Anyone telling you that reporting the truth pays is lying to you. I just paid the bill for all my monthly research resources, and once again, I’m operating at a loss. Will it stop me? Absolutely not, but ever the optimist, I do live in hope that one day, my making the truth available to everyone rather than locking it behind a paywall, will enable me to cover my costs.—disappointment over, time to move on.
In this third and final part of this series on the economy, I want to drill into the impact on everyday Americans living paycheck to paycheck. You can find PART ONE here and PART TWO here.
You don’t need to be an economist to understand that the bigger the wealth gap, the bigger the challenge for those in the middle and at the bottom. In a piece by Sarah Anderson, written on inequality.org and later featured by the London School of Economics in January, she notes:
The collective net worth of America’s top 12 billionaires now surpasses $2 trillion. Their combined wealth increased by more than $1.3 trillion, or 193 percent, between March 18, 2020 and December 3, 2024, according to the Institute for Policy Studies’ analysis of Forbes Real Time Billionaire Data.
What is challenging to come to terms with as an average everyday Joe struggling to get by, is the way that the system is rigged always to punish you and not those at the top stealing your money. Most people aren’t greedy; they just want enough money not to have to lie awake at night worrying about paying the bills, and enjoy the comfort of having access to healthcare, affordable childcare and maybe take a vacation once a year to recharge the batteries. In a normal world, how could anyone call these unreasonable expectations? THEY ARE NOT UNREASONABLE, so please stop viewing them as luxuries and not a right as they are in many developed economies.
Yet here we are. The monied class argue, how on earth will you be motivated to work for slave wages if you can survive on the fruits of your labour derived from a living wage? They would object to you not living in a state of perpetual anxiety at the thought of losing your job or becoming ill. They would even go so far as to say anyone supporting your aspiration for such a life must be labelled a communist, a Marxist or a socialist. Think about that for a moment. We have to change that narrative.
They went to war with ‘woke’ for good reason. Diversity, equity and inclusion are the enemies of economic slavery and authoritarian rule. This administration wants to rewrite the rulebook, and there is no doubt that they would adopt Apartheid in the blink of an eye if they could. I would go so far as to say they have already taken steps to get there. If there is one thing we have learned from the first 9 months of the Trump regime, it’s that money talks. Lawyers, corporate and social media, Republican lawmakers and even the Supreme Court have all bent the knee. This leaves us all exposed to authoritarian rule and a carefully crafted false narrative.
Trump has spent almost a decade creating an us-and-them environment for this very moment in which his ‘truths’ dominate the entire media ecosystem. His base is his Stepford wife, and the mainstream media appears to be suffering from terminal Stockholm Syndrome. The norms are gone, along with the guardrails and any sense of moral decency or integrity.
It’s no coincidence that too many Americans seem to have forgotten that the United States was not built on the blood, sweat, and tears of the rich; it was built by the hard labour of slaves and a workforce continually exploited by them. Workers are the fuel that drives the nation's prosperity and the obscene wealth the rich have accumulated. Small businesses are the very backbone of the economy, yet the arrogance of the oligarchs leads them to believe that this is their world now and the little people should know their place. The US workforce has become the abused spouse of out-of-control greed, which has suppressed aspiration by creating a Hunger Games environment for economic survival. There is no refuge from the new 21st-century digital plantation owners.
I could write a book on the injustices at play in this moment, but that’s for another time. In Trump’s new America, the people represent figures being woven into a tapestry of lies and deceit, where a crucial federal workforce, just like immigrants, is painted as a drain on an economy they have played no part in destroying. Trump paints them as the mystery assassin on the Grassy Knoll that ruined America. It’s textbook projection from a man who added $7.8 trillion to the national debt in his last term as president.
In Trump’s new TV Special portrayal of the American Dream, he is the glorious emperor delivered by God to save a white Christian nation with solutions in search of problems. If ever there was a story of a false prophet, Trump is the poster boy. Let’s take a look at his achievements to date.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in a report dated 23rd June 2025, they noted that:
[the] Trump administration found that the elimination or reduction of these government agencies have directly cost over 50,000 people their jobs. DOGE’s cuts at these select agencies and programs could result in a loss of over $10 billion in U.S.-based economic activity
The essential thing to understand here is that this cull of the federal workforce was not just about the performative politics of seeing loyal civil servants leaving their offices in tears with boxes containing their personal possessions; it was about destroying agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency which the report notes:
Since 2011, the CFPB received $7.3 billion in funding from the Federal Reserve. With those federal funds, the CFPB recovered more than $21 billion for taxpayers as a result of their enforcement and consumer protection actions.
I use this as one example of a whole host of funding cuts to agencies like NIH $4 billion in funding cuts to medical research. The report goes on to note:
This funding was intended to go to universities, hospitals and research institutes around the country, some of which is dedicated to tackling diseases like cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular conditions like heart failure.
Please, take a moment to read the full report. Along with cuts to IRS staff funding, these represent not cost savings, because many of the programs returned profits on investment, but an ideological Social Darwinistic obsession with cruelty that allows the rich to abstain from any form of social responsibility. This administration believes that the corporations run by the rich, who use them to shield themselves from their tax responsibilities, also need to be unburdened from both safety and environmental responsibility.
Profit over people is well and truly back. It leaves one asking the question, so what exactly are my taxes being used for? The short answer is, very little that will benefit you. Not only that, he has opened up your 401(k) to the private equity market, providing a lifeline to private equity firms who can’t wait to fleece you just as they did subprime lenders in 2008. Trump is calling it “Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets, " a chance to gamble your retirement via private equity. There’s nothing like a game of Russian Roulette with your retirement fund to get the blood pumping. You can read what I wrote about it below. It’s worth a read because I also discuss actions you can take to fight back.
Your economic disengagement can cause this government to bleed out fiscally
Every day, a president living in the departure lounge of life spins Americans a ‘jam tomorrow’ yarn, telling them they will soon have more money than they know what to do with, that they will get a non-existent DOGE dividend or a tariff bonus. How many lies does he have to tell before you realise he’s a pathological liar?
The objective of this administration is to eliminate any remaining protections for workers’ rights, voting rights, and human rights. They believe Americans have no right to clean water or pollution-free air, both of which will be sacrificed in the race to generate power for AI data centres. If it doesn’t turn a buck, they are not providing any of it, and that represents a considerable potential cost to you in terms of healthcare at a time when they are limiting access to that, too.
There is no clearer example of a failed Trump policy than the current hit being taken by farmers, many of whom voted for Trump on some twisted idea that he would not deport their slave labour and that shuttering USAID was a good idea. Farm bankruptcies have increased by 25% since Trump took office, and China no longer have any interest in buying US soybeans.
I thought this quote from agweb.com said it all. Farmer Adam Chappell said:
“This is the Worst Economy of My Lifetime ...”
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, says Adam Chappell. “Year after year of sweeping all this s*** under the rug and pretending it’s not happening has got us to this point. Years of barely squeaking by, surviving with a bailout and then doing it all again. That is the definition of insanity.”
It’s just another example of Trump’s failing tariff policy that is having a real-life devastating impact on already struggling US farmers. China just turned to Brazil to meet its enormous demands for soybeans. Not only did this punish the US, but it also strengthened links between China and Brazil. This was yet another geopolitical win for China. Trump’s response? A sarcastic post on Truth Social referring to Shri Narendra Modi:
“….Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
The point here is that these leaders really have no respect for Trump; he’s just seen as a political bully and a chancer who is easy to manipulate. The truth is that Trump is so desperate when it comes to Xi that he’s now insisting Europe impose 100% tariffs on China to apply the pressure he can’t. It all comes back to yet another example of his fantasy foreign policy narrative that America is respected around the world. Nothing could be further from the Truth. Putin is playing him like a Stradivarius; Netanyahu has never had so much fun, and trading partners are promising him fantasy investments that will amount to nothing more than free soundbites to help him sell his economic fantasy to any willing listener.
What you have to remember is that if Trump decides to bail out farmers, it’s not a problem for him; it’s YOUR taxpayer dollars that will be paying for his failure. He’s spent his entire life spending other people’s money to avoid taking responsibility for his failings.
He is a man out of his depth who has found himself with no alternative but to impose taxes on Americans disguised as tariffs, which he pretends other countries are paying, just to keep the lights on. If the Supreme Court does not uphold his illegal use of emergency powers to impose said tariffs, he truly will be the emperor with no clothes, and the US will dive into a recession.
What I’m desperately trying to point to here is that he’s selling the family silver to feed his addiction to the media spotlight, and none of his economic plan is delivering anything but derision from a global trading community who are suffering for his addiction. Domestically, the administration is spending money like drunken sailors on mass deportation and the militarisation of US cities. Trump has created a Deportation Industrial Complex, as noted by the Brennan Centre for Justice.
In a piece by Margy O’Herron on August 13th 2025, she states:
The so-called One Big Beautiful Act allocates more than $170 billion over four years for border and interior enforcement, with a stated goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year. That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined across the entire United States. The bill adds billions of dollars to border enforcement, but the largest percentage increase goes to finding, arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants already living in the U.S., most of whom have not committed a crime and many of whom have had lawful status.
Aside from it being a hugely inefficient way to waste money, it is the most prominent example of economic suicide in modern American history. You can read my detailed assessment below:
You can run, but you can't hide from the inevitable
It's safe to say that during the Trump era, propaganda has come of age. I have been reflecting on the way the Heritage Foundation and its hard-right partners have used Trump as a delivery mechanism for the most effective psychological warfare campaign in modern history. They knew America was fertile ground for propaganda based on the literacy rate of th…
On the face of it. In the politest of terms, we Brits are noted for ‘You’re fucked’, and it’s only a matter of time before the music stops. The burning question is how long, and that’s a difficult question to answer, because there are lots of moving parts, not to mention two wars, a military deployment in the Caribbean. Trump is like a duck. On the surface, he appears to be floating along, seemingly without a care in the world, but beneath the water, he’s paddling like mad, searching for an economic Hail Mary.
I would urge you not to be deceived by today’s lower-than-expected Producer Price Index that Trump will no doubt be doing a lap of honour with on Fox and social media. What you have to remember is that bonded warehouses are full of pre-tariff imports, which are yet to feed into the system. You should look at this as giving you more time to prepare for what I still believe to be an inevitable downturn. My focus will be on the Consumer Price Index tomorrow to see how much inflation is creeping into the equation.
I also now have a nagging feeling in the back of my mind regarding the accuracy of the numbers given by the BLS; there is now a Trump loyalist at the helm. And he has created an environment where my mind is seeing shadows around every corner. Is it possible that yesterday’s revised job numbers were part of a deliberate deception to keep people off balance regarding the PPI and CPI numbers? To be clear, I have no evidence to support my racing thoughts, so I am certainly not accusing Trump’s head of the BLS, E.J. Antoni, of fixing the numbers. Let’s just call it a dose of healthy scepticism.
In conclusion, I would say if you are not in the top 5%, there is every need to be concerned, and as stated previously, I would urge you to stop spending and save every cent you can right now until we get a better long-term view of the economy. I would like you to know that I do not want to see an economic downturn, as it will cause irreparable harm to the most vulnerable. Every American wants to see the economy succeed. I’m just a data guy, and right now, too many data points are screaming WARNING, and I wanted to share my honest assessment.
www.blackoutthesystem.com Sept. 16-20. Consumers helped to created these corporations. And when consumers withdraw their dollars, we cut the corporation supply source. We UNITED demonstate exactly WHO has the power. Do your own due dillegence and promote widely if inspired. This is easy, safe, and simple....anyone anywhere can do something and it WILL have an impact.
We, the people, still have the power of the purse. No one can control our spending, or lack of spending. When all else fails we can go on a spending strike until the business community stops supporting the Rat and the politicians who enable him.
Economic warfare is the only thing the oligarchs, the business community will understand and act on. I call it a Surreptitious General Strike. Go to work, do as little as possible. Stop spending money except on essentials. Quit feeding the corporate beast that supports the Rat.
Crush the economy and the stock market. It’s the only thing the oligarchs will understand. They and their corporations lose money, then they will put pressure on the “Republican” politicians, who they own, to back off and turn against the Rat. Mahatma Gandhi drove the British from India by boycotts and civil disobedience. We can stop the fascist takeover in the same way.