2021.1204.0009...

America is a failed state...

Billionaires Made America a Poor Country

I came across an amazingly disturbing number today. Some numbers are more than numbers — they tell stories, that cut across time, and hold the destinies of nations in their hands. This is one of them. This one, in particular, explains how America became a failed state.

This particular number is easy to understand. It goes like this. America’s billionaires now hold so much wealth that it’s now more than 20% of GDP. Let me put that to you more formally, and then I’ll tell you the story of why this number matters so much: America has about 700 billionaires, and collectively, they control about $5 trillion.

Those are just numbers, though. The story they tell is what matters — and it’s a grim, bizarre one of how a nation, even one as rich and powerful as America, can fall into poverty and ruin, and become a failed state.

Why does crossing the line of 20% of GDP matter so much? Well, 20% of GDP is also how much America puts toward public investment. It’s roughly the amount Americans invest in things like healthcare, retirement, schools, education, childcare — all of it.

Billionaires now have more wealth than America invests in itself, collectively.

(The paragraphs above and the paragraphs below are from the beginning and the ending of the article. The memes are my addition.)

The numbers I’ve discussed with you are almost iron-clad determinants that American fascism will only continue to surge and grow in fanaticism, fury, resentment, grievance, and rage. Because the central problem in society hasn’t yet been solved — there’s too much wealth in too few hands, and that leaves too little for everyone else, and so of course the working class will feel betrayed and abandoned, and turn to scapegoats to take revenge on.

What does too much wealth in too few hands mean, by the way? 700 Americans effectively control more wealth than the other 330 and million or so can invest in each other put together. That, my friends, is the surest, starkest indicator of social collapse there’s ever been. It’s what it means to be a failed state — by way of fascism, every flavour of it, from violence, to brutality, to hate, to theocracy, to coups.

America’s a failed state because it’s grand experiment failed — making a tiny, minuscule number of people ultra rich didn’t make everyone else better off. It made them worse off. So much so that about half of them turned to outright fascism as a result — and they’re hardening, every day, in their commitment to violence, revenge, and hate. That’s America’s real problem. The numbers don’t lie, and some numbers do more than reveal the truth — they tell stories, great and grand ones, which cut through history like a knife. This story? It’s a tragedy, of how a society’s dying.