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Welcome to Hard Times
While the majority of Americans manage to maintain a reasonably high standard of living, there are pockets of poverty and hopelessness spread around the country that the mainstream media seldom points out to its dwindling audiences.
The government shutdown from October into November of 2025 exposed the unobserved fact that more than 40 million Americans - 12% of the population - feeds from government assistance in the form of food stamps or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The effects of the shutdown and short-lived suspension of benefits to this vast horde of people was evidenced by overwhelming demand at privately-run food banks and some ill-conceived postings on social media for the most part.
Overall, nobody was harmed more than the politicians who caused the pain and suffering, as little as there was, because people on benefits now realize just how easily these programs can come to a screeching halt, with little more than passing lip service from the congress in Washington. There’s little doubt that putting limitations on how much food people could afford was closely monitored by the parties that fomented the test-run of what used to be known as austerity. Not getting the assistance many had become used to receiving came as a shock along with a renewed distrust of the federal government.
Points of view on the government’s “free food” assistance program vary widely, but the accepted concept is that it is a national disgrace that so many rely on it. The government’s budget for the program runs in excess of $100 billion a year, or about $8.6 billion a month, and beneath the numbers are federal and state agencies that administer the program. What is so egregious about the program in general is how it benefits food producers, large grocery chains and companies like Walmart, Pepsico, and Kroger’s. They benefit from increased demand, which feeds into higher prices (for everybody) and higher profits.
It’s believed that the suspension of food stamps and the downstream effects were primary causes for the congress to end the shutdown, but, while there was certainly angst over seeing hungry people in cities and towns across America, there was surely just as much - and maybe more - pressure from Big Ag and the corporate food peddlers to keep the “gravy train” intact. In the end, congress learned its lesson well, which is why the deal to re-open the government included funding for SNAP food stamps though the end of fiscal 2026, which is September 30, 2026. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to risk taking the blame for starving Americans; neither do they wish to risk campaign contribution erosion from the corporate side of the equation.
The SNAP snafu is but one instance pointing towards a dystopian future wherein basic survival becomes a dominant daily routine. The level of wealth disparity in the United States has never been greater. A recent report by Oxfam America showed that between 1989 and 2022, the richest one percent (1.0%) grabbed at least 987 times more wealth per household the the bottom 20% and the trend of inequality continues to widen. The top 1% owns roughly half of all the stocks in the U.S., while the bottom half owns just 1.1%.
While stocks at all-time highs are boasted to show America’s economic strength by President Trump, the main beneficiaries are his billionaire brethren. The rest of the country might as well pound sand. More than 40% of American households are now considered poor or low income. Tariffs may be adding revenue to the government, but they are raising the price of imported goods for the general public. Tax cuts generally benefit the upper 20% of the population. Many in the lower half of earners pay little or no tax as it is.
The inflation of the past five years had made almost everything in America unaffordable to what used to be known as the middle class. From a nation that promoted the “American Dream” as home ownership, the country has become a nation of renters, as the median price of existing homes in the U.S. has surpassed $400,000. It takes an annual income of $110-125,000 to qualify for purchasing the average home. With the annual median income in America at about $60,000, about 80% of potential home-buyers are priced out, forced to rent, and rents continue to increase in most areas across the country.
Wages have not kept pace with inflation in food, energy, or housing for a very long time. The days of the 1950s and 1960s, when a single earner could support a family of four with a mortgage and afford a summer vacation are long ago and far away. Only the aging Baby Boomer generation remembers those days of good and plenty. Life in the 2020s is comparatively harder economically, though economists point to the benefits that technology has bestowed as a fair trade-off, though it’s difficult to imagine anybody preferring $2,000 a month rent with unlimited channels on pay-to-view TV and a monthly smart phone bill a fair exchange for home ownership and money in the bank.
There are other, anecdotal suggestions that hard times are approaching. The burgeoning national debt, the hollowing out of industry from forty years of off-shoring manufacturing, rising homelessness, crime, and the national media’s reluctance to point out these problems are but a few of the issues pointing to lower standards of living, shorter life-expectancy and increased drug addiction, depression, and anxiety, especially among younger people.
The refusal of the government to balance its own budget or do anything of substance to ease the burden of high prices, debt, and high interest rates on everyday citizens sets a poor example for the youth of America. It fosters an acceptance of debt as a fact of life rather than something to be avoided like the plague. Household debt hit a record $18.6 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, with 5% of people aged 18 to 29 in serious delinquency. Of the $1.8 trillion in student loans outstanding, roughly one in five is seriously past due - more than 90 days. These are not signs of a healthy economy. They are more inclined to be associated with early signs of stress in failing states.
There may be some hope within the contours of a stock market crash or full-blown government default. At least with calamitous events some of the excesses, frauds, and abuses come to light and there’s the potential for restructuring, but it’s likely that unless those with their hands on the levers of power and influence are somehow negatively affected, the spiral downwards into depression and dependency for most Americans will continue uninterrupted.
The signs of decline and degeneracy are beginning to fester like open wounds. From the federal level down to states and cities, infrastructure hasn’t been adequately maintained for decades and even when there is an upgrade or improvement, it costs more at the street level, so the net effect is a negative one.
It’s easy to become complacent, especially if one holds a job and keeps expenses under control, but the system has become so fragile and dependent on debt, dodgy government fixes, and media propaganda, small disruptions can easily lead to larger, untamed problems that affect ever-growing swaths of society. The Baby Boomers and the ultra-wealthy inside their gated communities may not feel any pain, but on the streets of American cities and in the rural hinterlands, there’s an almost inescapable sense that things are not right and nobody is lifting a finger to fix any of it.
Liberal Baby Boomers inherited the most cohesive, high-trust society in history—90 percent white, English-speaking, Protestant-rooted, doors unlocked, crime at historic lows—and deliberately unmade it. They passed the 1965 Immigration Act, opened the borders, preached “diversity is strength,” imposed affirmative action, and demanded bilingual ballots, turning a nation into a hotel. Nature’s first law is that every stable society rests on one dominant ethnic core that assimilates outsiders; Rome had Latin Romans, Japan has Yamato Japanese, even Switzerland runs on alpine-European cantons with clear majorities. By smashing the white core and banning assimilation, boomers violated this law on a continental scale.
The ultimate irony is that their “no dominant culture” dogma guarantees the very segregation liberals claim to hate. California already functions as Greater Mexico, South Florida as Little Havana, Dearborn as Dearbornistan; the Black Belt, Mormon West, and white rural redoubts are drawing mental borders. Liberal Boomers destroyed the only mechanism—a confident white majority culture—that could have forced a shared American identity. Nature does not negotiate; when the center cracks, the pieces re-segregate by blood and soil. The rainbow utopia dies in the divorce papers of 2040, and the new maps will be drawn with rifles instead of ballots. Boomers fought nature. Nature has already won.
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