We have all heard the names of some of the billionaires. It is interesting to note Forbes has the complete list for 2016 and it overwhelms the cash on my browser. I got to #1067 but there is more to it than that. As we go down the list we find that there are more and more billionaires occupying the same spot because they are tied in the amount of wealth. What we get is many with the same number. For example there are 12 billionaires with the number 286. It is said there are 510 billionaires in the United States and 1,810 worldwide. The list is as of March 2016 so there could be one or two more by now. Why are there suddenly far more billionaires today than at any time in history? One reason is everything is more expensive so more is spent on items and this means a billion today is worth less than a billion yesterday, if you get my drift. This is certainly not the only reason however. There is the fact that old fortunes get passed along and grow and therefore some people inherit their money and are billionaires before the go into any businesses. The family investments just keep growing.

It is interesting to note when Forbes made the list of billionaires they left off a category of billionaires and that was the royalty. There is nothing wrong with getting wealth, but you have to wonder why all this wealth is increasing for the top 1/10 of one percent while the rest of the world is struggling. It is as if the world is tilted in one direction and that direction is where the billionaires are. There are quite a few people who have become rich by taking advantage of our new found technology. These are the new money people as compared to the families who passed their wealth along. We could say it is like comparing Elon Musk to Nathaniel Rothschild. Both are billionaires but Musk’s money is new money, because he started out with a borrowed $28,000 which he started a company with. The Rothschilds are a dynasty with a lot of money which was made over hundreds of years.

One of the problems as I see it in the United States is the fact the middle class is always at the rotten end of the stick. It seems as if there is some power squeezing it. If there is some type of plan it seems it is to do away with the middle class and just have a class of underpaid workers. It reminds me of some of the science fiction stories I have read over the years about dystopian societies where everyone is kept on the verge of hunger, they have nothing and their educations are limited. They are taught just enough to be able to run the machines which the elite class have in their factories. This is one thing I don’t think we will have to worry about, because the way automation is headed there will be no machine for us to run, the robots will do that day in and day out without any breaks or lunches and without requiring even a minimum wage. While it will become Dystopia for us, it will become Utopia for the rich and powerful. Some might say hey, these people desire to enjoy their money, but the simple fact is they are not treated like the rest of us when it comes to things like paying taxes. Many of the rich pay a much less percentage of taxes than the rest of us, because the tax laws are designed to allow them loopholes and tax shelters which are not available to people on a fixed income or salary.

If we were all treated equally under the laws there would be nothing to complain about, it would just be a case of someone maybe making better investments or rising to the top of a company, but the opportunities would be equal for all, but that is not the way of life. There has always been favoritism, bribery, corruption and so forth. The problem is some of the inequities are condoned by the government. When one tries to find out how many pages are in the U.S. tax code all different amounts of numbers are stated, depending where you check. One source Slate.com states in an article it is about 2,800 pages and yet most other sources state it is far over 70,000 pages. The IRS states it is 11,700 pages in six volumes, but I am not sure of the year. Anyway even 11,700 pages is an obscenity. It is made ridiculously complex so that we can’t take advantage of it, because let’s face facts, the middle class is carrying this country with their taxes and the government doesn’t want them reduced. We seem to have a conflict with the crushing of the middle class and the government’s desire to keep us paying a higher tax  percentage than the rich. This leads me to believe the plan to crush the middle class may not be solidified yet.

When people started talking about the New World Order years ago, many of us scoffed at the idea which was powerful people wanted to reduce all of us to serfs paying us just enough to exist and work for them. The other part of the plan was to reduce the population to make it more manageable. If we just look around today we will find a lot of people have lost their well-paying jobs and are no longer in the middle class. They are working for far less than they were. For most people there haven’t been decent pay raises for years and people are being told if they don’t like their jobs to just leave. Times are not good for a lot of people. Sure there is the occasional success story, but the bulk of the middle class is having a hard time. Immigrants are allowed to come into the country and they work for cheaper wages forcing a downward spiral of wages for all. I personally believe the reason illegal aliens are being allowed to stay is to do just that, lower the wages.

Is there a plan which is causing us so much grief? Take a look back 20 years or so and how things were then and compare them to how they are now. If you got a college degree back then it was almost a guarantee of a job. Today there are huge amounts of college grads who cannot find work. Many big businesses are moving to foreign countries where they can get scientists and such for less money. Back then a person could get a civil service job at a decent rate of pay and a nice pension. Today the pay is much less since there haven’t been many pay raises if any and the pensions have been decreased dramatically and many municipalities have not been able to pay pensions. A person wanting a job can can’t usually  see anyone they have to put in a resume and hope someone reads it and decides if it is better than the thousands of others in the pile and most of the time only a few are read. It is a very frustrating position to be put in.

Things are going from bad to worse and it doesn’t seem we have hit bottom yet. When things get bad it seems a war is inevitable. I just hope this is not the case now.