By the author of Street Survivalism: A Practical Training Guide To Life In The City and The Ultimate Survival
The wealth gap is growing in the West. Objectively, it goes up and down following economic boom and bust cycles, so on the surface, that shouldn’t be worrying. However, a combination of alarming factors is compounding and making that a more serious issue this time around.
The signs and consequences of that acceleration are everywhere: the explosion of homelessness, crime, and social unrest accompanied by the escalation of oppression, regulation, taxation, bureaucracy, and infrastructure decay. Not to mention mass illegal immigration, a threat that’s now coming to a head in the streets of the EU, the UK, and the USA.
Not everyone is paying attention to the issue, mostly because it’s a slow process that happens in the background. But they also aren’t noticing because governments are actively trying to gaslight the population. And from those who are aware, only a few are concerned or know what this means for advanced societies, for their standard of living, and even for the relationship between nations.
Only a few leaders have the courage to address the matter openly, or do something about it.
Perhaps the best example is El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who delivered a great speech during the recent UN meeting. It was the event’s most honest and courageous presentation, typical of a true statesman. It doesn’t matter much what you or I think of him. The guy has turned one of the most violent and deadly countries in the world into one of the safest in just a couple of years.
As he noted, after decades of conflicts, poverty, and violence, Salvadorans are now enjoying a much better standard of living and quality of life. Thousands got jailed for that to happen, but what matters is that now the majority – the honest part of the population – is free to work, advance, and enjoy their beautiful country.
Not everyone sees it that way, and some say he’s a “threat to democracy.” That idea has been abused by both sides of the political spectrum, to the point of turning it empty and meaningless. But facts speak louder than words: his people love him, and that’s the true measure of a leader’s success.
Argentina’s Javier Milei is another president who seized the opportunity to denounce the dangers of socialism, wokeism and corruption taking over the First World, and criticize governments turning the screws on liberty while printing money at large. The situation in Argentina is still bad, but it’s improving slowly and trending up thanks to Milei’s policies. Again, facts speak louder than words.
I’m sure that has many of us wishing one of them was the president of our country.
I do, and speaking of the devil, Brazil’s leftist and ex-convict president went the opposite direction with his populist, retrograde, and worn-out discourse. Lula missed the opportunity to denounce the stolen elections and the atrocities being committed against the population and the opposition in Venezuela in his opening UN speech.
Instead of addressing the political and humanitarian crisis taking place within his area of influence, the delusional leader ticked all the globalist agenda, from climate change to the conflict in Palestine, from internet regulation (i.e., censorship), world hunger, to the UN’s Security Council, among other crap completely out of his competence.
His discourse was mediocre, shameful, pathetic, and cynical, a direct contrast to his colleagues from El Salvador and Argentina. But that’s Lula, and Bill Gates’ foundation awarding him a prize for “humanitarian achievements” only makes things worse and tells us the rest we need to know about this whole clown theater.
Back to the topic, what stood out in Bukele’s speech is the part where he warns other leaders about the path much of the world is taking towards Thirdworldization.
Those who follow my work in preparedness know it’s based on that idea, which is the declining standard of living going on in much of the Western World. It’s happening, and Bukele showed how El Salvador is making an effort in the opposite direction by fighting for freedom, a free market, and a safer society.
Bukele was very humble and down to earth, acknowledging El Salvador is small and doesn’t have much power to change things, but the results achieved can serve as an example. I must say it won’t happen, unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons with one being the level of corruption running deep into the system. So you better prepare for what’s coming.
A small wealth gap is a characteristic of a First World country, and vice-versa.
Every country has the one percenters at the top, and also a minority of miserable and dispossessed. However, in an advanced and wealthy nation the majority of the population situated between these extremes enjoys a decent standard of living: decent, well-cared-for and safe neighborhoods, access to good education, basic healthcare, and material goods (such as a house and a car or two).
That was the standard of living of previous generations, but today, it’s getting harder for the majority to even pay the bills. The first-world middle class is getting crushed. Thanks to inflation (money printing) and the Cantillon effect, the concentration of wealth in the hands of those already well-positioned and close to the printing presses is happening at a dangerous pace.
Working, saving, and investing doesn’t cut it anymore, so too many resort to shortcuts – gambling in the stock market, bitcoins, betting sites, OF, etc. – ways to try and accumulate some wealth as quickly as possible. Everyone sees the writing on the wall and is trying to front-run the inevitable.
A growing wealth gap also begets the loss of freedom: governments and authorities must keep the population under control. No one likes to feel they’re being scammed. That’s exactly what’s happening and what Bukele brought up and criticized in his speech.
I’ll use my country as an example to illustrate how pernicious and damaging a large wealth gap can be.
Brazil is a big country blessed with fair weather, diverse territory, abundant natural resources, and mostly devoid of significant natural or geopolitical threats. However, much of those favorable conditions and potential get squandered by a mix of backward mentality, corruption, bureaucracy, poor education, low productivity, and more. That keeps the wealth and privileges concentrated in the hands of too few and too many trapped in poverty, ignorance, and a quotidian of instability, degradation, and violence.
Admittedly, these deficiencies exist everywhere. But I’m talking about extreme concentration resulting in huge inequality, something damaging and hindering in ways that are hard to explain. It makes attaining sustainable progress or achieving a solid social contract next to impossible.
At one point, this perverse contrast can push a society into what I call “soft survival mode,” a rat race. While not an out-and-out fight, everybody ends up doing what it takes instead of what is right, moral, or what contributes to the advancement and prosperity of the collective. Anger and resentment build between all classes, dividing and polarizing people even further.
Final thoughts
When the wealth gap grows too big, Thirdworldization tends to accelerate and aggravate. Everyone ends up getting touched one way or another. However, not everyone is impacted the same. The upper brackets of society are able to preserve their lifestyle. At the same time, the middle and lower classes get crushed and experience a big drop, with a large number being thrown into misery.
Objectively, despite the growing wealth gap, I don’t foresee the US, Canada, or Western Europe becoming as dysfunctional as a Third-World country. I know both realities and their differences well enough to affirm that. It’s possible, however, and even though things are bad already, they will get worse in the near future.
I should also add that it sounds darker in prospect than it is in reality. I’m not making light of it, but citizens of the First World may feel the fall from grace more than the actual consequences of it. We’ll see, but either way, life goes on, and a normal and fulfilling life is perfectly possible during crises, even through wars or other SHTF.
Finally, for long-lasting crises such as Thirdworldization, adaptation works better than preparation. So my advice is, prepare to adapt.
Have you seen evidence of this?
Have you seen evidence of the wealth gap in your area? Are people struggling more than they used to? Is safety degrading? What about the infrastructure?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Fabian
Fabian Ommar is a 50-year-old middle-class worker living in São Paulo, Brazil. Far from being the super-tactical or highly trained military survivor type, he is the average joe who since his youth has been involved with self-reliance and outdoor activities and the practical side of balancing life between a big city and rural/wilderness settings. Since the 2008 world economic crisis, he has been training and helping others in his area to become better prepared for the “constant, slow-burning SHTF” of living in a 3rd world country.
Fabian’s ebook, Street Survivalism: A Practical Training Guide To Life In The City , is a practical training method for common city dwellers based on the lifestyle of the homeless (real-life survivors) to be more psychologically, mentally, and physically prepared to deal with the harsh reality of the streets during normal or difficult times. He’s also the author of The Ultimate Survival Gear Handbook.
You can follow Fabian on Instagram @stoicsurvivor
I live in the US and in the state I live in I do see serious problems with our infrastructure. Our local government is amazing but our state governor and his people are as corrupt as they come. They are only interested in lining their own pockets with our hard earned taxes.
In such circumstance, I think the best course would be to do as the author suggests – adapt.
Identify the areas where you are vulnerable and find work-arounds.
If the local municipal water infrastructure is failing, for example, how can you adapt to that?
Drill your own well, if feasible?
Prepare to catch and store and purify rain water?
Reduce your water consumption?
Those who carefully note their vulnerabilities in a failing society and make plans to cope with possible problems; in other words, those who adapt to a changing reality; will fare better than those who won’t acknowledge that life as we know it is becoming life as we KNEW it.
Nice report Fabian thank you. In South Africa this degradation has taken place over 30 years since 1994 so called freedom which was only a smokescreen to destroy a well working society to a deteriorating one while the corporates and government was stealing the wealth of everyone. Even today they made it law to annex your property without compensation – i.e. legalised theft! Anyways one can see the backward degradation of society all over the world now due to bad government leadership, or plain puppets of the WEF players etc. Prepare your surroundings to be as self sufficient as possible and dont rely on the government to look after you because to them you are just a burdon, unless you have wealth and power, then you can play their game but you can also loose this easliy because there are bigger sharks out there too. Good to see some countries are getting better leadership, hope they will not get destroyed by the greedy as they did in the past with properous countries (like South Africa).
While the author’s language using terms like money printing, fiat money, and the Cantillon effect are accurate … it helps to understand the criminal history of counterfeiting. Centuries ago counterfeiting was a criminal offense that was punished with a death penalty if the offender was an individual. It was understood that creating money not backed by real assets was theft of the purchasing power from funds that people already had. But when central banks were created (like the Bank of England) to counterfeit the money to raise funds for foreign wars … there was no way the population at large could hold such institutions accountable.
Such money counterfeiting has also been used in attempts to destroy military opponents. During our American Revolution the British counterfeited the American continental currency in order to destroy its value. The result was near starvation during a very cold winter at Valley Forge because farmers pulling wagon loads of food simply passed by our troops so they could sell their produce to the English who had a value-holding currency. The bitter memories of that counterfeiting were still fresh in the minds of Americans who created the Coinage Act of 1792 and wrote in a death penalty for anyone trying to create American coinage with some other metal than real authentic silver.
Fast forward to 1912 when the British wanted to rig the American presidentlal election to put a puppet in the White House who would soon sign off on the creation of the Federal Reserve (for counterfeiting to help pay for America’s participation in the coming European civil war — later to be called World War I). The British secretly funded Teddy Roosevelt’s third party run to suck enough votes away from Taft so that Woodrow Wilson would (and did) win. The resulting Federal Reserve counterfeiting during WWI resulted in about a 15% price rise across the American economy. That was the beginning of institutional counterfeiting (theft of purchasing power) that has partly funded every foreign war (and the welfare state) through this present day.
Today the money printing (which has historically confiscated the vast majority of the US dollar’s purchasing power) is creating another trillion dollars in debt every 100 days or so. That kind of counterfeiting (a correct label no mainstream media has the guts to use) classically has always resulted in hyperinflation and the collapse of such fiat currency and the guilty government. I think one accurate transaction of the word fiat in this context could be
Fraudulently Instituted Actual Theft
The result of such a societal collapse would be terrible for what’s left of the middle and lower class people while the minority oligarchs will have converted that Cantillon benefitted purchasing power theft money into hard assets (land, high value art, precious metals, companies, etc, etc) that will survive such a collapse.
–Lewis
I really like your closing statement “adaptation works better than preparation.”
It’s NEVER too late. Even a little prepping can ease the transition, though.
My state is and has been Democrat, perhaps forever. It’s not a great place to live and quite corrupt historically. It’s usually a “good old boys” way of doing business. I get very disgusted but there are more and more recently voting Republican and wanting a change. That is at least hopeful. infrastructure requires repair or replacement everywhere but I see our local city finally replacing a large section of waterlines and that’s a start. Daily water leaks and outages around the city while patches are being made, are frustrating. Our Governor has made the state a sanctuary state for abortions on demand at any stage of pregnancy. She’s even taken money and built places to stay so that state visitors can come easily for abortions.
The ultimate adaption: what can you produce? And the ultimate produce is food. Everyone needs to eat. If you can produce more food that you consume, you have the best chance to survive. If you are a producer of anything that is in demand, you come out ahead.
One of the big forces that drives the income gap is the concentration of production into fewer and fewer hands. An example is where the super wealthy buy up all the farm land so that no one else has access to land. In many cities, property use restrictions restrict people from setting up businesses from their homes. Or renting out a shed or a spare bedroom for someone to live in it. Those living in apartments have it even worse. Even further down are those with at least a van or RV in which to live. Even a car is better than a tent. At the bottom are those on the street, and that’s where we find the greatest increase of the poor with the least access to means of production that won’t be stolen.
In my immediate neighborhood, we haven’t seen much of an impact. But in the nearby city, crime is up and homelessness is getting out of control. To make things worse for the homeless, the authorities keep moving them so that the only things they can own are what they can move, so that it is impossible for them to become producers.
If only ambition was clean and ethical, while providing a 6th sense of knowing what enough is in order to feel secure financially, mentally, physically and spiritually. In a perfect modern world, that paradigm would be taught as a central social concept with the focused goal of an awakened humanity.
Thank you for this very well written article. Blessings from SEA.