from the desk of Denver Snuffer: King Benjamin's Wisdom

from the desk of Denver Snuffer: King Benjamin's Wisdom: King Benjamin taught his people to repent and rely on God’s mercy. He declared that salvation comes “through faith on his name.” ( Mosiah 3:...

Top 1% Has 65 Times More Wealth Than The Bottom Half And The Global Elite Like It That Way

As we previously noted, the 85 richest people in the world have about as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the entire global population does.  In other words, 85 extremely wealthy individuals have about as much wealth as the poorest 3,500,000,000 do.  This shocking statistic comes from a new report on global poverty by Oxfam.  And actually Oxfam's report probably significantly underestimates the true scope of the problem, because Oxfam relies on publicly reported numbers.

As Michael Snyder examines, the rot goes deeper...

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

At the very top of the food chain, the global elite are masters at hiding their wealth.  In fact, as I have written about previously, the global elite have approximately 32 trillion dollars (that we know about) stashed in offshore banks around the world.  That would be about enough to pay off the entire U.S. national debt and buy every good and service produced in the United States for an entire year.  These elitists live on an entirely different planet than the rest of us do.  In fact, according to Oxfam, the richest one percent of the global population has 65 times more wealth than the bottom half of the global population combined.

There is certainly nothing wrong with making money.  In fact, the founders of the United States intended for this nation to be a place where free markets thrived and where everyone could pursue their dreams.  Unfortunately, this country (along with the rest of the world) has moved very much in the opposite direction.  Today, we have a debt-based global financial system which is dominated by gigantic predator corporations and big banks.  Working together with national governments, these corporations and banks have constructed a system that I like to call "Corporatism" in which the percentage of all global wealth that is being funneled to the very top of the pyramid steadily grows over time.

The Founding Fathers were very correct to be very suspicious of large concentrations of power.  In the early days of the United States, the federal government was very small and the size and scope of corporations was greatly limited.  Our nation thrived and a huge middle class blossomed.

Sadly, over the past several decades the pendulum has completely swung in the other direction.  Today, our society is completely and totally dominated by big banks, big corporations and big government.

And of course this is also happening in virtually every other nation on the face of the planet.  The global elite have rigged the game to send just about all of the rewards their way, and it is working.  The following are facts taken directly from Oxfam's latest report...

•Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.

•The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.

•The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.

•Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

•The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.

•In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.

Starting on Wednesday, several thousand members of the global elite will gather for the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland.  The following is how USA Today described this conference.

For several days at the end of January, presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and corporate titans jostle with actors, rock stars and major influencers for top billing at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The confab takes place in the Alpine village of Davos, about 90 miles southeast of Zurich, and for a brief spell each year the pristine ski resort half-sheds its Graubünden roots and becomes a ground zero for the political and business elite.

Unless you are independently wealthy, you can forget about going to this conference.  A ticket to Davos is going to cost you about $30,000, and that is on top of the $55,000 that it costs to join the organization.

Needless to say, it is an organization of the elite, by the elite and for the elite.

This year, the theme of the meeting is "The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business".  And the founder of the World Economic Forum says that the time has come to press the "reset" button for the global economy...

It's time to press the "reset" button on the world, the founder of the World Economic Forum said Wednesday, addressing media ahead of the WEF's much ballyhooed annual meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, that gets underway in a week's time.

"The world is complex, it's fast-moving, it's interconnected, and we in Davos want to provide a mirror to the world as it is. It is not a meeting devoted to one set of issues. It's a meeting that address the complexity of our world," said Klaus Schwab, the WEF's founder and executive chairman.

At first glance, that sounds pretty good.

Personally, I would love to hit a "reset" button for the global economy.

But what the elite mean by "reset" is much different from what most of the rest of us would mean.

The following is an excerpt from the executive summary for the agenda for the 2014 World Economic Forum...

"At an international level, the formal architecture forglobal governance was not designed for the interdisciplinary challenges and collective action problems of today. As a result, international cooperation has yet to fully enter the information age and capture its associated productivity gains."

For the global elite, the answers to our problems always involve more centralization and more "global governance".  In other words, the answers to our problems always involve giving them more control and more power.

The elite never actually want the pendulum to swing back in the direction of the "little guy".  The elite are generally pleased with how the game is being played because they are winning.

Most people don't even realize that they are participants in a debt-based neo-feudalist system in which money is being used as a form of social control.

As I have written about previously, there is about 190 trillion dollarsof debt in the world, but global GDP is only about 70 trillion dollars.

There is no way that all of this debt could ever be paid off at one time.  It is mathematically impossible.  Over time, all of this debt transfers the wealth of the planet away from us and to the global elite.  If this game was allowed to go on long enough, eventually they would have nearly all of it.

And some would argue that we are already getting close to that point.  A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research discovered that the bottom half of the global population only ownsapproximately 1 percent of all wealth, and at this point about a billion people throughout the world go to bed hungry every night.

This is one of the reasons why I am so adamant about the fact that the Federal Reserve needs to be shut down.  It is at the very heart of the debt-based system that we have in the United States, and over the past 100 years it has brought us to the brink of economic Armageddon.

Sadly, most Americans do not understand any of these things. They just assume that the debt-fueled prosperity that we have been enjoying will be able to go on indefinitely.

So is there any hope for the "little guy"?

Well, you could try to win the one billion dollar NCAA tournament bracket contest that Warren Buffett is backing.

Or you could go out and try to win the lottery or try to date a famous professional athlete.

But the odds of any of those things actually happening are so low that they aren't even worth mentioning.

Personally, I would rather spend my time trying to wake people up and help them understand how our global system really works.

I believe that a "great awakening" is coming.

I believe that millions of people are going to start breaking out of the "matrix of control" that has such a tight grip on their lives and are going to start thinking for themselves.

I believe that as the darkness gets even darker that the light is going to get even brighter.  I believe that we are going to see "renewal" on a whole bunch of different levels.

Yes, a great economic collapse is coming.

Yes, there is going to be a tremendous amount of pain.

But it won't all be bad news.

The times ahead are going to be full of adventure and excitement for those who are willing to embrace it.

Utah Police Obtain Grenade Launchers, Riot Gear From Feds The Alex Jones Channel Alex Jones Show podcast Prison Planet TV Infowars.com Twitter Alex Jones' Facebook Infowars store Like FEMA, local police are also preparing for mass panic

For the past five years, the Pentagon has equipped dozens of Utah police departments with a wide variety of military equipment commonly used in riot response such as the aforementioned grenade launchers, M14s, M16s and mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles through the Excess Property 1033 Program,the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

In total, over 2,240 pieces of military equipment valued at nearly $3 million have been sent to Utah since 2009, an amount far more staggering than what was revealed before.

Several of the sheriffs indicated that the equipment would only be used in worst-case scenarios.

“Are they absolutely necessary? Well, you never know,” Wasatch County Sheriff Todd Bonner said. “It’s good to be prepared.”

Iron Co. Sheriff Mark Gower also said that his department’s MRAP will only be used in “very, very limited situations where we anticipate the possibility of someone shooting at us.”

Another sheriff, Lynn Yeates with Box Elder Co., stated that his department’s grenade launchers will be used to fire non-lethal rounds, which are commonly deployed in riot response.

It is no coincidence that the Pentagon is purposely equipping these departments with military gear for civil unrest.

Currently, America is in worse shape economically than it was prior to the 2008 financial crisis. For one thing, America’s manufacturing might has disappeared due to the myriad of government regulations.

To satisfy consumer demand in spite of this, the U.S. has relied on foreign demand for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which has ensured that countries around the world would accept fiat dollars for their manufactured goods.

But eventually, as the Federal Reserve continues to create more dollars, the value of the already weak dollar will decline to the point where foreign countries will no longer accept them for their goods, destroying the American economy as it finally sinks under its heavy trade deficit.

The Fed’s only response to this and the still lingering recession is to print even more dollars.

“On top of the trillions in dollars already printed thus far, the Fed continues quantitative easing to the tune of about $80 billion per month,” Marc Slavo wrote on the subject. “It’s the only arrow left in the Fed’s quiver, because failing to inject these billions into stock markets and banks will lead to an almost instant collapse of the U.S. financial system.”

“Unfortunately, the current strategy is chock full of its own pitfalls, the least of which being the real possibility of a hyper-inflationary environment developing over coming months and years.”

In essence, by propping up the U.S. “house of cards” economy with the current round of quantitative easing, the Fed is only advancing the collapse of the dollar and the mass chaos that will ensue.

Other federal agencies are also making preparations for this mass rioting and panic.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently looking for contractors that can collect and remove bio-medical waste during national emergencies, as reported earlier by Paul Joseph Watson.

Previously, FEMA unsuccessfully sought a contractor that could supply 100,000 medical scrubs to be delivered to 1,000 make-shift “tent hospitals” within 48 hours of a declared emergency.

Last fall, FEMA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, spent $500,000 on automatic pepper spray launchers complete with 240,000 projectiles.

The government knows that a collapse is coming.

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Do you spend like the Feds?