America is obliterating its people and destroying its middle class. The USA The richest country in the world, a place long known for its Global Leadership Free market, solid institutions, entrepreneurship, Rapid Innovation and and wealth creation is in a rapid decline in nearly every category. For more than a century, people and capital have flocked to the United States in search of opportunities and a ticket to its famous middle class. A ticket which used to mean having a solid job or family business, having a house with a white picket fence, being able to afford some luxuries like traveling, eating out, and investing for retirement, and having some money left on the side for a rainy day.

That is what a middle-class lifestyle sounded like. And this American dream and corresponding work ethic has produced more wealth than any other system in human history. However, thanks to Trends spanning more than several decades now, this entire dream is collapsing. Pretty soon.

it will be dead entirely. Ninety percent of Americans born in the early 1940s were making more than their parents. by the time they reach their Prime earning years. Today, only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are now earning more than their parents, and the story looks like it's going to get worse as you head into the newer and newer.

Generations In 1965, the median home was 2.9 x the median household income. Today it is 5.3 x the median household income one in four. U.S Parents say they've struggled to afford food or housing in the past years. Homelessness is uptrending in most major American cities, and in a recent Bloomberg poll, just 39 percent.

Just 39 percent of middle class respondents say they expect their situation to get better in the next year, and the average real wealth of U.S middle class households has fallen more than 33 thousand this year alone. Pew Research ran a poll earlier this year and asked Americans what they see the country looking like in 2050 and 66 percent of participants said the U.S economy will be weaker 71 said the US would be less important in the world. 81 Said the gap between the rich and the poor will grow and when asked if life is better for people like you than it was 50 years ago, only 23 percent said yes. So not only do people think that over the coming decades things are going to get worse, but they think that over the last 50 years things have already gotten way way worse in today's video I Want to discuss exactly why this is happening? And I'm going to pinpoint three clear culprits: Number one, government, number two corporations, number three trade agreements and let's get right to work.

Okay, in 1965, the average Federal spending per person per year was 4 333 bucks. Today it is 19 594 bucks and these are in 2023. Meaning that this is indeed inflation adjusted, The government has grown to the point where it now spends 352 percent more per person than it did in 1965. Charlie Why is this? How can this be? is this? possible? I Don't understand.

Well, you've got your expensive questionable Wars Massive government stimulus aftermath of government stimulus Congress that wants to spend and convinces people that that spending is for free or that just someone else is going to pay for it. You've got expensive and expansive new government agencies and endlessly growing and adding more and more people and middle managers and managers. For those middle managers all managing each other for the sake of management and not for the sake of the American people. Non-defense spending inflation adjusted for 2023 dollars, has grown exponentially since 1965.

It's incredibly out of control now. Of course, Defense betting is also huge, even though it doesn't look like it relative to all the other spending. But the truth is that the military-industrial complex is known for misplacing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment and a host of massive multi-billion dollar accounting errors and other improper payments. But bigger picture here.

If you're looking at the overall data, what you need to know is that the US has built a massive, unchecked administrative state of many different government agencies, and oftentimes it doesn't even know where the money is going within them. According to the government's own agency, the GAO Government Accountability Office, the government has lost 2.4 trillion dollars in payment errors alone. Payment errors. Imagine wasting trillions in payment errors.

Oh, I Wired it to the wrong person. How much did you wire? Ah, just like 2.4 trillion dollars just for comparison per purposes, the entire 2022 U.S Defense budget was 778 billion. Again, we've wasted 2.4 trillion in payment errors. And yeah, sure, that spread out over some years, but this is getting way way worse.

The percentage change of improper payments is up 522 since 2005, and proper payments grew at nearly seven times the rate of GDP. And these are the government's own admitted numbers. So you can assume that the real number is probably way higher, and you could probably assume that it costs them a few million bucks just to come up with this number in the first place. And these are just a few of the reasons that the US government spends so much more than it takes in.

But what does the spending actually look like in context? Maybe our politicians in the US can afford to be stupid. Well, actually, no, they can't afford to be stupid. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP in 1965 was around 20 percent. Today it was at 30.2 percent.

Federal revenue at the same time is at 19 of GDP. Imagine for a second, you have a business and the business consistently spends more than it takes in year after year. What happens to that business? Well, it goes out of business and those in charge go homeless and have to live on the street outside a local 7-Eleven. Now that's what would happen in the real world.

Now when you are a country and you are a politician, those rules don't apply to you, at least not you directly. You can easily print and borrow more money, but but what happens is that just steals value from today's workers dollars and from future workers dollars in the form of current and future money printing that you're going to have to do in order to make up for any deficits that you have today. When a government decides to live way way way. Beyond Its means who picks up the tab.

Well, the workers within the country that it's governing, the workers pay for it in terms of a distressed economy, in terms of a currency that collapses, in terms of worse trade relations, in terms of a worse overall economic environment, and in terms of capital outflows as investors leave the country because they're too worried about an Institutional collapse. And folks, this is not an opinion. We've seen this throughout many countries throughout history. The fact of the matter is that endlessly borrowing and printing to finance Lobby Government creates poverty and it says Essence That is just a fact.

You can look back Five hundred, one thousand, two thousand years. You can look back to Ancient Rome This is what happens time and time again, and poverty is increasing as the middle class gets crunched and crunched and crunched more. And in order to stop this trend, the government has indeed tried substantial welfare programs. But despite gigantic increases in welfare spending, the U.S is actually back to poverty levels that are similar to where they were in the earlier eras when the U.S had basically no welfare spending.

which means we are paying way more for basically no results. And that's not to mention that it's pretty commonly thought that this poverty rate in the United States is way way underreported as a result of cherry picking an inaccurate CPI data. but we'll just leave that to the side for a second. The truth is though, that we're seeing no results for all this taxpayer money.

Hey you. Here's your multi-trillion dollar bill. Oh what do you get for it? Nothing more pain and suffering. Ha! Here's a map of the 80 plus federally funded welfare programs in the United States which cost around one trillion dollars per year and continue to grow year over year over year as politicians find fight for more and more funding.

but again, unfortunately the poverty rate has been balanced in around 10 to 15 percent since 1965 regardless of how many programs the government has created and how much money the government has spent on those programs. But to say the least, regardless of where you stand on this issue, it's pretty damn clear that government has played a substantial role in destroying its people and its middle class by taking a ton of their money and then wasting it in an effective program after an effective program. And one thing is also for certain, research shows that public trust in government continues to Trend down year after year, and it shows no signs of rebounding in 1964. Under President Johnson 77 percent of Americans said they trusted the government to do what is right most of the time in 2023, that's a sad joke.

that number's down at 16 percent and the reason is clear folks: the government has Let its people down decade after decade after decade and be more sick of it next. Corporation So corporations have played a huge role in destroying the American middle class as well. Peer research ran a poll that found that only 25 percent of Americans thought that large corporations had a positive effect on Society whereas eighty percent said small businesses do. Small businesses not only drive Innovation but have also been one of the main drivers of the middle class and job creation for more than a century.

According to Uschamber.com small businesses create roughly two-thirds two-thirds of new jobs and employ about half of America's private sector. Yet small businesses are getting consistently weaker and fewer and fewer corporations are taking more and more control of the entire economic pie. And this is getting worse, folks. Since 1940, the top one percent of American corporations have bought out nearly all of the assets and businesses in every sector and Consolidated them within their own.

Enterprises Overall, 100 percent of corporate assets are 97 percent controlled by the top One percent of companies. Listen to that. 97 percent of corporate assets are controlled by one percent of companies. Part of this of course is due to technology trends like for example, Amazon has put out a ton of small businesses.

Another part is trade relations. Large corporations have been able to expand abroad and generate way way way way way more. Capital which allows them to reinvest in buying up small businesses at home and then exporting their business to other countries. But a core Port of corporate power is what these corporations do with their money.

They love reinvesting into politicians and political action groups that push for policies that do what well, of course hurt their competition. It's very common that you see a politician running on a platform that says they want to increase regulation on massive and Rich corporations. but oftentimes what ends up happening of course is that the corporations can't afford the regulation. but these small businesses that are competing with it can't.

So the small business which already is having a hard time competing with the big business essentially just goes out of business and boom, The corporation gets even more powerful and industries get more and more and more. Consolidated Until only a few people in society control, like every company, let's say you're going to pass a hypothetical law that creates a mandatory restaurant permit that costs 500 thousand dollars per business. Who is that going to be a bigger problem for a small mom-and-pop burrito shop? Or Chipotle Obviously the small mom and pop burrito shop. That company might take 10 years or 20 years to make that 500 000, but Chipotle Corporate National International can easily pay that 500 000.

And sure, some laws do exempt small businesses, but even those? well. oftentimes those create a situation where it makes it really impossible for those small businesses to grow because as they grow, they start getting rapidly penalized. So what ends up happening is the small business, which already has to invest a lot of money and take on a lot of risks in order to grow, ends up just getting bought out by a bigger corporation which then grows it. That's why you see thousands upon thousands of brands in literally every industry being owned by just a handful of companies.

This isn't a coincidence. This is a hand in hand coordination between government and big corporations. What about lockdowns and rent freezes? Think about who that benefits the most. Who can more afford a 2020 style lockdown, a mom-and-pop restaurant, or a massive conglomerate? What about a retired mom-and-pop landlord that live off their rental properties versus a massive conglomerate landlording chain who can more afford rent? Phrases Again, the Conglomerate.

So you can see how a lot of these regulations and a lot of these phrases that are supposed to protect public health and the everyday person actually end up just enriching the people that already have all the money and the power, and specifically the corporations that already have all the money in the pound. Lastly, let's go ahead and talk trade agreements. Trade agreements are another core reason that the American middle class has been and is continuing to be destroyed. We'll start with NAFTA.

The North American Free Trade Agreement established a free trade zone in North America and was signed in 1992 by Canada Mexico and the US and took effect in 1994.. before that, there were tariffs on the majority of goods and services produced by each of these nations. Now, free trade sounds like a good thing, and it certainly can be. But you got to remember that the United States has substantially more regulations on its industry than say Mexico does.

Which means that Mexico has a huge, huge competitor of Edge. So that means that having a free trade agreement is like if you're going to let your kid go engage in free play with the other neighborhood kids, but you tell your kid he can only use one of his legs while playing like obviously your kid is going to fall over constantly and the other kids are going to win and laugh at him. obviously. Now on one hand, now after lowered prices for American consumers since American consumers didn't have to buy the more expensive American produced Goods, but on the other hand, it decimated completely decimated many American Industries specifically the manufacturing sector and increased the trade deficit between the U.S and Mexico by 576 percent in the coming decades After NAFTA was signed and encouraged.

U.S Auto Electronic Appliance heavy equipment and other Us-based manufacturers to relocate many of their multi-million dollar plants and future Investments to Mexico, which they then would produce products that they'd sell back to the United States and they'd keep a massive amount of profits. In the year before NAFTA went into effect, the trade deficit between the U.S and Mexico was non-existent There was a 7.5 billion dollar Surplus Some 30 years later, we've lost that Surplus and now we've got a trade deficit that is around 119 billion dollars. All of this destroyed many of the industries and jobs that had traditionally brought many middle class incomes to this country, but are now destroyed. and this is just an example of one trade.

Doom Now, if you watch this video, you may walk away thinking that the government is the reason that the middle class is getting destroyed and you'd certainly be right and wherever you stand politically. whether you think there should be more or less government or you don't care, well, the fact of the matter is that the government is still doing a horrible, horrible job. And if you want more government, if you want less government, whatever government is there should be forced to do a much better job than they're doing now. Because if they don't, well guess what? This middle class is going to keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

and eventually there's going to be like 99 of people that are in dirt poverty and one percent that are politically connected and very very very rich. And folks, this trend is expected to get worse in 2023. Publicly held federal debt as a percentage of GDP is at 98, but by 2053 folks that's expected to be at 195 percent of GDP. The American Consumer will pay for this and they will be told by politicians that sadly, the only way to solve this problem is to accept even higher taxes and even more even more government spending.

It will be a continued and endless downward spiral. So anyways, folks, what do you think about all this? Are things going to get better or worse? What can be done to change the trajectory? or is it too late? Let us know your thoughts down below. Is there another culprit Besides the government, corporations and trade agreements? Let us know down below. The most important thing to me is that we can get this video shared out there and more people can realize what is going on and get the real information instead of all the usual BS talking points that you hear on the mainstream news.

So if you appreciate this video, please go ahead and share it and hit that ravishing like button and subscribe and we'll see you in the next one.