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Photo from Fire Brigades Union, Firefighter Magazine<\/h5>\n<\/p>\n
Photo from Fire Brigades Union, Firefighter Magazine<\/h5>\nBy Michael Talmo | THE REAL FACTS<\/p>\n
January 16, 2026<\/p>\n
In 1992, a simple slogan<\/a> helped Bill Clinton get elected President of the United States: \u201cIt\u2019s the economy, stupid!\u201d The phrase was coined by political consultant James Carville,<\/a> and it worked like a charm. Clinton defeated sitting President George Bush, Sr.<\/a> (1924-2018) in a landslide<\/a> victory. Clinton captured 368 electoral votes to Bush\u2019s 168. It\u2019s time for a liberal\/progressive presidential candidate to adopt an updated version of that slogan. Hence, the title of this article.<\/p>\n But it won\u2019t be quite that simple. Decades of unfettered right-wing propaganda have brainwashed the public into blaming minorities for our economic and social problems. We have legions of uninformed, ignorant voters who don\u2019t know up from down. The poor and middle class have become a divided people, while the billionaire class has remained united. To change this, Americans, along with people in other countries, because billionaire wealth is a global problem, must first understand what\u2019s really going on. Otherwise, they will remain mere pawns on the chessboard of life.<\/p>\n The situation we\u2019re in<\/strong><\/p>\n In 2017, Forbes Magazine reported<\/a> that the three richest men in America, Jeff Bezos, <\/a>Warren Buffett,<\/a> and Bill Gates, <\/a>\u201ccollectively hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of the domestic population, \u2018a total of 160 million people or 63 million American households,\u201d with an estimated \u201ccombined fortune\u201d of \u201c$263 billion.\u201d But that\u2019s nothing compared to how billionaire wealth has skyrocketed since then.<\/p>\n In April 2025, Fortune Magazine<\/em> reported <\/a>that \u201cthe world\u2019s billionaires now hold more wealth than every country in the world except the U.S. and China.\u201d Take a minute to let that sink in, folks. We now have a global population<\/a> of around 8.3 billion people within 195 countries.<\/a> The combined population of the U.S. and China is around 1.8 billion. Meaning, the 3,028 billionaires occupying our planet with a combined net worth of $16.1 trillion dollars have more wealth than 6.5 billion people. With 808 million<\/a> of those people living in extreme poverty, another 3.5 billion<\/a> who are \u201cpoor by a standard that is more relevant for upper middle-income countries,\u201d and 67% of Americans<\/a> living paycheck to paycheck, how can hoarding all of that wealth possibly be moral or economically justified?<\/p>\n As Business Insider reported,<\/a> we are living in a second Gilded Age, which began with the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) in 1981. Like the first Gilded Age<\/a> of the late nineteenth\/early twentieth century, our country is now ruled by oligarchs, which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines<\/a> as \u201cgovernment by the few\u201d or \u201ca government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.\u201d Some synonyms <\/a>for \u201coligarchy\u201d are \u201cdespotism,\u201d \u201ctyranny,\u201d \u201ctotalitarianism,\u201d \u201crepression,\u201d \u201cdominance,\u201d and \u201csubjugation.\u201d And as explained, after that list of synonyms, oligarchs are usually the rich and privileged.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, there are millions of poor and middle-class people who have been duped into thinking that there\u2019s nothing wrong with a few people having so much money and power. They think that billionaires are self-made and that anyone can be rich if they work hard enough. They believe that billionaires create jobs and are innovative geniuses that tirelessly work to improve our standard of living. They believe that the best way to help them accomplish this is via tax cuts and deregulation of their mega business empires, which is often referred to as \u201ctrickle-down\u201d<\/a> economics. Nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n Burying the myths<\/strong><\/p>\n As explained here<\/a> and here,<\/a> billionaires started out with parents who were either rich or upper middle class and who, in some cases, had connections to the wealthy. For example, Bill Gates came from a well-to-do family to begin with. But as CNBC<\/em> reported,<\/a> his mother knew the chairman\/president of IBM, which helped Gates\u2019 company, Microsoft, land the contract that in one year would make him a billionaire at age 31. Jeff Bezos got $250,000 from his parents to launch his business. In the case of billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, they were born on home plate. Musk\u2019s family owned an emerald mine, and Fred Trump<\/a> (1905-1999) had a net worth of 200 million. Of course, there are poor and low-income highly talented entertainers like Elvis Presley (1935-1977) and gifted athletes like Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) who became wealthy. But they\u2019re the exception and not the rule.<\/p>\n As for wealth trickling down, it doesn\u2019t. Business Insider<\/em> reported<\/a> on a 2022 study that \u201cdemolishes the myth that tax cuts for the rich will trickle down.\u201d The London School of Economics and Political<\/em> Science<\/em> reported<\/a> on a comprehensive 2020 study<\/a> that analyzed \u201cdata from 18 OECD<\/a> countries over the last five decades\u201d and found (see Abstract) \u201cthat major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality\u201d and that \u201csuch reforms do not have any significant effects on economic growth and unemployment.\u201d The London School emphatically stated that history has shown us \u201cthat policies relying on \u2018trickle-down economics\u2019 are destined to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, as Investopedia<\/em> reported,<\/a> it was President Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher <\/a>(1925-2013) in the U.K. who brought trickle-down economics into mainstream politics, where it still remains entrenched to this day. Reagan even gave it a cutesy name that was coined by political strategist, Jude Wanniski<\/a> (1936-2005), \u201csupply-side economics.\u201d But no matter what you call it, making the rich a whole lot richer benefits no one but the very rich and does immense harm to the rest of us.<\/p>\n Facing reality<\/strong><\/p>\n Economics 101<\/a>: What drives an economy? Demand! People having money in their pockets to buy things. Put adequate amounts<\/a> of money into the pockets of poor and middle-class people, and they put it right back into the economy, which allows it to grow and provide more jobs. This, in turn, adequately funds the government via taxation, which then gives that revenue back to the people via maintaining the infrastructure and by providing and funding needed public services like fire departments, protection from criminals, mail delivery, public libraries, education, and a strong social safety net that includes healthcare and providing help in times of adversity. This creates a virtuous cycle.<\/p>\n Obscenely rich billionaires interfere with the aforementioned virtuous cycle by sucking most of the wealth out of the economy. They have so much money that they can\u2019t possibly spend it (there aren\u2019t enough of them to buy enough stuff to keep an economy going anyway), so they either hoard it, which is a big problem by itself, or they use it to cause even worse problems.<\/p>\n Pollution<\/strong><\/p>\n Last November, Yahoo News<\/em> reported<\/a> that \u201cfifty of the world\u2019s richest billionaires emit more carbon through their investments, private jets, and yachts in just 90 minutes than the average person does in their entire lifetime.\u201d It would take the average person \u201c860 years\u201d to emit the same amount of carbon.<\/p>\n For example, Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon<\/em>: His \u201cprivate jets alone have emitted as much carbon as an average US Amazon employee would over 207 years.\u201d That same month, UPI News reported<\/a> that \u201cBillionaires create over a million times more greenhouse gas<\/a> emissions than average person.\u201d Back in 2022, Euronews<\/em> reported <\/a>that \u201c125 ultra-wealthy individuals emit the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 85 million cars in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n For those among you who either don\u2019t think global warming is real or who think it isn\u2019t caused by humans, keep in mind that this is irrelevant to the fact that air and water pollution from fossil fuels kills millions of people every year and causes illness in many more. In 2022, the peer-reviewed journal The Lancet<\/em> reported<\/a> that \u201cpollution remains responsible for approximately 9 million deaths per year,\u201d which makes it \u201can existential threat to human health and planetary health, and jeopardises the sustainability of modern societies.\u201d Pollution includes \u201ccontamination of the ocean by mercury, nitrogen, phosphorous, plastic, and petroleum waste; and poisoning of the land by lead, mercury, pesticides, industrial chemicals, electronic waste, and radioactive waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Healthcare<\/strong><\/p>\n America is the only wealthy industrialized country that doesn\u2019t guarantee healthcare to all of its citizens nor even recognize it as a human right. Instead, healthcare is viewed as a commodity rather than as a vital public service. But as bad as for-profit health insurance companies and hospitals are, even worse are billionaires\u2019 private equity<\/a> firms, which buy up private medical practices, hospitals, nursing homes, you name it.<\/p>\n Missouri Medicine<\/em>, the peer-reviewed journal of the Missouri State Medical Association<\/em>, explained in this 2024 report<\/a> that \u201cprivate equity typically acquires healthcare entities to load them with debt, while distributing the funds received from the loans back to investors as dividends,\u201d which results in \u201clower quality or an outright denial of medical care, a shortage of equipment, a firing of employees, and an increase in prices. Patients and physicians lose, at the expense of short-term private equity profits. In many cases, the ultimate outcome is closure or bankruptcy, leaving patients and employees stranded.\u201d Hospital closures especially apply to rural hospitals, where traveling to a hospital emergency room much farther away could cost too many people their lives. But \u201cprivate equity firms are not motivated by providing quality medical care to a community but rather are squeezing their targets for profits.\u201d<\/p>\n Housing<\/strong><\/p>\n An October 2025 Common Dreams<\/em> article<\/a> reported that in the U.S., \u201cBillionaire demand for luxury housing is driving up the cost of land and housing construction, supercharging the already existing housing crisis\u201d and that \u201cBillionaire speculators are buying up rental housing, single family homes, and mobile home parks to squeeze more money out of the existing housing shortage,\u201d which has been going on for decades and may take another decade to correct, as reported<\/a> by J.P. Morgan. The NHC<\/a> further reported<\/a> that unaffordable housing has become \u201ca nationwide affordability crisis that now impacts workers across nearly all income levels,\u201d which has also been caused by \u201crising interest rates,\u201d along with \u201cwage stagnation,\u201d which has also been going on for decades.<\/p>\n The NHC<\/em> reported here<\/a> and here<\/a> that in Asheville, civil engineers cannot afford to buy a home despite a salary of nearly $100,000. Construction laborers and electricians cannot even afford to rent one-bedroom apartments. In Seattle, a dentist earning over $200,000 a year cannot afford a typically priced home with 10% down,\u201d which is \u201ceroding stability for workers, employers, and communities\u2026the American dream of home ownership is slipping away.\u201d In fact, Yahoo Finance<\/em> reported in a 2025 article<\/a> that middle-class people won\u2019t be able to afford a home within ten years, along with nine other things.<\/p>\n Food<\/strong><\/p>\n A report<\/a> by Farm Aid<\/a> explained that \u201cA handful of corporations control our food from farm to fork. Their unbridled power grants them increasing political influence over the rules that govern our food system and allows them to manipulate the marketplace.\u201d The result is a corporate system that drives family farmers out of business by lowering the prices paid to them while raising prices that consumers pay for groceries, along with giving them fewer choices. In other words, as reported in this 2024 article<\/a> in The Atlantic<\/em>, \u201cMergers and acquisitions have created food oligopolies that are inefficient, barely regulated, unfair, and even dangerous,\u201d which, as explained in this 2024 article<\/a> in The Conversation, <\/em>is \u201cdamaging our health, our communities, and the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n And who owns\/controls the aforementioned food oligopolies? As reported<\/a> in Euronews<\/em>. Billionaires! Forbes Magazine<\/em> and ABC News<\/em> list who those billionaires are here<\/a> and here.<\/a> Naturally, the goal of this kind of corporate monopoly is to maximize profits, not provide healthy food, which is why singer Willie Nelson, founder and president of Farm Aid<\/em>, emphatically stated<\/a> that \u201cOur food system belongs in the hands of many family farmers, not under the control of a handful of corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n Jobs<\/strong><\/p>\n Last year, Elon Musk declared<\/a> that \u201cAI and robots will replace all jobs\u201d and that \u201cworking will be optional,\u201d more like a hobby. Also last year, Common Dreams<\/em> reported<\/a> that \u201cAI could kill nearly 100 million US jobs.\u201d Within the next 10 years alone, AI and robots could replace \u201c40% of registered nurses,\u201d \u201c64% of accountants,\u201d \u201c65% of teaching assistants,\u201d and \u201c89% of fast food workers, among many other occupations.\u201d It\u2019s happening already. There are self-driving trucking companies that brag about eliminating the need to pay high wages to human drivers. Predatory capitalism has always been about cheap labor. \u201cUnitedHealth Group, JPMorgan Chase, and other companies are openly telling investors that AI will allow them to slash payrolls\u2014even as they post tens of billions in profits and reward CEOs with pay packages of $25 million, $35 million, or more.\u201d<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not overlook the danger AI and robotics pose to our freedom and to our very existence. In this 2023 analysis, <\/a>the BMJ<\/a> warned that \u201cseeking to create machines that are vastly more intelligent and powerful than ourselves\u201d opens the door to \u201cthe potential for such machines to apply this intelligence and power\u2014whether deliberately or not\u2014in ways that could harm or subjugate humans.\u201d This possibility \u201cis real and has to be considered,\u201d as reported here<\/a> and here.<\/a> Of course, while Elon Musk gets all gushy and squishy about AI and robots taking our jobs, he muses<\/a> that this \u201cwill make everyone rich\u201d via a \u201cuniversal high income.\u201d Don\u2019t fall for it, folks. If AI and robots wind up in the hands of a few greedy billionaires, I strongly doubt if things will bode well for the rest of us.<\/p>\n The media<\/strong><\/p>\n The mainstream news media used to be governed by an FCC<\/a> policy called the fairness doctrine. <\/a>Since 1949, it required TV and radio news broadcasters to present both sides of controversial issues \u201cin a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.\u201d Instead of expanding the fairness doctrine to cover cable networks,<\/a> it was abolished under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. This, as reported<\/a> by the Poynter Institute<\/em>, \u201caccelerated the polarization of US media,\u201d which, along with corporate deregulation, led to a few billionaires controlling just about all of the media not only here but globally, which is crushing democracy and human rights, as reported here<\/a> and here.<\/a> Among the top media billionaires is Rupert Murdoch,<\/a> who owns dozens of outlets that include Fox News, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times in the U.K. Elon Musk owns Twitter<\/em>, now X<\/em>, Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook<\/em>; and Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n As explained in this 2025 Yahoo News<\/em> report, <\/a>none of these billionaires are trained journalists. Instead, they rely on a sea of trolls, grifters, and pseudo-journalists who will spew their right-wing propaganda. Just about all of them are multimillionaires. Some examples: Fox\u2019s Laura Ingraham, net worth: $40 million;<\/a> Sean Hannity, also Fox News, net worth: $250 million;<\/a> Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire, net worth: $50 million;<\/a> Candice Owens, net worth: $5 million.<\/a> But her husband, George Farmer, has a net worth of $10 million. <\/a>Yes, there are centrist journalists and even some fairly liberal ones in the media. But they\u2019re vastly outnumbered by the conservative right-wing ones. So, when you hear news commentators on Fox, Newsmax, etc., denouncing universal healthcare, keep in mind that all of them are so rich that they don\u2019t need health insurance, so they don\u2019t care. Their job is to put a happy face on economic and social policies that make the rich richer and the rest of us a whole lot poorer.<\/p>\n Government<\/strong><\/p>\n The ultimate achievement of the enormous wealth of this planet\u2019s billionaires is the capture of the U.S. government, along with the governments of other rich countries. Last year, Harvard University<\/em> reported<\/a> on a 2014 study<\/a> conducted by Princeton <\/em>and Northwestern<\/em> Universities, which \u201cconcluded that the U.S. government represents not the interests of the majority of citizens but those of the rich and powerful,\u201d which makes America \u201cnot a democracy at all, but a functional oligarchy.\u201d And as explained in this 2023 study<\/a> published by Cambridge University Press<\/em>, \u201cbillionaires formally enter the political sphere at a much higher rate in autocracies than in democracies\u201d and \u201chave a strong track record of winning elections.\u201d And in this 2025 article,<\/a> CEO Today reported that Elon Musk is among the \u201cbillionaire puppeteers\u201d who are \u201cgaining control over global politics,\u201d which \u201craises serious concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n In my country, the U.S., the corruption is too vast for words. Most of our U.S. congressmen and presidents, along with many state legislators and governors, must rely on wealthy campaign donors to get elected. Most of them like this rotten system because they can get a whole lot richer after they leave office by becoming corporate lobbyists, by getting a cushy corporate job, or by getting huge fees for speaking engagements even if they say complete gibberish. In exchange, the billionaires get to enjoy the tax breaks and tax loopholes that they lobby for, which allows them and the huge corporations they either own or control as major shareholders to pay little or no taxes, including inheritance taxes, so they can build their family dynasties. And they usually get away with crimes that would send the rest of us to prison, while they get governments to pretty much cater to their every whim.<\/p>\n Example: In this 2025 article,<\/a> Yahoo Finance<\/em> reported that the world\u2019s two richest men, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, \u201cdidn\u2019t pay a dime in federal income tax\u201d in some years, along with Michael Bloomberg, Carl Icahn, and George Soros, just to name some. This, as reported<\/a> in Pro<\/em>P<\/em>ublica<\/em>, \u201cdemolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share.\u201d In other years, \u201cIRS records show that the wealthiest can\u2014perfectly legally\u2014pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.\u201d As for Donald Trump, a New York <\/em>Times<\/em> report<\/a> revealed that he \u201cpaid just $750 in federal income tax upon entering the White House\u201d in 2017 and \u201cno income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years that the Times reviewed.\u201d Investopedia<\/a> and ITEP<\/a> further reported that \u201cit\u2019s not unusual for large U.S. corporations to pay no U.S. income taxes despite making billions of dollars in profits.\u201d<\/p>\n Example: Common Dreams <\/a>and Democracy Now<\/a> explained why Trump blatantly violated<\/a> U.S. and international law by attacking Venezuela and abducting President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, who are now on trial in New York City for a litany of drug charges. But if Trump was really concerned about illegal drugs killing Americans, he wouldn\u2019t have pardoned<\/a> former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence for helping to drug-traffic \u201cmore than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.\u201d Turns out that the real reason is with Maduro gone, \u201cPaul Singer, a billionaire who is a top donor to President Trump, is set to profit immensely since his investment firm purchased Citgo, the U.S.- based subsidiary of Venezuela\u2019s state-owned oil company.\u201d Right-wing organizations funded by Singer had been pushing for the ouster of Maduro, and Trump delivered. It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n Example: In this 2022 article, <\/a>City Journal<\/em> reported that the COVID-19 lockdowns \u201cbrought little benefit and much harm.\u201d They \u201churt the economy, impeded education, and harmed the development of children.\u201d In this 2021 article,<\/a> Business Insider<\/em> reported that \u201c200 million to 500 million people\u201d fell into poverty in 2020. But not to worry because Business Insider<\/em> also reported that the world\u2019s billionaires didn\u2019t suffer any economic hardship at all. They \u201cadded 4 trillion to their wealth.\u201d The World Economic Forum<\/em> explained<\/a> that \u201cmuch of the financial gain for billionaires resulted from approaching the initial impact of the pandemic on asset prices.\u201d In other words, \u201cas assets like stocks suddenly got much cheaper, the wealthy were able to accumulate significantly more of them before they regained value. Most people don\u2019t have the same type of access to equity markets as the wealthy.\u201d And let\u2019s also not forget that since Trump took office in 2025, the \u201c10 richest Americans have gained 700 billion<\/a> in wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n Bottom line: nobody can work hard enough or long enough to earn a billion dollars, much less multiple billions of dollars. \u201cRent extraction, financial speculation, resource monopolization, and exploiting working people does,\u201d as reported<\/a> in Jacobin<\/em>. And if the very wealthy do occasionally wind up in an American prison, many of which are torture chambers as reported here<\/a> and here,<\/a> not to worry. They have special luxury prisons<\/a> prisons for millionaires and billionaires. That\u2019s the way the mop flops in America. Country club prisons for the rich and brutal torture chambers for us peasants. Isn\u2019t oligarchy just grand?<\/p>\n D<\/strong>ivide and conquer<\/strong><\/p>\n Since the billionaires who currently run things don\u2019t want to share their wealth, which results in a much lower standard of living for just about all the rest of us, they manipulate the public into thinking that various minority groups are responsible for their problems. This creates an underclass of scapegoats to bully, persecute, and inflict unimaginable acts of cruelty on. Who that underclass is changes over time. For now, it\u2019s immigrants, transgender people, and drag queens. It\u2019s the oldest trick in the book: \u201cLook at those people over there so you won\u2019t pay attention to what we\u2019re doing over here.\u201d<\/p>\n To accomplish this cultural charade, they rely on their massive right-wing media echo chamber, which includes a whole army of YouTubers and podcasters who got rich spewing hate, lies, and propaganda. It is in this culture war arena that ignorance resonates, stupidity reverberates, and bigotry radiates. These usually multimillionaire grifters are a bunch of useless little parasites feeding off the bigger, even more useless billionaire parasites. In politics, a grifter<\/a> is a con artist who uses the political process to enrich themselves. The Republican Party wallows in this grift like pigs wallow in mud because they have nothing to offer except tax cuts for the wealthy. So, they focus on made-up culture wars where they can assume a fake moral high ground and pretend that they are righteous and good.<\/p>\n The most effective way to make people fall for the scapegoating minorities con is by claiming that children need to be protected\u2014especially when it comes to sex. This is the moral high ground of right-wing conservatism, its ivory tower of virtue. This kind of propaganda shuts down all logic and critical thinking because of our Christian culture\u2019s discomfort with sex, as explained here<\/a> and here.<\/a> In the study of argumentation, <\/a>this is known as the \u201cthink of the children\u201d<\/a> fallacy, which is an aspect of the \u201cappeal to emotion\u201d <\/a>fallacy. Logical fallacies<\/a> are errors in reasoning that lead to wrong conclusions. Since the sex is dirty and sinful paradigm is so ingrained in Western society, even non-religious people hold these core views, which makes the protecting kids fallacy so difficult to overcome. It shuts down rational discussion and prevents people from looking at the consequences of what\u2019s being proposed.<\/p>\n Obviously, and of course, children need to be protected from sexual predators. But censoring the internet, watching porn, books in school, and being exposed to other lifestyles isn\u2019t about protecting kids\u2014it\u2019s an excuse to take everyone\u2019s rights away. It\u2019s about control. This is more easily accomplished in a society of wealth inequality and economic hardship. When people are in survival mode, they are less concerned<\/a> about protecting the rights of others and become more tribal. They are easier to manipulate. Billionaire oligarchs thrive on division and conflict. They don\u2019t want the public to realize that culture wars are manufactured moral panics designed to distract them. Class warfare is what\u2019s very real and what we need to unite against.<\/p>\n Last year, Erika Kirk, the late Charlie Kirk\u2019s widow, made the ultimate Freudian slip.<\/a> As reported here<\/a> and in this video,<\/a> she was \u201cpresenting the inaugural Charlie Kirk Courage Award to Utah University student Caleb Chilcutt,\u201d when she said, \u201cDespite the devastating loss of Charlie Kirk, my incredible husband at UVU, Caleb has persisted with the same grift.\u201d<\/p>\n Naturally, Erika flubbed around trying to correct herself, uttering the word \u201cgift\u201d and then \u201cgrit,\u201d and finally saying, \u201cIt has been a long day!\u201d She then turned to Chilcutt and said, \u201cTrust me, you\u2019re not a grifter, honey. It\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n Sorry to tell you this, dear boy: in my humble opinion, Erika Kirk was totally correct when she called you a grifter.<\/p>\n So, to all of you xenophobes, racists, religious fanatics, and nice folks who don\u2019t feel comfortable with those who are different, I implore you: Wake up. Instead of worrying about who\u2019s picking your strawberries, worry about who\u2019s picking your pocket; instead of worrying about who\u2019s washing your car, worry about who\u2019s taking you to the cleaners; instead of worrying about who\u2019s working at Home Depot, worry about the fact that future generations won\u2019t be able to afford a home. Instead of worrying about who\u2019s in the bathroom, worry about your life being flushed down the toilet, because while you get to feel morally superior and think you\u2019re defending civilization from the forces of evil and fruitcakery, your billionaire overlords are tearing civilization out from under you while laughing all the way to their offshore bank accounts.<\/p>\n What the future holds<\/strong><\/p>\n Last year, the London School of Economics (LSE) reported<\/a> \u201cthat the world is now on course for no less than five trillionaires within a decade.\u201d Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison will most likely be among them. The first Gilded Age was bad enough. But with AI, Robots, and other kinds of futuristic technology, this second Gilded age could soon be much worse and won\u2019t just affect our jobs as I mentioned previously.<\/p>\n Yuval Noah Harari,<\/a> PhD, is a bestselling author, historian, and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At this 2020 Davos meeting, <\/a>Dr. Harari laid out the potentially diabolical future that soon-to- be trillionaire elites have in store for us:<\/p>\n \u201cIn the coming decades, AI and biotechnology will give us god-like abilities to re-engineer life and even to create completely new life forms. After 4 billion years of organic life shaped by natural selection, we are about to enter a new era of inorganic life shaped by intelligent design. Our intelligent design is going to be the new driving force of the evolution of life. And in using these powers of creation, we might make mistakes on a cosmic scale.\u201d<\/p>\n In this 2021 60 Minutes interview,<\/a> Dr. Harari warned that if these \u201cnew technologies are available only to the rich,\u201d it could lead to \u201ca process of greater inequality than in any previous time in history because for the first time, it will be real biological inequality\u2026Homo sapiens will split into different biological castes\u201d with \u201cdifferent bodies and different abilities.\u201d In other words, we might see a whole race of humanoids that are much stronger, faster, and far more intelligent than the rest of us. Beings that might have a much greater life span and who are almost impossible to kill. Beings that will see themselves as gods among insects.<\/p>\n Another technology wealthy elites might use against us is optogenetics,<\/a> which has the potential to restore brain function and cure diseases by genetically modifying targeted cells in our gray matter with light. But in this video<\/a> on the World Economic Forum\u2019s website, Nobel Prize winning Japanese scientist Susumu Tonegawa,<\/a> PhD explained that with optogenetics, \u201cour memory, our emotions, and even thoughts can be manipulated. This is the idea that has existed only in the realm of science fiction until recently.\u201d<\/p>\n Please understand that I\u2019m not anti-progress and technology. I recognize all of the benefits AI and robotics can give us. But it\u2019s foolhardy not to recognize the enormous danger they pose in the wrong hands. And I have no doubt that in the hands of power-obsessed trillionaire elites, they will be used not only to control our lives but also our minds, our memories, our emotions, and reality itself. They will become too powerful for any of us to stop them. Of course, their plans could backfire, and these technologies might wind up controlling or destroying them along with the rest of us.<\/p>\n What must be done<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1887, historian and politician Lord Acton<\/a> (1834-1902) famously wrote that \u201cpower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n Wealth is power, and giving the ultra-wealthy the power they wield is the equivalent of giving sadistic despots like Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) or Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) the abilities of Superman. Power is a drug. It\u2019s a narcotic, a hallucinogenic drug that warps the mind and mangles the soul. And it\u2019s addictive. The more you get, the more you want. As explained here<\/a> and here,<\/a> wealth\/power retards one\u2019s humanity and the ability to tell right from wrong.<\/p>\n Power over others is the reason why the police sadistically abuse and kill citizens; it\u2019s the reason why prison guards abuse and kill prisoners; it\u2019s the reason why politicians like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu can callously give orders that mass murder Palestinian men, women, and children. It\u2019s the reason why state and federal legislators can pass laws denying people vital medical care to serve a religious or political agenda. It\u2019s the reason why employers and the managers under them, even in small businesses, abuse their employees.<\/p>\n Of course, not everyone who\u2019s a billionaire or in positions of power will do terrible things. But many will because violent, angry, sadistic, manipulative, greedy types are the kinds of people who usually crave wealth and power and who far too often succeed in getting them. Therefore, we must, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt<\/a> (1882-1945) declared in this 1936 speech about the danger of wealth inequality, \u201ctake away their power.\u201d Here is how.<\/p>\n Get rid of all billionaires. I don\u2019t mean kill them. I mean confiscate their wealth, which they didn\u2019t earn, break up the corporate monopolies they control, and give those trillions back to the rest of us where it rightfully belongs. This would eliminate all poverty and economic hardship in developed and developing nations. Forget about a small billionaire wealth tax of 5%, like the one proposed in California. That\u2019s kid stuff. It\u2019s like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. I\u2019m for free enterprise and for talented and innovative people acquiring some wealth. But there has to be a limit. In my opinion, no individual or household should be allowed to have a net worth of more than $15 million. That\u2019s more than enough to live a luxurious lifestyle. With the ultra-rich gone, we can then correct so much that is wrong in governments and create more just and peaceful societies and make sure that they stay that way.<\/p>\n It\u2019s up to us, folks. The billionaires have the wealth, but we have the numbers. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. We must unite and put an end to this enormous wealth gap. We did it before, and we must do it again. If we don\u2019t, we will lose our freedom, our identities, and even what it means to be human.<\/p>\n