I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. –Thomas Jefferson

“Mayday. Mayday. This is an emergency. The United States is being pillaged and plundered by a well-run conspiracy of traitors among which are wealthy elitists, right-wing activists, and legislative ne’re-do-wells who are hellbent on sucking up all the wealth in the nation and handing it over without ceremony to the ultra-wealthy. This hijacking is taking place barely beneath our societal radars without benefit of guns or violence while the rest of the country is comatose and languishing in a state of ignorance, apathy, and despair. To all who are within range of my words, please acknowledge this message. It could be our last chance to save our country.”

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I am as steeped in our culture, our history, and a sense of justice as anyone I know about. I especially admire the courage and the sentiments of men like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Where are such men and women today when we need them with such urgency? Where is the patriotism among the flag-wavers and the religious zealots? Have they forgot that all tyranny needs to succeed is that men and women of goodwill do nothing?

It’s time to take the fight to the enemy.

All the male members of my family except for one who was crippled from birth served in the military on foreign turf while under assault from combatants with real fighting skills. And we were all volunteers. Today, I carry that same determination against “the enemies within.” I make that qualification for those who dare to suggest that I should leave the country for pointing out its weaknesses. Suffice to say I am not inclined to follow the advice of mental or moral lightweights who have neither honor nor fighting skills.

I am saddened when I hear anyone refer to America as the “land of opportunity.” That expression was once told with pride and emotion by young and old alike. It has been rendered asunder by an avalanche of facts and outcomes brought about by subterfuge and by those with disgraceful motivations. Of the 44 major nations around the world, we are now in last place in opportunities—for our citizens, for our aspiring citizens, and for anyone who seeks a better way of life for themselves or their children.

In this essay I will explain one of our most obscure economic statistics: the Gini Coefficient of Inequality, and why this single measure of both prosperity and poverty now holds such a grim tale for America—today, tomorrow, and far into the future. This statistic is a sobering reminder that the enemies of freedom, justice, and general prosperity are winning in the battle to make America their private horn-of-plenty at the expense of all others.

First, keep this truism in mind: In an economic system, it is nearly impossible to take from anyone and give to others without a corresponding loss to the first person or group. But don’t take my word for it. Read the lessons about efficiency and optimality given to us by economist Vilfredo Pareto (see Pareto Efficiency). To believe otherwise is like smashing a can of peas with a hammer, while expecting no equal and opposite reaction from its contents.

In the U.S. and around the world, when government takes from one person or group, and gives to another, the first person or group becomes worse off. Moreover, when the first group is already poor, and government takes excessively from them, that group is destined unerringly to become impoverished. And so, we have this essay’s first economic principle at work: Excessive wealth to the few causes excessive poverty for the many. Poverty is not a self-imposed condition.

I have said this before, but it is worth repeating: We have the dubious distinction of having these consequences of wealth inequality: higher rates of crime, more criminals, more incarcerations, more illiterates, more mentally ill, more teen pregnancies, more obese residents, and more social immobility than in any of those other 44 nations. That is a list of facts, not opinions. They are all documented in data collected by two scholarly investigators who arrayed them in a lengthy list of References (see The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010).

More Facts: Our national wealth (the combined assets minus debts of all households) now stands at $107 trillion (from Flow of Funds Report, Federal Reserve). That sum is by far the most wealth among all the nations on Earth. But that is only part of our prosperity picture. That same wealth is also distributed in a gigantic skew in favor of those at the top. That means that the top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 50 percent combined. That distribution is measured by the Gini coefficient where 0 = perfect equality, and 1.0 means that one person has it all, while the other 327 million have none. Today our Gini coefficient is at 0.9, so we are approaching that inglorious number where one person has it all.

Our wealth Gini has been creeping higher and higher, as silently as a cat stalks its prey, under the careful eyes of a few of our ultra-wealthy citizens. Frankly, they have been stealing us blind without firing a shot, and nearly without a whimper of opposition. They have taken the words of poet Thomas Gray and stood them upside down: “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”

A few billionaires are busy right now devising the ways and means for pushing our wealth Gini closer to 1. Clearly, they want all the wealth, even knowing that excessive wealth by the few can only come about by deeper poverty by the many. Who are they? The 100 wealthiest persons in the country are the primary puppeteers. They are followed by their puppets: at least 80 percent of the Republican party—the ideologues, who are supported in the main by the five conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court. It is a tidy arrangement: All neatly legal, yet also manifestly disgusting in design and application of, by, and for the greedy.

How have they manipulated so many minds, motivations, and laws in their favor? They have systematically bought up large chunks of our news media—radio, television, and newspapers where they channel massive amounts of lies and other forms of propaganda; and they are the employers of a huge population of people who work for them. They use propaganda at every conscious and subliminal level; they demonize all who do not support them (the press, intellectuals, progressives, and other fair-minded persons); they contribute heavily to right-wing candidates for public office (local, state, and national) thanks to the Supreme Court (see Citizens United v. FEC); and they are likely supported by foreign operatives who infiltrate and spread misinformation (fake news) within our social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Gerrymandering by right-wing state legislatures is so blatant and widespread the term almost sounds benign. And myriad laws aimed at suppressing the votes of minorities is rampant in every state that is designated “Red” by news organizations.

They have even brainwashed our President to the point of outright goofiness. Approximately three months ago, one investigator had identified more than 4,200 lies in his first 18 months on the job (reported in the New Yorker, Aug, 3, 2018). It appears to this writer that nearly one-half of our population are themselves brainwashed to the point at which they smile and cheer at these antics that are part of a crude plan to take more and more from them, and give it to the ultra-wealthy. That is propaganda at work the likes of which would make Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels giddy with delight.

What can you and I do about all this before it is too late? First, let’s look at the trend and what it portends. That will give us a clearer perspective.

Since 1950 our wealth has been increasing at the rate of 7.2 percent per year. The wealthy now own 90 percent of that wealth. In 50 years they will own a greater percentage of our wealth by virtue of the new law that exempts taxes altogether on inheritances, and from the continuing rate of growth on present wealth. The national wealth by 2068 will be $107 trillion X 1.072^50, or $3.46 quadrillion dollars. That projected total is 32 times greater than today’s total.

Now assimilate those numbers if you dare. Here are a few possible scenarios that flow from them:

--The wealthy will have new wealth almost beyond our collective comprehension quotients, while the poor will be so destitute, they will likely be collapsing and dying in the streets by the tens of thousands. We would likely need to welcome immigrants in if only to pick up and bury the bodies.

--Americans could revolt and march on the Capitol. The carnage will be so great that smaller groups of men and women will form into clusters of hit-and-run survivalists. The carnage could go on for years until a foreign power chose to invade and tried to conquer what is left of our country.

--We could suddenly awaken from our brainwashed states of mental disengagement and start to fight back. This is unlikely because it requires backbone, and resolve, and the sudden realization that Jefferson and Paine understood the lessons of history much better than we do.

In other essays I have offered a more detailed list of counter actions that we need to take in order to turn the tide of impending doom that awaits us. I will defer to those measures. For now, this has been but an attention-getter written with neither grace nor fear. I know I am but one person shouting in the darkness. My hope is that just as I am standing now before that same alter where Jefferson spoke with such eloquence, you and I are more like Jefferson and less like the ultra wealthy.