“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage.” – Professor Joseph Olson
Is America, then, living on borrowed time? Are we so far past our prime and so into old age as a civilization that we are now senile and oblivious to our present surroundings, causing a danger to ourselves and others? Do we find ourselves living in the past and repeating the same old tales of our former glories over and over again to anyone who will listen? Are we barely kept alive by various medications that only stave off conditions that are getting worse every day while still imaginining that, if there were a need, we could rise up and be strong again — but not today as there’s rice pudding for desert and we don’t want to miss that!
Well I have news for you – This country isn’t old and it isn’t sick but it has been drugged and it has been beaten down and robbed and I am going to tell you that I not only saw it happen, but I think I got a pretty good look at the 10,000 guys who did it. It was the top 0.01%! Who are the top 0,01%? They are the top 10,000 income earners in the United States of America. If you THINK you are in the top 0.01%, you are not. People in the top 10,000 know only KNOW they are in the top 0.01% but they know where they rank as well. The median ANNUAL income of a person in the top 0.01% is $50,000,0000. They have $350,000,000 in assets and, since 1978, that is an increase of 550% – how have you done the past 30 years?
Now we are (or used to be) a pretty rich country and the median income of the 118M people who earn enough money to pay income taxes is about $50,000 but the cost of living in the same country as people who earn an average of 976 times more than that is pretty high as well (see “The Dooh Nibor Economy“). Even worse, The 10,000 paid just $112Bn in taxes last year – that’s just over 20% of their income, while the rest of the country, of course, paid a much…
