The deepening cost-of-living crisis has pushed up bills in the UK, with households now spending 12% more on essentials than they were a year ago, Nationwide reports.
According to the monthly analysis by Britain’s biggest building society, spending on utility bills jumped by around a third (34%) last month in annual terms.
Spending on mortgage payments surged by 17%, while rent payments were up by 11%. The report also showed that spending on loans and insurance rose by 8% and 7%, respectively.
The study found that in the past six months, nearly two-fifths (38%) had used credit cards to cover essential items such as food, drink, public transport and childcare.
“Our research shows that while the number of people worried about their finances has fallen slightly, there are people relying on credit as a way of bridging the gap for essential bills,” said Mark Nalder, the payments strategy and performance director at Nationwide.
Significant growth has been also reported in most of the non-essential spending categories, with the amount spent on holiday and airline travel soaring 19% and 34%, respectively, from a year ago.
Nalder noted that despite rising costs, households are “clearly looking to strike the balance between being fiscally responsible and still being able to spend money on themselves.”
Nationwide analyzed 208 million debit and credit cards, as well as direct debit transactions made by its members.
It is always immoral to take from someone property they acquired with their labor and energy. That’s called theft and those who claim ownership over it are enslaving and have elevated themselves to masters. Taxation is theft and is always slavery.
The immoral Internal Revenue Service exploited and stole from the poorest Americans last year. The agency is harassing and threatening those who are low-income “taxpayers” over the “wealthy.”
This isn’t a surprise considering the IRS is one of the most immoral of all the government agencies out there. They claim they own a portion of your time and laboring energy and if you disagree, they claim to have the “right” to kill you, kidnap you, or steal literally everything from you. So do you still think you’re free?
On Wednesday, Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data provided to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on audits performed by the agency in the fiscal year 2022. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the agency continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep, according to a report by ZeroHedge.
“The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are “easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.”
In fact, “if one ignores the fiction of auditing a millionaire through simply sending a letter through the mail, the odds that millionaires received a regular audit by a revenue agent (1.1%) was actually less than the audit rate of the targeted lowest income wage-earners whose audit rate was 1.27 percent!”
Are we figuring out this slave system yet? The illusion of freedom is quickly crumbling.
Correspondence audits—which are conducted via mail, and are the type frequently used when interacting with the poorest of taxpayers—are much easier and cheaper to conduct than other types of audits. Plus, the earned income tax credit is easy to get wrong. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that new hires with experience in the field will take almost three years of ramp-up time, with more junior new hires taking longer. The lag time between 2022’s infusion of funding, and legitimately increased capacity, will be enormous—if the agency can even snag the best in the industry when TurboTax and H&R Block will surely be swelling their own ranks. It makes sense that, given a dearth of experienced auditors not likely to be fixed soon, the agency would rely on the easiest and least time-consuming types of audits. -ZeroHedge
It is always immoral to take from someone property they acquired with their labor and energy. That’s called theft and those who claim ownership over it are enslaving and have elevated themselves to masters. Taxation is theft and is always slavery.
It should be noted that it was Trudeau’s oppressive (and long-running) pandemic restrictions that directly aided in triggering declining economic conditions in Canada, including supply chain disruptions and higher inflation. While Trudeau tries to blame the war in Ukraine for the terrible conditions (the inflation crisis started long before the Ukraine conflict), it cannot be denied that his authoritarian policies are at least partly responsible for the financial troubles of millions of Canadian citizens.
Poverty-stricken Canadians are going to food banks not just for help in feeding themselves and their families, but also to ask about government-assisted suicide as a potential solution to their struggles. Canada’s cost of living crisis is growing (as is America’s crisis), with inflation ongoing and spiking interest rates crushing lower and middle-class workers with increased debt burdens. The average monthly food cost for a family of four in Ottawa is around $1000 and the average monthly rent is $2000.
Canada’s euthanasia laws are becoming alluring to those people that cannot afford rising expenses and see no other way out.
The nation’s revised medical assistance in dying (MAID) came into force on March 17, 2021. The new law includes changes to eligibility, procedural safeguards, and the framework for the federal government’s data collection and reporting regime.
On March 17, 2021, Parliament passed legislation that makes important changes to who may be eligible to obtain medical assistance in dying and the process of assessment. These changes took effect immediately. Under the current laws, a patient must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition in order to receive assisted suicide, but apparently many Canadians believe they should have access even when they are healthy.
Justin Trudeau was confronted by Global News with a video interview of a food bank CEO relating her story of multiple recipients asking about government-supported suicide. His response is politically typical, with a show of general concern and assertions that his resolve is deepened to “step up” and help impoverished families (discussion begins at 13:30).
Immediately after this interview, Trudeau is set to enjoy a scheduled family vacation to Jamaica. In 2019, Trudeau’s vacation to Costa Rica leeched Canadian taxpayers nearly $200,000 in flight costs, and this does not include the added costs of extended protection in a foreign province by Royal Canadian Mounted Police. That’s a lot of money that could go to helping hundreds of families in need.
It should be noted that it was Trudeau’s oppressive (and long-running) pandemic restrictions that directly aided in triggering declining economic conditions in Canada, including supply chain disruptions and higher inflation. While Trudeau tries to blame the war in Ukraine for the terrible conditions (the inflation crisis started long before the Ukraine conflict), it cannot be denied that his authoritarian policies are at least partly responsible for the financial troubles of millions of Canadian citizens.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today that teenage overdoses increased 109 percent over the two years. Deaths caused by fentanyl alone increased 182 percent.
The largest cities in the United States are becoming cesspools of crime, drugs, violence and homelessness, and no matter what “solutions” our politicians come up with the problems just continue to get even worse. Sadly, this is even happening in the wealthiest cities in the whole country. New York City is the financial capital of the entire globe, and over the past two decades, San Francisco has been swimming in giant mountains of tech industry money. But today the streets of both cities look like something out of a post-apocalyptic horror movie. If things are this bad while economic conditions are still relatively stable, what will those streets look like two years from now when economic conditions are far worse?
New York City has seen some pretty rough times in the past, but the Big Apple has never had as many homeless people sleeping in shelters than it does right now…
New York City’s homeless problem does not appear to be getting any better.
According to the Coalition for the Homeless, the numbers have actually hit an all-time high. They claim the average number of people sleeping in a shelter every night climbed to nearly 66,000 in October.
It is far more preferable to sleep in a shelter than it is to sleep in the streets because violence in NYC has escalated to very frightening levels…
Fatal stabbings and slashings are up an alarming 37% in the Big Apple this year.
The NYPD has logged 96 blade-involved killings so far in 2022, compared with 70 for the same period in 2021, according to department stats obtained by The Post.
Stabbings and slashings overall are up 10% in 2022, with 4,344 compared to 3,954 last year, the stats show.
Meanwhile, the downward spiral that we are witnessing in San Francisco is incredibly alarming.
Part of the problem is that the office buildings downtown are much less occupied these days thanks to the “work at home revolution” that began during the early stages of the pandemic…
Today San Francisco has what is perhaps the most deserted major downtown in America. On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy, while the vacancy rate has jumped to 24 percent from 5 percent since 2019.
Another major factor is drug addiction. Right now we are witnessing the worst drug crisis in the history of the United States, and it just keeps intensifying every year.
Drug overdose deaths among US teens doubled from 2019 to 2021 – even as use of illicit substances declined – as fentanyl fueled a nationwide crisis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today that teenage overdoses increased 109 percent over the two years. Deaths caused by fentanyl alone increased 182 percent.
Once upon a time, the United States was such a lovely place to be.
But now our communities are degenerating into rapidly decaying hellholes and our streets are filled with violent predators.
Have you heard about a new trend called “jugging”?
A new crime trend is targeting the distracted and the elderly, with police warning about it from Alabama to California.
The big picture: Jugging involves thieves staking out unsuspecting victims at banks or retail stores before following and robbing them while they juggle smartphones and car keys in parking lots or at home.
But of course, not all predators will be satisfied with just robbing you.
When a 20-year-old pregnant woman was taken in by a 36-year-old man after being kicked out of her home, she was initially relieved to have a place to stay.
A 20-year-old pregnant woman was kicked out of her house around Thanksgiving. Her luck appeared to be make a holiday rebound when a stranger offered her a warm meal and a place to stay. However, this was anything but charity.
Michael Barajas, 36, is accused of subjecting the young woman to unimaginable depravities over the course of three weeks.
It turns out that this particular predator actually had his teeth filed down into sharp points.
He literally looks like he is insane, and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson is describing him as “a monster”…
According to the Tri-County Times, Barajas has been charged with human trafficking, kidnapping, first-degree criminal sexual conduct, possession of methamphetamine, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, and felony possession of a firearm.
“This guy is a monster,” said Swanson. “If you look at the teeth that are filed down and the threats of ripping out a throat, I will say no more.”
Anyone with any sense would never have gone with him.
But other predators can look completely innocent.
For example, one 33-year-old man recently thought that he was pulling over to help a woman that was in trouble on the side of the road.
But once he got out of his vehicle, two men jumped out from their hiding spots and viciously attacked him…
Shortly before 11 p.m. on Wednesday, an unnamed 33-year-old man was driving along near the intersection of Hutchinson Road and South George Washington Boulevard, a rather rural area just outside Yuba City, about 40 miles north of Sacramento, when he spotted a woman standing near a black SUV on the side of the road. She flagged the man down, indicating that she was in some kind of distress.
The man pulled over and exited his vehicle to see how he could help. However, once he left his vehicle, two seemingly armed men jumped out of the woman’s SUV. One appeared to have a gun, the other had a knife. Under threat of violence, they zip-tied the driver’s legs together and stole his wallet and car keys. The three con artists then poured gasoline all over the victim and lit him on fire before they left, driving away in their own SUV and taking the victim’s car too.
Ignoring what is happening is not going to make it go away.
Social decay is systematically eating away at the foundations of our civilization, and at this point, America’s decline is really starting to accelerate.
The British media say people in some regions eat pet food and heat food on a radiator due to the skyrocketing cost of living crisis. pic.twitter.com/92DSWRSDYl
Meanwhile, our Dear Leader is out there (Indonesia) giving hundreds of millions away for wars and gender issues studies.
Capitalism is truly barbaric: In Canada, elderly poor people with disabilities are choosing to be killed in medically assisted death (MAiD), because they can't afford to pay rent and are becoming homeless.
Canada: A St. Catharines man says he will choose medically assisted death over homelessness. CityNews explores the ethics of MAiD amid concerns some feel they have no other choice. Source: CityNews (Youtube) pic.twitter.com/GhQuOTRQA2
It’s either war with Russia and China to stop BRICS+ or the financial collapse of the US, EU, and the entire Debt and money printing circus. It was never about the people of Ukraine. Ukraine is a sideshow. The main event is yet to come. The two options are poverty or nuclear war.
What’s the root cause of the US proxy war in Ukraine? Most people don’t have a clue. Let me explain. It all started after the 2007-2008 financial crisis that originated in the US. The reliability of the US Govt as a partner in global financial affairs was destroyed.
In 2009 Russia hosted the first BRICS summit to establish a better international financial system with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, and later with future BRICS+ partners. In short a new “multipolar order”. BRICS is challenging the US Dollar reserve currency status.
That started a new Cold War with Russia and China. US National Debt is now at $31 trillion, total US Debt is at $92 trillion and total US unfunded liabilities are at $172 trillion, and all of that without any US Govt surplus to pay for any of it. Only more Debt and money printing.
The US Govt knows that without the reserve currency status it is bankrupt. Without money printing on the backs of other nations, it’s simply Game Over for the US. But not just for the US. The EU and most western democracies followed the US model of endless Debt and money printing.
That’s why they stand with the US and support the escalating actions that seem totally illogical to most people. Why is the EU sacrificing prosperity for a US proxy war in Ukraine? Because if the US is collapsing they collapse too. Their alliance is glued by the fear of failure.
BRICS+ was on track to launch its new global financial system by 2030. Ukraine is the tool for conflict with Russia and Taiwan is the tool for conflict with China. Eventually, the US and NATO will be at war with Russia and China. They simply don’t seem to have another choice.
It’s either war with Russia and China to stop BRICS+ or the financial collapse of the US, EU, and the entire Debt and money printing circus. It was never about the people of Ukraine. Ukraine is a sideshow. The main event is yet to come. The two options are poverty or nuclear war.
By buying Ukrainian war bonds, you will be directly funding the continuation of a war that isn’t yours and the death that goes along with it. It’s no longer your country doing it at the political level.
Hearing this, I was just thinking….
…wouldn't it have been something, if @JustinTrudeau had announced "Canadian Freedom Bonds" in order to support Canadians in their fight for freedom, democracy and the rule of law? https://t.co/1CnuwST1uv
If you want to get a feel for what is really going on in this country, just walk the streets of our major cities. In fact, you don’t even need to go to the “bad areas” to see the extreme social decay that is eating away at our communities like cancer. As you will see below, there are tent cities, open drug use, and rampant crime within two blocks of the White House. Even the best parts of Washington D.C. are being “fundamentally transformed”, and there is no way to put a positive spin on this. From coast to coast, the number of addicts just continues to grow, the number of people sleeping on the streets just continues to grow, and crime rates are rising to frightening levels. If things are already this bad while the economy is still relatively stable, what will our major cities look like when economic conditions really start deteriorating in 2023 and beyond?
It may be difficult to believe now, but at one time Philadelphia was one of the finest cities on the entire planet.
Once upon a time, I actually worked in the heart of Washington D.C., and sometimes I would walk right past the White House during my lunch break.
In all those years, I never saw a single tent in the streets.
Not one.
But now there are dozens of encampments all over the city.
And we are supposed to believe that things are getting better?
I don’t think so.
In New York City, the homelessness crisis has gotten so bad that the National Guard has actually been called in to deal with the problem…
New York City has called in the National Guard to deal with the rising migrant crisis that is overwhelming homeless shelters and facilities as staff are unable to cope with the surge.
National Guard reservists are being deployed to help with day-to-day operations at many shelters, including managing the capacity, distributing food and helping out with staff shortages.
There are over 62,000 people currently living in New York City’s homeless shelters – close to 13,000 of which are migrants, according to the Department of Homeless Services.
Prior to this year, had you ever heard of any city bringing in the National Guard just because homelessness had begun to spiral out of control?
Unfortunately, the exploding homeless population is doing whatever it feels like doing right out in the middle of the streets.
At this point, even some of the nicest neighborhoods in the Big Apple are being overrun by the drug and sex trades…
I don’t want to leave the west coast out, and so let’s talk about what is happening to Portland.
In recent years, terrified residents have watched as homeless encampments have taken over street after street.
When you hear a mother crying out for help because she is scared to death of letting her children go outside where all the addicts are, it should break your heart.
Right now, we are facing the worst drug crisis in the history of our country.
Overdose deaths are at the highest level ever recorded, and that is primarily because of all the fentanyl that is flooding into this nation from Mexico and China.
Earlier this month, police in Eugene, Oregon arrested a man that had enough fentanyl to literally kill four million people…
Oregon police seized a record-breaking 18 pounds of fentanyl pills — enough to kill 4 million people — inside a car when they found a driver passed out on the side of the road. Andre Lavell Johnson of Portland was found “slumped over the steering wheel” at the intersection of E. 11th Avenue and High Street just before 11 p.m. Oct. 19, Eugene Police said.
Officers pinned the car before rousing awake the 42-year-old Johnson. The suspect, who had previous warrants out for his arrest, tried to start the car and escape, but officers removed him from the car for an inspection, police said.
Inside, police found fentanyl pills “matching the description of currently circulating counterfeit oxycodone pills containing fentanyl,” police said. A firearm, which was later found to be stolen, was also discovered on the floor of the driver’s seat.
Fentanyl is a national plague unlike anything we have ever experienced before, and at this point, the drug dealers are even finding ways to introduce it to our children.
There is so much evil in our society today, and it is getting worse with each passing month.
Thanks to years of extreme social decay, the streets of our major cities are now literally teeming with predators.
So if you live in one of our major cities, you will want to be very careful before you step outside your home.
Because you never know who may be there to greet you…
Matt Pike, volunteer co-ordinator of the Memorial University St. John’s campus food bank, blames a rising cost of living for increased demand. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
The food bank at Memorial University’s St. John’s campus is temporarily closed after surging demand overwhelmed resources.
Matt Pike, the food bank’s volunteer co-ordinator, said the closure will last until at least Nov. 3 while volunteers restock.
“The demand over the past few months has just been more than we could have possibly predicted,” he said.
Pike said use of the campus food bank in August — about 150 clients — usually increases by 50 per cent in September as students head back to class, but this year it doubled. He said the food bank served about 300 clients in September and 360 in October before it was forced to close.
“We were on track to doing closer to 500 clients this October had we not had to shut down,” he said.
Pike said the campus food bank serves clients in the MUN community — mostly students, but also some staff and professors.
“The cost of living is tough for everybody; it’s not just students,” he said.
Increased costs, tuition — and pressure
This year, food banks across the province have reported increased demand — and more difficulty obtaining supplies — as groceries get more expensive. The consumer price index rose 6.7 per cent from September 2021 to September of this year.
Pike said the St. John’s campus food bank is feeling that pressure.
“When our donations haven’t grown but the cost of food has grown and the demand has grown, that means our hampers are getting smaller and the number of people we can really get a lot of food out to is getting smaller,” he said.
Pike said the food bank hopes to reopen Nov. 3, and he doesn’t know what people who rely on the food bank will do in the meantime.
Isabel Ojeda, executive director of campaigns for the MUN students’ union, said the closure of the food bank is “devastating.”
“I think it’s really, really reflective of the fact that students are struggling all around with the increasing cost of living,” she said.
Isabel Ojeda, MUN’s students’ union director of campaigns, says the increased cost of living impacts some students academically. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
Ojeda said food insecurity, trouble finding housing and higher tuition rates — which kicked in this term — are impacting students.
“All in all, it’s becoming harder and harder for students to actually focus on their education because they have so many other barriers coming up to them,” she said.
MUNSU has been vocally opposed to the increase to undergraduate student tuition, and Ojeda criticized university administration and the provincial government for the tuition increases.
Tuition for new undergraduate students from Newfoundland and Labrador more than doubled this fall, and existing undergraduate students will see their fees hike by four per cent a year until 2026. International undergraduate student tuition, while still below the Canadian average, has gone up to $20,000 a year.
Trick-or-eat
Mosaic Campus Church, a group that holds services at the Breezeway — MUN’s undergraduate student bar — is holding a “trick or eat” food drive on Halloween for the food bank.
Jenna Reid, MUN communication studies student, is a team lead at Mosaic Church, which holds services at the Breezeway, MUN’s undergraduate bar. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
“Basically, a bunch of college students are going trick-or-treating for non-perishables,” said Jenna Reid, a MUN communication studies student and part of the church lead team.
“From what I’ve encountered, students are working harder than they ever have before just to survive, honestly,” she said.
Reid also blamed the rising cost of living and criticized the tuition hike.
“If you know a student in your life and you can, like, have them over for a meal or even just, like, check in on them, I would highly recommend doing that,” she said. “A lot of students are having a rough go right now.”
According to the report, food banks across the country were straining under a historically high demand that culminated in 1.5 million visits in March 2022.
The study found that one-third of clients using food banks are children, and they represented about 500,000 visits in March 2022. It says the higher cost of living makes households with children more vulnerable to poverty and hunger.
This year saw the use of food bank rise to the highest levels in Canadian history, according to a bleak new report.
Food Banks Canada just dropped its landmark HungerCount 2022report that reveals just how devastating the state of food insecurity is in the country.
According to the report, food banks across the country were straining under a historically high demand that culminated in 1.5 million visits in March 2022.
This means the use of food banks is up 35% compared to pre-pandemic visits in 2019.
Food Banks Canada cites high inflation and a “broken” social safety net as the main causes for this spike, which has affected Canadians of all ages and socioeconomic status.
“Canada’s food banks are facing uncharted challenges as turbulent economic conditions continue to exacerbate and deepen systemic inequities, especially for employed people earning low incomes, students and seniors on fixed incomes,” explained Food Banks Canada CEO Kirstin Beardsley in a statement.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 