Those in the top one percent of the top one percent are pretty much able to do whatever they want, and the rest of us are pretty much powerless to stop them.  Unfortunately, the gap between the ultra-wealthy elite and the rest of us just continues to get even larger.

Last year, the total wealth of the world’s millionaires reached a staggering 86.8 trillion dollars…

The world has never had so many rich people and their investments in soaring stock markets have made them wealthier than ever recorded, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The number of “high net worth individuals” (HNWI) — defined as people with liquid assets of at least $1 million — rose by 5.1 percent last year to 22.8 million, according to consulting firm Capgemini.

Their total wealth reached $86.8 trillion in 2023, a 4.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the annual World Wealth Report.

Meanwhile, 5 billion people have gotten poorer since the start of the pandemic…

Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost 5 billion people globally have become poorer.

How much power do the hundreds of millions of people around the world that are living on less than two dollars a day have compared to the billionaires in the western world that are constantly making headlines?

The truth is that they run the world and the rest of us are just living in it.

Here in the United States, the colossal gap between CEO pay and worker pay got even larger last year…

Bosses have always made more money than workers. But the gap between CEOs and employees is growing.

The median CEO in the S&P 500 was paid 196 times as much as the median employee in 2023, according to an analysis by Equilar and The Associated Press.

That’s up from a ratio of 185 in 2022.

It would be a good thing if the rich were getting richer as long as everyone else was getting richer as well.

But instead, poverty is literally exploding all around us.

In 2020, there were approximately 140 homeless camps in Oakland, California.

Since that time, the city has closed 537 homeless camps, but there are still approximately 1,500 remaining all over the city…

Oakland officials passed a policy in 2020 to regulate homeless encampments when there were about 140 camps. The policy was created to prohibit encampments in specific areas of the city, including proximity to businesses, schools, playgrounds, traffic lanes, bike paths, housing and playgrounds.

Any encampments in those prohibited areas were supposed to be vacated, with the city offering shelter before evacuating the camp.

Since then, the city has closed 537 homeless camps with approximately 1,500 remaining, according to a city report.

I feel so bad for the law-abiding citizens that still live in Oakland. Conditions have become so precarious that one construction company actually “refused to finish its pothole paving job because it got ‘too dangerous’ for its workers”…

Frustrated Oakland residents are in the hole after a construction crew quit and refused to finish its pothole paving job because it got ‘too dangerous’ for its workers – as other businesses flee the Bay Area over the same concerns.

Residents in the Sobrante Park area in East Oakland said they weren’t even notified after the third-party general contractor decided to abandon the project before repaving the streets, leaving large potholes and dangerous loose gravel all over the neighborhood since mid-May.

If you still have a nice home and plenty of money, good for you. But you should understand that you are solidly in the minority at this point.

Of course our politicians care far more about the economic health of the elite than anyone else, because it is the elite that fund their campaigns. So even though just about all the rest of us have seen our standard of living go way down, in recent years there has been an all-out effort to prop up the stock market because that is where the elite have much of their wealth.

Today, the wealthiest 10 percent of all Americans own 93 percent of all the stocks. And the poorest 50 percent of all Americans own just 1 percent of all the stocks.

The stock market wealth that the entire bottom half of the country controls is basically just a rounding error compared to the enormous holdings of the elite. Unfortunately for the elite, it appears that trouble may be brewing for the financial markets…

The US stock market is shrinking, and investors are pulling their money out at a near-record pace as storm clouds gather over the US economy.

That means the titans of Wall Street may have to contend with choppy water as they cruise toward their Nantucket getaways this year.

In fact, Bank of America says that their customers have been pulling large amounts of money out of stocks for five consecutive weeks…

Bank of America analysts said on Tuesday that their clients have now been large net sellers of US stocks for five weeks in a row. Just last week, they sold off $5.7 billion more in stocks than they purchased, the highest outflow since last July.

Bank of America recorded the second largest sell-off of tech stocks in their history last week. And while one week does not a trend make, it does stand in stark contrast with the Magnificent Seven fervor that ensnared Wall Street mere months ago.

Whether it happens sooner or later, it is inevitable that America’s financial idols will come crashing down at some point.

But for most of the country, it feels like the economy has already crashed.

Our cost of living crisis has become exceedingly painful, our entire society is drowning in debt, and poverty and homelessness are exploding all around us.

Just about the only people that are still doing really well are those that are at the very top of the food chain.

When you hear that “the economy is booming”, those are the people they are talking about.

But just like all the rest of us, the elite will not be able to escape the period of tremendous global chaos that is ahead of us.

Like I said, money can buy you just about anything, but it cannot purchase a free pass from the day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

A majority of Americans are worried about rising inflation, but the federal government continues to print and spend money and issue costly regulations.  A majority of Americans oppose widespread government surveillance programs that intrude upon their privacy, but elected officials continue to give the Intelligence Blob full access to Americans’ most sensitive records and communications, in total disregard for the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches.  A majority of Americans distrust mainstream news sources, but prominent news organizations continue to push ideological propaganda at the expense of truthful and objective reporting.

These are just a few of the many ways in which America’s most powerful institutions fail to faithfully represent or protect the American people.  As the disconnect between the governing and the governed continues to grow, the dishonest state of our Union will become undeniable: an insular cabal of financial, corporate, political, and bureaucratic “elites” hold 99% of the American people hostage.  When Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell speak about protecting “democracy,” what they want to preserve is an outrageously unbalanced system in which a few control everything and most control nothing.

That’s a little like a Jenga tower of blocks, in which all the weight at the top sits perilously upon a couple of crooked supports.  Eventually, such an uneven structure will collapse.

Most of us already feel America’s Jenga tower wobbling.  The federal government feels it, too.  That’s why it spends so much time censoring Americans’ speech, spying on their conversations, and abusing the criminal “justice” system to batter perceived political enemies.  As with all budding totalitarian regimes that have risen in the past, the U.S. government has abandoned persuasive argument for intimidation and coercion.  It is an ugly factory that produces nothing but nagging regulations.

It is a second-rate club that protects D.C.’s privileged VIPs and shoves the rest of America behind a cheap velvet rope.  It is an ear-splitting bullhorn that endlessly screeches, “Do exactly what we say!”  And the more it nags and shoves and screeches, the more America’s Jenga tower wobbles.

Mirroring the Soviet system that collapsed thirty years ago, the U.S. government mistakenly believes that it can maintain control by exerting tremendous pressure on all of society’s constituent blocs.  It spies on Christian churches.  It threatens parents who refuse to let the State program their children in Marxist indoctrination plants posing as schools.  It punishes businesses that refuse to engage in pronoun games and other renditions of “transgender” madness.

It discriminates against white people (especially white men) who prioritize individual liberty over political correctness.  It micromanages every market transaction by regulating the supplies and costs of available energies.  It churns out countless new laws, rules, and regulations that are too byzantine for citizens and businesses to understand.  In other words, the U.S. government has replicated the Soviet system’s blueprint for making every citizen a criminal beholden to the mercies of the State.

This kind of top-heavy society is the exact opposite of America as founded.  Thinking again in terms of Jenga blocks, the Founding Fathers attempted to protect the United States from becoming another one of history’s wobbly towers by constructing a system that distributes power in the shape of a pyramid.  At the bottom of this pyramid is the individual, who is meant to retain the lion’s share of power over the direction of his life.  The individual citizen is the foundation of an American enterprise that treasures liberty.  Free speech, gun ownership, due process, and guarantees that the government cannot invade a citizen’s home on a whim all aid the individual in preserving this base of power.

Above the citizen’s foundation in the pyramid of power lie local and state governments, which are formed when citizens hand over a small portion of their freedom in return for dispassionate enforcement of agreed-upon laws and security from outside threats.

At the top is the national government, whose power does not materialize out of thin air, but rather arises from powers originating with the people and the individual states.  By and with their continued consent, individual Americans and state governments lend the federal government discrete powers that are both limited in scope and explicitly itemized within the Constitution.  In this way, the federal government exercises delegated authority over the smallest portion of an individual’s life.

Though Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court jointly occupy the apex of the pyramid, the scope of their legitimate jurisdiction is tiny compared to the broad foundation of power possessed by each American citizen.

This pyramid of power distribution is what made America’s founding historically “exceptional.”  Aside from a handful of tribal cultures and ancient city-states, never had political power been defined so explicitly as originating with the people.  This idea was incompatible with European monarchical systems that traced all authority from the absolute power of kings and queens.  As such, the American system did not just begin from a state of revolution; it advanced a notion of the State that was truly revolutionary!

By recognizing the people as the legitimate custodians of all political power, the Founding Fathers hoped to provide firm foundations for a limited but stable American government to persevere over time.  Just as the pyramid is a remarkably stable geometric shape, a pyramidal distribution of power prevents any temporary government official from toppling over the whole system.  A pyramid survives calamitous storms, while a Jenga tower collapses from a sneeze.

What do we have in America today?  Well, we clearly have a Jenga tower once again.  Congress passes laws (such as Obamacare’s national takeover of private health care) that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.  The president barks executive orders that punish Americans for their religious beliefs or political speech.  The Supreme Court regularly rewrites the Constitution to provide the federal government with new and more pernicious authorities absent the consent of the American people or the individual states.

A vast regulatory bureaucracy makes and enforces rules that affect every aspect of a person’s life and property.  The Intelligence Blob and Cheka FBI spend their time and resources crushing any American who opposes these unconstitutional usurpations.  Decades of public school education have brainwashed too many Americans into believing that free expression is dangerous and that government agents should be empowered to “seek and destroy” any utterance that might be amorphously branded as “hate.”  And because free speech expands the area of operations for all other freedoms, the U.S. government’s targeting of political speech as unapproved “disinformation” broadly threatens human liberty.

We still have a pyramid of sorts, but it has been inverted.  Unaccountable spy agencies, central banks, and multinational corporations possess expansive, unchecked powers at the top.  That power trickles down to administrative agencies, federal police forces, courts, White House officials, and members of Congress.  The federal government treats the states as vassals obliged to do its bidding.  And at the very bottom is the lone citizen who is expected to obey.  Because the Bill of Rights is an easy-to-understand operations manual for a functioning American power pyramid, that pesky document has been buried six feet underground.

You would think that those who play Jenga with Americans’ lives would have learned something from the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Soviet Union: with the weight of so much power on top, the whole tower will inevitably crash.

Also common under socialist/communist rule is religious persecution, as we see happening to Christians in America now, as the new cancel culture and perverted “woke” mentality tries to erase all family values, ethics, morals, and belief in God.

“Enemies of the state” are all US citizens who oppose the communist narratives and Godless counterculture

Anyone who criticizes, challenges, or opposes the CCP-led regime in Washington DC is considered an enemy of the state, a domestic terrorist, and a white supremacist MAGA extremist. Did you vote for Trump? You must be a domestic terrorist who hates all immigrants, according to the lunatic Democrats inside the DC beltway. This is all part of a plan to replace the middle class in America with illegal immigrants, who will replace the work force, rely 100 percent on the government for support, and vote for more free stuff offered by the Democrats, forever insuring a one-party system that rules by dictatorship.

The pandemic has ushered in a tsunami of health catastrophes like nothing ever seen before in this country. The vaccine holocaust has not only taken countless lives, but has wrecked the health of even more. The plandemic helped the current fake president and his cabal take over Washington DC, ushering in a new era of injustice, where the FBI, DOJ, and CDC are the ultimate criminals, looking to wipe out all opposition, for good.

If you are a patriot who owns land and guns, you are the ultimate enemy of the communist party – the Democrats. That means you have power and wealth, which “belongs” to them.

If you run your own business, you are now an enemy of the state, because you do not rely on the government for handouts, funding, paychecks, food, or healthcare (most likely). That is why all of mainstream media and social media try to shut down, censor, and bankrupt all independent businesses, because they are competition for the ruling class.

If you do not support transgenderism and grooming children for perverted lifestyles, then you are also an enemy of the state, because the ruling class believes they OWN your children, just as they believe they own you, your land, your business, and what’s left of your medical rights.

The Democrats in DC are part of a child trafficking syndicate that even the Wall Street Journal has recently documented, called Pizza Gate. This is one key reason the Biden Regime keeps the US borders wide open to illegal immigration; because it makes it easier to kidnap children and turn them into slaves, prostitutes, and tranny gimps. The FBI works under this corruption umbrella and that is why they will not prosecute the Democrats for these atrocities.

It is also why during and after every mass shooting, the Democrats talk about gun control; because as long as millions of law-abiding citizens have guns, the communists can’t take over. That is why the peaceful protesters from January 6th are held illegally in prison and abused, as a deterrent for anyone else who challenges the DC cabal of freaks and perverts. Remember, socialism is just the introduction to communism. It’s just like a foreword in a book. The real end game is to eliminate the middle class in America by killing us, starving us, taking our guns, seizing our property, kidnapping our children, and setting fire to the constitution once and for all.

Stand up and be heard. Fight for your inherent rights as a US patriot and citizen. Protect your home, land, guns, and children. Eat local and organic food. Use natural remedies and natural medicine. We must put an end to the tyranny that disguises itself as government, for the government officials are the TRUE domestic terrorists who are all drunk with power. Tune your food news frequency to FoodSupply.news and get updates on more toxic foods and food shortages coming to stores near you.

Sources for this article include:

• NaturalNews.com
• TheGatewayPundit.com
• NATURAL NEWS

Areas like Texas, the Great Lakes region, New England, and North Carolina, are in the highest risk category, according to a report from the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC).

In the same analysis, the agency concluded that a “large portion” of the U.S. power grid is at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions.

Though climate change advocates claim severe weather events are the primary culprit, energy insiders say tight fuel supplies and an outdated electric grid play a critical role in potential blackouts.

Conservative estimates this year put the cost of critical power grid and infrastructure upgrades at $4 trillion with the use of supplemental nuclear power. Without nuclear energy, the price tag bumps up another $500 million dollars.

The administration of President Joe Biden approved a $13 billion stopgap measure to “modernize and expand” the power grid on Nov. 18. However, members of the energy community say it will take months or years for U.S. residents to see the difference.

Falling Behind

“There is a significant gap to upgrade aging grid infrastructure to meet net zero mandates and maintain reliability, and we are running out of time,” analyst Kim Getgen told The Epoch Times.

Getgen is the CEO and founder of Innovation Force, which tackles complex issues like America’s energy crisis. She says Biden’s infrastructure investment is a good start, but it’s exactly that, just a start.

“Upgrading aging infrastructure, system hardening, and resilience measures while complying with the evolving set of new cyber and physical security threats will require even more investment,” Getgen assessed.

She added that the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2021 Infrastructure Report Card gave the U.S. power grid a C- grade.

Getgen maintains a greater level of investment is needed, saying, “we can’t maintain the millions of miles of distribution and transmission lines that deliver the power, and we can’t harness the potential of renewable clean power.”

And though upgrades are crucial, some energy specialists say the U.S. electrical grid won’t become efficient overnight. Or even by next winter.

“It’s important to remember that something as complex as the electricity grid takes time to change,” director of energy studies at the University of Florida, Ted Kury, told The Epoch Times.

Working in the university’s Public Utility Research Center, Kury says the regulatory process for new utility projects moves slowly, no matter how much money is thrown at it.

“It’s a process with numerous safeguards, but that also means it takes more time. It’s reasonable to think that we’ll start seeing impacts in the next few years,” he explained.

Senior consultant in risk management at Customized Energy Solutions, Eric Hendrick, agreed with Kury’s assessment.

“Given the politics involved in any legislation, it’ll take some time before any of these funds trickle down to the states that need the funds,” Hendrick told The Epoch Times.

During a press statement, the director of reliability assessment for NERC, John Moura, explained there are “more areas at risk” of blackouts this winter amid power generation and fuel supply challenges.

The U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, also noted in a November brief that 70 percent of the nation’s power grid is more than 25 years old.

Grid upgrades aside, strained natural gas and coal supplies are also, quite literally, fueling higher power outage risks.

Fuel Factor

Not only are millions of Americans facing a greater risk of losing power this winter, they’ll also be paying higher energy bills.

Homes that run on natural gas can expect to pay 28 percent more. For those using heating oil, a 27 percent price spike is expected, and a 10 percent increase is likely for households that rely on electricity alone for heat.

This is due to a combination of higher market prices and demand, according to an Energy Information Administration analysis.

And with the continued push toward Biden’s net zero energy goals, an additional 11,778 megawatts of coal generation was retired in 2022. Meanwhile, the demand burden has shifted heavily onto natural gas, which is already suffering supply issues.

“This problem will be difficult to address in the short term … keep in mind gas storage is currently 89 BCF below last year’s level and 86 BCF below the
five-year average,” Hendrick said.

He added that low levels of natural gas storage and a lack of transportation infrastructure in the northeastern United States would likely create “volatile scenarios” with just 10 to 12 days of colder than normal weather.

Nevertheless, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission predicts a 24 percent increase in net natural gas exports for the 2022-2023 withdrawal season.

And then there’s the coal conundrum. With fewer generating facilities and sporadic supply chain disruptions in 2022, NERC asserts that coal has “limited stocks and resupply uncertainty” this winter.

Kury says 2021 saw a spike in coal consumption for electrical power. This year has seen an overall decrease in demand, but it doesn’t shore up with diminished reserves.

“It’s still impacting coal stockpiles at power plants,” Kury said.

“When you also consider that coal is delivered by rail, and rail transportation has been impacted by labor disputes, it reinforces the need to get more fuel to power plants.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Utility companies are already bracing for impact as they all seem to just know that energy usage will reach an all-time high in the coming months, leaving millions without power in the dead of the summer heat.

The powers that be say that it is warmer than usual in some parts of the country, which they are already blaming for future blackouts. (Related: Rolling blackouts are expected to sweep the entire country this year.)

“Federal agencies responsible for power reliability, like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), have warned that grids in the western half of the country could face reliability issues this summer as consumers crank up air conditioners to escape the heat,” claims a report from Refinitiv data.

As energy equipment breaks down over the summer, power companies say they probably will not have the spare parts or other resources necessary to fix it fast enough to keep the power on – supposedly because of the heat.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which mismanaged the infamous Texas blackouts of early 2021, says it is already asking customers to cut back on their energy use and turn up their air conditioning units after six power plants shut down back in May during an alleged heatwave.

How do they know for sure that nationwide blackouts are coming?

Another event in Ohio that was blamed on a “storm” left some 200,000 homes and businesses without power. The grid operator there said it had to intentionally shut down power in some areas to prevent remaining lines from becoming overloaded.

There sure are a lot of this mysterious incidents happening at once, almost as if someone is testing the grid to see how easy it is to knock out at a later date, which they already appear to be planning for in advance.

They already introduced us to the “Great Reset” followed by “Reset the Table.” Is this the part where they reset the energy supply and force everyone into darkness as part of some bizarre initiation into the New World Order?

Or, it could just be that America’s energy system is now so overloaded and mismanaged, coupled with a forced transition into “green” energy, that the systems currently in existence are simply unable to handle the load whenever it gets a little bit hot or rains.

According to Ralph Izzo, head of the New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), energy utilities are having to be frugal with their replacement parts inventories in order to avoid running out in the event of a weather emergency – or even just a few consecutive days of heavy heat.

“You don’t want to deplete your inventory because you don’t know when that storm is coming, but you know it’s coming … If we have successive days of 100-degree-heat, those pole top transformers, they start popping like Rice Krispies, and we would not have the supply stack to replace them,” he is quoted as saying.

Nick Akins, head of the Ohio-based grid operator AEP, added that many utility operators are changing their maintenance habits as well.

“We’re doing a lot more splicing, putting cables together, instead of laying new cable because we’re trying to maintain our new cable for inventory when we need it,” Akins says.

In the comment section at RT, one person was quick to point out that perhaps the United States should stop sending billions of dollars to Ukraine and instead “fix the country.”

“But no profit is as good as war,” this person added.

The latest news about the energy situation in America can be found at PowerGrid.news.

Sources for this article include:

• RT.com
• NaturalNews.com
• NATURAL NEWS
• Image by Dan Nguyen via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0