So true.

 

I Lived it.

Saw it happening right in front of me.

If you are my age or older?

You saw it too.

If you are not that much younger than me?

Then you grew up in the middle of it.

Not capable of realizing what was going on.

The frog that didn't know he was 

even in the water basically.

The American Dream is officially over

All because the rich must always steal from the poor.

Donald Earl Collins

Professorial Lecturer at American University in Washington, DC

(Good piece BTW)

Every Kingdom falls.

Only one stands forever.

And it is not of this earth.

And?

Revelation 6:6

 Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “Two pounds[a] of wheat for a day’s wages,[b] and six pounds[c] of barley for a day’s wages,[d] and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

(The poor get starvation wages,

the rich continue to get richer, 

indulging in more exotic luxuries.)

"The best days of the American economy are long in the past, and better days for the US are unlikely in the foreseeable future.

The 20th-century idea of an “American Dream”  – where a sizable majority of people in the US could become or aspire to become middle-class, affluent or even extremely wealthy – is mostly dead in the second quarter of the 21st."

"According to a report from Moody’s Analytics in February, the richest 10 percent of Americans (households with an annual income of at least $250,000) drove half of all US consumer spending (about $10 trillion) between September 2023 and September 2024."

(To say that isn't sustainable?

Is a huge understatement.

All debt based economies eventually fail.)

"The fact that 12.7 million households could collectively outspend much of the rest of the nation is truly jaw-dropping. It points to the end of an economy that has depended primarily on the needs-based and discretionary spending of ordinary working Americans since the end of World War II."

"The biggest surprise of all on the end of the American dream, though, is that for tens of millions of Americans, this is not a surprise. The dismantling of the American dream and the consumer capitalism that 

"defined the nation from 1945 

through the housing bubble bust in 2008"

began more than a half-century ago.

(His "markers" are 100% spot on BTW:

From the end of WW2, 

till the housing bubble bust

which was the First woe, 

"a warning of impending doom."

because we and other advanced economies tried an experiment 0% interest rates, it didn't fix anything it just let Billionaires borrow $ for nothing and put it in the stock market and then make back their loan, pay it off and then do it all over again.

It set the stage for interest rates being higher to combat the inflation of the $ supply during Covid (Second Woe) and landed us right where we are today.

Both of these events (Housing crisis and Covid) were Global in nature and the book of Revelation does not say what theyare or when they happened, and if you know me? You know my position on the "chronology" of the book of Revelation. (Most of it anyway) Gods time (as in a vision or in a series of visions) is cylindrical (past present and future all at the same time.) not linear.

(reference Time dilation)

"The gradual austerity leaders imposed on social welfare and education programmes combined with multiple rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations, killed social mobility, especially for Americans living in poverty."

(And they brain-washed you into thinking they were doing you a favor by doing it. I just could not believe the amount of people I knew personally, who were voting against their own self-interest, without even realizing they were doing so.

If you are 45 now?

I was almost voting age when you were two.

You didn't witness what my generation did before you were born, therefore, you were lacking the adequate reference points on the road to where we are now.

See point above about not knowing you were the frog in the boiling water without even knowing it.

Side note:

There is a reason I was born when I was. So that I could witness all of this and be here today to help explain it to you.)

(cf Romans 8:29-30)

"The transition from manufacturing to service industry jobs, along with automation, regional shifting, downsizing, and the offshoring of millions of other jobs, 

the saddling of millions of Americans 

with healthcare 

and higher education debt… 

(That was 100% by design BTW.

For, 

"There is no freedom 

without economic freedom."

Otherwise? 

We are all just economic slaves.)

"All of these changes and more have turned the American middle class into a class of strugglers and not strivers. And the worst thing is, this is exactly what the wealthiest of Americans have wanted for decades."

(100% spot on.)

"By the measure of most experts, the economic power of ordinary Americans peaked sometime between 1970 and 1974. 

(In 74 I was 10.

If you are 45?

You weren't born for another 6 years or so. My entire adult life, I watched the purchasing power of the middle class of this country erode.)

"More than six out of 10 Americans could claim middle-class status, and Black, Latinx, and other Americans of colour had begun to climb into the US middle class in larger numbers."

(My dad and five out of my six uncles worked in a union shop.

Some 60% of the working age population in Louisville in the 70's worked at GE, International Harvester, or Ford in union shops.

How dare us peons think we should have decent wages, good health benefits, rights to collectively bargain, two cars in the garage, $ in the bank set aside for a rainy day, and be able to put kids through college affordably, and take a couple of vacations a year.

WHICH IS THE WAY IT WAS.

My entire neighborhood(s). 

Every household. 

How dare us think 

we should have that kind of life 

seems to have been the thinking of the elites.

Translation?

IT DIDNT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.)

"The story goes that the OPEC oil crisis, brought on by the US supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, 

(I remember the gas lines.

I remember 29 cent a gallon gas right before that as well.

I remember me and my dad laughing 

the first time we ever saw a Honda

dad had a Ford LTD at that time.

We start bombing Iran?

you will see this again:

Promise.

"along with the deindustrialisation of the American Midwest, 

(How dare these people think they should have decent lives!)

ground down the US economy from 1973-74 onward. The combination of higher unemployment and higher inflation, known as stagflation, ended a three-decade run of endless US economic dominance and prosperity. But this story makes it seem as if a set of unfortunate circumstances ended the Pax Americana. 

In truth, 

the major corporations, 

the wealthiest of Americans 

and the federal government 

began shifting resources away from ending poverty and sustaining the American working and middle classes during the 1970s."

"Neoconservatives saw Johnson’s vision of ending poverty and shifting more public tax dollars to truly lift all Americans into prosperity as communist and dangerous. By the time of President Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution in the 1980s, both the remnants of the Great Society and War on Poverty programmes and even the social welfare system Franklin D Roosevelt built through the New Deal in the 1930s faced attacks and austerity."

"Although Reagan claimed in his diary in 1982 that “the press is dying to paint me as now trying to undo the New Deal. I remind them I voted for F.D.R. 4 times. I’m trying to undo the ‘Great Society’,” he ultimately showed disdain for all social welfare and social mobility policies."

(His presidency was the start of the 

"style over substance"

 variety that is now par for the course on both sides of the aisle.

Four of my classmates my senior year in High school had to drop out of school and enroll in college to keep their social security benefits from having a deceased parent, they literally had to do it overnight to keep them. The high school guidance councilors worked with U of L to make it happen for them. Show up to school one day your senior year, and four of your friends just aren't there anymore. Nice. 

Also? These evil fucks wanted to count ketchup as a vegetable in the school lunch programs, to keep  from funding them at adequate levels, all the while reducing capitol gains taxes on the wealthy and declaring tips as taxable income and not gifts.

"In the Reagan administration’s attempt to slash $1.5 billion from children’s nutrition funding, school lunch program requirements were worded (whether deliberately or not) so as to conceivably allow for designating ketchup as a vegetable, allowing the USDA to eliminate one of the two vegetables required to meet minimum food and nutrition standards, and thus shrink costs. It also offered a group of protein substitutes – yogurt, nuts and sunflower seeds – and suggested that tofu, a soybean cake, be substituted for a hamburger to save money.")

So Fuck your 

"Regan Revolution"

and its aftermath

(US today.)

Think its a coincidence that poster was here when we moved in?

Or all the periodicals about the JFK assassination 

from that time period? 

WE KNOW BETTER.

Dinosaur FDR democrat, 

just like my mom and dad 

and all my family was.

That make a lil more sense to you now?

And these days?

Completely apolitical 

as we know 

whats coming

and thinking an election, 

a political party, 

or a man 

is going to fix the mess our world is in?

COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL

at this point.

CHRIST ALONE

is all that can fix this, 

destruction being the biggest part of new birth and all.

Regan's platform he ran on BTW:

1) Cut Taxes

2) Increase military spending

3) Balance the budget.

Im 15.

Im like:

"Dad this doesn't make any sense, 

it just doesn't add up,

how is it supposed to work?"

"It wont."

And it didn't.

It made people feel good though.

(See above about style over substance)

Dad also used to say:

"Trickle down economics isn't a theory,

its an excuse 

to give your $ to the rich."

And it had never been employed anywhere else in the world by anybody else ever, and they went ahead and did it anyway.

I aint even got started on the moral majority and its ties to Reagan.

Dad, again, a Baptist deacon at that time mind you.

"The moral majority is neither."

And he was right, 

cutting the school lunch programs?

for poor students?

While cutting taxes for the wealthy?

Not exactly Moral.

And that is exactly 

what American evangelicals 

married themselves to.

"Get out of her my people!"

Revelation 18:4)

"Particularly from 1981 on, through corporate lobbyists and the merging of various ideological perspectives from both the Republican and Democratic parties, the new lower tax system for the wealthy and for corporations took shape.'

"The nation’s richest individuals once paid as much as 91 percent of their earnings for every dollar over $200,000 in the 1950s, and a 70 percent income tax rate in the 1970s. The Reagan-era tax cuts brought the highest tax rates down to between 50 percent and 28 percent during the 1980s. Although there were some small increases in the highest income tax rates under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, by then, investments in social welfare programmes had not kept up with inflation for nearly 20 years, and with welfare reform, they would never fully recover."

(The tax base was shifted from the wealthy and corporations, to the middle class, and the church in America was right there with em cheering them on, 

as was a brain-washed populace 

that didn't understand what was being done.)

"As of the Trump tax cuts during his first term in office, corporate taxes are at an all-time low of 21 percent. These policies have led to a massive shift in wealth from middle-class, working-class, working-poor and impoverished Americans, towards the rich and massive corporations."

(I said that above 

before I read that paragraph

 because I lived it 

and I watched it happen, 

so I know its true.

If you were born in 1980?

Its just how things were to you.

You didnt see the pinnacle 

of middle class purchasing power 

the decade previous.

Your point of reference 

is skewed to your experience, 

not what immediately preceded it.)

"Carter C Price and Kathryn Edwards authored a RAND Corporation working paper in 2020, estimating that between 1975 and 2018, tax cuts and social welfare austerity had led to a nearly $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the top 10 percent in wealth. Worse still, this transference had accelerated in the 2010s to an average of $2.5 trillion annually – all before the COVID-19 pandemic."

(It is the largest transfer of wealth in human history and there wasn't even a shot fired to do it and again a brain -washed populace (see cuts in education) cheered it on thinking they were getting a good deal.)

"In the meantime, things have been bleak for ordinary Americans in other areas of the economy. The federal minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 since 2009 (the minimum wage also went through an eight-year period of stagnation in the 1980s).

(When there is no dignity in working?

Then why even bother?

I never, not once

in any of my careers 

(lol and there have been a few)

got paid equal to the value 

I was providing my employer.

After a while?

You just say:

 "Fuck it, I'll just get by some how 

and just go ridin, 

Who needs this shit? 

I'm just gonna keep getting further 

and further behind anyway. 

So whats the point?"

:-).

"People say I'm crazy

Doing what I'm doing

Well, they give me all kinds of warnings

To save me from ruin

When I say that I'm okay, well they look at me kinda strange

"Surely, you're not happy now, you no longer play the game"

People say I'm lazy

Dreaming my life away

Well they give me all kinds of advice

Designed to enlighten me

When I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall

"Don't you miss the big time boy, you're no longer on the ball?"

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

Ah, people asking questions

Lost in confusion

Well, I tell them there's no problem

Only solutions

Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I've lost my mind

I tell them there's no hurry, I'm just sitting here doing time

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

I just had to let it go

I just had to let it go

)

" Monopolisation and downsizing have continued to cost most Americans living-wage jobs, as half of all working Americans make less than $50,000 a year, and a quarter of all workers make less than $25,000."

(They have turned you into slaves to your debt.

 No thx, I'd just as soon just go ride.

"Now, when I was just a little boy

Standin' to my daddy's knee

My papa said, "Son, don't let the man get you

And do what he done to me"

'Cause he'll get you

'Cause he'll get you now, now"

 ).

“If you filter the statistic to include unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today – hardly something to celebrate,” Eugene Ludwig, the former US comptroller of the currency, wrote in Politico earlier this year. So much for the best economy the US has seen in decades, at least that was the claim of former President Joe Biden."

(Ref: LISEP 

Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity

That is what I saw as my future 9-10 years ago, 

and I just said no thx. The point is, that has been the case than for a good while now.

Plus?

Know what the difference is 

between not having $5 you need 

and not having $5000 you need?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

Either way?

you still don't have what you need.

Take the dignity out of work and then complain that people don't wanna bother getting further and further behind seems to be the American way.

I am better off now

(and yes I had some fortunate circumstances come my way, but I knew they were comin :-). Power of the spirit.)

But I am better off today, having worked odd jobs here and there for a while, than I would have been if I had kept playing the game John Lennon sings about that others did.

When somebody can not work much?

And get farther ahead that those busting their ass working 2, or 3 jobs?

The shitstem (RNM) is beyond repair at that point.

I saw the handwriting on the wall

and just checked out of it.

God ground me down to dust 

and then regenerated me

(2nd work of grace, John Wesley)

But that is a different story

for a different day.)

"The US, then, is back to its pre-Great Depression economy. Except that in 2025, it’s an economy in which the consumer habits of the wealthiest 10 percent have an outsized influence compared with the bottom 300 million Americans. One cannot truly have consumer capitalism if most consumers cannot make enough money to afford to rent or buy a home, take a vacation, or even pay for food and basic healthcare. But this was the end goal of wealthy Americans pretty much all along, with help from both political parties. Any remaining American dream is but a mere fantasy these days. All because all the on-ramps to general middle-class prosperity have been carpet-bombed."

TRANSLATION:

It's over

you can forget about it.

And people are gonna fight a war 

and die?

To defend this?

And then come home 

and be homeless 

and not have any healthcare?

You have got to be out of your mind.

If you were born in 1980 or after?

Your reality

is my aberration.

It simply did not 

have to be this away.

There is only one everlasting Kingdom

Psalm 145:13

 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,

    and your dominion endures through all generations.

The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises

    and faithful in all he does.

You might just wanna 

trust his will

so that you can enjoy it.

Eternally.

"All I wish for you is happiness."

Every last person on this earth.

I really do.

Peace yall.

Love ya.