominated by that central bank and, thus, dominated by globalists.

If Vladimir Putin, for instance, were actually opposed to the corruption of international banking cartels (as he is often painted to be), then he would have abolished Russia central bank long ago and cut off ties with the IMF and BIS. Instead, Putin continues to promote centralization under the IMF and the use of the IMF’s world currency, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

The globalists are known by many names under many institutions. They hide behind such fronts in order to confuse and distract the curious, while conjuring false paradigm conflicts like that brewing between the East and West today.

False Nationalism

On July 20, 1992, Strobe Talbott, who was at the time a columnist for TIME and who went on to become President Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, wrote:

I’ll bet that within the next hundred years (I’m giving the world time for setbacks and myself time to be out of the betting game, just in case I lose this one), nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. … perhaps national sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.

I cannot stress this point enough: Globalists do not possess a sense of loyalty to any one nation or culture. International bankers see countries and societies as tools with limited usefulness. The usefulness of the U.S. for instance, is now ending. That’s why a vast shift in the global economy is taking place, which will end the dollar’s reserve status and the American financial system in the process.

There are no “American” globalists or “Chinese” globalists. They are all members of the same banking establishment with the same goal: to end all sovereignty and construct world economy as well as world government. Globalists use national affiliations to create international wars and fiscal calamities that can be exploited to further centralize power under a single authority, which they hope the peoples of the world will accept without question.

War As Psychological Conditioning

In February 1920, Winston Churchill wrote an article that appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, stating:

From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

Whether cold wars or hot wars, what we are told about the motivations behind international conflicts is almost always untrue.

Wars are not fought over resources. They are not fought over territories. They are not fought over assassinations, dictatorial conquests or human rights abuses. If you believe that Libya was about freedom, Iraq was about oil, Vietnam was about the spread of communism or that the Civil War was about slavery, then you have bought into the facade hook, line and sinker. There are hundreds of excuses for war. But in the end, all wars — save the ever so rare revolutions of common people — are triggered deliberately in order to achieve psychological transformation.

War and economic collapse are the two faster methods to achieve full spectrum change in a society’s principles and loyalties. War allows for the trampling of freedoms, the accumulation of wealth and political authority, the destabilization of the average person’s means of survival and the desperation of the population, leading to the centralization of control in the name of safety and security.

Governments do not wage wars against each other; they wage wars against their own citizens.

It is difficult to exaggerate the quasi-religious zeal with which the War on Americans is waged. Two years ago, a video surfaced of a training lecture on regulatory enforcement by the head of the EPA’s Region Six office, which oversees Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. This senior administrator, who was appointed by President Obama in 2009, cited the Roman Empire as the inspiration for his mode of operation: “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the

Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.” The same year he gave this talk, his office charged in an emergency order that a

Fort Worth-based…more at:

http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/file/archives/pdf/2014_04_Imprimis.pdf

“Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it.” —H.G. Wells, The New World Order (1940)

The solutions to surviving the war on the Middle Class can be found in our new e-book.

Discover life-saving ways in which you can survive and prosper during The End of the Monetary System As We Know It. This is the information that your financial advisor, your doctor, your police precinct and your government hope you never discover…plus learn how food is your best investment!

http://www.poormansurvival.com/Pages/WaronMiddleClass.aspx

Free - *10 Ways to Take Back Your Liberty

*Rules for Radicals-by Saul Alinsky…the Playbook President Obama uses

*Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Compliments of the Poor Man Survival Crew!

http://1drv.ms/1kDV3ER

Yours in freedom,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

Got a News Tip or Resource to Share With the Poor Man?

Send it to: PoorManSurvivor@Gmail.com

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Wednesday, July 9, 2014

The New Face of Hunger in America-Could it be you?

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

http://PoorManSurvivor.net

ISSN 2161-5543

Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food. ~Frank A. Clark

The New Face of Hunger: We’re now seeing more formerly middle class families and even Ph.Ds and on food stamps at our area food banks…

This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps

Sara Bareillis played softly through the surround-sound speakers of my husband’s 2003 Mercedes Kompressor as I sat idling at a light. I’d never been to this church before, but I could see it from where I was, across from an old park, abandoned in the chilly September air. The clouds hung low as I pulled the sleek, pewter machine into the lot. But I wasn’t going to pray or attend services. I was picking up food stamps.

Even then, I couldn’t quite believe it. This wasn’t supposed to happen to people like me.

Are we all destined to become debt serfs?

* * *

I grew up in a white, affluent suburb, where failure seemed harder than success. In college, I studied biology and journalism. I worked for good money at a local hospital, which afforded me the opportunity to network at journalism conferences. That’s how I landed my first news job as an associate producer in Hartford, Conn. I climbed the ladder quickly, free to work any hours in any location for any pay. I moved from market to market, always achieving a better title, a better salary. Succeeding.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/08/this-is-what-happened-when-i-drove-my-mercedes-to-pick-up-food-stamps/?hpid=z4

Politicians in DC get an automatic pay raise each year in addition to their gold plated perks…DO YOU?

Feds Report Historically High Proportion Of U.S. Population Is Now On Welfare »
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released its annual report to Congress on Welfare Indicators and Risk Factors, and in its 165 pages is the revelation that more people, as a percentage of the population, are now on welfare than at any time since the department began tracking the figure.

The Decline of the Middle Class-Has anyone noticed?

Economists often state that the middle class is the engine of commerce, and industries from construction to education to consumer electronics rely on a strong middle class -- with large amounts of disposable income -- to build colleges, fill homes and buy over priced Smart phone and high priced concerts. But what if this massive engine ground to a halt?

On the surface, the scenario sounds unlikely. But a growing army of economic analysts note the steady erosion of the middle class, and the loss of its massive buying power. A Daily Finance writer, Charles Hugh Smith laid out a fairly clear argument for the disappearance of the middle class, at least in terms of wealth. As Smith notes, the top 20% of the American populace holds roughly 93% of the country's financial wealth, and the top 1% of the country holds approximately 43% of the money in the U.S. Meanwhile, the middle 20% of the population -- what would, officially, be called the middle class -- holds only 6% of the country's total assets.

Trouble on the Factory Floor

How did the middle class become second class citizens -- or, as Smith puts it, "Debt Serfs"? Not surprisingly, the answer is complicated, involving factors like the rising cost of education, Wall Street’s elimination of pension funds and affordable health care, declining middle class wages, and the skyrocketing price of housing, food and fuel. Yet one clear answer lies in manufacturing. When looking at the declining American middle class, a good number to start with is 42,400. That's the total number of factories that the U.S. lost between 2001 and the end of 2009. Put another way, this translates into the outsourcing of 32% of all manufacturing jobs in America.

Other numbers illuminate the impact of this massive job drain. At the end of 2009, 15.7 million people were unemployed, while 12.6 million -- 20% fewer -- worked in manufacturing. This represented only 9% of the American working populace; at manufacturing's height in 1960, 29% of Americans were employed in the sector. Today, three out of five people in a household no longer hold a job.

This bleeding of American manufacturing represents a massive drop in the products that are made in America: According to one economist, the country currently doesn't produce any television sets. Computer manufacturing in the U.S. employs about 166,000 people; in 1975, it employed almost 300,000. Meanwhile, Asia's computer manufacturing sector has about 1.5 million workers.

Economic Déjà Vu

If the low wages, dangerous workplace conditions sounds familiar, it's because that describes the conditions in many American factories in the late 1800's and early 1900's. When the true rate of inflation is factored in, most Americans haven’t had a raise since the late 1970s.

This situation was largely remediated by the growing power of organized labor, which successfully pushed for minimum wage, collective bargaining, reasonable work weeks, and many of the other rights that today's workers enjoy. Yet, in the past few decades, "the unions" have become an all-purpose scapegoat for inflexible work rules and the rising cost of American-made goods, as low-cost overseas labor has led to massive outsourcing, led by General Electric in the mid-1980s. And in recent years, some of that reputation may be deserved. Yet the fact remains that organized labor did much to create the American middle class.

If the middle class is to rise to anything approaching its former power, American manufacturing must rebound. While the U.S. is still in the upper ranks of the world's largest consumers, its economy is rapidly slipping down on the global list. According to some economists, China's economy is on track to overtake the U.S. by 2040; ten years later, India will also outstrip America.