"Travel and Food Plans are Canceled This Thanksgiving"
"This is going to be the most expensive Thanksgiving ever. People cannot afford to travel long distances. Gas prices are a huge damper on Thanksgiving travel plans."
"This week it is being reported that the human population of our planet has now reached 8 billion. We should all remember this moment, because soon the population of the globe will start getting much smaller. In “End Times”, I explain that we are moving into one of the most chaotic times in all of human history. There will be wars and rumors of wars, economic collapse, worldwide famines, horrifying pestilences and great natural disasters. Needless to say, in such a future the global population would fall very rapidly. But for purposes of this article, let’s imagine that none of those things will happen for the foreseeable future. For a moment, let’s imagine that conditions will be pretty much like they are today for decades to come. Unfortunately, even in such a wildly unrealistic scenario the human population of our planet would still plummet dramatically in the years ahead. In fact, if current trends continue there will be hardly anyone left by the end of this century no matter what happens.
I realize that I have just made some very outrageous statements, and a lot of you are probably wondering how I could have come to such wild conclusions. So let me take this one step at a time.
According to the UN, the population of the world just hit 8 billion for the first time ever. The following comes from the official website of the United Nations…"The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to World Population Prospects 2022, released today on World Population Day.
“This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.
But the population of our planet is not growing as rapidly as it once was. In fact, even the UN is acknowledging that total population growth has dropped to just a trickle…"The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1 per cent in 2020."
In many wealthy areas of the planet, birth rates have already dropped well below replacement level. This is true in the United States and Japan, and in Europe the population is steadily declining even though there has been a massive influx of migrants..."The European Union’s population shrank for a second year running last year, the bloc’s statistics office said on Monday, as the region reels from over two million deaths from the coronavirus. According to Eurostat, the population of the 27 countries that make up the bloc fell by close to 172,000 from the previous year and over 656,000 from January 2020."
One of the big reasons why birth rates are falling in wealthy countries is because men in those nations are a lot less fertile than they used to be. In fact, researchers have just released a study that shows that the decline in sperm counts “has only accelerated since the turn of the century”…"Plummeting sperm counts ‘threaten mankind’s survival’, researchers dramatically warned today. Counts have more than halved since the 1970. And the decline has only accelerated since the turn of the century, according to a global analysis. Once your sperm count gets low enough, it becomes almost impossible to have children.
So this is a really big deal. "According to the study, average sperm counts have been declining by 2.64 percent per year since the year 2000…Results showed the mean sperm count fell by 51.6 per cent between 1973 and 2018 across men from all continents. And concentrations have been falling by 2.64 per cent per year since 2000, quicker than the previous drop of 1.16 per cent annually from 1972.
Average sperm counts have already fallen into “the danger zone”, and if this trend continues average sperm counts will fall by another 50 percent in less than 20 years. At that point, it is likely that the number of men that are infertile will be far greater than the number of men that are still able to have children. And that is a recipe for catastrophic population decline."
If you are a man that wishes to remain fertile, one thing that you can do to help yourself is to stop carrying around your phone in your pockets. Constantly exposing your genitals to microwave radiation is a really bad idea if you want to have kids.
Of course the human race is killing itself in countless other ways as well. For example, even though we know that glyphosate causes cancer, we keep feeding foods that have been sprayed with it to ourselves and our children on a daily basis.
As a result, approximately 80 percent of the entire U.S. population now has glyphosate in their urine…"Part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found glyphosate in 1,885 of 2,310 urine samples representative of the population at large. Nearly a third of the samples came from kids, ranging in age from six to 18.
“Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the country, yet until now we had very little data on exposure,” Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, said Monday in a statement. “Children in the U.S. are regularly exposed to this cancer-causing weedkiller through the food they eat virtually every day.”
Why would we do this to our kids? Are we insane?
Another way that we are literally killing ourselves is by our widespread use of plastics that contain cancer-causing chemicals. When we dispose of a plastic item, it slowly starts breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. Over time, the pieces become so small that they can barely be seen. There are trillions upon trillions of these “microplastics” in the air, water and soil all over the planet. In fact, researchers have found microplastics wherever they have looked. They have been discovered in the remotest parts of the Earth, they are in the rain that falls from the sky, and they now make up approximately 40 percent of the dust in our homes.
Microplastics often contain cancer-causing chemicals, and studies have shown that exposure to microplastics can cause “cell death”…"Microplastic particles can cause cell death, cellular wall damage and allergic reactions in humans – at levels ingested by people via their food, a study has warned. Researchers led from the University of Hull reviewed 17 previous studies on the toxicological impacts of microplastics on human cells in a laboratory setting. The team then compared the levels of microplastics required to cause cellular damage with those taken in via drinking water, seafood and table salt."
If you get enough plastic in your system, you will die. And the amount of plastic that we create each year has been rising at an exponential rate. So this is a health crisis that is only going to get worse. But even if we were able to eliminate all plastic use immediately, this crisis would continue to escalate for a long time to come, because all of the plastic that we have already discarded will continue to slowly break down for decades.
Sadly, what I have covered in this article is just the tip of the iceberg. The air that we breathe, the beverages that we drink and the food that we eat are all toxic. If all that wasn’t enough, there are numerous other ways that we are literally committing societal suicide on a scale of epic proportions. So the population of the world will not stay at 8 billion for long. Even if global conditions remain relatively stable, a future of widespread infertility and mass death is ahead. The clock is ticking for humanity, and the mess that we have created is way too big for us to fix on our own"
Baltimore, Maryland - "The Middle Class Delenda Est (the middle class must be destroyed). In the next couple of days, we will look at Baltimore rowhouses…the plight of small farmers during the Roman Empire…and the meaning of “common sense,” among other things. All of these themes come together in one extraordinary and magnificent spectacle – think “Gone with the Wind” meets “Stalingrad” – that is, the destruction of the middle class and the societies that depend on them. CNBC:
"Household debt soars at fastest pace in 15 years as credit card use surges, Fed report says." "Total debt jumped by $351 billion for the July-to-September period, the largest nominal quarterly increase since 2007, bringing the collective household IOU in the U.S. to a fresh record $16.5 trillion, up 2.2% from the previous quarter and 8.3% from a year ago."
And while debt is increasing, job prospects are receding. Charlie Bilello updates us on the job cuts in the tech industry:
• Twitter cutting 50% of its workforce (estimated 3,700 jobs).
• Facebook ($META): cutting 13% of its staff (11,000 jobs), its largest round of layoffs ever.
• Snap ($SNAP): cutting 20% of its workforce (1,200 jobs).
• Shopify ($SHOP): cutting 10% of its workforce (1,000 jobs).
• Netflix ($NFLX): cut 450 jobs in two rounds of layoffs.
• Microsoft ($MSFT): cutting <1% of workforce (1,000 jobs).
• Salesforce ($CRM): cutting 1,000 jobs.
• Robinhood ($HOOD): cutting 31% of its workforce.
• Tesla ($TSLA): cutting 10% of its salaried workforce.
• Lyft ($LYFT): cutting 13% of its workforce (700 jobs).
• Redfin ($RDFN): cutting 13% of its workforce.
• Coinbase ($COIN): cutting 18% of its workforce (1,100 jobs).
• Stripe cutting 14% of its workforce (1,000 jobs).
In addition to these cuts, Amazon ($AMZN) has announced a hiring freeze, Apple ($AAPL) has paused almost all hiring, and Google ($GOOGL) is reducing new hiring by 50%.
War and Taxes: Jobs, debt, housing, income, inflation – when these go the wrong way, the middle class is doomed. Add war and taxes…and the destruction is complete. But America won’t be the first country to destroy its middle classes. It is what great empires, as well as banana republics, do. From ancient Rome to modern Venezuela – eliminating the middle class is not just a by-product of a corrupt elite, it’s the name of the game.
The success of the Roman Empire was mostly thanks to its middle-class farmers and craftsmen. They were the backbone of the Republic, ready to take up their swords and shields as duty called. They were a largely homogenous group, sharing the same culture and values. But they were a threat to the ruling class, too. Dispersed and independent, they were not so easily distracted by circuses in Rome or so cheaply bought off with the free bread distributed to urban mobs. And they might turn on the elite as well as support them.
As the Republic became an Empire, it expanded its borders in a series of almost permanent wars around the periphery. Generals gained wealth and glory, returning in triumph with their booty…including slaves. Middle class farmers had small plots of land that they worked themselves, with their families, and sometimes a few slaves. But when the imperial conquests really got rolling, the number of slaves grew proportionally. In the capture of Epiros alone, in the Third Macedonia War, 150,000 people were sold into slavery.
The slaves changed the domestic economy and the soldiers and free farmers themselves found themselves squeezed. In the early days, a citizen-soldier did his duty and soon returned home to take up his plow again. But as the Empire became more far-flung, it stationed its young men in Africa, Spain, and the Middle East, on bases hundreds of miles from Rome, often with a tour of duty that lasted as long as 20 years.
When they got home, the soldiers found their farms long neglected. Their families often had to borrow in order to survive until the fighting men returned. Then, to pay the debt, the farm was sold to elite landowners. These rich men consolidated the small farms into ‘latifundio’ that were worked by teams of slaves, rather than free men.
Large plantation-style farming then lowered farm prices; independent farmers had a hard time competing. This, combined with the constant need for more soldiers, inflation, and higher taxes, led many farmers to abandon their land…and finally, to sell themselves and their families into slavery.
Common Nonsense: “What goes around, comes around,” is an expression arising from observation and embedded in the popular mind as “common sense.” “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up,” is another common dictum, “because you will meet them again on the way down.” As it turned out, the rich and powerful met invading barbarians.
By then, the ‘Roman’ army had disintegrated. But it had ceased being ‘Roman’ anyway. When the middle class was destroyed so was the stock of loyal, patriotic soldiers willing to fight and die for the homeland. The empire had been forced to turn to mercenaries and pay-to-fight armies that were reliable…but only to a point. And as the empire’s finances dissolved, the pay-to-fight soldiers often didn’t get paid and didn’t fight. In the heat of battle, many turned against Rome. Finally, the Empire was unprotected; there were no citizen soldiers to rally…and no middle class to keep order.
Oadacer deposed the last emperor in 476. By then, the barbarians – which included Goths, Huns, Alans, and other Germanic tribes, escaped slaves, starving and displaced peasants, deserters and brigands of all sorts – roamed freely over the country, raping, pillaging, stealing, slaughtering, enslaving and destroying every thing and everyone they came in contact with.
More to come…"
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Joel’s Note: "On the subject of soaring debt, Dan Denning shared this vertiginous chart among the BPR braintrust yesterday. It’s what the kids used to call “fugly”…
Click image or larger size.
This year’s third quarter increase of $351 billion was the largest nominal quarterly jump since 2007 and included a $282 billion increase in mortgage balances, according to the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data. Continued the report, from Liberty Street Economics:
"Mortgages, historically the largest form of household debt, now comprise 71 percent of outstanding household debt balances, up from 69 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019. An increase in credit card balances was also a boost to the total debt balances, with credit card balances up $38 billion from the previous quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this marked a 15 percent increase, the largest in more than twenty years."
Of course, borrowing money at low (or even negative real) rates is one thing… but, as reported in this space over the weekend, this outstanding debt comes at a time when interest repayments are cresting multi-decade highs, further putting a strain on middle class families.
The New York Fed’s data suggests Americans are on track to hold close to $1 trillion (with a “T”) in collective credit card debt before year’s end. And that’s at eye-wateringly high rates, too. A survey by Bankrate.com puts the average credit card interest rate at just over 19%, the highest it’s been in over thirty years. Here’s a look at the year-over-year increase in credit card balances outstanding.
What does this spell for the mighty American consumer…and for earnings of the aforementioned tech companies, already struggling with massive layoffs? What does it portend for the job market in general? And what does it mean for foreclosures on households struggling to juggle mounting debt as interest rates continue to rise?"
"Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski is famous mostly for what he didn’t do, but more about that in a minute. What Potemkin did do, starting in 1774, was conquer most of what is southern Ukraine, the Crimea, Moldova, and Catherine the Great a bunch of times. The land he mostly took from the Ottoman Empire, but Catherine seems to have invited the conquest. And apparently, Grigory didn’t do it right, because she made him do it again. And again. I mean a bunch of times. Catherine had a succession of lovers that would put Kamala’s body count in 1992 to shame. Okay, the summer of 1992. Okay. August of 1992. Okay, August 11, 1992. By noon
But when Potemkin wasn’t kicking Ottoman butt or... well, the other thing, what he did do was found city after city along the Black Sea coast. You just might have heard of Kherson? Yup. Potemkin founded and named that city. He was even buried there until Putin dug him up and took him back to Russia recently. It’s certain he wasn’t the last Russian to retreat. But mostly, we remember Potemkin for the phrase Potemkin Village. Where did that phrase come from?
Catherine the Great, somewhere between lovers, decided to have a Lord of the Rings-type trip to go see what Potemkin was up to down south, and maybe have Potemkin put something in Mount Doom, if you know what I mean. That was based on the idea that Potemkin had a lot of the Novorossiyan (approximately the southern area that Putin held before the Russians began advancing to the rear last month) villages built and rebuilt so that he could fool Catherine about how prosperous the area was.
Well, not really. First of all, Potemkin didn’t have to impress Catherine, they’d known each other forever by this point, and she really liked him even though whenever they weren’t together they were boffing enough other people to make Paris Hilton blush. What everyone does agree on is that Potemkin had folks paint some of the village buildings, and they did build a few fake ones, but those were mainly to show Catherine what the area would look like.
So, despite personal bravery, solid administration, building an entire fleet, and being a diplomat worthy of any of today’s age, we remember Potemkin for something he really didn’t do. To be fair Potemkin was the guy that conquered most of the area that Russia and Ukraine are fighting for right now, so there’s a good argument that they should just give it all back to Turkey and be done with it.
But it came to my mind when I started thinking about the economy we find ourselves in today – in many ways, it’s a Potemkin economy. FTX®, that wonderful stealer of money and funder of Democrats? It was a financial Potemkin Village. There was nothing really there, ever. A smelly-looking Millenial with his autistic girlfriend who is so homely that she makes Greta Thunberg look like an 8.5 and the rest of the crew literally printed their own virtual currency, and then grifted their way through piles of cash from nations and celebrities and even their own employees. A Potemkin Village? Sure.
And now Elon Musk is finding that his $44 billion toy, Twitter™ is filled with fraud. First, there are fraudulent users. We don’t have the full number of bots that Tweeted™, but it wasn’t a small number.
Third, the advertisers weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Rather than being advertisers that were interested in, oh, say, advertising to customers, they’re fleeing the platform. Why? Because they weren’t interested in selling products, they were really interested in social posturing. They’re leaving in droves – the economic engine of Twitter® appears to have been built on corporate virtue signaling.
Fourth, the employees themselves seemed to be, at a ratio of at least 75%, useless people with a huge sense of entitlement. How bad are these people? They’re upset that they won’t have free food from in-house chefs. They’ll have to pay for lunch. Maybe they’ll have burgers?
And how many other Potemkin Companies are sitting out there, in plain sight, but just not yet recognized? My bet is that there are a lot, especially in the financial sector and tech sectors. One principle that I’ve seen apply again and again is Wilder’s Rule #32: what can be built really quickly can collapse a lot quicker. If Zuck can make $100 billion in four years, he can lose it in four weeks.
Oops. And what else might be a sign of a Potemkin Economy? Valuations are built on emotion, and emotion is defined on how pretty something is. Well, at least if we lose the Potemkin Companies and the Potemkin Dollar, we still have our relationship with Catherine the Great Kamala.
Oh, crap. We’re in even worse condition than I thought."
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day. It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers.
At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out. Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next three decades would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction. And then it happened.
That Sunday afternoon, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated during an official visit to Sarajevo. And the world changed forever. Five weeks later the entire continent was at war with itself. But even still, most of the ‘experts’ thought it would be a simple, speedy conflict. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, famously told his troops who were being shipped off to the front line in August 1914, “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees...” It took four years and an estimated 68 million casualties to bring the war to a close. But that was only the prelude.
Following (and even during) World War I, a series of bloody revolutionary movements took hold in Europe, including in Russia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. Then came the Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. Later, Germany sunk into one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in human history.
Communism began rapidly spreading across the world almost as quickly as the Spanish flu, often through violent fanatics who engaged in murder and arson in order to intimidate their opponents; this became known as the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States.
Of course there were some good years during the 1920s when people generally felt prosperous and happy; but it all came crashing down at the end of the decade when a severe economic depression strangled the entire world. It lasted for more than ten years, during which time the world was once again brought to an even more destructive war that didn’t end until atomic weapons obliterated the civilian populations of two Japanese cities.
Again – go back to June 1914. Who would have thought that the next 30+ years would play out so destructively? Even for the people who did predict that Europe would go to war in 1914, most leaders thought it would be over quickly. And almost no one expected it would spawn decades of chaos.
Today we’re obviously living in different times and under different circumstances. But we may be standing at a similar precipice as in 1914, staring at enormous trends that could shape our lives for years to come. Covid only scratches the surface.
We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health. They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.” Really? The same scientists who told people they couldn’t go to work, school, or church, but it was perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness? The same scientists who wanted to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but are happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns and so-called "vaccines'?
The public health consequences from this pandemic and "vaccine" will reverberate for years to come. And that doesn’t even begin to take the economic consequences into consideration. Western governments have taken on trillions of dollars in new debt this year and central banks have printed trillions more. Even with all that stimulus, however, there are still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lost their jobs, and countless businesses that have closed.
Future generations who haven’t even been born yet will spend their entire working lives paying interest on the debts that are being accumulated today. The long-term consequences of all this are incalculable.
And then there are the social trends – the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world so fast. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century. They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn, but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.
Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism. Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. You can’t even watch a football game or a TV commercial anymore without some commentary on oppression and victimization. And any intellectual dissent is met with intimidation or censorship.
In fact the largest consumer technology companies in the world have become our censors. We’re not allowed to share scientific information that doesn’t conform to the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization’s guidance. And news articles that don’t match their ideology are blocked.
Let’s not kid ourselves – these trends are not going away any time soon. It’s great to be optimistic, hope for the best, and enjoy the good years as they come. But it makes sense to at least be prepared for the possibility that we could be at the very beginning of a period of enormous instability that may last a very long time."
"In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players."
"According to precious metals and financial expert Bix Weir, when the FTX cryptocurrency exchange imploded, it took with it billions of dollars of investments. It now has more than a million creditors both big and small. Weir says it is the tip of the iceberg in a dying over-indebted system. Weir contends it is orders of magnitude worse than the Lehman Brothers meltdown that caused the Great Recession in 2008. Weir explains, “Does it really matter if we control the House or the Senate or the Presidency? The only thing that will matter, the only thing that will change what is going on is when the ATMs shut off and, all of a sudden, people cannot get money out of the bank. That would change things really fast. I think it will happen. All we need is one highly connected derivative bank to go down, and they all go down. They can bail out a trillion-dollar bank, but they cannot bail out a $2 quadrillion failure, and that is what is coming. The moment that hits is when everybody will say, okay, nobody is getting paid off.
We are going to find out in about a month how many counterparties in the FTX debacle will be translated into the derivatives, which is probably 100 times bigger than what happened on FTX. Every one of those people on the FTX ledger was placing derivative bets that were hedging their crypto position. Now, their crypto positions have disappeared. The actual cryptos are no longer there, that is what was hedging this transaction. There are two sides to a derivative trade. If one side loses, they double lose. So, we could see a massive, massive fallout from the derivative mess.”
Weir also points out, “The insanity is we all believe in unbacked fiat money. That system is dying, and that’s why they are desperate to go to something else. They know the end of this system is going to be painful. That’s why they keep kicking the can down the road. Nobody really pretends it’s going to work out. You don’t hear the government saying we are going to pay off the debt. Nobody talks about that anymore. They talk more about what will we do next. Let’s invent a new kind of currency. That’s what they are talking about now because everybody has known since day one that this system will end.”
Well known politicians, sports stars and big-financial institutions were all involved with FTX. Charges are flying that FTX was a money laundering operation, a fraud and a huge public rip-off. This is a symptom of what comes at the end of a financial system. What does the end look like? Weir says, “It might be we have many currencies being used with the collapse of the system. Our government is completely corrupt. When they find out all the bad things your politicians have done to your country, to humanity and to children, good night. There is going to be chaos in the streets. Then what do you have that will work in a barter type situation until we all figure this out. I think that is where we are going. Right now, it’s going to be painful. December will be really painful, and in January and February, who knows what will be with the change in government - if there is one.”
Weir says gold, and especially silver, are extremely undervalued. He says physical supplies of both metals are disappearing. Weir says both metals will be going way up in value in the not-so-distant future." There is much more in the 34-min. interview.
"Most Americans are just a single illness away from losing everything. We all know that by now The United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the entire world. The shocking results of a recent survey just revealed that more than 122 million Americans can’t afford to get sick because of the insane costs of medical care in the U.S. In fact, healthcare debt is the No.1 reason why individuals file for bankruptcy in this country, and it is also one of the primary reasons why the U.S. middle class is disappearing so rapidly. All over the nation, families are being financially eviscerated by extremely high health insurance premiums, ridiculously high deductibles, and very large out-of-pocket expenses that were not anticipated – and all of this should serve as a major wake-up call for all of us. If significant changes aren’t made quickly, this out-of-control health care system will destroy the U.S. middle-class all by itself.
Healthcare in America is largely an unmitigated mess, experts say. Today, over 30 million Americans don’t have health insurance, and for people to have access to the medical care, they often have to navigate through a maddeningly tortuous and obscure bureaucracy. Even those who do have insurance can face wildly expensive medical bills that lead them to take on massive amounts of debt or even declare bankruptcy. Healthcare costs are still the number one reason for personal bankruptcy in the U.S.
A new survey published by the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization West Health and Gallup found that 112 million, or 44%, of American adults, are struggling to pay for healthcare, and more than double that number, 93%, feel that the quality of the service doesn’t match the cost. “The bottom line is that Americans are increasingly getting priced out of the system and many of those who can still afford to pay don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth relative to the cost,” researchers wrote.
Healthcare costs have been on a steep rise since the 1980s. Forbes recently published an analysis from U.S. Federal Government actuaries that shows Americans have some of the highest costs in the developed world; exceeding $4.3 trillion in 2021 alone. In the 1970s, health spending totaled $74.1 billion in 1970. By 2000, health expenditures had reached about $1.4 trillion, and in 2020 the amount spent on health tripled to $4.1 trillion.
On a per capita basis, health spending has increased sharply in the last five decades, from $353 per person in 1970 to $12,531 in 2020. In 2022, health insurance for a family of four is $28,000 – easily the cost of a car. Needless to say, that can be financially crippling for most U.S. households. About 46 million U.S. citizens carry medical debt on their credit reports, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Because of the risk of facing a surprise medical bill, many people prefer not to receive any medical care at all, the West Health and Gallup survey reported. In the second quarter of 2022, 30% of Americans reported deferring medical care in the prior three months due to fear of the cost, a figure that has tripled since March 2021. But their decision can have serious consequences: The same survey found that 21% of adults said they or a household member experienced a health problem after deferring care due to cost.
“The velocity of change in the number of Americans who cannot afford health care is alarming. In a short time, we’ve witnessed healthcare affordability become an issue for most middle-income earners and even the nation’s wealthiest households. This goes to show the problem is growing larger and deeper,” the study highlights. The only way that we are going to have a thriving middle class is if we get healthcare costs under control, but unfortunately, we are stuck with this system for now. The healthcare industry is certainly not going to reform itself, and then by the way things are going in Washington, nothing is likely to get done for the foreseeable future. So our healthcare system is going to continue to deteriorate, and the citizens of the wealthiest country in the world will continue to travel to developing nations when they need important procedures to be done. A clear sign that America is failing us all."
"Is this what will become of our Milky Way Galaxy? Perhaps if we collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years, it might. Pictured below is NGC 7252, a jumble of stars created by a huge collision between two large galaxies. The collision will take hundreds of millions of years and so is effectively caught frozen in time in the above image. The resulting pandemonium has been dubbed the Atoms-for-Peace galaxy because of its similarity to a cartoon of a large atom.
The above image was taken by the MPG/ESO 2.2 meter telescope in Chile. NGC 7252 spans about 600,000 light years and lies about 220 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius). Since the sideways velocity of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is presently unknown, no one really knows for sure if the Milky Way will ever collide with M31."
“That we can never know,” answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”
“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”
“The Individual vs. The Illusion Of Consensus Reality”
by Jon Rappoport
“This is such a supercharged subject, I could start from a dozen places. But let’s begin here: the individual is unique, because he is he. He is unique because he has his own ideas, because he has his own desires, because he has his own power. That power belongs to no one else. In particular, it doesn’t belong to the State. The State will try, will always try to suggest that it is granting power to the individual, but this is a lie. It’s an illusion broadcast with ill-intent. While everyone else is trying to manufacture connections to the group, under the banner of a false sense of community, the individual is going in the opposite direction.
Philip K Dick: “Insanity - to have to construct a picture of one’s life, by making inquiries of others.”
Consensus reality is the reality of sacrifice. It is coagulating energy, form, content, substance that takes on amorphous shapes studded with slots into which people can fit themselves.
The independent individual thinks what he wants to think. Over time, he keeps graduating into new, more nearly unique levels of what he wants to think. He rises above the group. He rises to his own thoughts.
There is no subject and no substance which is not infiltrated by consensus reality. Wherever you look, you will encounter it. The group is the basis of consensus reality, and the group pact extends everywhere. The group fears a sector where only individual thought can tread. That would be dangerous to the illusion. “Well, we’ve got things well in hand in most places, but over there and over here we’re not in charge. A different kind of reality pervades.” No, that doesn’t work for the group. The exceptions would blow a hole in the rule.
“Stay away from the corner of Lexington Avenue and 34th Street. Something too weird is going on there. We come in and try to inject consensus on that spot and it doesn’t work. Our “sharing” energy bounces off that corner. We may have to call in the troops to surround the place and cordon it off.” Alert! Alert! Consensus reality is breaking down in Sector 328-A! Locate the problem! This is an emergency! Bring in the news team to shore up the illusion! Turn on the hypnosis machines! Group consensus is fraying and fragmenting in Area 768-B! Call the professors and pundits! Discredit the individual! Call him a monster! Do something fast!
Consensus reality is an illusion in the sense that you can see it and I can see it, but we didn’t sign up for it. That’s the catch. Take any area of life, and I mean any, and that’s the case. Wherever there is tight consensus, perception ensues. That’s the whole point. “We, the group, aren’t fooling around. When we sign a pact among ourselves, we intend everybody to see what we decide is there to see.”
So you, the individual, can opt out. That doesn’t necessarily mean the consensus disappears; you can still see it, but you see it without accepting it. You can see the oasis in the desert, which is a mirage, but because you have your own bottle of water, you don’t have to run toward the mirage and fall down on your knees and try to drink from the pool.
Philip K. Dick: “Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… increasingly, we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated electronic mechanisms… And this is an astounding power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
The strong and free individual evolves. He doesn’t stay the same. He doesn’t know everything worth knowing today. He knows enough, but not everything. He continues to emerge with new ideas, new energy, new invention. He becomes larger. He gains more power.
When the illusion of consensus reality attains a level beyond mere slogan, it enters the realm of systems. This is its most convincing format. A system appears to be watertight. Each one of its parts has relations with the whole. This is interesting, because that mirrors what a group is. Each member is a part that connects to the whole. Consensus as a system is like a game of chess that plays the same moves over and over. Game one is the same as game two, three, four… That’s where its illusion of power comes from.
The individual, though, doesn’t proceed according to systems. He isn’t moving from one closed context to another. That’s the group. The individual may retain the same general principles over time, but what he does and thinks strikes out into new territories. Because he creates. There is no individual without creating.
Consensus is the coin of the realm. It is forced from the top, and it is signed up for at the bottom. One hand washes the other. Societies may begin through consensus, but if they have any courage, they shift focus to the job of pulling away coercive restraints on the individual. Regardless, the individual asserts his freedom. It is his to begin with, not the group’s. No one gives it to him.
American society is moving rapidly to an inverse, an upside down structure, in which freedom is looked upon as a privilege grudgingly accorded in the absence of a reason to take it away. The prevalent official attitude is: consensus must be strengthened. It must dominate the landscape.
Through vast experience, the free individual knows that consensus has no theoretical limits. Group-perceptions about the way things are can give birth to the most universally “proven objective truths.” In his explorations, the individual may even find that a demonstrated law of nature is nothing more than a consensus. And, therefore, an illusion.
The group has conception of Normal. Normal is like a message passed around, from hand to hand, and when you look at it closely, for content, it dissolves. There was really nothing there. This is similar to what happens when physicists probe further and further into matter, looking for smaller and smaller particles, and come up with an enormous amount of empty space.
The group consensus is the illusion. Finally, there is mindless hive-action covering a vacuum. This is also what occasionally happens to people who have hidebound political ideologies. The people on the Left move further and further to the Left, and the people on the Right move further and further to the Right. Finally, they are both so distant from government they meet and stare at each other in shock. At that point, they are just individuals.
From my unfinished manuscript, "The Magician Awakes": “You keep saying it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you say it out loud and sometimes it’s just a very strong thought that could cut through a melon. You repeat it over and over—”it doesn’t matter.” You’re sitting there with the most powerful thing in the universe, your imagination, and yet it doesn’t matter. New worlds are waiting for you. But you don’t pull the trigger.
“You go to meetings. What are these meetings? Who’s there? What do you talk about, the end of the world? Your problems? The conversations seem to be endless…”
“But society runs on groups! It must have groups!” And what? The individual must give in and join and belong? That’s the conclusion? I’m afraid not. Consensus reality is a cartoon that is trying to become as real as steel. What deconstructs the steel and exposes the cartoon? There is only one thing that can do that. Nothing and no one else is going to do that. The individual does it."
"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
"We are getting more warnings about the economy and even Jeff Bezos is back. We are seeing a crypto collapse because of the FTX Exchange. Will crypto bring other things down as well?"
