Due to technological advancements, over the past 35 years there has been an explosion in production, distribution, profits and wealth creation. Most of that wealth increase has gone to only one-hundredth of one percent of the population, to the modern day aristocracy. In the United States, the 400 richest people now have as much wealth as 185 million people combined, nearly 60% of the entire population. US millionaire households have at least $46 trillion in wealth, yet only one-tenth of one percent of the population makes one million dollars a year.
$46 trillion. Can you comprehend how much money that is and what could be done with that stunning amount of wealth, the implications, the possibilities? Especially given the capabilities of modern technology. Think about how we could evolve society with that astonishing amount of wealth, and how much better off we would ALL be if we did.
It’s hard to comprehend how much wealth $46 trillion represents. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000. People cannot comprehend that much wealth because there is no frame of reference, no comparison of scale or historical precedent. An entire generation of stratospheric wealth has been systemically denied to the people and hoarded into the hands of a few. It's the greatest theft of wealth in history, a crime against humanity.
Once you wrap your mind around how much wealth $46 trillion is, and realize how profoundly society can be transformed by it, you begin to grasp the fact that we’ve been living under neo-feudal rule. If Americans had a real understanding of how much wealth is being kept from them, we would have a full-blown societal evolution right now.
There’s no doubt about it; the denial of wealth is what keeps us in check, in debt. As a wise man once said, “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One by sword, the other by debt.” The harsh, unavoidable truth is that we live in a system of debt slavery. The indentured servant is now the indebted consumer, indebted to a modern day aristocracy that thinks we are merely wage slaves and glorified peasants. Instead of using the advancement of technology and exponential increase in production, distribution and wealth creation to empower humanity, these modern neo-feudal lords are pathological in their shortsighted greed.
When you understand the wealth at hand, you begin to recognize the crime against humanity that is afoot. We live in the richest, most technologically advanced society in human history. Yet here we are, in the 21st century, with the highest number of people living in poverty in American history. People can't afford to pay their medical bills. Millions upon millions of American families foreclosed on. An all-time record number of children going hungry, as record-breaking profits and record-breaking bonuses are handed out to the bailed out aristocracy. It's a massive crime against humanity.
We have people walking this earth who crashed the global economy, then profited from it. They are responsible for the impoverishment of tens of millions of people, and for their recklessness, they get bailed out and then have the audacity to not only keep their jobs, but to give themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses, bonuses on the backs of hardworking American taxpayers. Their scandalous and shameful behavior makes the Robber Barons look like Boy Scouts. It's so shortsighted, unstable and unsustainable. Pathological shortsighted greed is humanity’s most severe disease.
To paraphrase Guy DeBord, ‘The economy has declared war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilities for living, but our chances of survival. When an all-powerful economy lost its reason - that's what defines these times.’
We anticipate reactionary, propagandized minds impulsively attempting to dismiss this perspective as a demonization of wealthy people. To be clear, we’re not against wealthy people; just because you have wealth doesn't make you a tyrant. It's the people who crashed the economy and use their money to rig the political system, to rig the legal system, to rig the market, to rig the rules against hardworking Americans. It's all the corrupt crony-capitalists we are calling out. In fact, we don’t blame any single person. It is a systemic problem. It’s our archaic and incredibly outdated system, a system that’s increasingly vulnerable to, and easily rigged by, the forces of shortsighted greed.
We know many people within the economic top one percentile who are using their wealth and resources to improve the human condition in many different ways. We wish more wealthy people would put their money where their mouth is. We’re sure they will soon enough, in the interests of preservation, but just having wealth in no way makes you a tyrant. Again, when you break it down, it is really only one-hundredth of one percent of the population that is doing the damage. And ultimately, it is the political system and mainstream media that allows them to get away with it, that deceives, dumbs down and mentally conditions the population to the point where the overwhelming majority remains unaware of their own power and potential in an incredibly wealthy and technologically advanced society.
Even more shocking than the $46 trillion and the 400 Americans who have as much wealth as 185 million Americans combined, is the fact that a mere 147 tightly knit companies control 40 percent of the global economy. This is obviously a highly unstable, unsustainable and unhealthy situation.
To paraphrase from several quotes by philosopher and social psychologist John Dewey:
‘There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group or class, except in relation to the liberties and effective powers of other individuals, groups or classes.Fortunately, that day is now upon us. A critical mass of humanity is now awake and aware of the obsolete systems that limit our potential.
Liberty signifies release from the impact of particular oppressive forces, emancipation from something once taken as a normal part of human life, but now experienced as bondage. Today, it signifies liberation from the coercions and repressions that prevent people from participation in the vast wealth that is presently at hand.
In relations between people, between capital and labor, in our attitudes toward other members of society, we have now developed a social conscience and awareness, and situations that would have been accepted a generation ago are now understood as an intolerable scandal.
Our current crisis continues only because people refuse to look facts in the face and prefer to feed on illusions produced and circulated by those in power with an excess that contrasts with their withholding the necessities of life. The day that a critical mass of people awake to the realities of the situation, the restoration of freedom will commence.’
If the 400 wealthiest people and the CEOs from the 147 most powerful corporations were not so blinded by shortsighted greed, they would urgently call for a summit to strategize the most efficient and effective way to evolve their destructive behavior and use the immense resources that they are presently in control of to enhance the renaissance that is just beginning.
We are on the right side of history. We are offering an olive branch. We come in peace, respect and love. We’re here to amplify the mass transition into a new age of enlightenment. The Occupy movement was the first awakening wave from a tsunami of transformation that is just beginning to wash over the planet. Each successive wave will be more effective in eradicating humanity’s most severe disease, pathological shortsighted greed.
You shall reap what you sow. Karma.
As a very wise man once said, “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
Just over the horizon shines the first ray of the new rising sun.
Welcome to Renaissance 2.0.
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