Why the Next American Revolution is Coming… By Jeff D. Opdyke, Editor of The Sovereign Individual Dear George, Nothing is quite as fragile as a false sense of stability… and as Americans, we are nothing if not overly confident about the stability of our lives here at home. Yet around the globe, many a nation finds itself in an uproar today or has suffered public discontent in recent months – Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, France, Britain, China, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania … among others. Some, like Syria, are in all-out revolt, as bullets fly, blood spills and bodies are buried. In every instance, the cause is anger directed at government and a sense of panic among the people that their stable lives – even lives of relative stability – hang in the balance, as changes of various sorts wash over the population. For us, such turmoil seems far removed from our peaceful soil. We forget that meaningful revolution is in our past. And few pay attention to the probability that meaningful revolution is in our future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement Obama won’t be happy about this We just put the final touches on a short video that could cause quite a stir. You see, at a private gathering this October, we’re going to show 400 freedom-loving Americans how to shield their wealth from Obama’s iron-fisted policies and LEGALLY escape Uncle Sam’s tax-happy grasp. Considering the IRS is in bed with Obama and robbing us blind with every new kind of tax you can imagine, they may not like it when we start teaching these unique strategies on U.S. soil for the first time ever. To watch this 2 minute video before we’re forced to take it down, click here now. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- People don’t revolt just because times are bad. Bad times have written perilous chapters in the history of every economy … yet, revolution is comparatively rare. No, people revolt when times seem hopeless, when populations feel so cheated by government’s actions or inactions that the risk of losing everything for standing against authority seems but a minor concession. We have not breached hopelessness in America – not yet. But many of us do feel cheated, and increasingly so. The governments we have elected over the past two decades have done more to divide our country, to rob us of our patrimony, to usurp our liberties and freedoms and to encourage a level of dependence among the people than any previous American governments in power. Today, we find ourselves in precarious circumstances in our country, though like the ostrich, most of us – including far, far too many in D.C. – have our heads in the sand. We have accumulated a level of debt that is double the world’s entire GDP, and we have no hope – ever – of repaying that sum. One out of every six Americans now lives in poverty. That’s higher than in the 1960s, when LBJ launched his famous (if not failed) War on Poverty. Half of our country, according to the Census Bureau, is either “poor” or “low income” – a sad irony in a country that trumpets the abundance of wealth and opportunity that theoretically exists from sea to shining sea. One-third of the nation is enrolled in at least one of the country’s welfare programs (and that doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare). Our educational system – focused so archaically on rote memorization, teaching questionably useful standardized tests and protecting ill-qualified but unionized teachers – barely squeaks into the top 20, globally. Even those, though, are not the flashpoints of revolution. They are symptoms of multiple and systemic cancers metastasizing across the economy, with government as the incubator. The Flashpoints of Revolution Here at Home We have systemic joblessness in America. Though the Obama administration crows about job creation, in the more than three years since the Great Recession’s end, we have yet to recoup the nearly nine million jobs lost between 2007 and 2009. Many will never come back because technology has made them redundant. And those that are returning highlight one of the reasons revolutions arise: economic desperation. During the Great Recession, 60% of the job losses occurred in the middle-income ranks. Yet, 60% of the jobs that have returned have come in the low-income ranks. Worse, the labor participation rate of America’s youth – those aged 16 to 24 – is at its lowest level since, at least, the 1970s. Obama’s America, thus, is breeding economic desperation as middle-income families struggle to reclaim a lifestyle they once knew and as easily agitated youth with little to lose find that America has too few jobs for them. That is a flashpoint. So, too, is the systemic and expanding welfare mentality that has infected our government and too many of our people. D.C. now operates roughly 185 means-tested welfare programs, funded by both federal and state taxes. Projections for 2013 show that all those programs combined will cost Americans nearly $1 trillion, equal to 26% of Washington’s spending plans – and that’s before accounting for ObamaCare’s massive costs. By some estimates, America now spends nearly $17,000 each year, per person in poverty. That’s four times the amount the Census Bureau estimates is necessary to lift ever poor Americans out of poverty. Politicians and journalists conveniently ignore the size of the welfare spending that is already happening in our country and, instead, aim to shame Americans into accepting an ever-more expansive, ever-more expensive welfare system as they try to goad our country toward a more-socialist model. As taxpayers, however, we can only dig so deep. States, which are responsible for roughly a quarter of the annual welfare tab, can only tax their citizens so much before each state’s federal welfare-spending requirements drastically impinge on the ability of local lawmakers to fund local services. As welfare programs expand in coming years – and as ObamaCare imposes costs on the system that taxpayers must fund – economic desperation will root broadly. Those funding the taxes will – rightly – revolt against a system that consumes too much of their pay … and those receiving the benefits will counter-revolt to protect the stability of their unearned lifestyle. Modern American: Rife with Simmering Discord Let me be clear … I am not calling for revolution in America. No one would. As Chairman Mao once quipped: “A revolution is not a dinner party … [it] is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” Yet, our path to revolution – or, at least, the flashpoints that historically have fomented history’s most-significant revolutions – seems crystalline. People will say, I am certain, that revolution cannot happen in modern America. But modern America is rife with simmering discord. Some of it boiled over in the Occupy Movement, some in the bitter struggle over egregious unionism in Wisconsin and some in the Tea Party’s rise to influence – movements that span political ideologies. As Americans, we like to think of ourselves as “exceptional.” But save for a historically brief period between 1941 and 1999 – the beginning of our finest hour as a nation, and the beginning of the end of our economic power – we are not. We are susceptible to the same emotions roiling governments the world over – and the flashpoints of discontent are clearly visible here at home. Our revolution is coming. Until next time, stay Sovereign …
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 22:57:55 +0000
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