The Big Picture


Introduction

For many readers of this website, the simple truth is that you live in a developed (industrialized) nation that has a steadily declining economy. Your government will never say this, because it rightfully fears inciting public panic.

The Bad News

Now the bad news. There simply is no easy way out. And no one knows how far the decline will go, or how painful the decline will be.

As you personally witness the decline, many are seeing reductions in rights and freedoms. Some are losing the right to privacy, the right to have public protests — as well as freedom to travel freely without government checkpoints, and freedom of the press.

Your government isn’t stupid. It knows all about the trends. And it is busy making preparations for inevitable worsening social unrest.

Why is all of this happening? It’s basically the consequence of a combination of things that include: overpopulation (elsewhere), increased globalization, excessive consumerism, corporate greed, government corruption, advances in technology, and years of public ignorance and apathy.


The Good News

Now for the good news. Your nation’s government is doing everything it can to slow the decline down to a crawl.

It’s a bit like trying to put a train wreck into slow motion, or very carefully landing a jumbo jet that’s running low on fuel. You want to slow it all down. Give your people a chance to adjust. Minimize the casualties and property damage. Buy as much time as possible, so you can put emergency provisions in place. Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.

Economic Decline of Developed Nations

The 1950s and 1960s

In the 1950s and 1960s, a limited number of inexpensive products were made in only a few nations with very low wages. “Cheap” meant made in Taiwan, Japan, or Korea.

Back then, some of your citizens recognized the potential long-term danger inherent in this trend. However, they were demonized as advocates of protectionism and isolationism, which were branded as counterproductive, old-fashioned, irrational, selfish, evil, and ethnocentric. Some politicians and mass media pundits joined in on this.

They failed to bravely say the truth: The long-term solution to end other nations’ poverty was by population reduction through preventive birth control. It was not through sending jobs and food to them. But this idea was considered taboo and even evil.

The young and middle-aged of your nation had not experienced the economic hard times of the past. So they were optimistic that prosperity would last forever. Individuals spent excessively on many things. And their government spent excessively on the following:

- excessive military forces

- retirement of the elderly (having unplanned, increasing lifespans)

- welfare (entitlements) for the poor, disabled, and others

- corporate welfare (tax breaks) for businesses offering jobs

- education and healthcare

By about the 1960s, your nation had become very materialistic. It felt that happiness was found in having and consuming more material things. Of course, millions of the repeated messages to “buy now” in print, radio, and TV advertising contributed to this. If you don’t believe this, ask yourself why businesses spend billions on advertising their repeated messages?

The 1970s

In the 1970’s, your nation made laws allowing “free trade” with very big, overpopulated nations having billions of people willing to work for ultra-low wages. The massive wage gap remains. Today, worldwide minimum wages range from about $US 0.25 to 8.50 per hour. Millions of jobs were lost to those nations.

Who made the decision to open the floodgates to the ocean of ultra-cheap labor? Your government, with this decision being influenced by the following:

- Big corporations seeking greater wealth for their executives and stock holders — investors living in your nation such as fund managers of retirement plans, insurance companies, and banks. Of course, they also included individuals who could afford to buy stocks.

- Overall public desire for “a better life”, which meant having and consuming more things. Politicians could look like heroes for giving this to them.

- Overall public ignorance about the long-term effects.

- National security interests. Lifting big (nuclear armed) nations out of worsening poverty could prevent them from waging future wars for resources, as their acts of desperation.


The Avert Nuclear War Theory

The Vietnam War (1955 to 1975) became a proxy war between China and the US. China’s victory was a sign of its unbending determination, and perhaps its desperation to gain access to resources. Today Vietnam is the third largest oil producer of Southeast Asia; and China is its chief trading partner.

In 1979 the US and China signed a free trade agreement; other nations soon followed. In that same year, China first applied its one-child policy. It sounds like a secret deal was made to avoid another Vietnam War. Developed nations would help lift China out of poverty by giving it jobs, if China would help itself by controlling its population growth.

“The deal” would avoid future wars for resources — which would be desperate acts of almost any nation dealing with worsening poverty. This would also reduce the potential for those wars escalating into nuclear war. US Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all looked at using nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War. Surely China did too.


The Greed and Corruption Theory

If there wasn't any "deal" to avert nuclear war, then the following two things probably happened.

1) China had the wisdom to control its population growth to avoid worsening poverty.

2) The short-sighted greed of powerful corporations caused them to influence governments of developed nations to make decisions that would greatly harm the public interest and greatly reward their self-interest. (All corporate charters place self-interest ahead of public interest.) They influenced easily-corrupted government officials to give them access to massive amounts of ultra-cheap labor and massive new markets — in China, India, and other huge, overpopulated nations. This ensured their massive profit-making for many decades. 


The Sales Pitch

The government, powerful corporations, and, in many cases, corporate-owned mass media "sold" this plan to many developed nations by emphasizing that massive amounts of cheap products would be made available to the public, and there would be major reductions in environmental pollution (from factories to power plants). 

But they failed to say the following things any economics professor could figure out:

- The overall public benefit would be short-term (two to three decade).
 
- This would cause long-term drawbacks of massive, continuous loss of jobs and the dismantling of almost all factories.

- Within two decades, the sustainable manufacturing-based economies of many developed nations would likely be transformed into unsustainable service-based economies.

- This transformation would likely result in ever-increasing debt due to trade imbalances.

- This growing debt would eventually lead some nations into bankruptcy and possible social chaos, with almost no practical way to avoid it — or to quickly recover from it after hitting bottom. It would take decades to rebuild a manufacturing base and to recondition citizens to being content with owning far fewer things and being tolerant of increased pollution.

These powerful corporations basically sold out the citizens of the developed nations for their own excessive self-interest (greed). And many of these same corporations had, and many still have, their headquarters in the same nations they sold out.


Propaganda to Thwart Opposition

Whether free trade with huge, poor (nuclear armed) nations was to avert nuclear war or to satisfy corporate greed, the citizens of developed nations needed to be persuaded into accepting the impending, massive loss of jobs.

So anyone who opposed a harmless-sounding “free trade agreement” was branded — by  corrupt (and sometimes ignorant) politicians and mass media icons — as an advocate of protectionist and isolationist policies. And those policies were repeatedly demonized, by the same politicians and media icons, as being old-fashioned, counterproductive, selfish, misinformed, nutty, and practically evil.

Advocates of protectionism and isolationism were openly ridiculed for failing to see the enormous benefits to their country. And they were made to appear like alarmists, exaggerators, and closed-minded, fossilized buffoons of the early 1900s.
 
The public was purposefully made to confuse gradations of protectionism with total  isolationism. Isolationism is what it sounds like: being isolated. This implies non-involvement in the affairs of other nations.

Before the 1970s, the attitude of isolationism had been demonized for decades, by mass media, as the dangerous type of thinking, the major factor, that contributed to America's (and other nations') reluctance to assist in containing Nazi aggression in its early stages.

Today, America is the polar opposite. It has military bases in 93 other nations. It is often called "the world's policeman." In turn, it is sometimes viewed as meddling, intimidating, and waging wars for profit. Sometimes, it is hated because of those things. It is also paying a huge price for its global military presence, as its massive military budget is greatly contributing its economic downfall.

Economic Decline of Lesser-Developed Nations

Some of the lesser-developed nations, such as several Middle Eastern and African nations, are also in economic decline. They are mainly experiencing the results of the following:

- Overpopulation due to outdated religious ideologies that prohibit the use of birth control measures.

- Decreasing ability to export their limited natural resources (like oil), due to higher extraction costs as supplies decrease and as internal need for them increases.

- Continued lack of manufacturing jobs for a few reasons. People did not need to work for ultra-low wages in the past, while factories were being built elsewhere. Their nations lack the developed infrastructure (roads, utilities, ports) needed to attract manufacturing business. Instability and dangers due to religious ideologies discourage foreign investment. And your nation’s leaders looted and plundered some of its wealth that should have been used to build infrastructure and develop domestic industries.


The Here and Now

Now You Know

Now you know why and how your nation entered long-term economic decline. The big questions that remain are: How low will it go, and how painful will it be?

Your nation has to deal with not only managing very big — and growing — painful public and private debt. It also has to deal with the reality that there is no painless, long-term way out. Its government is doing everything it can to postpone declaring its already de facto bankruptcy. It continues to borrow. It continues to print more debt notes. It increasingly scales back government programs (austerity measures), but this adds to unemployment. And when it finally scales back its military, this will also add to unemployment of people trained to fight and kill.

One thing that the government is spending more on is surveillance and police strength — because it must. It knows that social unrest will grow, public protests will increase, and public venting (through destruction and violence) will increase. The public already has a general sense that it is now “every man for himself”. Those who are employed gladly work ever harder to keep their jobs. And the unemployed compete harder for limited job openings. Of course, some have completely given up and are merely waiting for “the other shoe to drop”.

But Nations Like America Appear to be Recovering

Some still believe nations are able to recover from economic decline. They see things like prospering stock markets and falling unemployment rates.

America’s stock markets are improving while its economy is declining. Why? Many corporations have factories and jobs in other nations. And as billions of poor people earn more, they can spend more on the things corporations produce. An ocean of ultra-cheap labor remains, while global demand for goods and services increases. So there is still plenty of profit to be made by corporations and investors in corporate stock markets. And interest rates on savings are so low that many more people have invested in stocks to stay ahead of the inflation rate.

America’s unemployment rate is falling. Why? The number of low paying jobs has increased. Today, one in four Americans works at a job paying less than $10 per hour.

American poverty remains at an all time high. Roughly 16% of its population lives in poverty; this includes almost 20% of its children. Each year 3.4 million Americans experience homelessness; 1.4 million of them are children.

America's combined public and private debt totals $48 trillion. Averaged out over its population of 314 million, each American's share of this debt is $153,000.
 

The Future

How will your nation ever get out of its massive and growing debt? Some short-term solutions include the following:

- Exchange natural resources (minerals, metals, oil, forest products, etc) and public assets (infrastructure, roads, utilities, ports) for foreign debt reduction.

- Wage war to steal resources from other nations, and exchange them for foreign debt reduction. (China and India get most of Iraq’s oil.)

Some long-term solutions include:

- Reduce government programs (social programs and military).

- Have the wealthiest pay more taxes. Tax profits from investments in multinational corporations.

- Create more jobs at home by buying more domestically-made products, which are usually much more expensive. In other words, you must consume much less to make jobs for your fellow citizens.

- Return to national policies of protectionism and isolationism. Ease the transition by having steadily increasing import tariffs until prices of domestically-produced goods become competitive. This too requires a public willingness to pay much higher prices and, in turn, consume much less.

- Move your investments to corporations with lots of jobs in your nation.

America: An Emerging Police State

An example of an emerging police state is the U.S. For example, in 2012 its Congress and President enacted the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA gives the President the power to authorize the secret arrest, detention, imprisonment, torture, and execution of any person in America (including U.S. citizens) deemed a significant threat to national security. The NDAA eliminates many provisions of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, which protect the rights and freedoms of Americans. However, martial law has been declared in the U.S. on previous occasions.

An increasing amount of public tax money is being spent on police and military personnel and equipment inside the U.S. The troops have returned home from Iraq. As far as equipment for domestic policing goes, in 2012 America's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered 1.6 billion bullets and 2,700 armored military vehicles, as well as thousands of assault rifles.

Across America, DHS has conducted training seminars with the clergy of diverse religious groups to train them in assisting maintaining order during an emergency. This training included encouraging church members to obey all government orders. Note that during Hurricane Katrina, all citizens’ were told to surrender their guns to government forces collecting them door-to-door.

Surely, the U.S. government knows that the nation’s steady economic decline is guaranteed due to its enormous $17 trillion public debt, its $31 trillion private debt, the loss of its manufacturing base, and an overall sense of entitlement to a very expensive lifestyle.

Stages of Growing Social Unrest

As poverty increases, so does social unrest. And then police forces must be increased to deal with it.

Early on, the government studies the situation and realizes that an inevitable worsening trend is in place. They are not sure how far down the economy will decline. They are not sure how the public will react to each stage of the decline.

So they prepare for the worst and hope for the best. They put laws in place that vastly increase government surveillance and law enforcement powers. They increase surveillance of communication and transportation networks. They increase the number of police personnel. They may invent new national police agencies so the true size of this increase is not recognized at more local levels. They increase purchases of weapons, bullets, vehicles, and other equipment needed by police forces.

More people vent their frustration and anger about becoming poorer through peaceful protests and social media. Some hope for improvement remains. Government leaders give repeated promises of hope and change to keep people calm, and to “give hope a chance”.

Then as conditions worsen, public frustration, anger, and despair grow.

More protests occur. They become more organized. They become bigger.

An increasing number of protests become violent. At times, outsiders incite the violence. The government uses this violence as justification to further reduce rights and freedoms, and increase spending on police forces.

Crimes to get money increase throughout society (theft, prostitution, black markets, drug dealing, etc.). The very wealthy are shielded from most of this in their well-protected residential and work areas. More of the wealthy “dress down” when they are among the public.

More people start venting their frustration in destructive ways. Some destroy things around them (arson, vandalism, etc.). Some harm their weaker family members; there is increased spousal abuse, child abuse, and elderly abuse. Some begin to destroy themselves. They numb their mental suffering (loss of self-respect, depression) and physical suffering (hunger, fatigue) through alcohol and drugs.

Efforts are made to divert public attention away from their problems. Mass media is sometimes used for this. In extreme cases, a small war or major false-flag event is orchestrated for this.

Individual acts of aggression (including violence) against falsely perceived threats increase. These “threats” are usually nearby poor people who are minorities of a different race, religion, nationality, and/or immigration status).

Membership and active participation in extremist groups (race hate groups, anti-immigrant groups, ultra-conservative political groups) increases.

The government further reduces rights and freedoms.

Organized class warfare groups form. Police surveillance of communications (telephone, Internet, etc.) increases. Arrests and interrogations increase.

Censorship increases. Warnings to the public are issued. Public examples are made out of some engaging in organized class warfare.

Growing numbers of people live in fear and chaos. This grows into social chaos, which endangers the orderly functioning of society. A total police state is now required to restore and maintain order. There are widespread arrests and detentions. Prioritized lists are used, with organizers and inciters of illegal activity at the top.

Government promises are given that the police state is only temporary. Everyone should remain calm and obey authorities without question. Religious clergy are used to promote this message.

Overpopulation

Overpopulation is when a population exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment. In most countries, the poor produce more children than any other group. Many of them have more children than they're able to care for.

We live in a world with a global labor pool and a global marketplace. 

So, overpopulation in one part of the world now impacts much of the rest of the world.

World Population Growth

At the current rate of world population growth, there’ll be 9 billion in 2050.

To give you a better understanding, in 2007 the world grew by more than 200,000 per day; and in 2009, it grew by more than 272,000.

The world’s useable farm land divided by its population averages to about one acre (0.4 hectare) per person.

More than one billion people struggle to live on less than one dollar per day.

More than three billion struggle to live on about two dollars per day.
 
More than 840 million go hungry every day.

Worldwide, minimum wages range from about $0.24 to $8.50 per hour.

Who Encourages Overpopulation?

Corrupt leaders of governments and businesses encourage fast growing populations to get more people to rule over, to buy the things they sell, and to work for lower wages.

Corrupt leaders of religions encourage fast growing populations to get more followers who, in turn, give those leaders more money and power.

Effects Around the World

As overpopulation occurs in some nations, the following things happen in many nations around the world:

Wages remain low or fall.

The prices of goods and services increase.

More people have to work harder simply to afford the necessities of life.

More people have to borrow money. As demand for loans grows, lenders can increase interest rates.

Earth's limited resources are consumed faster. So it gets more difficult and expensive to extract what remains.

Poverty grows. In almost all countries, poverty is growing the fastest for the young, minorities, less educated, and people with fixed incomes — like many elderly.

The gap between the very rich and others becomes more visible. Since the early 1900s, the gap between the world’s poorest 20% and the richest 20% grew by three times. Today, the world’s poorest 20% use less than 2% of the world’s goods. And the world’s richest 20% use more than 80%. The worldwide gap grew more in the past 3 years than in the previous 12 years.

There's more fighting over resources at local to national levels. Divisions grow along backgrounds of race, nationality, religion, and culture.

Some governments incite wars to eliminate some of their poor and distract others from daily problems.

More people get ill due to unsanitary living conditions and unaffordable healthcare. Disease spreads. New diseases develop.

More people abuse alcohol and drugs to numb their despair and frustration. Other increasingly use stimulating substances so they can work more.

More people show disrespect and contempt toward law enforcement officers.

More people steal. More money is spent to protect property and personal safety, which results in less being spent on things that could benefit society.

Public protests grow and become more violent. Ultimately organized class warfare grows.

In places with severe overpopulation, land, water and air become badly polluted. Resources run out. Malnutrition and starvation increase.

As social unrest and crime rates increase, nations, out of necessity, increasingly become police states.

Modern Organized Greed (MOG)

“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”
- U.S. President Thomas Jefferson

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Self-Interest versus Greed

People need a healthy level of self-interest to survive. Having too much of it is greed.

For thousands of years there have been greedy people. But over the past two centuries, technology has enabled greed to become extremely organized at a global level. This modern organized greed has evolved into big corporations that are extremely wealthy and powerful.

Globalization has profited many corporations. It’s nothing new. It’s as old as Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. It’s simply been speeded up by advances in technology that have improved transportation and communication — as well as information processing. The globalization of trade includes worldwide networks linking production and marketplaces. Globalization also includes the Internet.

Overpopulation has profited corporations. It has resulted in lower wages in many developed nations and increased worldwide demand for goods and services.

Advances in technology, globalization and overpopulation have all helped corporations become much bigger.

How big are they? By 1999, 51 of the world’s 100 largest economies were those of corporations. So some corporations are now more powerful than many nations. Does this surprise you? Who owns the biggest buildings? Long ago it was big religious organizations. Then it was big governments. And now it’s big corporations.

Not All are Bad

Many corporations, and their employees, are not intentionally greedy. They are only trying to achieve the goals of their corporate charters. All corporations have corporate charters with self-interest as a first priority — to make a profit (sometimes an increasing one) for their shareholders. Their second or ambiguously ranked priority is to protect the public interest — to at least not harm society.

Not all corporations harm societies. Some try to balance serving their self-interest with protecting the public interest. Multi-national corporations deal with conflicting interests of different nations' publics, as well as conflicting allegiances.

People around the world have shares of corporations. The investments of many retirement funds, insurance companies, and banks are in stock shares of corporations.

Some corporations practice social responsibility. They recognize the long-term benefit to themselves and others. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is also called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, and sustainable responsible business. It is self-regulation. A business monitors and ensures its compliance with the spirit of local to national laws, society’s ethical standards, and international norms. Sometimes businesses go further and do things for social good, such as donating to charities or sponsoring public safety advertising campaigns (drink alcohol responsibly).

Some investors are now taking matters into their own hands. They are conscientiously limiting their investments to socially responsible corporations. For example, some investors don’t buy stocks in corporations that produce weapons, tobacco, alcohol, genetically modified foods, toxic fertilizers and pesticides, etc.

Were We Warned?

The quotes at the top of this section say we were warned.

U.S. President Jefferson warned us long before charters were changed to place profit first. He must have projected their trend into the far future. Later, Lincoln warned us in harsher terms. He must have seen the dangerous trend taking shape. Eisenhower was the last courageous president to warn us. He gave an  ominous, almost paranoid-sounding warning.

Eisenhower clearly described the dangerous rise of corporate influence over government — at all levels. His warning focused on the most deadly aspect of it: the military-industrial (corporate) complex. He didn’t focus on the food-industry complex.

What future dangers did he see? Perhaps, the build up of a needlessly massive, expensive military and endless justifications for it (such as the endless need for America to be the world policeman). The creation of tensions between other nations and profit from selling weapons to them. The buying up and misuse of most mass media to instill exaggerated fears in society — so that vast profits could be made from preparing for war, waging war, and rebuilding after war. If you project those profitable militaristic trends forward, you end up with many more wars — possibly resulting in WWIII.

Maybe Eisenhower wasn’t so paranoid after all. Good thing he gave his warning in his presidential farewell speech. He certainly didn’t want to get assassinated. As a retired president, he represented little threat to the status quo. Years later, along came peace-mongering President Kennedy. He should have appreciated Eisenhower’s wisdom, and given his speeches on worldwide disarmament after leaving office.

How expensive has the military become? .Each year, the world’s combined annual military budget is $1.3 trillion. This doesn’t include off-the-record funds. Many nations prepare for wars against the same nations they do billions of dollars of trade with. Does that make any sense?

How much do the biggest spenders spend each year? US: $420 billion. China: $90b. Russia: $70b. England: $50b. France: $50b. Germany: $40b. Japan: $40b.

Weapons Exports

The biggest weapons exporters are, from biggest to smallest: The U.S., Russia, Germany, France, the Netherlands (home of the Peace Prize), the U.K., Italy, Spain, China, Sweden, Israel, Canada, Poland, Switzerland, the Ukraine, South Africa, South Korea, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Belgium.

Who do they sell weapons to? Governments of all sorts of rich and poor nations.  This includes nations ruled by dictators and oligarchies. Later, some of them secretly transfer these weapons to other, possibly more dangerous entities.

Is this legal? Of course it is. Most citizens of countries that profit from this don’t really care about what happens in some far away place ruled by dictators. If they don’t care, why should the corporations or government of their nation care? Only recently in 2013, did the UN start to address this, by making a rather non-enforceable international agreement on the sale and transfer of some small weapons.

Profit from Poverty and Corrupt Governments

MOG can locate production facilities in many countries. Obviously, they want to locate them in places that give them the most profit, such as places with cheap labor, relaxed pollution laws, low corporate taxes, and cooperative governments. These would be places with overpopulation, poverty, and easily corrupted governments.

This has had bad consequences for ordinary people in nations with high standards of living, and associated high costs of living. They’ve lost almost every job that can be shipped out. Of course, people in the profitable locations are exposed to unhealthy/unsafe work conditions and polluted environments.

Profit from Eliminating Competition

MOG promotes monopolies, which are growing around the world. Small businesses and family farms are driven out of business. As competition is reduced, prices of goods and services can be more easily increased.

To ensure profit from existing investments, at times MOG discourages or oppresses the development of alternative resources. It uses its influence over mass media and governments to do this. Sometimes it just buys up competing alternatives, from start-up companies to patent rights, and lets these alternatives become forgotten.