"The Employment Numbers Are Screaming That We Have A Major Crisis On Our Hands"

"The Employment Numbers Are Screaming 

That We Have A Major Crisis On Our Hands"

by Michael Snyder

"The employment numbers for the month of August were just released, and they are horrible. Sadly, they have now been horrible for several months in a row, and many economists are warning that conditions will get even worse during the months ahead. Other than during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, we haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession. If you have a job that you value, hold on to it very tightly, and if you are currently looking for work try to find something as soon as you can before competition for jobs becomes even more intense.

Each month, the U.S. economy must add about 150,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth. According to the BLS, the U.S. economy only added 22,000 new jobs during the month of August… U.S. job growth continued to slow down in August, with just 22,000 new jobs—a sign that the labor market is deteriorating markedly. Friday’s report adds to a summer of slow hiring and points to a stagnant job market that has lengthened job searches, shut young people out of employment and increased unemployment for Black workers. This number was much worse than most analysts were projecting.

After the report was released, one prominent economist stated that it looks like the U.S. economy is “heading into turbulence without the soft landing achieved”… “The job market is stalling short of the runway,” said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at jobs site Glassdoor. “The labor market is losing lift, and August’s report, along with downward revisions, suggests we’re heading into turbulence without the soft landing achieved.”

Just like we have seen so many times before, the figure for the month of August will probably end up much lower once it is revised. So by the time it is all said and done, I expect that the final number for the month of August will actually be negative.

Interestingly, the number for the month of June was just revised down into negative territory…"On Friday, the BLS revised the prior two months’ data, showing that employers shed 13,000 jobs in June, revising the month’s hiring downward by 27,000 fewer jobs. That marks the first monthly decline in hiring since December 2020, when the U.S. was in the midst of an economic crisis caused by the pandemic." Please read that last sentence again.

Thanks to the birth-death model, it is very difficult for the BLS to actually produce a negative number. The last time it happened there were lockdowns all over the nation due to the pandemic. But now the number for June is negative.

That is a huge red flag, and Mark Zandi is suggesting that the U.S. economy may have already entered the next recession… “It’s clear the job market is struggling,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune. “The economy is on the edge of recession: In fact, we may already be in one. As more revisions come in, it will probably show that employment is declining in a consistent way.”

Overall, during the first eight months of this year the U.S. economy has added the fewest jobs that we have seen since 2009.

Do you remember 2009? The Great Recession was a very difficult time. Would our country be able to handle another downturn of that magnitude? Personally, I think that it is a really bad sign that our economy continues to bleed manufacturing jobs…"The United States lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs for the month, continuing a downward trend since its most recent peak in February 2023, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics."

This wasn’t supposed to happen. But it is happening. As I discussed yesterday, the numbers that we are getting are confirming over and over again that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we are being warned that our problems could soon accelerate even more. One economist is telling us that “the labor market has headed off a cliff-edge”… “August’s employment report confirmed that the labor market has headed off a cliff-edge,” Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a Friday research report."

That doesn’t sound good at all. If you want to look for a silver lining, the good news is that it looks like the Federal Reserve will probably give us a rate cut next month. One economist is urging the Fed to give us rate cuts in October and December too…“The Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates in September and probably October and December, too. The ‘no hiring’ economy is turning to a layoff economy and if that worsens, it will lead to a recession. This needs to be stopped,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in an email."

Hopefully those rate cuts will actually happen, because we desperately need them. But cutting rates will not reverse our economic momentum. And the government numbers are not giving us the full picture. As I have documented in previous articles, government economic numbers almost always make things look better than they actually are.

I believe that the numbers that we get from private sources are much more accurate. According to a new report that was just released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in August was 39 percent higher than it was in July…"U.S.-based employers announced 85,979 job cuts in August, up 39% from the 62,075 announced in July. It is up 13% from the 75,891 announced in the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas."

August’s total was the highest for the month since 2020 when 115,762 job cuts were recorded. After 2020, it is the highest August total since the thick of the Great Recession in 2008, when 88,736 cuts were announced. August marks the sixth time this year that the job cut total surpassed that of the corresponding month one year prior. Can anyone out there think of a way to make those numbers look good? Because I can’t.

Overall, the number of announced job cuts in the United States is up 66 percent compared to last year…So far this year, companies have announced 892,362 job cuts, the highest YTD since 2020 when 1,963,458 were announced. It is up 66% from the 536,421 job cuts announced through the first eight months of last year and is up 17% from the 2024 full year total of 761,358. That last number totally blew me away. We still have four months left to go in 2025, and we have already beat last year’s grand total by 17 percent.

Let’s be very honest with ourselves. We have a major crisis on our hands. And as bad as things are now, the truth is that they will soon get even worse. The consequences of decades of incredibly bad decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way. Brace yourselves and your families for what is coming next, because the months ahead are not going to be pretty."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/t

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Deep Still Blue”

Full screen recommended.

2002, “Deep Still Blue”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Is this one galaxy or two? The jumble of stars, gas, and dust that is NGC 520 is now thought to incorporate the remains of two separate disk galaxies. A defining component of NGC 520 - as seen in great detail in the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope - is its band of intricately interlaced dust running vertically down the spine of the colliding galaxies. A similar looking collision might be expected in a few billion years when our disk Milky Way Galaxy to collides with our large-disk galactic neighbor Andromeda (M31). 

The collision that defines NGC 520 started about 300 million years ago. Also known as Arp 157, NGC 520 lies about 100 million light years distant, spans about 100 thousand light years, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces). Although the speeds of stars in NGC 520 are fast, the distances are so vast that the battling pair will surely not change its shape noticeably during our lifetimes."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210907.html

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"

by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about filler, which is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."

- https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

"The Cost Of Raising Kids Is Completely Out Of Control!"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 9/5/25

"The Cost Of Raising Kids 

Is Completely Out Of Control!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"This Proves Everything: Don't Say I Didn't Warn You!"

Full screen recommended.

Steven Van Metre, 9/5/25

"This Proves Everything: 

Don't Say I Didn't Warn You!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I Went to Most Popular Park in Moscow: VDNKh"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling With Russell, 9/5/25

"I Went to Most Popular Park in Moscow: VDNKh"

"On the last day of Summer, what do you do in Russia? Take a walk around the World Famous VDNKh Park in Moscow, Russia. First opened in 1935, VDNKh serves to highlight the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy. The Soviet name VDNKh is an acronym meaning 'the Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy.'"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Worst Part..."

"People cry not because they are weak.

It's because they've been strong for too long."

 - Johnny Depp

"Col. Douglas Macgregor, 'America: A Dangerous Time On The Brink Of Annihilation'"

Gerald Celente, 9/5/25

"Col. Douglas Macgregor, 'America: 

A Dangerous Time On The Brink Of Annihilation'"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap 5-September"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/5/25

"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: 

Weekly Wrap 5-September"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Adventures With Danno, "A Very Disappointing Trip To Meijer"

Adventures With Danno, AM 9/5/25

"A Very Disappointing Trip To Meijer"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Publishers Clearing House - The Checks Just Stopped!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/5/25

"Publishers Clearing House - 

The Checks Just Stopped!"

"Publishers Clearing House has stopped their famous prize checks, leaving winners in a tough financial spot. In today’s video, I explain how this shocking situation unfolded and why it’s a powerful reminder to always choose the lump sum when offered payments. From lawsuits and bankruptcy to financial advice about annuities and settlements, this story has it all. Plus, I share insights into other financial news, including Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy and lessons from Bobby Bonilla's legendary annuity deal."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The FED Is About To Make Things Much Worse, Careful What You Wish For"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/5/25

"The FED Is About To Make Things Much Worse, 

Careful What You Wish For"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "All Aboard"

"All Aboard"

by Bill Bonner

Paris, France - "The train keeps rumbling and trundling down the tracks. Out the window, the most exciting financial trend we’ve seen so far this year? Al Jazeera: "The gold market is booming as investors seek a safe haven for their investments amid global economic uncertainty. The price of gold has risen by nearly a third over the past year, surpassing $3,550 per ounce on Wednesday to hit an all-time high." And the biggest worry? Bloomberg: "Global Bond Selloff Deepens with Longer Debt Leading Losses."

What are these news stories telling us? We don’t know for sure, but we think this train is headed for a place that begins with an ‘s.’ “The real problem is the money…the dollar,” we explained to French friends last night.

“When the Nixon administration switched to a pure-paper currency, it falsified our money and skewed everything. Foreigners were able to make things cheaper…partly because they are just lower-cost competitors…but also because the US was pumping up labor rates, along with everything else.”

Today, the ‘labor cost’ part of making a product in China, for example, is only about 1/5th of what it is in the US. In Vietnam, it’s only 1/16th as much as the US. This labor cost gap widened after the phony dollar was put into service. As the fountainhead of worldwide money-printing, US manufacturing costs increased faster than those of other countries - making the US less and less attractive as a place to make things. That’s why so many things are no longer ‘Made in America.’

“It had nothing to do with the lack of tariffs…or with foreigners taking advantage of us,” we continued. “Last year, trillions in trade changed hands, at low tariff taxes…with less than 1% average difference between what we had to pay in tariffs and what others paid us. Tariffs were never the problem. And raising them now won’t solve anything. It will just raise costs by creating new barriers to trade.”

That little discourse seemed to do the trick. Our friends changed the subject. We’d like to change the subject too. But our subject is money. And the new tariff regime is going to ‘play Hell’ with it.

Tariffs are essentially a sales tax. And a sales tax - averaging maybe 15% - is going to reduce consumer purchasing power…and cut into sales and profits. That is, it will be downer.Fewer goods and services will trade hands. GDP growth will slow. Sales and profits will fall. A real slowdown, in other words. And look, we strain our eyes…we can now make out the first four letters of the sign ahead - s, t, a, and g….

The tariffs may be struck down next month, along with many other features of the Big Man’s rule. Not knowing what comes next also contributes to a slowdown. No one wants to make a major financial decision while so many balls are up in the air. They might come down on our heads.

Rising bond yields (falling prices for bonds) tell much the same story. It will be more expensive to borrow money tomorrow than it was yesterday. Projects that might have made sense in May or June are looking less attractive in September. Because the cost of finance has gone up.

But of course…there’s always more to the story, isn’t there? And the more to this story is on the signpost ahead -- f, l, a, t, i, o, n. That’s the part the gold market is probably talking about.

Tariffs will drive up prices. So will uncertainty itself. Producers will be reluctant to ramp up output. They will want to see sustained price increases before they make further investments. Supplies will go down; prices will go up. And the job market will soften. A report out yesterday told us that the feds are about to announce a big revision in the unemployment numbers – in which almost a million jobs will disappear. And then, the Fed, whose job is to make sure we have full employment, will have to lower interest rates…and ‘print’ more money. Next stop. Stagflation."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Jim Kunstler, "The Grifters' Lament"

"The Grifters' Lament"

by Jim Kunstler

"We are the sickest country in the world. That's why we have to fire people at 

the CDC. They did not do their job! This was their job to keep us healthy!" 

- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

"What a gruesome spectacle it was to see HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. take on a conclave of vicious grifters on the Senate Finance Committee straining to warp reality in defense of their mighty patron, the nation-wrecking pharmaceutical companies. Do you understand how deep, convoluted, and grave the political sickness is?

Over the years, the public health agencies and “big pharma” had evolved into a symbiotic vector driving the nation into chronic illness. They allowed the population to poison themselves on a diet of corn syrup, engineered snack foods, and chemical additives. Result: epidemic obesity, diabetes, and many other illnesses. To counter that, they dosed everybody to-the-max with sketchily-tested pharma products while the agency employees raked in royalties and pharma got a get-outa-jail-free card in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) - legal liability cancelled.

Then, they all badly mis-stepped, conniving in the Covid-19 operation, a still poorly-comprehended scheme to punk the American people and enable mail-in ballot fraud to steal the 2020 election. First, there was Dr. Fauci’s years’ long effort to hatch a novel corona virus, Covid-19, in labs here and overseas. Then, there was the opportune release of the virus in 2019. Then, the pharma response to the virus: a “miracle” mRNA vaccine that was likely already developed in secret, even before Operation Warp Speed was acted-out to pretend that pharma just came up with it. And, of course, there was President Trump 1.0 getting hosed by his Covid Response Team (Fauci, Birx, et al.) on all this.

Thus, you have that battery of US Senators all paid handsomely by Pharma to defend the industry with hysterical obfuscation against the lone figure, Mr. Kennedy, striving to correct all that fantastic corruption. He retorted to their malign nonsense honorably, revealing their conflicts of interest, their cupidity, the bales of dollars paid by pharma to the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and the rest over the years, and their longstanding silence on the afore-mentioned poisoning and drugging of America.

Incidentally, to understand how this grift got so exorbitant, look to the unfortunate 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U.S. 310). In a 5-4 ruling (by majority conservative justices, then including Alito, Thomas, and Scalia), SCOTUS decided that previous prohibitions on corporate money in election campaigns were unconstitutional because corporations enjoy legal status as persons, that is, as citizens, and giving money to election campaigns is a form of free speech under the first Amendment, which can’t be abridged by any law.

And so, the spigot opened on vast fortunes laid on politicians by corporations seeking to protect their interests. If anything went to warp speed, it was the Beltway lobbying industry. The Citizens United decision was a singular tragedy for our country. The legal reasoning behind it was specious because corporations, unlike real human citizens, do not have duties, obligations, and responsibilities to the nation, entailed in their citizenship. Rather, corporations have duties, obligations, and responsibilities solely (and explicitly in law) to their shareholders, whose interests are not necessarily consistent with the public interest. Why has no one noticed this?

Well, they haven’t and that is exactly where American politics went badly off-the-rails. The resulting accelerated corruption in the public health agencies of our government has been a disgusting side effect of all that, which RFK, Jr., has been called to clean up, a Herculean task. The most visible manifestation of that corruption is the chronic illness of the people - 76.4 percent of all of us, he told the committee, with eight out of ten young men physically unfit for military service. We’re the sickest nation in the world.

When the senators confabulate over “the science,” what they really mean is the armature of medical authority that has enabled the money-flow to their campaign committees (and eventually to their own bank accounts.) It’s that very scaffold of authority that has collapsed. Why? Because the medical authorities lied over and over about the Covid-19 episode, and especially about the vaccines, which were never properly tested, and were neither safe nor effective.

Your own doctors got paid extravagantly to push the vaccine. The so-called Pfizer Papers, collected, collated, and analyzed by Naomi Wolf’s organization (because nobody else would do it) showed the sloppiness of the whole process behind the vaccines’ development and release, and the pharma companies’ evasion of responsibility for the damage done. The medical journals lied about everything from the origin of the virus to the efficacy of the vaccine. The CDC campaigned against viable, inexpensive treatments for the virus. The CDC pushed the worthless, gamed PCR tests to jack up the case numbers. The CDC pushed the idiotic mask rules, school closings, business closures, and the vaccine mandates. The hospitals killed people with remdesivir and respirators, and got paid for it! The authority of all these parties is blown, especially the CDC’s - and these perfidious senators have the gall to hide behind this “science”?

What Mr. Kennedy is challenged with is sorting through all the official lies told by these agencies - the so-called “data” - to arrive at a comprehensible picture of what really happened. And then to inquire beyond Covid into many other pharma products that might be making Americans sick. Neither the politicians nor the people employed by the agencies when Covid went down want that to happen."

- https://www.kunstler.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Feast of Immortals"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Feast of Immortals"

"In Irish folklore, Manannán Mac Lir hosted

 banquets at which those who ate never grew old."

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial circle. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of the expanding nebula's 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image,indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a (American) football-shaped cloud of glowing gas. 

The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star, now a tiny pinprick of light seen at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,500 light-years away."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

The Universe

"Life is not what you see, but what you've projected.

It's not what you've felt, but what you've decided.

It's not what you've experienced, but how you've remembered it. 

It's not what you've forged, but what you've allowed.

And it's not who's appeared, but who you've summoned.

And this should serve you well until you find what you already have."

- The Universe

○

“There are no accidents. If it's appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. There are no accidents. And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.”

“Tallyho,”

The Universe

“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”

- www.tut.com

Gerald Celente, "Bad Labor Market News"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, PM 9/4/25

"Bad Labor Market News"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Economy Has Destroyed This City, Businesses Are Gone Forever, The Shocking Aftermath"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/4/25

"The Economy Has Destroyed This City, 

Businesses Are Gone Forever, The Shocking Aftermath"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Millions Of Americans Are Living In Third World Conditions"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 9/4/25

"Millions Of Americans Are Living

 In Third World Conditions"

"It's 2025 and the American middle class is dead. Completely gone. And we're acting like this is fine. The country we grew up believing in doesn't exist anymore. The promise that hard work gets rewarded? That's over. Millions of Americans are living in conditions that would make third-world countries feel sorry for us.

The average person has been completely abandoned. Corporate overlords have squeezed every drop of wealth out of the working class and now demand we thank them for it. You're expected to sacrifice your entire existence - 70, 80 hours a week - just to barely survive. This isn't politics. This is economic warfare. The numbers are depressing and the people running this show are counting on us being too exhausted to fight back.

A basic one-bedroom apartment for $1,800 requires $64,800 annual income to qualify. 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Median household income is $70,000, but after taxes and necessities, people are drowning. We've created a system where most Americans can't afford basic shelter. When people can't afford traditional housing, where do they go? The answer should terrify you. Americans paying to live in storage units with no running water, no proper ventilation, no emergency exits, risking their lives because the alternative is homelessness.

And here's the thing - we're not just becoming a third-world country. We're becoming worse than one. At least in developing nations, people have communities, they have extended families, they have social structures. Here? You're on your own. You work 80 hours a week and die alone.

Let's talk about healthcare - and I want you to understand how completely we've been betrayed by this system. Emergency room visits that cost $7 in Vietnam are costing Americans $3,000 WITH insurance. Medical bankruptcy affects 530,000 families annually in America. That's more than the entire population of Wyoming going bankrupt every year just from getting sick.

This is American healthcare in 2025. People are choosing between insulin and rent. Between cancer treatment and keeping their homes. Families with decent jobs and insurance are being destroyed by medical debt. And the worst part? This was designed. This isn't an accident - this is how the system is supposed to work. It's a wealth extraction machine, and you're the product.

What we're witnessing is the complete destruction of the American economic model that built the middle class. For 75 years after World War II, we operated on a simple premise: work hard, follow the rules, get rewarded with a middle-class life. That social contract doesn't just exist anymore - it's been deliberately torn up and burned.

The question isn't whether Americans can adapt to third-world conditions - clearly we can. The question is what happens to a superpower when the majority of its population has nothing left to lose. Because that's where we're heading. And when we get there, when the cost of living exceeds human capacity to earn money, when 80-hour weeks aren't enough anymore - what happens then? The social contract between the American people and their government has been completely shattered. And historically, when that happens, very dark things follow."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Columbia, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Worst and the Stupidest?"

"The Worst and the Stupidest?"

by Victor Davis Hanson

"Elites have always been ambiguous about the muscular classes who replace their tires, paint their homes, and cook their food. And the masses who tend to them likewise have been ambivalent about those who hire them: appreciative of the work and pay, but also either a bit envious of those with seemingly unlimited resources or turned off by perceived superciliousness arising from their status and affluence.

Yet the divide has grown far wider in the 21st century. Globalization fueled the separation in a number of ways. One, outsourcing and offshoring eroded the rust-belt interior, while enriching the two coasts. The former lost good-paying jobs, while the latter found new markets in investment, tech, insurance, law, media, academia, entertainment, sports, and the arts making them billions rather than mere millions.

So, the problem was one of both geography and class. Half the country looked to Asia and Europe for profits and indeed cultural “diversity,” while the other half stuck with tradition, values, and custom - as they became poorer.

The elite found in the truly poor - neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base - an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes, and romance of the far distant underclass.

Second, race became increasingly divorced from class - a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals. For the white bicoastal elite, it became a mark of their progressive fides to champion woke racialism that empowered the non-white of their own affluent class, while projecting their own discomfort with and fears of the nonwhite poor onto the middle class as supposed “racists,” despite the latter’s more frequently living among, marrying within, and associating with the “other.”

The net result was more privilege for the elite and wealthy nonwhites, more neglect of the inner-city needy, and more disdain for the supposedly illiberal clingers, dregs, deplorables, chumps, and irredeemables.

The results of these contortions were surreal. The twentysomething who coded a video game that went viral globally became a master of the universe, while the brilliant carpenter or electrical contractor was seen as hopelessly trapped in a world of muscular stasis. Oprah and LeBron James were victims. So were the likes of Ibram X. Kendi, Ilhan Omar, and the Obamas, while the struggling Ohio truck driver, the sergeant on the frontline in Afghanistan, and Indiana plant worker became their oppressors. Or so the progressive bicoastal elite instructed us.

Globalization and its geography, along with the end of ecumenical class concerns, certainly widened the ancient mass-elite divide. But there was a third catalyst that explained the mutual animosity in the pre-Trump years. The masses increasingly could not see any reason for elite status other than expertise in navigating the system for lucrative compensation.

An Incompetent Elite: In short, money and education certification were no longer synonymous with any sense of competency or expertise. Just the opposite often became true. Those who thought up some of the most destructive, crackpot, and dangerous policies in American history were precisely those who were degreed and well-off and careful to ensure they were never subject to the destructive consequences of their own pernicious ideologies.

The masses of homeless in our streets were a consequence of various therapeutic bromides antithetical to the ancient, sound notions of mental hospitals. The new theories ignored the responsibilities of nuclear families to take care of their own, and the assumption that hard-drug use was not a legitimate personal-choice, but rather a catastrophe for all of society.

From universities also came critical race theory and critical legal theory, which were enshrined throughout our institutions. The bizarre idea that “good” racism was justified as a get-even-response to “bad” racism, resonated as ahistorical, illogical, and plain, old-fashioned race-based hatred.

The masses never understood why their children should attend colleges where obsessions with superficial appearances were celebrated as “diversity,” graduation ceremonies matter-of-factly were segregated by race, dorms that were racially exclusive were lauded as “theme houses,” Jim-Crow-style set-aside zones were rebranded “safe spaces,” and racial quotas were merely “affirmative action.”

Ancient notions such as that punishment deters crime were laughed at by the degreed who gave us the current big-city district attorneys. Their experiments with decriminalizing violent acts, defunding the police, and delegitimizing incarceration led to a Lord of the Flies-style anarchy in our major cities. Note well, those with advanced or professional degrees who dreamed all this up did not often live in defunded police zones, did not have homeless people on their lawns, and found ways for their children to navigate around racial quotes in elite college admissions.

So, the credentialed lost their marginal reputations for competency. Were we really to believe 50 former intelligence heads and experts who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”? Even if they were not simply biased, did any of them have the competence to determine what the laptop was?

Or were we to take seriously the expertise of “17 Nobel Prize winners” who swore Biden’s “Build Back Better” debacle would not be inflationary as the country went into 9 percent plus inflation? Did we really believe our retired four-stars that Trump was a Nazi, a Mussolini, and someone to be removed from office “the sooner the better”?

Or were we to trust the 1,200 “health care professionals” who assured us that, medically speaking, while the rest of society was locked down it was injurious for the health of people of color to follow curfews and mask mandates instead of thronging en masse in street protests?

Middle Class Competence: On the operational level, the elite proved even more suspect. Militarily, the middle classes in the armed forces proved as lethal as ever, despite being demonized as racists and white supremacists. But their generals, diplomats and politicians proved so often incompetent in translating their tactical victories in the Middle East and elsewhere into strategic success or even mere advantage.

Nationally, the failure of the elite that transcends politics is even more manifest. The country is $37.3 trillion in debt. No one has the courage to simply stop printing money. The border is nonexistent, downtown America is a No Man’s Land, and our air travel is a circus - and not an “expert” can be found willing or able to fix things. 

The universities are turning out mediocre graduates without the skills or knowledge of a generation ago, but certainly with both greater debt and arrogance.

Our bureaucratic fixers can only regulate, stop, retard, slow-down, or destroy freeways, dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, ports, and refineries - and yet never seem to give up their own driving, enjoyment of stored water, or buying of imported goods.

Is it easier to topple than to sculpt a statue? A generation from now, in the emperor has no clothes fashion, someone may innocently conclude that most “research” in the social sciences and humanities of our age is as unreliable as it is unreadable, or that the frequent copy-cat Hollywood remakes of old films were far worse than the originals. Yet this lack of competence and taste among the elite is not shared to the same degree in a decline of middle-class standards.

Homes are built better than they were in the 1970s. Cars are better assembled than in the 1960s. The electrician, the plumber, and the roofer are as good or better than ever. The soldier stuck in the messy labyrinth of Baghdad or on patrol in the wilds of Afghanistan was every bit as brave and perhaps far more lethal than his Korean War or World War II counterpart.

How does this translate to the American people? They navigate around the detritus of the elite, avoiding big-city downtown USA. They are skipping movies at theaters. They are passing on watching professional sports. They don’t watch the network news. They think the CDC, NIAID, and NIH are incompetent - and fear their incompetence can prove deadly.

Millions increasingly doubt their children should enroll in either a four-year college or the military, and they assume the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department are as likely to monitor Americans as they are unlikely to find and arrest those engaged in terrorism or espionage.

When the elite peddles its current civil-war or secession porn - projecting onto the middle classes their own fantasies of a red/blue violent confrontation, or their own desires to see a California or New York detached from Mississippi and Wyoming - they have no idea that America’s recent failures are their own failures.

The reason why the United States begs Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil is not because of lazy frackers in Texas or incompetent rig hands in North Dakota, but because of utterly incompetent diplomats, green zealots, and ideological “scientists.”

Had the views of majors and colonels in Afghanistan rather than their superiors in the Pentagon and White House prevailed, there would have been no mass flight or humiliation in Kabul.

Crime is out of control not because we have either sadistic or incompetent police forces but sinister DAs, and mostly failed, limited academics who fabricated their policies.

Current universities produce more bad books, bad teaching, bad ideas, and badly educated students, not because the janitors are on strike, the maintenance people can’t fix the toilets, or the landscapers cannot keep the shrubbery alive, but because their academics and administrators have hidden their own incompetence and lack of academic rigor and teaching expertise behind the veil of woke censoriousness.

The Naked Emperors’ Furious Search for Fig Leaves: The war between blue and red and mass versus elite is really grounded in the reality that those who feel they were the deserved winners of globalization and who are the sole enlightened on matters of social, economic, political, and military policy have no record of recent success, but a long litany of utter failure.

They have become furious that the rest of the country sees through these naked emperors. Note Merrick Garland’s sanctimonious defense of the supposed professionalism of the Justice Department and FBI hierarchies - while even as he pontificated, they were in the very process of leaking and planting sensational “nuclear secrets” narratives to an obsequious media to justify the indefensible political fishing expedition at a former president’s home.

The masses increasingly view the elites’ money, their ZIP codes, their degrees and certificates, and their titles not just with indifference, but with the disdain they now have earned on their own merits. And that pushback has made millions of our worst and stupidest quite mad."

- https://amgreatness.com/

"Average Americans Will Suffer As A Result Of SNAP Benefit Cuts"

Snyder Reports, 9/4/25

"Average Americans Will Suffer 

As A Result Of SNAP Benefit Cuts"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Snyder Reports, 9/4/25

"Warning - 

American Jobs Are Slowly Disappearing"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Is the American Dream Dead? Housing Emergency Declared!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, M9/4/25

"Is the American Dream Dead? 

Housing Emergency Declared!"

"Is the American Dream dead? Today, we’re diving into the unfolding housing crisis, the potential federal declaration of a housing emergency, and what it could mean for homebuyers and the economy. From discounted new constructions to potential forgivable loans and fast-tracked permits, the proposed solutions could shake up the real estate market. Plus, hear how these changes might impact homebuilders, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and even your local community. It’s not just housing—everything from rising food costs to economic struggles with automobiles and insurance policies is creating chaos. We’ll also touch on hunger action month, the challenges facing charities like Joseph Dreamhouse, and how small acts of kindness can make a big difference."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Let’s turn compassion into action! Join us this Hunger Action Month by donating what you can. Together, let's unite to nourish our veterans and families suffering from food insecurity.

Please Donate Now www.jdhcdc.org

OR You can mail your donation to: Joseph Dreamhouse, 

5846 S. Flamingo Road,

Cooper City, FL 33330

o

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 9/4/25

"You Are Lucky if You Have a Job"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

"If only"... you don't stop because you can't stop.

If you do it's all over. It's all over anyway, you're just buying time.

Tell me I'm wrong...

Joel Bowman, "An Abuse of Statistics"

Congreso de la Nación Argentina, home of the 

best Argentine politicians money can buy…

"An Abuse of Statistics"

by Joel Bowman

“Democracy is an abuse of statistics.”

~ Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Villa la Angostura, Argentina - "It’s election season here in Argentina, which means political scandal, media mud-racking, plus high crimes and misdemeanors for all and sundry. Par for the course in a country with a sorry history of public folly. As one confidential insider observed in a recent communiqué, “Unfortunately, this is nothing new – so-called ‘campaña sucia’ or ‘smear campaign’ tactics are a defining characteristic of the Argentine political ecosystem during the electoral season.”

For those of us following along, that very season kicks off with this weekend’s provincial election in the capital of Buenos Aires, a traditional Peronist stronghold which accounts for about 40% of the electorate. With 46 seats in the Provincial Chamber of Deputies and 23 seats in the Provincial Senate up for grabs, the election will be seen as a kind of bellwether for President Javier Milei’s administration.

As that bastion of journalistic objectivity, Reuters, reported…"BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina's wild-haired, firebrand President Javier Milei will face a crucial litmus test in an upcoming local election that could derail ambitious economic reforms as his austerity-fueled experiment fuels social tensions.

Milei has been able to tame runaway inflation with a ruthless austerity plan and he aims to keep his unorthodox economic experiment going by generating more investor confidence and blocking any laws that the current opposition-controlled Congress could pass that would affect the country's finances.

Yes, dear reader, according to the long-disgraced newswire, the “radical right-wing leader” has dared rein in government spending with a “ruthless” economic plan… that has seen inflation plummet by more than 90% since the “wild-haired firebrand” assumed office. It’s the kind of “austerity-fueled experiment” citizens around the world would be glad to endure.

But there are obstacles ahead for the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” president… including detractors from within the libertarian establishment and even allegations of corruption inside the Milei government itself. Never a dull day. We’ll have more on the Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age next week… but for now, your editor is spending some quality time with family down at the actual End of the World, here in snowy Patagonia.

While we relish a few peaceful days ahead of the election season madness, we invite you to enjoy a guest column penned by our friend, MN Gordon, all about the latest goings on at the other end of the Americas. Mr. Gordon writes the excellent Economic Prism publication, from which we occasionally feature selected commentary.

In today’s guest essay, he takes a look at President Trump’s latest round of firings and what they might portend for the markets and the economy at large. Please enjoy his thoughtful musings, below… and do feel free to dive into the comments section with your own 2 cents. Cheers ~ JB"

"Here Comes the September Swoon"

by MN Gordon, founder of Economic Prism

"Government bureaucrats thought they had it made. High paying jobs that are practically guaranteed for life. Great retirement benefits. A certain air of importance. Now they’re walking on eggshells. Tiptoeing around. Trying to stay out of President Donald Trump’s crosshairs.

Several weeks ago, Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer. If you recall, he blew a gasket following revisions to the May and June jobs report, which adjusted total jobs created from 291,000 to 33,000. He said the numbers were rigged for political reasons and gave McEntarfer a pink slip.

Last week, it was Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s turn to get the boot. Cook had apparently taken liberties on several mortgage applications in 2021. She claimed two places as principal residences – in Ann Arbor, and Atlanta – to get better mortgage terms. Trump said this fraud is sufficient cause to remove Cook from her position. Cook disagrees. She has lawyered up.

McEntarfer and Cook, from our perspective, are the lucky ones. Their jobs shouldn’t exist to begin with. Producing bogus data and price fixing interest rates are endeavors which cause more harm than good. Thanks to Trump, they now both have the opportunity to find gainful employment doing real, useful work. Jobs like fixing leaky faucets or packing meat that provide a real benefit to society. They should be happy that they no longer must waste their lives doing garbage work.

Trump, for his part, will likely replace Cook with someone that’s one hundred percent favorable to his cause. Someone who is willing to cut rates, pump credit, and do his or her part to assist the Treasury in financing the U.S. government’s massive deficit. Now, after getting hammered on by Trump for many months, it appears that Fed Chair Jerome Powell is finally coming around…

Transitory Inflation? In case you missed it, the annual central banking powwow in Jackson Hole recently came and went. Fed Chair Powell, in what may be his final appearance in Jackson Hole as the world’s most important central banker, delivered a speech on Friday, August 22. There he strongly hinted that the Fed is ready to pull the trigger on a rate cut as soon as the September Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

Powell’s message was that the balance of economic risk is shifting. All year, the Fed has been holding the federal funds rate steady (currently between 4.25 and 4.5 percent). Over this time, inflation has ticked stubbornly higher while the labor market has cooled down, thus setting the stage for an episode of stagflation.

The Fed’s attention since Trump came into office has been focused on limiting inflation. Powell’s remarks suggest the Fed is now more worried about the economy sputtering than prices spiraling out of control. According to Powell, it’s a “challenging situation” where, in the near term, “risks to inflation are tilted to the upside, and risks to employment to the downside.” What exactly does that mean?

On the inflation side, Powell noted that the effects of higher tariffs across trading partners “are now clearly visible,” pushing up prices for consumers. However, he downplayed the long-term threat, stating, “A reasonable base case is that the effects will be relatively short-lived—a one-time shift in the price level. Of course, ‘one-time’ does not mean ‘all at once.’”

This is all conjecture and guesswork. The logic seems to be that if the price increases from tariffs are just a temporary, one-off ‘transitory’ event, the Fed doesn’t need to slam on the brakes with higher rates. It can afford to focus on the other half of their dual mandate: maximum employment. Maybe so. But if you recall the last time Powell said inflation was transitory – in 2021 and 2022 – he sat on his hand while consumer prices spiraled to a 40 year high. Will he be wrong again?

Downside Risks to Employment: Powell spent part of his speech discussing the labor market. While the unemployment rate remains low, around 4.2 percent, recent jobs data, including McEntarfer’s downward revisions to previous months, has been signaling a slowdown in hiring. Powell described the current state of the jobs market as a “curious kind of balance” resulting from both supply and demand for workers slowing. He then delivered the line that really got the markets buzzing: “This unusual situation suggests that downside risks to employment are rising. And if those risks materialize, they can do so quickly in the form of sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment.”

The words “downside risks to employment are rising” are about as close as a Fed Chair gets to explicitly stating a rate cut is coming. Hence, the major stock market indexes spiked following his remarks.

So, what does this all mean for the September 16 and 17 FOMC meeting? Before the speech, the odds of a September rate cut of 25 basis points were already relatively high. After Powell’s comments, that probability skyrocketed, with market futures now pricing in the move as an almost certain outcome. Some estimates put the probability at nearly 90 percent.

The markets believe Powell’s Jackson Hole speech was, in effect, laying the groundwork for a September cut. By cutting rates now, and making borrowing cheaper for consumers and businesses, Powell is hoping to get ahead of a cooling labor market. Unless there’s a strong August jobs report or a dramatic inflation surge, you can be certain there will be a 25 basis point interest rate cut when the FOMC meets next month. What to make of it?

Here Comes the September Swoon: Powell’s dovish pivot in Jackson Hole was enough to send markets rallying. Investors, anticipating a rate cut at the upcoming September 16 and 17 FOMC meeting, have been “buying the rumor” by bidding up stocks. The “sell the news” stage of the trade will come later and depends on several factors.

The market’s reaction has already priced in a significant likelihood of a rate cut. The good news is already baked into stock prices. So, the magnitude of the cut is critical. If the Fed overdelivers, with a 50 basis point rate cut, speculators will celebrate with more buying. But if there’s just a 25 basis point rate cut, followed by a somewhat hawkish Fed statement, there could be a wave of selling. Powell’s speech was careful to say that the decision is not on a preset course. That it will depend on incoming data. Hence, investors and speculators will be closely watching new inflation and employment reports leading up to the September meeting.

If these data points surprise to the upside, the Fed could be forced to hold off on a cut, leaving investors who bought into the rumor exposed to a selloff. Regardless of the outcome, many may sell to lock in profits immediately after the FOMC meeting to avoid being caught on the wrong side of the trade.In short, you can expect there to be wild price springs over the next three weeks…and don’t forget, September has historically been the worst month for the U.S. stock market, with the S&P 500 averaging negative returns since 1926. By this, conditions are ripe for a September swoon. Prepare accordingly."

MN Gordon

Founder of Economic Prism

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/