America is the “land of milk and honey,” according to Hollywood and the rhetoric of our leaders. That’s why millions of people from around the world line up in front of U.S. embassies trying to get in as immigrants. Many others risk their lives and the lives of their families to enter the country illegally.

I am sorry to break it to you folks in Mexico and overseas, but it’s all a Hollywood hoax, a make-believe picture of the country that’s deep in debt and whose citizens are struggling to make ends meet month after month.

A new banking survey suggests that 80% of Americans have less than $5,000 in savings, and that nearly 7 in 10 have only $1,000 or less in their savings accounts.

The GoBanking (survey company) asked 7,000 people around the country how much money they had set aside in savings accounts for the future, and found that 34% of them have absolutely nothing set aside.  So over one-third of Americans live from hand to mouth every month.

The GoBanking said that people living beyond their means is one likely reason for the downward trend in savings. The rise of cashless payment options has made it easier than ever to spend money, resulting in more people splashing their cash electronically without giving it a second thought.

The golden noose syndrome invented by Wall Street bankers and gullibly accepted by millions of dumbed-down Americans.

PLUTOCRATS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Nothing new there. Nearly 20 years ago, I published a column in the Washington Times titled “PLUTOCRATS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER – March 9, 1997 – http://www.truthinmedia.org/Columns/Plutocrats%20of%20NWO.html). This is how it started…

“A crude hand-painted sign on a run-down building in East Berlin, not far from the former “Checkpoint Charlie” crossing which once divided the West and the East, read as follows in July 1995:

“The border runs not between the peoples, but between top and bottom.”

The implication? The Wall may be down, but the class differences remain.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the U.S.

This is where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the Great American Divide between the relative “haves” and “have nots” has been growing wider and deeper in the last 30 years.

The share of the national wealth owned by the top 1 percent of Americans increased from 22 percent to 42 percent between 1979 and 1996, according to Rep. David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat. The top half percent of the U.S. population saw their wealth surge by 24 percent during the 1980s deregulation period – the so-called “Reaganomics” era.

The top 1 percent gained 12 percent; the top 5 percent increased 9 percent, while the bottom 60 percent of Americans experienced an overall decline in their net worth.”

Nearly 20 years later, we still keep hearing our plutocratic leaders tell us about how great life is in our country. It is not. It is not for most of our fellow citizens, as you can see from the above statistics.

So I encourage the would-be immigrants to America to do a turn-about-face and make the most of what they can do to improve life in their own countries. Not because Donald Trump says so. Nor because he wants to build a wall. Because if they come here, legally or otherwise, they will be joining the ranks of “Les Miserables” in this Land of Plutocrats.

By the way, if you want to emigrate to a country that really takes care of its citizens, try Japan, for example. By contrast to America, the average Japanese household had $171,000 in savings in 2013.

Makes you wonder who won the war, doesn’t it? The bankers, of course.

America: “Land of milk and honey?”  Only in Hollywood movies.

AUTHOR’S DISCLOSURE

In the interest of truth and full disclosure, statistically, this writer might well be included among the plutocrats, although not the Plutocrats of the New World Order. I have been fortunate enough to earn enough for my family and myself over the decades the amounts that far exceed the average savings cited in this article. Don’t hold it against me.I credit this to God and to my spirit guides. They know I was once as poor as a mouse and eating lard and tuna fish from cans just to survive.

UPDATE DECEMBER 15, 2017

A heart-rending truth about how the world’s richest nation treats some its citizens

A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America

The UN’s Philip Alston is an expert on deprivation – and he wants to know why 41 million Americans are living in poverty. The Guardian joined him on a special two-week mission into the dark heart of the world’s richest nation.

“You got a choice to make, man. You could go straight on to heaven. Or you could turn right, into that.”

We are in Los Angeles, in the heart of one of America’s wealthiest cities, and General Dogon, dressed in black, is our tour guide. Alongside him strolls another tall man, grey-haired and sprucely decked out in jeans and suit jacket. Professor Philip Alston is an Australian academic with a formal title: UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

General Dogon, himself a veteran of these Skid Row streets, strides along, stepping over a dead rat without comment and skirting round a body wrapped in a worn orange blanket lying on the sidewalk.

The two men carry on for block after block after block of tatty tents and improvised tarpaulin shelters. Men and women are gathered outside the structures, squatting or sleeping, some in groups, most alone like extras in a low-budget dystopian movie.

We come to an intersection, which is when General Dogon stops and presents his guest with the choice. He points straight ahead to the end of the street, where the glistening skyscrapers of downtown LA rise up in a promise of divine riches.

Heaven.

Then he turns to the right, revealing the “black power” tattoo on his neck, and leads our gaze back into Skid Row bang in the center of LA’s downtown. That way lies 50 blocks of concentrated human humiliation. A nightmare in plain view, in the city of dreams.

Alston turns right.

So begins a two-week journey into the dark side of the American Dream. The spotlight of the UN monitor, an independent arbiter of human rights standards across the globe, has fallen on this occasion on the US, culminating on Friday with the release of his initial report in Washington.

For more, see… https://goo.gl/BRU7kG (The Guardian, Dec 15, 2017)

Also see the earlier Truth in Media reports on the same subject: AMERICA: “LAND OF MILK AND HONEY” IS RUNNING LOW ON BOTH, Sep 28, 2016 – https://wp.me/p3QU1S-1Ml

– and my column published by the WASHINGTON TIMES over 20 years ago: “PLUTOCRATS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER” – March 9, 1997 – http://www.truthinmedia.org/Columns/Plutocrats%20of%20NWO.html)