"Let Them Eat Fries"

"Let Them Eat Fries"

by Joel Bowman

“If printing money would end poverty, 

printing diplomas would end stupidity.”

~ Javier Milei

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Where goes sound money, so too goes civil society. From drachma debasement in ancient Greece… to clipped coinage during the Roman Empire. From the freshly-inked assignats rolling off the presses in the lead up to the French Revolution… to the hollowing out of the Weimar Republic during the hyper-inflationary period of the 1920s… It seems that everywhere we look, monetary pride goes before societal decline… and fall. Whether denominated in Hungarian Pengos, Polish Zlotys, Brazilian Reals or Venezuelan Bolivars, experiments in monetary hijinks invariably end in tears.

From where we sit today, penning these words down here in Argentina’s capital… to the ruinous state of Zimbabwe, once known as “Africa’s breadbasket,” now little more than an economic basket case… Literally from A – Z, in countries the world over, history is replete with cautionary tales of what happens when the feds crank up the printing presses.

And yet, with that hoary old cry, “This time will be different!” our dear leaders urge us on, imploring we lowly citizens to ignore all past and documented experience to the contrary... and follow them into the monetary trenches.

Why do we fall for such an obvious ruse, over and over and again? Why do we suppose that the immutable laws of economics will be suspended, in our favor, just this once? Is it arrogance or ignorance that causes us to see ourselves as the precious exceptions to history’s iron-clad rule? Perhaps it’s a bit of both...

$4 French Fries: We found ourselves pondering price inflation yesterday, after a friend sent us a Zerohedge article titled “The Uproar Over $4 Fries,” which included the following prices increases:

McDonald’s Price Increases from 2019 to 2024:

Medium French Fry $1.79 -> $4.19

McChicken $1.29 -> $3.89

Big Mac $3.99 -> $7.49

10 McNuggets $4.49 -> $7.58

Cheeseburger $1.00 -> $3.15

According to a consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan, cited in the article, “44% of middle-income respondents said their financial situation was worse than it was a year ago, while just 23% said it was better, based on a three-month average ending in September. Those who feel worse off overwhelmingly said it was because of higher prices.”

Hmm... 2019 to 2024. What happened during that inglorious period that might have caused such a run up in the prices of America’s favorite fast food?

Some commenters pointed to deals on apps, noting that “only bozos pay full price at the cashier.” Others blamed the rising cost of minimum wage labor for the increases. “When you’re paying $20/hour for the guy who mops the floor, it changes everything,” said one. “Restaurants are labor intensive and their workers are barely literate.” (Automation and minimum wages: a subject for another Note...)

Then there’s the multi-trillion-dollar shaped elephant in the room. Might, for example, these non-trivial line items have had anything to do with inflation hitting 40 year highs during the past half decade?

How about the CARES ACT of March, 2020 ($2.2 trillion), plus the Families First Coronavirus Response Act the very same month ($192 billion), and the Paycheck Protection Program & Health Care Enhancement Act a month later ($484 billion), the Consolidated Appropriations Act in December, 2020 ($2.3 trillion), the American Rescue Plan Act in March, 2021 ($1.9 trillion), the American Jobs Plan in March 2021 (est. $2 trillion), and the Opposites World-named Inflation Reduction Act ($500 billion)...

A coupla trill’ here… a coupla trill’ there… pretty soon, you’re starting to talk real money! (Or at least, real fake money…) Hmm… what might this potent profligacy portend for the empire’s future? Perhaps a look into the past can provide some clues…

Let Them Eat Fries: To take just one of the aforementioned examples, that of the French Revolution, the printing presses there were rolling long before royal heads were. Under Kings Louis XV and King Louis XVI, France had run up enormous debt loads, in part thanks to vast warfare expenditures abroad – including backing America in her own War of Independence – and lavish governmental expenses at home. Guns and butter, bread and circuses, welfare and warfare…the items on the shopping list change throughout the ages, but the net effect remains the same.

By the 1780s, France’s balance sheet was in tatters. The country’s General Assembly tried tax increases and spending cuts but such austerity measures proved, then as now, unpopular with the masses and so were soon abandoned in favor of less conspicuous methods. By the end of the decade, all honest options having been exhausted, the French did what so many mere mortals had done before: they looked around for a dishonest one. And they didn’t have to look far.

As the historian Andrew D. White recounted a century later in his rather unimaginatively titled book, “Fiat Money Inflation in France”..."Statesmanlike measures, careful watching and wise management would, doubtless, have ere long led to a return of confidence, a reappearance of money and a resumption of business; but these involved patience and self-denial, and, thus far in human history, these are the rarest products of political wisdom. Few nations have ever been able to exercise these virtues; and France was not then one of these few."

No doubt there were impassioned arguments on both sides, for and against money printing. Opponents pointed to historical disasters, such as the 1720 Mississippi Bubble, still relatively fresh in the Frenchmen’s collective memory.

Proponents, meanwhile, summoned that old saw, tried and true, against which so few politicians can hold their ground. “This time will be different,” they argued… same as always. And so it was that after long deliberation, the General Assembly agreed to a round of money printing… “juste cette fois,” (“just this once”) they’d have told themselves. The bills, assignats, were to be backed by Church property… especially confiscated for this very purpose. And so, like magic, 400 million of them were put into circulation.

And for a while, the old elixir seemed to do the trick. Commerce picked up, confidence rose and people got to work spending their newly inked notes. Oh, to be alive in the Summer of 1790, France! ‘twas surely the place to be! Then came the fall…

Devilish Deeds: By the time the leaves had turned from green to yellow, economic activity had begun to slump and, along with it, the hopes of the monetary conjurers and printing press prestidigitators. And then, sure as one season follows the next, “The old remedy immediately and naturally recurred to the minds of men,” as White observed. “Throughout the country began a cry for another issue of paper.”

Rather than admit they had erred – borrowing from the future that which the present had not yet earned – the General Assembly did what all such assemblies of men in their position do: they doubled down on their devilish deed. It was not the money-printing itself that was to blame, they rationalized, but rather the magnitude of issuance. 400 million units was simply not enough to stoke the embers and get the fire going again. Perhaps another round would help…

But by then, the fix was in. The conversation has shifted from “to print, or not to print?” to how much should be printed. And so, the presses were cranked up once again, and the newly-inked bills were sent forth across the land… 300, 400 and 600 million units at a time...

Here again Mr. White describes the scene: "The consequences of these over issues now began to be more painfully evident to the people at large. Articles of common consumption became enormously dear and prices were constantly rising. Orators in the Legislative Assembly, clubs, local meetings and elsewhere now endeavored to enlighten people by assigning every reason for this depreciation save the true one. They declaimed against the corruption of the ministry, the want of patriotism among the Moderates, the intrigues of the emigrant nobles, the hard-heartedness of the rich, the monopolizing spirit of the merchants, the perversity of the shopkeepers, - each and all of these as causes of the difficulty." And this was only the beginning. Where sound money had gone, civil society was about to follow…

False Prophets and Phony Profits: Slowly at first, then all of a sudden, peaceful protests turned violent, and angry mobs began smashing shopfronts and setting fire to businesses. A jilted peasantry thronged the cobblestones, demanding their daily bread, the price of which was cast adrift, afloat on an ever-rising tide of new fiat money. By the time King Louis XVI received the guillotine’s closest shave, in 1793, there were some 3.5 billion assignats in circulation. And when his wife, Marie Antoinette, lost her own head later that same year, the price of her infamous cake was far beyond the reach of most peasants.

And yet, fast-forward to the year 2025, and who should a population struggling under the crushing weight of trillions of freshly printed currency units – and the rising cost of living it necessarily manifests – turn to in order to relieve their age-old burden? Why, the false prophets of socialism, protectionism and big government collectivism, of course. The same rascals who delivered them their unjust deserts in the first place. Where goes sound money, indeed."

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

"The Crash Is Here! Layoffs, Confidence Collapse & The 24% Turkey Shock"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/26/25

"The Crash Is Here! Layoffs,

 Confidence Collapse & The 24% Turkey Shock"

"Layoffs are surging, consumer confidence is crashing, and Thanksgiving costs are skyrocketing - welcome to today's video where we dive into the challenges impacting families, businesses, and even holiday traditions. It's a tough time for many, with 13,500 jobs lost weekly in November, private payrolls suffering, and expenses climbing across the board. Turkey prices are up 24%, and holiday budgets are tighter than ever. Let’s break it all down together."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/ 

"Connecting The Dots Reveals A Dire Future" (Excerpt)

"Connecting The Dots Reveals A Dire Future"

by Jim Quinn

Excerpt: “Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle.

Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – Strauss & Howe – "The Fourth Turning"

Knowing who to trust and who to distrust at this point in history is the most important quality for anyone who expects to maneuver their lives and those of their loved ones through the final years of this Fourth Turning. I trust people who base their opinions on facts, not some government approved narrative regurgitated by legacy media bubble headed bimbos and “expert” talking heads. Michael Burry, Ed Dowd and Edward Snowden are men whose opinion I value.

They have all put their careers on the line telling the truth, when virtually everyone else was toeing the Deep State/Wall Street/Big Pharma line regarding the surveillance apparatus monitoring everything we say on our phones or type on our computers; the Federal Reserve/Wall Street manufactured housing bubble to replace the Dot.com bubble; the Covid plandemic created as an excuse to manufacture trillions of new debt because our empire of debt began seizing up in September 2019; and the current Everything Bubble (commercial real estate, residential housing, stocks, bonds, bitcoin, AI).

I’ve been a huge fan of Ed Dowd since reading his principled, factual, data driven destruction of the Covid narrative in real-time when the world had lost its mind and had bowed down to the authoritarian dictates of our government overlords. He was right all along about the Covid scheme to enrich Big Pharma, politicians, and legacy media, while seeing how far the ignorant masses could be pushed before they pushed back. Other than Ed and a small minority of other brave truth tellers, the globalist elite scheme worked to perfection, with billions injected with a toxic gene altering concoction, and the power of government enhanced and broadened.

The tweet below from Ed Dowd was from sixteen months ago, four months before the election of Donald Trump. Absolutely no one was speculating about the scenario Ed laid out. And now his “conspiratorial conjecture” is playing out in real time. No one with any brains wanted the dementia ridden basement dummy or the cackling brain dead hyena, and their cult party of death and destruction to continue their reign of terror on our nation.

"Trump and his MAGA legions swept into power (or was he ushered into power?) with promises of America First, an economic renaissance, retribution for the criminal politicians in DC who conducted a coup against Trump, the instantaneous end of wars, MAHA, releasing the Epstein client list, and drastic reduction in government spending through Musk’s DOGE initiative. The level of hope and enthusiasm from Trump’s base, and even the moderates who voted against Kamala, was off the charts. NOT ANY MORE.

This needs to be said now and I will be attacked. I have no proof so it’s a literal conspiracy theory but bears watching with eagle eyes. Conjecture: If I were in the shadows and had an agenda of ushering in a reset to control the end of the current ponzi debt based fiat system…

- Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) July 23, 2024

The real owners as described by George Carlin and/or the invisible government as described by Edward Bernays, really don’t care which figurehead from the uni-party is installed at the top of this dung heap of debt. The fleecing of the national treasury continues unabated by the ruling class, and the plight of the plebs deteriorates on a daily basis. But they have been convinced by their overlords to continue going deeper into debt, while thinking they can vote their way out of this delusional debt debacle of a floundering empire.

Trump’s closure of the border and continuing modest efforts to deport the tens of millions of illegal invaders is about the only real positive I’ve witnessed in his first year in office. The old “at least he’s not Kamala” mantra is wearing thin and does not explain his exasperatingly stupid decisions and bloviating pronouncements on a daily basis. Those who adhere to the principles of liberty, freedom, transparency, free speech, not policing the world, and fiscal responsibility are extremely disappointed, but not surprised by the results under Trump thus far. His absolute vitriolic hatred for Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted with him 90% of the time, tells me all I need to know about Trump’s moral compass and adherence to the Constitution.

Despite the initial publicity campaign (propaganda) for DOGE and the huge cuts to spending which Trump spewed on a daily basis, the national debt increases by $6.5 billion PER DAY, just as it did under the pants shitting president before him. Future generations are incurring $3.3 billion PER DAY of interest on the now $39 trillion national debt. Trump’s tariff revenue is like pissing in an ocean of debt, as he acts like he is going to send us $2,000 checks with the money he just made us pay by imposing the tariffs. The big beautiful bill cut nothing. Ignoring future recessions and multiple looming wars, the CBO projects the debt to go up by another $23 trillion in the next ten years. I’ll take the over, if the entire Ponzi scheme doesn’t collapse beforehand."

Full, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"The Middle Class Is Cracking"

"The Middle Class Is Cracking"

by Charles Hugh Smith

The middle class is cracking, but if you want a statistic that "proves" this, there isn't one. The cracking isn't a statistic, it's the culmination of observations logged over the past 15 years about these critical measures of what it takes to qualify as middle class:

1. How much income a household needs to secure the minimum qualifications of a middle class standard of living / quality of life, based on the conventional standards of the 1960s - 1980s. (The qualifying characteristics are listed below.)

2. The upward or downward mobility of those claiming middle class status. Put another way: if it requires monumental effort and perfect execution to achieve the minimum qualifications of middle class security, then that isn't a "middle class" set of qualifications, that's an elite set of qualifications.

3. Precarity: how much (or little) financial disruption does it take to tip a household into a down-spiral that becomes increasingly difficult to escape. The foundation of any non-trivial definition of "middle class" (any definition that is solely based on income is trivial) is the financial resilience offered by ownership of assets, particularly income-producing assets, and savings that can be tapped to handle emergencies.

I've been addressing these issues for many years. Here are a few of my posts on the decay of the middle class:

•  Priced Out of the Middle Class (June 28, 2012)
•  What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)
•  Misplaced Pride: Most of the "Middle Class" Is Actually Working Class (June 14, 2019)

• Squeezed for Decades, America's Working Class Is Finally Up Against the Wall (May 13, 2024)

Here are the minimum requirements to qualify as middle class, drawn up by myself and readers:

1. Meaningful healthcare insurance. By meaningful I mean healthcare insurance that doesn't have high deductibles--if you have to pay thousands of dollars before the insurance kicks in, that's not insurance, it's a simulation of insurance--and insurance that isn't reduced to meaninglessness by limitations on coverage and/or zero coverge for core elements of healthcare.

2. Significant equity (25%-50%) in a home or other real estate.

3. Income/expenses that enable the household to save at least 6% of its net income.

4. Significant retirement funds: 401Ks, IRAs, etc.

5. The ability to service all debt and expenses over the medium-term if one of the primary household wage-earners lose their job.

6. Reliable vehicles for each wage earner.

7. If a household requires government assistance to maintain the family lifestyle, their Middle Class status is in doubt.

8. A percentage of non-paper, non-real estate hard assets such as family heirlooms, precious metals, tools, etc. that can be transferred to the next generation, i.e. generational wealth.

9. Ability to invest in offspring (education, extracurricular clubs/training, etc.).

10. Leisure time devoted to the maintenance of physical/spiritual/mental fitness.

11. Continual accumulation of human and social capital (new skills, networks of collaborators, markets for one's services, etc.)

12. Family ownership of income-producing assets such as rental properties, bonds, family-owned business, etc.

The absolute scale of these requirements is less important than all twelve being included in the household's quiver. In other words, it's not necessary to own equity worth millions, but it is important to own meaningful equity across the range of assets listed above.

Back in 2012, I went through each requirement and arrived at a minimum household income of $106,000 - adjusted for inflation, the equivalent sum today is $152,000. Before you scoff, please read the entirety of Michael Green's careful analysis of what qualifies as "poverty level income" and "middle class income:" How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America (via Cheryl A.) Green concluded the minimum income needed today is $140,000 - more or less the same as my estimate, especially given his detailed explanation of why this minimum is barebones. Green's analysis of middle-class precarity dismantles all the statistical rah-rah presented as evidence that we're all getting richer every day, in every way. Like insurance with stupidly high deductibles, this isn't middle class security, it's a simulation of middle class security.

This report in the Wall Street Journal suggests this reality is now so undeniably obvious that the WSJ had to address it: The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation: Workers growing tired of economy in which everything seems to get more expensive. As Green explained, soaring costs for big-ticket essentials - all the things required to participate in the economy in a meaningful fashion - are crushing the middle class.

Unless you lucked into an early seating for the banquet of wealth served up by The Everything Bubble - then life is good: Feeling Great About the Economy? You Must Own Stocks: Investors' rosy feelings about their stock market gains are powering spending - but it's a different story for everyone else.

This has generated a generational divide in security/precarity and wealth accumulation: those who bought stocks and housing long ago when they were relatively cheap have piled up wealth not by being more productive, but by becoming early owners of capital that has been goosed by policies seeking to boost spending via "the wealth effect."

That this bubble-generated wealth flowed predominantly to older households with incomes that enabled asset purchases effectively made the rich richer. Those without these advantages lost ground, and absent the cushion of wealth piled up by The Everything Bubble, their claim to middle-class security is more a simulation than the real thing.

The middle class is cracking, and the Everything Bubble hasn't even started to pop yet; once it does, job losses will accelerate due to the self-reinforcing nature of job losses reducing income and spending which then triggers more job cuts. How the U.S. Economy Became Hooked on AI Spending: Growth has been bolstered by data-center investment and stock-market wealth. A reversal could raise the risk of recession.

This chart illustrates the reality: the already-wealthy have pulled away as financialization, globalization, precarity and inflation gutted the middle class.

The solidity and economic dominance of the US middle-class is illusory. The middle class is cracking, and borrowing more to maintain spending is hanging on by one's fingernails, not middle-class security."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"When Is It Going To Happen? The Truth Is That It Is Happening Now"

"When Is It Going To Happen? 

The Truth Is That It Is Happening Now"

by Michael Snyder

"Most Americans are exceedingly focused on the present and spend very little time thinking about the future. And if you are in the minority of the population that is thriving in this “K-shaped economy”, you may be wondering what all of the fuss is about. After all, during the holiday season of 2025 wealthy Americans are literally spending money as if there is no tomorrow. But meanwhile, just about everyone else is really struggling.

For a long time, we were warned that a cost of living crisis would be coming. That is happening now. For a long time, we were warned that delinquency rates would rise because consumers were piling up too much debt. That is happening now. For a long time, we were warned that foreclosure filings would surge when the current housing bubble started to burst. That is happening now. For a long time, we were warned that cryptocurrency prices would plummet. Now more than a trillion dollars in cryptocurrency wealth has been wiped out.

Another thing that we have been relentlessly warned about is the weakness of the labor market. Today, we learned that “the pace of layoffs has picked up over the past four weeks”…"The U.S. labor market is showing further signs of weakening as the pace of layoffs has picked up over the past four weeks, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Tuesday. Private companies lost an average of 13,500 jobs a week over the past four weeks, ADP said as part of a running update it has been providing. That’s an acceleration from the 2,500 jobs a week lost in the last update a week ago."

With the government shutdown still impacting data releases, alternative information like ADP’s has been filling in the blanks on the economic picture. This confirms what I have been saying. All over the nation, large companies have been conducting mass layoffs. In fact, Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that the number of announced job cuts last month was 175 percent higher than it was in October 2024…"Layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas recorded 153,074 job cuts in October alone - a staggering 175 percent jump from last year and 183 percent from September." It was the sharpest October spike since 2003, when companies were reeling from the dot-com collapse.

We aren’t talking about something that might hypothetically happen someday. This is happening now. In just the last three months, many of the biggest companies in America have been ruthlessly firing highly paid employees…"Over the past three months, Amazon, Apple, UPS, Intel, Verizon, AT&T, Walmart, Target, Ford, and GM have all made headlines for slashing white-collar staff - a broad corporate reset that shows little sign of slowing."

I keep trying to tell everyone that this is just the beginning. The McKinsey Global Institute is warning that approximately 40 percent of all U.S. workers could potentially be replaced by AI…"About 40 percent of American jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute. The American consultancy’s analysis found that robots and AI agents could automate more than half of US work hours, both manual and cognitive, using technology that is available today, if companies redesigned how they did things. Most of the roles at risk involve the kinds of drafting, processing information and routine reasoning that AI agents can do."

What would you do if you suddenly lost your job? You might want to start thinking about that. The American people can see where things are headed, and that is clearly reflected in the latest consumer confidence numbers…"Consumers soured on the current economy and their prospects for the future, with worries growing over the ability to find a job, according to a Conference Board survey released Tuesday. The board’s Consumer Confidence Index for November slumped to 88.7, a drop of 6.8 points from the prior month for its lowest reading since April. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were looking for a reading of 93.2. In addition, the expectations index tumbled 8.6 points to 63.2, while the present situation index slipped to 126.9, a decline of 4.3 points."

As economic conditions deteriorate, we are going to see a lot more turmoil in the housing market. One housing analyst named Melody Wright is even projecting that the price crash that we are going to witness is going to be “worse than 2008”…"The U.S. housing market is going to face a price correction “worse than 2008,” according to housing analyst Melody Wright, who expects home prices to drop in half as soon as next year. “I think…we’re going to correct all the way to a point where household median income matches the home price, the median home price. And so that is going to be worse than 2008. This could devolve a lot faster than last time,” Wright said during an interview with Adam Taggart, host of Thoughtful Money, published on YouTube."

Our system could not handle a crash of that magnitude. But what goes up must come down. It has become very difficult to sell homes at today’s absurdly elevated prices, and as a result large numbers of sellers are simply pulling their listings…"Homesellers in the US are yanking listings off the market, as the nation’s real estate sector stagnates. Nearly 85,000 sellers removed their properties in September, the highest number for that month in eight years, according to Redfin. The number of stale listings - those sitting on the market for 60 days or more - jumped to the highest level for any September since 2019."

Nobody can argue with any of the facts that I have shared in this article. When people disagree with me, they tend to call me names instead. And that is okay. I fully understand that the reality of what is talking place all around us is not welcome news to a lot of people out there. But if we are not willing to face reality, we will inevitably make bad decisions. And making bad decisions is what got us into this giant mess in the first place."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"They're Not Governments, They're Mental Institutions, And The Inmates Are Running The Asylum"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 11/25/25

"They're Not Governments, They're Mental Institutions,

And The Inmates Are Running The Asylum"

The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing 

global current events forming future trends.

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Consumer Is In Big Trouble - Everyone Is Losing Their Job And Has No Money Saved"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/25/25

"The Consumer Is In Big Trouble - 

Everyone Is Losing Their Job And Has No Money Saved"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Retirement Has Become A Financial Nightmare And Everyone Is Starting To Panic"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/25/25

"Retirement Has Become A Financial Nightmare 

And Everyone Is Starting To Panic"

"Retirement in America is becoming almost impossible, and people from every generation are feeling it. In this video, we're looking at what's really going on, from older Americans struggling to afford basic necessities even after working their entire lives, to younger generations saying the whole system is a scam and refusing to play along. We'll go through TikTok clips and comments from people across different age groups sharing their experiences: retirees with no healthcare, couples in their 50s still living paycheck to paycheck, Gen Xers cashing out early, and Gen Z rejecting the traditional work-retire model completely. Is retirement actually becoming impossible? Are younger generations making it worse by refusing to save? Or is the system just broken for everyone? Let's talk about it."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Stella Maris"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Stella Maris"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy's central regions is clear in sharp telescopic snapshot. The composite image highlights emission from long outflow filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues. Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space. 

Triggered by a close encounter with nearby large galaxy M81, the furious burst of star formation in M82 should last about 100 million years or so. Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is about 30,000 light-years across. It lies 12 million light-years away near the northern boundary of Ursa Major."

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

The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”

“Starting With Little Things”

“Love the earth like a mole,

fur-near. Nearsighted,

hold close the clods,

their fine-print headlines.

Pat them with soft hands -

Like spades, but pink and loving; they

break rock, nudge giants aside,

affable plow.

Fields are to touch;

each day nuzzle your way.

Tomorrow the world.”

- William Stafford

"A Revision Of Belief..."

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.“

- Nassim Taleb

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.

It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

- Mark Twain

"A Mess..."

Deputy Wendell: "It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?"

Sheriff Bell: "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here."

- "No Country For Old Men"

Oh, the mess is here alright...

The Daily "Near You?"

Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. Thanks for stopping by!

"What Happens When We Die"

"What Happens When We Die"

by Maria Popova

"When my atheist engineer grandfather died, my atheist engineer grandmother leaned over the body in the hospice bed that had contained half a century of shared life and love, cradled the cranium in which his stubborn and sensitive mind had dwelt, and whispered into the halogen-lit ether: “Where did you go, my darling?”

Whatever our beliefs, these sensemaking playthings of the mind, when the moment of material undoing comes, we - creatures of moment and matter - simply cannot fathom how something as exquisite as the universe of thought and feeling inside us can vanish into nothingness.

Even if we understand that dying is the token of our existential luckiness, even if we understand that we are borrowed stardust, bound to be returned to the universe that made it - a universe itself slouching toward nothingness as its stars are slowly burning out their energy to leave a cold austere darkness of pure spacetime - this understanding blurs into an anxious disembodied abstraction as the body slouches toward dissolution. Animated by electrical impulses and temporal interactions of matter, our finite minds simply cannot grasp a timeless and infinite inanimacy - a void beyond being.

Pillars of Creation, Eagle Nebula, Messier 16

Even Walt Whitman, who could hold such multitudes of contradiction, could not grasp the void. “I will make poems of my body and of mortality,” he vowed as a young man as he reverenced our shared materiality in his timeless declamation that “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” It was easy, from the shimmering platform of his prime, to look forward to becoming “the uncut hair of graves” upon returning his own atoms to the grassy ground one day.

But then, when that day loomed near as he grew old and infirm, “the poet of the body and the poet of the soul” suddenly could not fathom the total disbanding of his atomic selfhood, suddenly came to “laugh at what you call dissolution.” And then he did dissolve, leaving us his immortal verses, verses penned when his particles sang with the electric cohesion of youth and of health, verses that traced with their fleshy finger the faint contour of an elemental truth: “What invigorates life invigorates death.”

I wish I could have given my grandmother, and given the dying Whitman, the infinitely invigorating "Mr g: A Novel About the Creation" (public library) by the poetic physicist Alan Lightman - a magical-realist serenade to science, coursing with symphonic truth about our search for meaning, our hunger for beauty, and what makes our tender, transient lives worth living.

Toward the end of the novel, Mr g watches, with heartache unknown in the Void predating the existence of universes and of life, an old woman on her deathbed, the film of her long and painful and beautiful life unspooling from the reel of memory, leaving her grief-stricken by its terminus, shuddering with defiant disbelief that this is all. “How can a creature of substance and mass fathom a thing without substance or mass?” wonders Mr g as he sorrows watching her succumb to the very laws he created. “How can a creature who will certainly die have an understanding of things that will exist forever?”

And then, as a faint smile washes across her face, she does die. Lightman writes: "At that moment, there were 3,​147,​740,​103,​497,​276,​498,​750,​208,​327 atoms in her body. Of her total mass, 63.7 percent was oxygen, 21.0 percent carbon, 10.1 percent hydrogen, 2.6 percent nitrogen, 1.4 percent calcium, 1.1 percent phosphorous, plus a smattering of the ninety-odd other chemical elements created in stars.

In the cremation, her water evaporated. Her carbon and nitrogen combined with oxygen to make gaseous carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which floated skyward and mingled with the air. Most of her calcium and phosphorous baked into a reddish brown residue and scattered in soil and in wind.

But then we see that every atom belonging to her - or, rather, temporarily borrowed by her - truly does belong to everything and everyone, just as you and I are now inhaling the same oxygen atoms that once inflated Walt Whitman’s lungs with the lust for life: "Released from their temporary confinement, her atoms slowly spread out and diffused through the atmosphere. In sixty days’ time, they could be found in every handful of air on the planet. In one hundred days, some of her atoms, the vaporous water, had condensed into liquid and returned to the surface as rain, to be drunk and ingested by animals and plants. Some of her atoms were absorbed by light-utilizing organisms and transformed into tissues and tubules and leaves. Some were breathed in by oxygen creatures, incorporated into organs and bone.

In a passage evocative of the central sentiment in Ursula K. Le Guin’s spare, stunning poem “Kinship,” he adds: "Pregnant women ate animals and plants made of her atoms. A year later, babies contained some of her atoms… Several years after her death, millions of children contained some of her atoms. And their children would contain some of her atoms as well. Their minds contained part of her mind.

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? It is not likely. Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. Will they have some faint sense of her glimpse of the Void? No, it is not possible. It is not possible. But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at the moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.

And the individual atoms, cycled through her body and then cycled through wind and water and soil, cycled through generations and generations of living creatures and minds, will repeat and connect and make a whole out of parts. Although without memory, they make a memory. Although impermanent, they make a permanence. Although scattered, they make a totality."

Here we are, you and me, Walt and Alan, my grandmother who is and my grandfather who is no more - each of us a trembling totality, made of particles both absolutely vulnerable and absolutely indestructible, hungering for absolutes in a universe of relatives, hungering for permanence in a universe of ceaseless change, famished for meaning, for beauty, for emblems of existence. Out of these hungers, out of these contradictions, we make everything that invigorates life with aliveness: our art and our music, our poems and our mathematics, our novels and our loves."

- https://www.themarginalian.org/

"Do Not Let Your Fire Go Out..."

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the

hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all.”

- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

"You Must Be..."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat.

 "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, 

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Oh, I know, I know, lol...

Thanks for stopping by!

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Hidden Agenda: How Governments Use Inflation To Redistribute Wealth"

"The Hidden Agenda: How Governments

 Use Inflation To Redistribute Wealth"

by Nick Giambruno

"Inflation is the single biggest threat to your financial well-being. That’s not exactly a revelation for most people. However, propaganda muddles the issue, so there is a lot of confusion. Though he was wrong on just about everything, John Maynard Keynes was on target when he said: "Lenin was certainly right, there is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the basis of existing society than to debauch the currency. This process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

What is inflation? How is it measured? What is coming next, and what can the average person do about it? I’ll break it down and clarify these fundamental and crucial questions.

Inflation is one of the most misused words in the English language. The original and correct meaning of inflation is an increase in the money supply. However, the government and their court economists in academia and the mainstream media have redefined inflation over the years.

Since its founding in 1828, Webster’s Dictionary had defined inflation as "an increase in the money supply." Then in 2003, it changed the definition to "a rise in the general price level." The difference might seem subtle, but it’s not. It’s a deliberate deception. Redefining inflation this way confuses cause and effect, which is exactly why they did it.

Price increases are not inflation. Instead, they are an effect of inflation - an increase in the money supply. When inflation is redefined as "a rise in the general price level," many people are confused about what is happening and who is causing it. Inflation seems to come out of nowhere. It would be like redefining robbery to mean "a mysterious property loss," as if there was no robber.

The reality is that inflation is 100% a political phenomenon. Neither the local grocery store, the pharmacy, the restaurant owner, nor foreign scapegoats are responsible for inflation. The government - with its monopoly control over the currency - is. Governments inflate the money supply to generate more money than they could through direct taxation and issuing debt. In short, inflation is a hidden tax the government takes from its citizens without their consent.

The Real Way To Measure Inflation: There are two main ways to measure inflation:

#1. Based on the government’s definition of inflation (increase in the general price level)

#2. Based on the correct definition of inflation (increase in the money supply)

The former is prone to political manipulation and consistently understates reality. The latter gives an accurate picture.

When you hear about inflation in the mainstream media, academia, or from some government official, they are talking about the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI measures changes in the price level of a weighted average basket of consumer goods and services. However, there are several significant flaws with the CPI.

First, it assumes that "a rise in the general price level" can be distilled to a single number. However, prices do not increase uniformly across the board, as seen with big-ticket items like medical care, college tuition, and housing, which tend to rise much more rapidly than other things.

As shown in the chart above, it is evident that price increases are unevenly distributed and cannot be condensed into a single number. The rise in prices is an unevenly distributed vector, with prices of scarce goods and services rising faster. Moreover, every individual has their own preferences, meaning their desired basket of goods and services will differ. For example, someone in Los Angeles will have a different basket than someone in rural Montana.

Trying to quantify a general increase in prices as a single number for over 334 million people - as the CPI claims to do - is an impractical task. It’s even more ridiculous than using a national average weather temperature to indicate what clothes you should wear for the day.

Second, the government gets to determine what items are included in the CPI and their weightings in the index. They can cherry-pick the items to show the least possible price increases. It’s like letting students grade their own papers. In short, the CPI is a worthless statistic. It’s misleading government propaganda intended to conceal the government’s hidden inflation tax.

Yet, most people incorrectly equate inflation to the CPI because government officials, the mainstream media, and academics repeat this falsehood, and most people thoughtlessly accept it as gospel. The real way to calculate inflation is intuitive and uncomplicated.

You don’t need to perform complex math calculations or have an advanced degree in economics - anyone can do it. All you need to do is look at the change in the money supply. Doing so eliminates much of the noise, political manipulation, and propaganda of the CPI to get a clear picture of what is occurring.

It is no surprise that the government prefers people to focus on a nebulous statistic like the CPI rather than the change in the money supply. That’s because when you look at the change in the money supply, it becomes clear that the government is engaging in a staggering amount of currency debasement. In short, the Federal Reserve has recently created more money out of thin air than at any other point in US history. Since 2020, the US money supply has skyrocketed by 36%, an incredible change in such a short period.

If your after-tax wealth has not increased by 36% since 2020, then you are not keeping up with the Fed’s monetary debasement. You are losing ground and on the road to serfdom. It’s just an anecdote, but I don’t know anyone whose after-tax wealth has grown by 36% since 2020. I imagine that most people don’t know anyone, either.

As bad as the situation with inflation is right now, it’s nothing compared to what is ahead of us. The coming money printing could be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible.

Thanks to rampant inflation, socialism - and the poverty it inevitably brings - could soon become irreversibly entrenched in the United States, just as it has in numerous Third World countries. Rapidly rising food, housing, medical, and tuition costs are squeezing Americans, many of whom fail to grasp the true cause of their declining living standards. The explosion in the cost of living is a predictable consequence of the Federal Reserve's ongoing currency debasement.

Consider this. Imagine working 9 to 5 for 50 years, only for the Federal Reserve to print 40% of the money supply and inflate away 20 years of your hard work. You don’t have to imagine - it actually happened during the Covid mass psychosis, when governments around the world indulged in a frenzy of currency debasement. In other words, if your after-tax wealth hasn’t increased by 40% since 2020, you aren’t keeping pace with the monetary debasement.

As Michael Saylor aptly put it, "The road to serfdom consists of working exponentially harder in order to earn a currency growing exponentially weaker." It’s no wonder an increasing number of people are struggling to make ends meet. It’s like running on a treadmill that only tilts steeper and speeds up. I have no doubt the Fed will soon engage in even more egregious currency debasement.

The Federal Reserve is Your Enemy: The Federal Reserve is back in the news, preparing to launch yet another round of currency debasement - what it euphemistically calls "monetary easing," a term the media mindlessly parrots. Whenever discussing the Fed or central banks, it’s essential to keep the basics in mind. You have to start with the most fundamental concept: central planning doesn’t work. That’s the first principle.

Central planning of shoes doesn’t work. Central planning of wheat doesn’t work. And central planning of (fake) money doesn’t work. Central banks in general—and the Fed in particular - are on a mission impossible. They don’t know what the interest rate should be. Nobody does. That’s something only a voluntary market of savers and borrowers, dealing in honest money, can determine. A politburo can’t centrally plan interest rates any more than it can potatoes. They are inevitably going to fail—and cause significant damage in the process. It’s also crucial to remember that central banks have nothing to do with the free market. They are, in fact, the antithesis of it.

In Karl Marx’s "Communist Manifesto", central banking is the fifth plank. Meanwhile, the lying media portrays central bankers as selfless bureaucrats heroically trying to save the economy. It’s a load of BS. Central bankers are the enemies of the average person - the driving force behind currency debasement and the primary cause of the spiraling cost of living.

From Inflation to Socialism - and Worse: Even though the media won’t admit it, the Fed’s currency debasement is the primary reason most people are feeling the sting of rising prices today. They know it’s getting harder and harder to maintain their standard of living - but few understand why. They’ll blame supply chain problems, Vladimir Putin, or greedy corporations- anything but the Fed, the true source of inflation. The media’s hunt for the "real cause" of inflation is like O.J. Simpson’s search for "the real killers," only more absurd.

The deliberate confusion surrounding inflation opens the door for opportunistic politicians promising supposed freebies to ease the pain. Tragically, many fall for this siren song. Perverse as it is, the very policies sold as solutions to inflation only make it worse. Inflation perpetuates itself like a heroin addiction - people keep craving more of the very poison that’s destroying them. For instance, a Newsweek poll shows that 63% of Americans "strongly support" government stimulus checks to fight inflation. In other words: let’s combat the effects of currency debasement by engaging in even more currency debasement.

The more inflation erodes living standards, the more people clamor for misguided government interventions - universal basic income, price controls, rent controls, inflation "relief" checks, and higher minimum wages - all of which fuel the same destructive cycle of rising prices. It’s only a matter of time before "Fight for $15" - the rallying cry for a $15 minimum wage - becomes "Fight for $20," then "Fight for $50," and eventually "Fight for $100."

Instead, people should fight to end the Federal Reserve and the counterfeit money it creates out of thin air and forces everyone else to use. That’s the only way to break this insidious cycle that impoverishes everyone except the politically connected insiders closest to the printing press. But of course, that’s not what’s likely to happen. The more probable outcome is that the US continues down an inescapable spiral - a political-inflation doom loop that follows a predictable pattern:

1. In a fiat currency system, the government inevitably prints ever-increasing amounts of currency to fund itself.

2. This makes prices and living costs rise faster than wages.

3. The average person feels the pain but doesn’t understand why.

4. More people support politicians who promise freebies to ease the pain.

5. To pay for those "freebies," the government prints even more currency.

6. The result? More inflation - and the cycle repeats.

Most of America Depends on the Government: At this point, we have to ask ourselves whether the political situation in the US will improve. Unfortunately, the evidence points to a troubling but inevitable answer: no. The reason is simple - an ever-growing number of US voters are now net recipients of benefits from the government. This also includes the vast number of government employees and those in the nominally private sector who feed off the warfare state - defense contractors and other firms that thrive on massive, no-bid government contracts.

Those involved in the military-industrial complex live off government largesse as much - or more - than those collecting food stamps and other traditional forms of welfare. Yet they’re rarely counted in the statistics. Any honest accounting of who depends on the government must include them. When you tally everyone living off political dollars instead of free-market dollars, the number easily climbs north of 50% of the US population. In other words, the US has already crossed the Rubicon. There’s no going back.

The growing majority of voters who collect net benefits from the government form a built-in constituency that will perpetuate policies financed by ever-increasing inflation. That’s a major reason why I believe ever-increasing currency debasement is inevitable. Most people have no idea how bad things can get when the political-inflation cycle spirals out of control - let alone how to prepare for it.

The price of groceries, medical care, tuition, rent, and everything else will continue to rise. The only question is: how fast? This is an established trend in motion - one that’s accelerating and nearing a breaking point. And when that break finally comes, those who understand what’s happening and prepare accordingly will be in a vastly different position than those who don’t."

- https://internationalman.com/

"Economic Bubbles Are Bursting Everywhere! You Must Take Cash"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/25/25

"Economic Bubbles Are Bursting Everywhere!

 You Must Take Cash"

"Digital currency is shaping up to be a nightmare we can’t escape! In today's video on I Allegedly, I break down Ohio's new law requiring businesses to accept cash for transactions under $500 and why keeping cash alive is essential. From Ray Dalio's warnings about market bubbles to Robert Kiyosaki’s crypto moves, we’re diving into the latest financial buzz and what it means for you. Plus, I share insights on e-bike regulations, Harley-Davidson dealership closures, and even a million-dollar lottery win story! Rosie is back on the leash and joining me for a walk as we explore these hot topics."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "The Problem With Fake Money"

"The Problem With Fake Money"

by Bill Bonner

"You get honest people when they do honest work for honest money."

- Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Take away the honest money and everything gets a little fishy. Long have we dwelt on the corrupting influence of funny money on capital asset prices and on the economy. Everything gets distorted, perverse...and false. We get high prices. We get low prices. What we don’t get are honest prices. Yesterday, we looked at the ‘small time crooks’ - ripping off the public for a million or two. Today, we move to the big fry.

You’ll recall that the money in question was never earned by anyone. No one has a genuine claim to it. And what kind of apple falls from this funny money tree? Just what you’d expect...a funny one...with the worms already in it. Whatever else can be said about it, the Trump Team has an exceptional appetite for rotten fruit. The Economist: "Recently a delegation of Swiss businessmen arrived there bearing a gold bar and a Rolex clock for Donald Trump, who said “Job well done,” and accepted them on behalf of his presidential library. Days later America’s tariff rate on Switzerland dropped by more than half. In May Qatar gave Mr Trump a presidential jet worth $400m, also bound eventually for his library. In October the Gulf state won approval to build a training facility for its fighter pilots at an air-force base in Idaho."

Hardly a day goes by without the taint of scandal. But our point is not that people are crooks; crookedness will always be with us. But crooked money begets crooked people. In an honest economy, you get paid for providing goods and services. In a funny money economy, rackets, grifts and the ol’ false shuffle pay off. The Economist continues: "In the past ten months the president has dismantled the government’s anti-graft apparatus. The result is a widespread perception that the White House is pliable and that activity once treated as scuzzy, scandalous or punishable will be tolerated, if not welcomed.

The presidential pardon, for example, is now ‘up for sale,’ says The Economist. It reminds us that Trump pardoned Trevor Milton this past spring. Mr. Milton was the man behind Nikola...a company that took the Christian name of Nikola Tesla, leaving the patronym to Elon Musk. The stock was at one time worth $30 billion on the promise of a fleet of trucks that wouldn’t need gasoline. Alas, the company hit a serious speed bump; its new technology didn’t work. Milton towed a prototype of his truck up the side of a mountain and filmed it rolling back down, letting viewers imagine that it ran on its own power. This and other shenanigans resulted in a four-year prison sentence.

But in the court case, Milton was represented by Brad Bondi, brother of Pam Bondi, now America’s attorney general. And last year, Milton shrewdly contributed $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign. The pardon - which sprung him from prison and also eliminated the requirement that he make restitution to Nikola investors (who were wiped out when the company went bankrupt) - came two months after Trump regained the White House."

And now, no spider weaves its web at a lobbyist’s door. Clients are coming in hot and heavy; ready to pay big money for a word whispered in the president’s ear. Lobbyists broker deals with the president to get them out of the pokey. The Washington Post: In April, Alina Habba, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, extolled her office’s role in the sentencing of a former nursing home magnate to three years in prison for defrauding the government of $38 million. The man, Joseph Schwartz, was alleged to have overseen a “collapsed nursing home empire” and “willfully” failed to pay employment taxes, Habba’s announcement said. Around that time, Schwartz paid $960,000 to two lobbyists “seeking a federal pardon,” according to their lobbying filing."

Fake money seems to bring out the worst in people. Like the village prostitute, it is available to all...but cherished by none...and ultimately abused and depreciated. But nothing in the history of chicanery even comes close to the opportunities presented by Mr. Trump’s crypto business. It takes fake money to a whole new level. People use one kind of fake money (dollars) to purchase the president’s crypto (also of no real value). But like magic, what they get in return can actually be worth something. The Economist is on the story:

"In May a fund based in the United Arab Emirates, MGX, said it would buy $2bn-worth of World Liberty’s tokens. The transaction has netted the Trumps millions this year. Two weeks later Mr Trump agreed to let the UAE buy the most coveted AI chips - a privilege denied by the Biden administration, on account of Emirati chumminess with China. Negotiating the chip deal for the Americans was Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s envoy, whose son is the boss of World Liberty. Opposite Mr Witkoff was the brother of the Emirati crown prince, the chairman of MGX."

But the grandest larceny leaves the public not only witless and clueless, but with a fawning admiration for the perps. Tune in tomorrow..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"The 10 States Where Crime Is Getting Worse Than Anyone Expected"

Full screen recommended.

The Unfolded States, 11/25/25

"The 10 States Where Crime 

Is Getting Worse Than Anyone Expected"

"Americans once assumed that the nation’s crime problem was shrinking - that the worst cities were already known, the danger zones were predictable, and the trend was slowly improving. But as 2025 unfolds, that assumption is falling apart. Crime is rising in places few ever expected, and entire states are now watching safety shift faster than local leaders can respond.

From major metros like Philadelphia, Denver, and Jacksonville to isolated regions in Alaska and New Mexico, a clear pattern is emerging. Violent assaults, auto theft, property crimes, and community-level disturbances are climbing under the pressure of population surges, officer shortages, high living costs, and addiction crises. This change is not just about more incidents - it is about the United States entering a new phase where old assumptions no longer match reality.

In this investigative countdown, we break down the ten U.S. states where crime is rising the fastest. Using verified national data on violent crime, property crime, economic stress, and demographic shifts, we uncover what is actually happening - and why these trends are reshaping how Americans think about safety today.

The numbers behind the surge:

• Violent crime exceeding 750 cases per 100,000 residents in the hardest-hit states.

• Property crime surpassing 3,000 incidents per 100,000.

• Auto theft rising more than 30% in several regions.

• Police staffing levels down in over two-thirds of major departments.

• Homelessness and addiction straining local communities.

• Rapid population growth overwhelming fast-expanding metros.

• Housing, insurance, and cost-of-living increases outpacing wages year after year.

This is not a temporary fluctuation - it is part of a long-term realignment. The crime surge of 2025 is transforming not only where Americans feel safe, but how cities adapt, how states respond, and how entire communities prepare for pressures they have never dealt with before."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/