Economics

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid

Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

As we accelerate towards whatever disastrous outcome awaits our debt-ridden, delusional, decadent, despairing society, I seem to be drawn to the anti-establishment lyrics of Bob Dylan, written during the turbulent 1960s. Maybe it’s the assassinations and unpopular war in the 60s that have triggered my focus. You certainly don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing today. A gale force wind is blowing the nation towards civil and global war, simultaneously. And it is not a naturally occurring wind, but an artificial storm created by the ruling plutocracy in a last-ditch traitorous effort to retain their wealth, power and control over our lives.

They have kept their evil machinations and malevolent schemes hidden from the view of the masses through their control of mass media, politicians, the financial system, and corporate entities, all doing their bidding in our corporate fascist totalitarian state, disguised as a democratic republic.

After twenty years of schoolin, they have propagandized and indoctrinated generations into believing whatever they are told to believe by their overlords. They have been taught to feel, emote and embrace delusionary falsehoods, rather than think critically, analyze and embrace truthful reality. The question of our time is whether enough people can be awoken from their government induced mass formation stupor to reverse our downward spiral into the abyss.

I believe I’ve known which way the winds have been blowing for the entirety of this Fourth Turning, but my expectations regarding the timing of major events have been inaccurate. My impatience is a result of not having lived through a Fourth Turning and accepting the crisis will last twenty to twenty-five years.

I should be happy the violent, bloody phase of this Fourth Turning has been delayed, as it has given me more time to prepare by acquiring more firearms, ammo, supplies, and precious metals. But a feeling of melancholy engulfs me on a daily basis, knowing there is no exit strategy for avoiding what lies ahead. If anything, the delay in any significant level of violence thus far probably ratchets up the intensity and explosiveness when it does commence, like a pressure cooker ready to explode.

If you don’t sense the impending volatility of our current state of affairs, you are either willfully ignorant, too dumbed down and distracted by your techno-gadgets to notice, or a participant in the machinations to undermine our civilized society and replace it with an authoritarian new world order of CBDCs, social credit scores, censorship, fifteen minute cities, techno-gulags, pervasive surveillance, and eating zee bugs.

The plutocrats have been utilizing their vast wealth and control over politicians, bankers, and media moguls to impose their demented psychopathic vision upon the masses, blatantly trampling upon their rights, liberties and freedoms, with no fear of retribution or consequences for their treasonous acts. They believe they are invincible, as their hubris grows to colossal levels, portending their eventual downfall. We are hurdling towards our rendezvous with destiny, for good or for ill.

The last two books I’ve read have further contributed to my sense of foreboding, as they confirm the historical fact of man’s inhumanity to man, insatiable greed driving those in power, and the willingness of the ruling elite to use violence as a means to achieve whatever outcomes they desire. The two books are Dune, by Frank Herbert, and End Times, by Peter Turchin. Dune is a science fiction novel published in 1965, capturing the corruption and duplicities practiced by the ruling classes as they fight for control over land, resources and wealth, during the waning days of a formerly great empire.

The tone of the novel is dark, ominous and gloomy. The characters seemed resigned to their tragic fate, as melancholy pervades their world, and they are powerless to change the catastrophic events which are unfolding according to an immutable destiny. I have a similar feeling regarding the events unfolding on a daily basis, as we head towards a cataclysmic climax to our empire of debt, domination, delusion, and destruction. As Frank Herbert noted, there is no escape from the choices we have made over time.

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

The non-fiction – End Times – was published in 2023 by Peter Turchin, a complexity scientist studying the dynamics of historical societies, further painting a very bleak picture of our current historical paradigm, with little opportunity to alter the violent upheaval about to engulf our decaying society. Him and his team created a quantitative model that analyzed complex societies across thousands of years and discovered predictable waves of political instability brought about by the same forces in a predictable pattern. Based upon this model, in 2010 Peter went on record predicting major instability in the U.S. in the early 2020s. The basis for his prediction was as follows:

“When a state, such as the United States, has stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt, these seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. In the United States, all of these factors started to turn in an ominous direction in the 1970s. The data pointed to the years around 2020 when the confluence of these trends was expected to trigger a spike in political instability.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

I know many people don’t trust academic created models, especially when they attempt to predict future history and sociological trends. Many dismiss Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning generational theory as voodoo and making history fit into their model. I’ve been convinced since reading the book in 2004 of its validity, and nothing that has occurred since the start of this Fourth Turning in 2008 has convinced me otherwise. Turchin’s model, based on entirely different criteria, essentially predicts violent upheaval, war and societal collapse on the same timeline as the Fourth Turning theory.

In addition, I have been following the daily writings of Martin Armstrong, a non-academic investment manager, for a decade, and his Socrates model also predicts civil war, global war, economic collapse and a turbulent outcome by 2032. In fact, all three models are in alignment regarding the degree of violence, bloodshed and turmoil, with clear winners and losers by the time this crisis period resolves itself. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon as described by Turchin.

“All complex societies go through cycles of alternative stretches of internal peace and harmony periodically interrupted by outbreaks of internal warfare and discord.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

The level of gaslighting, propaganda, misinformation, censorship of the truth, and blatant mistruths being peddled to the masses by the plutocrats pulling the levers of this shitshow has reached epic proportions. This is being perpetrated as a last-ditch desperate effort to maintain the control they have been exercising since the 21st Century commenced. The upcoming election in five weeks has accelerated their efforts to derail Trump’s election at all costs.

Two attempted assassinations by Deep State patsies, after a half dozen failed efforts to imprison Trump, and the ascension of Saint Kackler by the Deep State and controlled regime media using fake polls and trying to duplicate the Biden basement dummy strategy has failed. The vote margin in the swing states appears to be too large for the Democrat cheating schemes of illegal immigrants and dead people voting, mail-in ballot fraud, and Dominion vote switching to overcome. The plutocrats thought they had covered all their bases but are in danger of seeing their best laid plans self-destruct.

“The plutocrats can use their wealth to buy mass media, to fund think tanks, and to handsomely reward those social influencers who promote their messages. In other words, they wield enormous power to sway the electorate toward the opinions that promote their interests. The plutocrats can afford to plan, and implement their plans, for the long term.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

I believe the tapestry of history will be stained by the traitorous machinations of the nefarious Deep State forces controlling Biden, Harris, Congress, and every governmental department in the next five weeks. Spineless Jerome Powell has done as he was told by producing a crisis level interest rate cut when stock and housing markets are at all-time highs and unemployment is near all-time lows. They will stop at nothing to retain rule over our nation, even risking nuclear annihilation in their game of chicken with Putin.

They believe their 3rd assassination attempt will be a charm. We should be vigilant for whatever false flag or new “deadly” pandemic they can activate in the coming weeks. Will it be another FBI created “white supremacist” Trump supporter terrorist attack on people of color? Or will they initiate a false flag in the Middle East with their Israeli co-conspirators to launch the neo-con dream war with Iran? They launched the Covid scamdemic in a matter of weeks, so a new terrifying super virus isn’t out of the question. Anything they can do to interfere with a smooth election will be attempted.

They believe they can’t allow Trump to take office in January 2025. We all know the uni-party does as they are told by the monied interests. The plutocrats don’t spend $4 billion per year “lobbying” politicians for nothing. The election of Trump would not materially change the course of this titanic ship of debt. We’ve already struck the iceberg and are taking on water. Economic catastrophe is a certainty.

Trump may only delay the inevitable. Turchin’s book explains what is really happening out of sight of the masses. Super-elites (Trump, Musk, Carlson versus Obama, Soros, Gates) are battling for supremacy, while the little people are nothing more than pawns in the chess game of world domination as our nation rots from within.

“The social pyramid has grown top-heavy. We now have too many ‘elite aspirants’ competing for a fixed number of positions in the upper echelons of politics and business. In our model, such conditions have a name: elite overproduction. Together with popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and the intra-elite conflicts that it has engendered, has gradually undermined our civic cohesiveness, the sense of national cooperation without which states quickly rot from within.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

Turchin’s model revolves around what he terms an oversupply of super-elites who are created when a country/empire devolves into a plutocracy, where the rich get richer by rigging the system in their favor, while the rest of society sinks into immiseration (impoverishment). Every empire goes through the same cyclical process, which eventually leads to its decline.

Turchin marked the 1970s as when the tide turned heavily in favor of the elites, with the middle and lower classes slowly and steadily sinking into despair, as their standard of living has degraded year after year, while being lured deeper and deeper into debt by the ruling elite who have profited mightily from their indebtedness. The Establishment/Deep State/Plutocracy/Ruling Elite or whatever other term you want to use for the evil psychopaths running the show and telling their Biden and Harris puppets what to say and do, are all part of George Carlin’s Big Club – and you ain’t in it.

“The business and political elites knew each other, went to the same schools, belonged to the same clubs, married into the same families, shared the same values – in reality, formed the phenomenon which has lately been dubbed The Establishment.”– The Triumph of Conservatism – Gabriel Kolko

As the younger generations are enslaved in student loan debt to obtain degrees from left wing universities, controlled by communist academics, older generations are mired in debt from McMansions, $60,000 SUVs, outrageous medical expenses, and plain old grocery bills. For the past forty years, the relative wages of the average American have been in decline, while the wealth of the elites, controlling the mega-corps, too big to fail banks, media conglomerates, and political system, have risen to obscene heights on the backs of the working-class peasants. Life expectancy has been in decline, depression and suicides on the rise, discontent and anger reaching acute levels, and an oversupply of elite aspirants, created by all that newly printed fiat, have created a combustible mixture on the verge of erupting like Mount Saint Helens.

Those who currently benefit from our utterly corrupt plutocracy of psychopaths and deviants, pretend everything is normal and anyone questioning their provably false narratives are dangerous conspiracy theorists who must be censored, silenced and prosecuted for thought-crime. Their arrogance towards the common man and hubris in believing their own bullshit has left them susceptible to the vengeance of those they have scorned, ridiculed, and belittled, while pillaging the wealth of an empire in its death throes.

A feeling of despair leading to a revolutionary vibe is in the air, as sides have been drawn, no compromise is possible, and those 300 million firearms are poised to be put to use. The debased establishment doesn’t think enough people have the gumption and courage to step up and call their bluff. If they are able to steal this election again and install another actual moron in the White House, the country will begin to implode, with chaos, violence and much bloodshed likely.

“Americans today grossly underestimate the fragility of the complex society in which we live. But an important lesson from history is that people living in previous eras similarly didn’t imagine that their societies could suddenly crumble around them. States die in a great variety of ways. Some go out in a bang of violence; others unravel quietly and die with a whimper.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

I tend to lean towards the American empire going out with a bang, rather than a whimper. I’ve referenced this level of normalcy bias and cognitive dissonance among the masses previously with regards to the last two Fourth Turnings. In late 1859 there was virtually no one who foresaw the devastation and death that would engulf the nation in the next five years, with over 600,000 killed and 500,000 wounded. Over 8% of the white male population between the ages of 13 and 43 died in the space of those five years.

In early 1938 very few people expected a global conflagration involving virtually every country on earth to result in the deaths of 65 million people (3% of the global population). We are now at another turning point in human history. When enough critical thinking citizens become convinced there is no hope of fixing their problems through conventional means, like the ballot box, because the system is unfixable and corrupt, violent upheaval will consume the nation, with an unknowable outcome. As Turchin has documented, this societal implosion has occurred on a regular basis across the centuries. The only difference is previous regimes didn’t have the means to destroy the planet with the push of a button.

These periodic societal implosions are entirely the result of plutocratic greed, where the ruling elites feel impelled to rig the financial and political institutions in a way that pumps immense wealth into their pockets, creating a chosen few who see their mega-yachts rising on a tide of Fed created fiat, while the dinghies of the impoverished many sink to the bottom of the sea. This predictable devolution of every empire is what destabilizes their society and leads to discord, violence, and the overthrow of the existing social order.

The “Haves” have so much wealth, so much control over our media, so much unwarranted influence over our political system, so much dominion over our intel agencies and military, and complete domination over central banking, while the “Have Nots” have little chance to succeed or even maintain their standard of living, as their anger towards the “Haves” reaches the boiling point. You can feel it. It will only take one spark to ignite this powder-keg of engineered wealth imbalance to initiate Civil War 2.0.

Turchin’s model predicts a grim future, with an outbreak of serious violence during the 2020s. Based on the current trajectory of our societal disintegration, his model paints a dark, bleak future for the United States, and probably the entire world when the USA does everything in its power to maintain world domination through military means. Based on hundreds of previous empire collapses, Turchin provides this assessment:

“The probability of ruler assassination was 40%. Bad news for the elites. Even more bad news for everybody was that 75% of the crises ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in one-fifth of cases, recurrent civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. 60% of exits led to the death of the state – it was conquered by another or simply disintegrated into fragments. The overall conclusion is grim. In most cases, several disasters combined, and some societies experienced really severe outcomes – End Times – Peter Turchin

Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning theory predicts war and bloodshed on a grand scale in the second half of this crisis period (2024 – 2032). Turchin’s model predicts the same. Martin Armstrong’s Socrates model also predicts the same. I find it interesting that Neil Howe and Peter Turchin, both academics, choose to disregard the unequivocal outcome of their models and pretend a positive outcome is a possibility. Hope is not a strategy, and denying the reality before our very eyes, benefits no one except those in power.

Armstrong, an investment manager, shows no inclination to not trust his model. He expects civil and global war, while predicting this will be the last presidential election in U.S. history. What will happen between now and November 5, to ignite the next bloody phase of this crisis? Will they shoot Trump’s plane out of the sky? Will they blatantly cheat on election day through fake mail-in ballots and Dominion vote switching, installing kackling Kamala as their puppet? Will they provoke Russia and/or Iran into launching World War 3? We know for sure these societal storms will only intensify until a climax is attained, with distinct winners and losers.

It has been a slow train coming, but it is picking up speed as we enter the final stages of this journey. The Deep State has had control for too long and their time has come. They have disregarded and torn the U.S. Constitution to shreds. We are no longer bound by their illegal laws, regulations and rules. They don’t apply no more. We’ve been standing around and waiting for someone else to do the dirty work.

The Founders, like Jefferson, risked their very lives to give us this country. It is time to make a brave and courageous stand against the forces of evil and take this country back from the super-elite fools glorifying their traitorous deeds in the name of Satan. The slow train of justice is coming around the bend, and anyone who cares about the future of this Republic needs to hop on. The times that try men’s souls have arrived. The choices we make will matter.

Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’
In the home of the brave, Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Slow Train Coming – Bob Dylan

Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

As many a Gen Xer will do these days, I dusted off an old compact disc: REM’s album Murmur, which was released in 1983. As I listened to the first track, “Radio Free Europe,” I looked at the CD’s cover. It was an eerie photo of thick vegetation.

As I later learned, when the REM album was released, this plant was well on its way to enveloping large swaths of the southeastern United States, including Georgia (which was REM’s original base). The name of the all-consuming plant? Kudzu (Pueraria montana).

Immediately, I thought of the left’s “Green Economy.” Bear with me.

Per a 2019 article in The Nature Conservancy entitled “Kudzu: The Invasive Vine that Ate the South”: “Kudzu looks innocent enough yet the invasive plant easily overtakes trees, abandoned homes and telephone poles.”

Kudzu is an invasive species. “Kudzu—or kuzu (クズ) – is native to Japan and southeast China. It was first introduced to the United States during the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 where it was touted as a great ornamental plant for its sweet-smelling blooms and sturdy vines.”

The invasive plant’s other ominous nickname is “mile-a-minute,” for its spread of up to “one foot per day.” This makes Kudzu’s spread as lightning quick as it is lethal to indigenous vegetation:

“[Kudzu] outcompetes everything from native grasses to fully mature trees… This loss of native plants harms other plants, insects and animals that adapted alongside them, leading to cascading effects throughout an ecosystem. Over time, these effects of habitat loss can lead to species extinctions and a loss of overall biodiversity.”

So, are we to blame posh 19th-century Americans’ vanity for the introduction of and devastation by Kudzu? The introduction, perhaps. But, like sundry other 21st-century problems, we can point to the 20th Century’s titans of science and the federal government for the vast extent of the devastation. As the Nature Conservancy concedes:

“From the 1930s through the 1950s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted it as a great tool for soil erosion control and was planted in abundance throughout the south. Little did we know that kudzu is quite a killer, overtaking and growing over anything in its path.” [Italics mine.]

Note the article’s use of “we,” to mute the culpability of the government and scientific community at the time. Some things never change, right Dr. Fauci? Nor does the present scientific community’s effort to without the slightest trace of humility or irony push their remunerative climate change narrative—and the more apocalyptic the narrative the better:

“Kudzu thrives in areas with mild winters and hot summers. Climate change may be making it easier for creeping vine to spread, as winters in many areas of the U.S. become milder. Climate change also can lead to more regional drought, an opportunity for this versatile killer.” [Italics mine.]

The weasel words “may” and “can” have been italicized, rather than, say, the words “does” or “will.” Why? It is an attempt to insulate subsequent speculative statements from having to be demonstrably factual—you know, like real science expects (or used to, anyway). This is the tell in apocalyptic climate change rhetoric.

Here is an easy way to remember the climate change cult’s rhetorical conceit: “If I could be any plant in the forest, I would be Kudzu.” Yet, there are no “ifs,” “ands,” nor “buts” about it. You cannot be any plant in the forest; thus, you are not now and can never be a Kudzu. (Don’t shoot the messenger.) Still, such is advice for those who have not been indoctrinated to blindly “trust the science” and the expertise of the governing elite.

Is there any hope of eradicating Kudzu? It is possible, though the size of the “patch” is determinative of how best to do so. “Newer, smaller patches can be controlled with persistent weeding,” as well as through persistent mowing and grazing (by cattle and goats, not people)” will weaken and eventually control the plant.” Bigger patches require cutting the invasive vine and treating it with herbicides. Oh, and here is the most comprehensive remedy 21st-century science provides: “The best way to deal with kudzu or other invasive plants is to prevent them from spreading.”

You don’t say?

On the subject of things best not to spread, ponder the latest collusion between the environmental and political science communities: the Democrats’ Kudzu Economy (a.k.a., the “Green economy”).

Their Kudzu economy perversely denigrates increasing prosperity and promotes scarcity in the name of collective virtue. Reducing energy and product production, spurring inflation, and curtailing employment opportunities and the American Dream, itself, the Democrats’ Kudzu economy seeks to insulate its proven failures behind a veneer of collective “purpose.” Trillion-dollar spending bills combined with executive and administrative diktats are designed to curtail and, in many instances, eliminate consumer choices and smother the entrepreneurial spirit and productive capacity of the American people. Further, Democrats and their cohorts in radical climate change organizations seek to have an omnipotent federal government, as well as state and local governments, substitute their arbitrary and capricious decisions and preferences for those of the sovereign people it purports to—and is supposed to—serve.

Rarely right but never in doubt, this elitist gaggle of climate alarmists, leftist politicians, collusion media, anti-competitive corporatists, and sundry know-it-all billionaires bent upon introducing and spreading within the most prosperous economy in human history their own version of an invasive socialist ideology that will smother and destroy everything in its path.

Imbued with neo-pagan earth worship, including dire prophecies of an apocalypse if its dictates are not obeyed, at its invasive root the Democrats’ Kudzu economy is simply more hoary socialism in earth shoes: another duplicitous attempt to impose a demonstrably failed, inhumane ideology upon an unfortunate populace.

Unlike their 20th-century predecessors in the Soil Conservation Service who acted and erred with inaccurate information but with the best of intentions to improve the lives of Americans, the proponents of the Democrats’ Kudzu economy should know better; however, they have allowed ideology and greed to desensitize them to the consequences of their actions upon their fellow citizens. For the rest of us, the Kudzu economy may be “The End of the World As We Know It,” but its elitist proponents feel fine.

Well, for now, anyway. Kudzu advance is not limited to the largely “red,” southeastern states. It has been increasingly found in “blue” northern climes, including the states of Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, and Delaware. Should a landscaping crew happen upon the invasive vine on a tony estate on Martha’s Vineyard or any of the other retreats of the insulated elites, perhaps the Democrats will learn a painful lesson that blind faith in fallible science has unforeseen and unfortunate consequences. Heck, maybe that could then spur a further self-examination of their radical ideology and, thus, a reconsideration of their zealous promotion of their Kudzu economy.

Is this too much to expect? Probably. But where there is life, there is hope; and, however deep the darkness enveloping it, a thin reed of truth will out to the light.

American tech workers, along with lawyers and accountants, have some of the lowest rates of union membership in the country.

But in the last few years of ballooning layoffs, sentiments may be changing.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, shows the percentage of U.S. tech employees that would join a union if their company had access to one.

Data is sourced from Blind, which conducted an online survey of 1,901 verified tech professionals.

Which Tech Company Employees Are Likely to Join a Union?

Amongst the companies, union support appears to be highest at Intuit (financial software), General Motors, and Oracle (enterprise software).

On the other hand, Tesla, DocuSign, and Google employees have the least desire to join a union.

As it happens, over a thousand workers in North America already belong to the Alphabet Workers Union, which represents employees at Google and other subsidiaries like Waymo.

Meanwhile, Tesla has been involved in several controversies regarding unions. For example, in May 2024, a U.S. labor agency accused by Tesla of discouraging workers from creating a union at its Buffalo, NY plant.

However, on average 67% of those polled in the Blind survey said they were likely to join a union and 73% said that unions “mostly helped.”

When Blind asked tech workers why the industry’s union membership rate is so low compared to other jobs, the general sentiment indicated that tech employees are already well compensated for their jobs, without needing collective bargaining.

The tech sector might be poised for an upswing after Federal Reserve’s first big rate cut. Check out How Sectors Perform After Rate Cuts to see where else gains are made.