Extreme Poverty Is Now At Record Levels … According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than they have ever measured before. In 2010, we were told that the economy was recovering, but the truth is that the number of the "very poor" soared to heights never seen previously. Back in 1993 and back in 2009, the rate of extreme poverty was just over 6 percent, and that represented the worst numbers on record. But in 2010, the rate of extreme poverty hit a whopping 6.7 percent. That means that one out of every 15 Americans is now considered to be "very poor." – The Economic Collapse Blog
Dominant Social Theme: How did it get so bad? We have to elect better politicians and make businesses more socially responsible.
Free-Market Analysis: This is a good article from Economic Collapse and is getting a lot of play. We ordinarily don't comment on articles that are widely disseminated in the alternative 'Net press, but we want to provide some commentary on this article because it helps illustrate the wrong direction in which both America and the Western world are headed.
The meme here is one of "regulatory democracy." One would think after a century of the most vicious kind of regulatory democracy that things would generally be better. But are they? No, of course not.
They are much, much worse. The reason for this is that the concept has root that people need "leaders" and that only government – the bigger the better – can provide prosperity and create the conditions necessary for civil society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As we are seeing now, governments do not create wealth; they drain it. Governments do not provide peace; they ruin it. Governments do not guarantee the perpetuation of civil society; they abrogate it. These are the unfortunate facts.
Government cannot be fixed by better government. Government cannot be fixed by the right leadership. The only way to make government better is to make it smaller. The best government in our view governs the least.
Every law and regulation is a price fix. It is incredible that generations of smart people throughout the West can gaily endorse market functionality, the Invisible Hand and markets generally while going on about the need for this law or that regulation.
Every law and regulation is a price fix. Each one moves wealth from people who create it to people who didn't and don't have any idea about how to direct the wealth they've received toward productive endeavors. This is why so many lottery winners eventually go broke. They have no idea how to handle the money they get because they have not earned it to begin with. A little like governments.
One thing, however, that laws and regulations do effectively is to "level" society. The idea of an egalitarian society is the Holy Grail of progressives, politicians and the law enforcement officials who ensure that the leveling takes place.
What these people and many other people fail to understand is that the leveling is always leveled DOWN. You can, in fact, build a fairly level society in which only a tiny handful of fabulously wealthy people have approximately the same income, the same possibilities, the same outcomes.
It will be a "fair" society, to be sure, but it will also be a ruined one. We're on that track now. Here are facts that the Economic Collapse blog cites in the article excerpted above: "19 Statistics About The Poor That Will Absolutely Astound You" …
#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of "very poor" rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
#2 Last year, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
#3 It isn't just the ranks of the "very poor" that are rising. The number of those just considered to be "poor" is rapidly increasing as well. Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
#4 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.
#5 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.
#6 In Washington D.C., the "child food insecurity rate" is 32.3%.
#7 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.
#8 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#9 Today, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps.
#10 According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps.
#11 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#12 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.
#13 We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.
#14 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#15 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
#16 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#17 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program.
#18 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#19 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.
These facts and figures are not a coincidence in our view. There is a predatory force at work here, Money Power, wielded by an Anglosphere power elite that is trying to create world government and has been busily at work for at least the past century making it happen. They have used regulatory democracy as their weapon.
Now this power elite is apparently getting ready to shift its memes somewhat. Because government is being held in disrepute by more and more individuals, there will be new ways of promoting authoritarianism. People are to be instructed in the virtues of direct democracy and are to be assured that the new meme of "transparency in government" will assure that past abuses won't take place as a result.
But if world government does come about, the results will be the same for the world as they are in America now. Everybody will be leveled – but down not up. Since much of the world lives without regular shelter on a dollar a day, one can reasonably assume that this is where the rest of the world's billions will eventually end up.
Only apparently, in the long-term there won't be "billions" as the other part of the elite agenda is to cull the planet. The lucky ones will end up working in a global gulag for the new Kings of the World.
Editor's Note: Tip of the hat to Saman Mohammadi of The Excavator who mentioned DB today in a thoughtful article on what we call directed history. His response comes after we commented on a previous article of his presenting evidence that the current government of Iran is a product of Western intel. On Friday, we wrote: "This is another good article by the Excavator! We've been writing about the issue since the publication of High Alert in 2007 (as have others as well) but Mohammadi does a good job in presenting what we consider to be a fairly scholarly exegesis on the subject [of the current Iranian false-flag government]." His articles can be seen on his blog and today's article is featured at Alex Jones's websites. Our previous article is entitled, "Excavator Digs up Truth About CIA's Support for Khomeini's Regime Change in Iran."
What stands between us and this fate is the Internet Reformation. Education is key to helping people avoid onrushing one world government. We can see resistance building to plans for a new world order and believe that over time this resistance shall grow increasingly widespread and genuine. The Internet is a process not an episode.
