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Frustrated job seekers all over America just got more bad news.  The unemployment rate just hit the highest level that we have seen in four years, and that is yet another indication that the labor market is getting even tighter.  If you currently have a good job that you highly value, hold on to it, because finding a replacement for that job would not be easy in this very challenging economic environment.  In previous articles, I have shared heartbreaking stories from unemployed Americans that have been unable to find work no matter how hard they have tried.  I am going to share more of those stories today.  When you are unemployed and month after month goes by without finding a job, it can really do a number on your self-esteem.  If you have ever been through a stretch like that, you know exactly what I mean.

37-year-old Anna Whitlock thought that it would be relatively easy to find another tech position when she was laid off in November 2024, but nearly a year later she is still searching for work…

When Anna Whitlock was let go from her job in the technology industry in November of 2024, she wasn’t worried about lining up a new position. The Washington state resident had 11 years of experience managing network infrastructure projects, a specialized role that involves equipping buildings with internet access, cameras and wifi security systems.

“The last time I had to job search, I found something pretty easily,” she said.

Almost a year later, the 37-year-old is still without a job. Whitlock said she has applied to hundreds of jobs — even for positions she’s overqualified for — to no avail.

Whitlock is highly qualified and has a ton of experience.

But even though she has applied for hundreds of positions, her job search has gone nowhere, and now her unemployment benefits have run out…

“The more I looked, the more I wasn’t getting responses. If I did have an interview, I only made it the first one or two rounds,” said Whitlock, who has a 16-year-old daughter. “Things got really real when my unemployment ran out.”

There are countless others that are going through the same thing, and their ranks are growing with each passing day.

In fact, even the government bureaucrats at the BLS are admitting that the unemployment rate has risen to the highest level that we have seen in more than 4 years…

The unemployment rate in November rose to 4.6%, the highest level since September 2021.

The November employment report offers a fresh picture of the labor market after a six-week blackout in official data caused by the recent government shutdown. The data suggests that employers in industries ranging from manufacturing to hospitality are hitting the pause button on hiring amid concerns about economic growth and tariff costs, some economists noted.

“Businesses are not hiring as they adjust to tariffs, uncertain conditions and AI. The result is about 700,000 more unemployed Americans than there were a year ago,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in an email.

In 2021, we were still recovering from the massive spike in unemployment that we experienced during the initial stages of the pandemic.

What excuse do we have now?

According to one prominent economist, the U.S. economy is now “in a jobs recession”…

“The U.S. economy is in a jobs recession,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The nation has added a mere 100,000 in the past six months. The bulk of those jobs were in healthcare, an industry that is almost always hiring due to America’s aging population.”

It takes approximately 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.

So over a six month period, the U.S. economy must produce 900,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth.

So the fact that we have added only 100,000 new jobs over the last six months means that we are 800,000 new jobs short of what would be required just to be treading water.

Digging deeper into the numbers that the BLS released, we discover that the number of full-time workers in the U.S. fell by nearly a million between September and November…

In November, the number of full-time workers plunged by 983K from September to 134.17 million. At the same time, in the two months since Sept, the number of part-time workers soared by over 1 million (1.025 million to be precise) to 29.486 million…

Wow.

I knew that we were losing good paying full-time jobs, but I didn’t think that it was happening that fast.

Throughout 2025, large companies have been ruthlessly laying off highly paid workers all over the nation.

In fact, Challenger, Gray & Christmas has reported that the number of announced job cuts through the first 11 months of this year was 54 percent higher than the number of announced jobs cuts through the first 11 months of last year…

Americans are growing increasingly terrified about layoffs – and with good reason. Cuts are accelerating, and no industry feels safe. All told, employers have announced roughly 1.2 million cuts so far this year, according to layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas – that’s 54 percent more than during the first 11 months of 2024. Perhaps the most unsettling is that industries once seen as safe harbors for employees – tech, manufacturing and even small business – are now among the hardest hit.

Most of the jobs that are being cut are good paying full-time jobs.

We are talking about the sort of jobs that college graduates work.

Once upon a time, a college degree was a ticket to a good job and a middle class lifestyle, but these days a college degree is a lot less valuable than it once was…

Not so very long ago, the accepted wisdom (or at least the advice that your parents told you over and over again) was that going to college to get a degree would set you up for more success in life, opening doors to interesting careers and bigger wage checks. But new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland suggests that this may no longer be quite so definitive today. In fact, some kids who are fresh owners of high school diplomas may be finding it easier to land jobs than their more educated colleagues.

I feel so badly for young college graduates that are trying to find work right now.

When Jake Fishman graduated from Cornell, he assumed that his degree would open up all sorts of doors for him.

But after applying for over 300 jobs, he is still without a job…

Each morning, Jake Fishman ’25 opens his laptop to repeat the same ritual. Scrolling through Handshake, LinkedIn and Indeed, he submits countless cover letters and resumes that, according to him, rarely get a response.

Since graduating from Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration in May, Fishman estimates that he has applied to more than 300 jobs and has only heard back from five.

A lot of people assume that those that are unemployed are idle.

But of course that is not true at all.

Searching for work in this environment is essentially a full-time job, and Fishman says that he is “somehow busier than ever”…

“Despite being unemployed, I’m somehow busier than ever,” Fishman said. “Basically, applying for a job is a full-time job.”

While Fishman tells himself that he is bound to find a job as a Cornell graduate, months of unanswered applications made him question that assumption.

I wish that I could tell job seekers that conditions will soon improve.

But I can’t do that.

Yes, economic conditions are really rough right now, but I am convinced that they will continue to deteriorate during the months ahead.

So if you are without work, I would encourage you to grab whatever is available while you still can.

A major economic storm has now arrived, and the intensity of that storm is only going to increase as we head into 2026.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

We possess technology that would have been unimaginable to people living 100 years ago, we have access to more entertainment than any other generation in human history, and we have been enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that has been fueled by an unprecedented debt binge for decades.  So why are so many of us so miserable?  One out of every eight Americans is taking an antidepressant, more than 48 million Americans have a substance use disorder, the suicide rate has been trending in the wrong direction for years, and according to Gallup the percentage of U.S. adults that are currently dealing with depression has nearly doubled since 2015…

The percentage of U.S. adults who report currently having or being treated for depression has exceeded 18% in both 2024 and 2025, up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015. The current rate of 18.3% measured so far in 2025 projects to an estimated 47.8 million Americans suffering from depression.

We like to think that we are smarter than all of the generations that have come before us.

If that is true, then why can’t we figure out how to be happy?

What we are doing now is clearly not working, and this is particularly true for our young people.

One study found that approximately 42 percent of Americans that belong to Generation Z have been diagnosed with “anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD” or some other mental health condition…

In fact, an estimated 42% of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD or other mental health condition, with a staggering 60% reportedly taking medication to manage their mental health, according to a study on the respected Psychiatrist.com website.

Nobody can deny that we have failed our young people, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.

We have never seen a group of young adults that is as unhappy as Generation Z is, and without a doubt they are feeling an enormous amount of pressure from many different directions…

Analysts point to a host of difficult, anxiety-producing issues facing Gen Z, including widespread financial worries – with college costs in the stratosphere, food more expensive than ever, home ownership out of reach for most, and two jobs often needed just to pay the rent.

Then there’s the disconcerting reality that many Gen Zers are not dating or getting married and having families – partly due to economic pressures, high anxiety and insecurity about the future, disillusionment with marriage due to the high level of divorce in their parents’ generation, and widespread reliance on dating apps. But also because they are spending so much time living in a virtual world where they can plug into and commune with every imaginable – and unimaginable – type of individual, cause, “influencer” and community on earth, all recruiting 24/7.

I think that all of the reasons mentioned in the quote above are valid.

But I think that there is another that is more important than any of them.

Over the years, Gallup has found that there is a very close link between loneliness and depression…

Gallup research has shown a strong link between depression and loneliness, as one-third of those who had experienced loneliness the day before were also currently suffering from depression, compared with 13% among those who had not.

After declining from pandemic-era highs of 25% to a range of 17% to 18% through much of 2022 and 2023, reports of individuals experiencing significant loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday” have inched upward again since the latter half of 2024 to 21%.

Even though we are more “connected” to one another through the Internet in this day and age, the truth is that we are more isolated than ever.

As a result, much of the population is desperately lonely.

We were designed to love others and to be loved by others, and if we want to turn our mental health crisis around we need to rediscover the importance of making real human connections.

But instead, many Americans are turning to drugs and alcohol to ease the emotional pain that they are feeling.

A report that was put out two years ago by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that 48.5 million Americans have a substance abuse disorder…

According to a 2023 report by the federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and above have a substance use disorder.

This is a national epidemic that is getting worse every single year.

It has been estimated that substance use disorders are now costing the U.S. economy more than 90 billion dollars annually…

A new study has found that substance use disorders (SUD) cost the U.S. economy just under $93 billion in 2023 from a combination of missed work, reduced work productivity and lost household productivity.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on December 8, was conducted by a team at the Division of Injury Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Needless to say, drugs and alcohol are not the answer.

So a lot of people that go down that road end up giving up completely.

For decades, the suicide rate in this country has been steadily moving higher…

Since the 1950s, the suicide rate in the United States has been significantly higher among men than women. In 2022, the suicide rate among men was almost four times higher than that of women. However, the rate of suicide for both men and women has increased gradually over the past couple of decades.

This breaks my heart.

So many people are needlessly ending their own lives.

According to the CDC, an American now dies by suicide every 11 minutes…

The level of suicides among our young adults is particularly alarming.

It is being reported that the suicide rate for young adults in the 18 to 27-year-old age bracket jumped by almost 20 percent from 2014 to 2024…

The suicide rate for U.S. adults aged 18-27 increased nearly 20% between 2014 and 2024, rising from 13.8 per 100,000 people to 16.4, per a new analysis of CDC data from Stateline, a nonprofit newsroom.

We have failed our young people.

Here we are at what many believe to be “the happiest time of the year”, and yet much of the population is soul-crushingly miserable.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Previous generations of Americans were much happier, and today there are lots of people that are living lives that are absolutely teeming with joy.

So if you are feeling depressed right now, I want you to know that there is hope.

You may not realize it yet, but you are greatly loved.

Once you learn how to respond to God’s love and the love that others have for you, everything will start to change.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Inflation is a tax that nobody can escape.  No matter how hard you may try, the rising cost of living is going to catch up with you eventually, and we live at a time when the cost of living has become exceedingly painful.  The reason why the cost of living has become such an important issue is because those that are running the system have been treating our currency like toilet paper.  Many of us warned what would happen when the Federal Reserve started printing money out of thin air and monetizing the debt.  But instead of learning their lesson, they are beginning to do it again.  And Congress is spending so much money that the monthly budget deficit for the month of October just set an all-time record.  What they are doing to us is literally insane, and the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes.

In so many ways, the U.S. economy is starting to resemble the economy of the Weimar Republic just before hyperinflation kicked in.

As the U.S. dollar rapidly loses value, even high earners are now struggling to stay afloat financially.

If you doubt this, just consider the shocking results of a brand new Harris poll…

• Six figures is survival, not success: 64% of six-figure earners say six figures is no longer a sign of wealth but survival mode — a paycheck that covers costs, not comfort. The benchmark of success has become the bare minimum to keep up.
• The American Dream feels out of reach: More than half of six-figure earners say the Dream no longer feels attainable, revealing a generation of professionals who have achieved everything on paper but feel they’re standing on financial quicksand.
• Where luxury used to live, the basics now move in: Groceries, housing, and healthcare are the top expenses draining even the top 10%. Vacations, savings, and wellness — once staples of comfort — have quietly slipped into the “nice-to-have” category.
• The illusion of wealth is exhausting: Many top earners say people assume they can afford it all, yet behind the image of success are quiet sacrifices: skipped purchases, delayed plans, and a fragile sense of security.
• Credit cards as life rafts: Three-quarters of six-figure earners have used a credit card in the past three months because they ran out of cash, not to collect points. For many, plastic has become the bridge between paychecks.
• Affluence, paid in installments: BNPL use is highest among $200k+ households — the top 10% now financing everyday life, from groceries to gas, in ways once reserved for those just getting by.
• The new middle class begins where old wealth used to end: Six-figure earners now define financial comfort at $200k+, and more than half say they’d need double their current income to finally feel secure. The top 10% are quietly struggling — so what happens to the other 90%?

If nearly two-thirds of six figure earners feel like what they are bringing in is only enough for “survival mode”, what does that say about our economy as a whole?

The truth is that our leaders are systematically murdering the American Dream.

I have been ranting about this for years, and now people all over the country are finally waking up to what they have done to us.

According to a new AP-NORC poll, 87 percent of Americans have noticed “higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months”…

The survey indicates that it’s the level of prices — and not just the rate of inflation — that is the point of pain for many families. About 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 87%, say they noticed higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months, while about two-thirds say they’ve experienced higher prices than usual for electricity and holiday gifts. About half say they’ve seen higher than normal prices for gas recently.

It is virtually impossible to get 87 percent of Americans to agree on anything.

But somehow we are all convinced that grocery prices have been going up.

When I go to the grocery store, I can hardly believe how high prices have become.

Some things are now three or four times as much as they once were.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have witnessed such a dramatic shift.

But this is only just the beginning.

According to Fox Business, the proportion of U.S. small businesses that are raising their selling prices “jumped by an all-time high in November”…

The share of small businesses raising their selling prices jumped by an all-time high in November as inflationary pressure continued to impact businesses and consumers, according to a new report by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).

NFIB’s monthly report on small business economic trends for November found a 13-point jump in the net percent of owners who reported raising their average selling prices, which was the largest monthly jump in the history of the survey.

That pushed the percent of owners saying they’re raising average selling prices to a net of 34%, which is the highest reading in the survey since March 2023. That’s also well above the monthly average of a net 13%.

What this means is that our cost of living crisis is accelerating.

If your paycheck is not keeping up, you are losing ground.

Meanwhile, mass layoffs continue to occur all over the United States.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers have announced a grand total of almost 1.2 million job cuts so far this year…

Americans are growing increasingly terrified about layoffs – and with good reason. Cuts are accelerating, and no industry feels safe. All told, employers have announced roughly 1.2 million cuts so far this year, according to layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas – that’s 54 percent more than during the first 11 months of 2024. Perhaps the most unsettling is that industries once seen as safe harbors for employees – tech, manufacturing and even small business – are now among the hardest hit. That’s left millions of workers asking the same pressing question: How do I avoid getting the chop?

Retail is one of the industries that has been hit particularly hard.

So far in 2025, retailers have announced almost 140 percent more job cuts than they did during the same period in 2024…

For the year so far, the industry has announced 91,954 job cuts, up nearly 140% from the same period in 2024. The cuts are primarily attributable to softening demand, tariff uncertainty and changing consumer preferences, per the report.

As I discussed last week, the tourism industry has also fallen on extremely hard times.

In New Orleans, a lack of tourists is causing the streets to be quieter than they have been in a long, long time…

But in the quieter areas, things are, well, quieter. On a cool December evening as raindrops polka-dotted the pavement, longtime street performer Onunze Ubaka, 72, crooned Motown classics to a virtually empty corner off the usually busy Jackson Square in the French Quarter. Few tourists passed by. Even fewer stopped to drop dollar bills into his white tip bucket.

“You can feel the change,” Ubaka said in between songs from Lou Rawls and The Temptations. Inside his tip bucket, a small pile of greenbacks barely covered the 15-pound dumbbell he started putting in after a young man tried to run off with it.

Ubaka said there’s been a general economic slowdown, in particular a loss of international tourists.

Just look around.

Everything is changing.

You would have to be blind not to see it.

Sadly, a whole lot more pain is on the way.

Printing more money won’t solve our problems.

It will only make things even worse.

Borrowing and spending more money won’t solve our problems either.

Our leaders kicked the can down the road for many years, but now the entire road is coming to an end.

They kept trying to outrun the laws of economics, and for a while they actually thought that they were getting away with it.

But now a time of reckoning has arrived, and it is not going to be fun.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Do you remember all of those people over the years that warned us that the cost of living would eventually spiral out of control? It turns out that they were right. Our leaders flooded the system with trillions upon trillions of new dollars, and now we have a real life nightmare on our hands. The value of the U.S. dollar has tanked, the price of silver is up more than 100 percent in 2025, and we are in the midst of a horrifying cost of living crisis that never seems to end. In particular, food prices have become exceptionally painful, and this is hitting those on the low end of the economic spectrum really hard.

The Century Foundation just conducted a survey that came up with some absolutely stunning results.

According to that survey, 34 percent of U.S. registered voters have skipped a meal in order to save money, and 29 percent of U.S. registered voters have “delayed or skipped medical care over the past year”…

• 29% of registered voters said they delayed or skipped medical care over the past year; including 49% of voters under 30 years old, 37% of Hispanic voters and 32% of Black voters.
• 24% said they delayed or skipped buying medicine prescribed by their doctor.
• 64% of poll respondents said they switched to cheaper groceries or cut back on groceries; including 79% of voters under 30 years old, 74% of Black voters, 72% of women, and 71% of Hispanic voters.
• 34% of registered voters said they’ve skipped a meal to save money, including 54% of voters younger than 30 years old, 44% of Black voters, 41% of Hispanic voters, and 39% of women.
• 48% of poll respondents said they tapped into savings to meet daily expenses, including 59% of voters younger than 30 years old, 57% of Hispanic voters, 55% of Black voters and 52% of women.

These numbers are crazy.

Large segments of the U.S. population are now going without the essentials because the cost of living has become so oppressive.

Are you starting to understand why I rant about this so much?

Tens of millions of Americans are really hurting right now.

Just look at what is happening to the price of ground beef.  It now costs about three times as much as it did just 15 years ago…

When I was growing up, my mother was constantly feeding us ground beef.

Now it is considered to be a “luxury meat”.

Our standard of living is being steadily destroyed all around us.

Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that tickets for a Christmas program at a local Baptist church in Texas are selling for up to 71 dollars per person…

A Christmas show at a church in Plano, Texas, has become a flash point in America – a Rorschach test in today’s hyper-political culture.

The ‘Gift of Christmas’ at Prestonwood Baptist Church, as the nearly two-hour extravaganza is called, has become one of the most well-known holiday shows across the US, mostly thanks to social media.

People seem to either love or loathe the ‘Vegas-style’ production at the mega church- complete with a flying Santa Claus and live camels and sheep- with tickets selling from $20 to $71 per person.

What in the world are they doing?

When I was growing up, going to church was always free.

Just about everything that you can think of has become so expensive these days.

And U.S. consumers just continue to become less confident about what is ahead…

A new Gallup poll shows that U.S. consumer confidence deteriorated sharply in November, falling to its weakest level in 17 months as households contended with a protracted federal government shutdown, volatile financial markets, cooling job prospects, and renewed inflation anxiety.

Americans are being squeezed financially from countless directions, and as a result debt levels have been exploding.

Unfortunately, many are now reaching a breaking point.  In fact, the number of foreclosure filings has risen 21 percent in just one year…

If you need proof that Americans are struggling financially, here it is.

Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — are continuing to skyrocket.

New data from ATTOM shows the number of homeowners falling behind is rising every single month.

In November, 35,651 properties had a foreclosure filing — up a staggering 21 percent from just one year earlier.

Of course there are vast numbers of people that can no longer afford to live in a home at all.

Millions of Americans now permanently live in their vehicles, and that includes a 50-year-old woman in Vermont named Chandra Duba…

Chandra Duba has been living in an RV outside a friend’s house in Jericho for the past few months, after losing her Section 8 subsidized housing in Winooski. Until last week, she didn’t have electricity, but now she’s able to plug into a nearby solar array.

Duba, 50, works as a delivery driver at Domino’s, where her pay with tips is too high for food stamps but too low for rent in the area, she said. The RV was relatively affordable but partially gutted — the stove is gone, and the heating and cooling systems don’t work.

Duba said she is grateful to have a roof over her head but that she doesn’t see the vehicle as a long-term answer to her housing problem.

She is literally living in an RV without any heat, but she still makes too much money to qualify for food stamps.

This is what life is like in 2025 for so many people.

It turns out that business leaders are also very concerned about where things are heading.  One recent survey found that only 28 percent of U.S. business executives are “optimistic about the U.S. economy’s outlook over the next 12 months”…

The AICPA and CIMA survey polls chief executive officers, chief financial officers, controllers and other CPAs in U.S. companies who hold executive and senior management accounting roles. The survey is a forward-looking indicator that tracks hiring and business-related expectations for the next 12 months.

Twenty-eight percent of business executives said they were optimistic about the U.S. economy’s outlook over the next 12 months, down from 34% in the past quarter. Domestic economic conditions (No. 1) and inflation (No. 2) were cited as top concerns, swapping places from last quarter.

If only 28 percent are optimistic, that means that 72 percent are either pessimistic or declined to give an answer.

Yes, things really have gotten that bad.

Personally, I am particularly concerned about the plight of our farmers.

As I documented in a previous article, farmers in the United States haven’t faced a crisis of this magnitude in decades.

And even though the Trump administration has just announced a 12 billion dollar aid package, many farmers are still facing financial ruin anyway…

A few years ago, Wisconsin soybean farmer Doug Rebout was getting $14.50 a bushel for his crop. Now, amid a trade dispute with China and rising production costs driven by inflation, that price has plummeted to around $9.30.

Rebout’s farm, which grows about 80,000 bushels of soybeans annually, is looking at a $400,000 economic loss due to the drop in prices, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Prior to President Donald Trump’s announcement of a $12 billion assistance package for farmers, Rebout said that though financial aid would help farmers “weather the storm,” many fear the economic uncertainty will linger. Some are worried about losing farms that have been in their families for generations.

It is time for all of us to be honest with ourselves.

2023 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.

2024 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.

2025 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.

That isn’t a coincidence.

That is a trend.

And if you don’t want to think about how difficult things are now, you definitely won’t want to think about where the long-term trends are taking us next.

Inflationary policies lead to inflationary results.

For decades, our leaders have been doing highly inflationary things.

Now we are enduring a historic cost of living crisis that has spun out of control, and that should not be a surprise to any of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Why have major tourist destinations all over America been so depressingly quiet in 2025?  Normally tourism accounts for close to 10 percent of U.S. GDP, and that makes it a critical pillar of the U.S. economy.  We witnessed an enormous downturn during the early days of the COVID pandemic, but that was just temporary.  Now we are witnessing a similar downturn, but this time we don’t have a pandemic to blame.  Needless to say, the overall economy is steadily moving in the wrong direction, and that is certainly affecting tourism.  But as you will see below, there are other factors that are very much within our control that are driving tourists away.

When I claim that the U.S. is experiencing a “tourism industry apocalypse”, I am not exaggerating at all.

This summer, many of the country’s top tourist destinations were so empty that they resembled something out of “a dystopian novel”…

Imagine walking into what was once America’s most vibrant tourist destinations and hearing nothing but the whisper of wind through empty corridors. This isn’t a scene from a dystopian novel — it’s the stark reality of US tourism in 2025.

The summer that was supposed to be bustling with laughter, excitement, and packed attractions has turned into a ghost town of economic uncertainty. Take Florida, once the entertainment paradise of America, where over 15,000 Walt Disney World employees now face the terrifying prospect of reduced hours or complete layoffs — right in the middle of peak tourist season.

In the past, I have written about how a vacation to Disney World has become so ridiculously expensive that it is now out of reach for most middle class families.

But that doesn’t fully explain why international visitors to Florida fell by 38 percent in just one year…

The numbers are brutal. International visitors to Florida have plummeted by a staggering 38% in just twelve months. Hotel bookings from Orlando to Miami have nosedived by 27%, creating what experts are calling a “post-pandemic crisis without a pandemic”.

But this isn’t just about empty hotels and quiet theme parks. It’s about the human stories behind these statistics. Workers who built careers around tourism are now facing an uncertain future. The problem runs deeper than just fewer tourists — it’s about systemic vulnerabilities in tourism-dependent economies.

Many would argue that conditions in Las Vegas are even worse.

There are thousands upon thousands of empty hotel rooms every night, and many casino floors are eerily empty these days…

Agitators in the city have attempted to document the deterioration by posting ominous images of barren casinos, conjuring the perception of a place hollowed out by economic armageddon. The reality is more nuanced, but it is true that practically every conceivable indicator tracking tourism to Las Vegas is flashing warning signs. Hotel occupancy has cratered. Rooms were only 66.7 percent full in July, down by 16.8 percent from the previous year. The number of travelers passing through Harry Reid International Airport also declined by 4.5 percent in 2025 during an ongoing ebb of foreign tourists, for familiar reasons. Canadians, historically one of the city’s most reliable sources of degenerates, have effectively vanished. Ticket sales for Air Canada jets flying to Las Vegas have slipped by 33 percent, while the Edmonton-based low-cost carrier Flair has reported a 62 percent drop-off. Those last data points have provoked the city’s mayor, Shelley Berkley, to engage in some emergency diplomacy. In September, she implored our neighbors from the north to make their prodigal return to the Strip.

“I’m telling everyone in Canada, please come,” she said. “We love you, we miss you, we need you.”

We don’t like to admit it, but we are very dependent on our neighbors to the north.

Canadians normally account for approximately 30 percent of all international visits to the U.S. each year.

But this year it has been a completely different story…

From Washington state to northern New England, American businesses that have long depended on Canadian visitors are seeing traffic dry up — and with it, a crucial source of revenue.

A new report shared exclusively with Fortune by the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) – Minority, a congressional standing committee dating back to 1946 responsible for documenting the economic conditions of the U.S., details how a sharp drop in Canadian tourism is hitting every U.S. state along the northern border.

For many border communities, maintaining a healthy level of visitors from Canada is a matter of economic survival.

If there is a substantial drop in Canadian visitors, many businesses will simply cease to exist.

If you live in a community near the Canadian border, you know exactly what I am talking about.

So the fact that the number of vehicles crossing over the border from Canada has dropped so precipitously is extremely alarming…

From January to October 2025, the number of passenger vehicles crossing the U.S.-Canada border fell by nearly 20% compared with the same period in 2024, according to the JEC analysis, which draws on U.S. Customs and Border Protection travel statistics. In some border states, the decline reached 27%, a shift that local tourism agencies say is showing up in fewer tourists, more hotel vacancies, and weaker sales.

Other than during the early days of the pandemic, we have never seen anything quite like this.

One woman that runs a gift shop in northern New Hampshire says that she can count the number of Canadian tourists that she has encountered this year on one hand…

In northern New Hampshire, the absence of Canadian license plates is especially stark. “Being only eight miles from the border, normally Canadians make up anywhere from 15-25% of visitors. Now, I can probably count the number of Canadian visitors on one hand. I’m just trying to plug along and keep my nose above the waterline,” said Elizabeth Guerin, owner of the Fiddleheads gift shop in Colebrook, New Hampshire.

Everyone knows what has happened to our relationship with Canada over the past year.

And now the Canadians are showing us exactly how they feel about it.

We need people to come here and spend their money.

So it is important to be friendly.

Unfortunately, we continue to implement even more measures that will make it even more difficult for foreign visitors to come to this country.

For example, it appears that millions of foreign visitors will soon be required to submit “five years of their social media history” before entering the United States…

The Trump administration is proposing to ask visitors from several dozen nations that enjoy visa-free travel to the U.S. to submit additional personal information before entering the country, including five years of their social media history, the Department of Homeland Security said in a notice this week.

Citizens of 42 countries enrolled in the visa waiver program can generally come to the U.S. for up to 90 days for tourism or business travel, without needing to apply for a visa at an American embassy or consulate, a process that can take months or even years.

The list of countries in the visa waiver program includes many European nations like the United Kingdom, Germany and France, as well as some U.S. allies around the world, including Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

The tourism industry is already in critical condition.

Are they trying to finish it off?

Of course even if we were as welcoming as possible, a lot of tourists would still shun us because of how expensive the U.S. has become to visit.

When one author wrote that we have built “a tourism economy designed to extract maximum revenue from every interaction”, he was right on target…

America has become too expensive to visit, and the tourism industry refuses to admit it. We’ve turned travel – and living – into an extraction operation, and we’re surprised when people stop coming.

America has lost the plot. We built a tourism economy designed to extract maximum revenue from every interaction, and it’s backfiring spectacularly. We have priced ourselves out of our own welcome mat. What once felt like a promise to the world is now an obstacle course, a trip measured not in miles but in fees, surcharges, and the steady erosion of goodwill.

I’ve spent nearly 15 years observing this industry at Skift, watching as we’ve collectively convinced ourselves that premium travel’s resilience somehow masks the fundamental rot beneath. But the cracks are showing, and they’re widening faster than anyone wants to admit.

If we want tourists to visit, we need to stop ripping them off.

At this stage, the vast majority of America’s most prominent tourist destinations are only affordable for the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy.

And the gap between the rich and the rest of us just continues to grow.

According to one recent report, the top 0.001 percent of the world’s population has three times as much money “as the entire bottom half of humanity”…

Fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential.

The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026, based on data compiled by 200 researchers, also found that the top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half captures less than 10% of total global earnings.

Wealth – the value of people’s assets – was even more concentrated than income, or earnings from work and investments, the report found, with the richest 10% of the world’s population owning 75% of wealth and the bottom half just 2%.

If you are at or near the top of the pyramid, life is good.

But for those in the bottom half, things are really rough.

History has shown us that when the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” gets too large, really bad things can happen.

We have already seen eruptions of civil unrest all over the globe throughout 2025, and I am convinced that this is just the beginning.

Reviving the middle class should be a priority for leaders all over the globe.

And if we want to have a sustainable tourism industry, we need to make tourism affordable for the middle class again.

Unfortunately, the tourism industry has become yet another example of the rampant greed that is now permeating our society, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

$60 silver is here!  The exponential rise in the price of silver that we have witnessed in recent months is astounding experts all over the globe.  So far in 2025, the price of gold is up about 60 percent, but the price of silver is up more than 100 percent.  We have never seen anything like this before, and there are some very specific reasons why this is happening.  Fortunately for silver investors, it appears that conditions will continue to be very favorable as we roll through the early months of 2026.

Many of us had been anticipating that the price of silver would smash through the $60 threshold and stay there this week, and that is precisely what occurred on Tuesday…

Gold rose on Tuesday as traders remained optimistic ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision, while silver rose to hit the unprecedented $60 per ounce milestone as the white metal faced supply constraints.

As I write this article, the price of silver is sitting at $61.22 an ounce.

It seems like just yesterday we were talking about $50 silver, and now some analysts are projecting that it will hit 70 dollars an ounce during the first half of next year…

Gold has shrugged off the jobs report, Haberkorn said, and added “we could see silver trade over $70 an ounce in the first half of 2026, and gold is on a path towards $5,000 an ounce.”

This is amazing news for silver investors.

But hardly anyone is talking about the real reasons why this is happening.

Right now, hundreds of giant AI data centers are being constructed all over the United States.

Hundreds of others are going up in various other nations around the world.

Many of these AI data centers are powered by solar energy, and approximately 300 metric tons of silver are required for just one 500 megawatt solar array…

Tech giants have pledged to power their AI data centers with renewable sources. That means an explosion of new solar installations — and each solar panel uses roughly 20 grams of silver in its photovoltaic cells.

A single 500-megawatt solar array — enough to power one hyperscale data center — requires roughly 300 metric tons of silver. Multiply that by the hundreds of new data centers being built worldwide, and the connection between AI and industrial silver demand becomes undeniable.

As long as the AI boom continues, demand for physical silver will remain strong.

Of course silver is used in thousands of other high tech products as well, and that is why it is being anticipated that there will be strong industrial demand for physical silver for at least the remainder of this decade…

“People are anticipating that there’s going to be strong industrial demand for silver for years to come, which is why it’s been bid up, the silver price,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at City Index and FOREX.com, adding that the buying momentum is strong at the moment.

Sectors including solar energy, electric vehicles and their infrastructure, and data centers and artificial intelligence will drive industrial demand higher through 2030, the Silver Institute industry association said in a research report.

Meanwhile, the behavior of the BRICS nations is also driving the price of silver higher.

Demand for physical silver in India has been off the charts, and it went even higher once the Reserve Bank of India decided to “allow consumers to monetize their physical silver holdings”…

In a report published this summer, Metals Focus noted that India is the world’s second-largest market for physical silver investment, accounting for nearly 80% of global silver bar and coin demand. The research firm also noted that India has long been the world’s largest consumer of silver jewellery and silverware by volume.

In an updated report, the analysts said that over the last five years, Indians — particularly lower-income consumers in rural communities — have purchased an estimated 29,000 tonnes of silver in jewellery and 4,000 tonnes in coins.

Metals Focus added that they see a potential game-changing development for the silver market as a new rule from the Reserve Bank of India will allow consumers to monetize their physical silver holdings.

I don’t think that demand from India is going to slow down any time soon.

Russia is another BRICS nation that is having a sizable impact on the silver market.

In late 2024, Russia’s central bank decided to start purchasing silver for its State Reserve Fund, and since that time the price of silver has dramatically outperformed the price of gold…

Silver is moving out of a long shadow cast by gold, its precious metal sister with hints of a major new buyer, Russia’s central bank, starting to influence the silver price which has risen to a 14-year high.

Data is scarce but since Russia revealed a plan late last year to add silver for the first time to its State Reserve Fund the silver price has outperformed gold.

Last but certainly not least, China recently decided to impose very significant export restrictions on silver starting in 2026…

The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (MOFCOM) has issued Announcement 2025-No. 68, imposing stringent conditions on the export of three critical minor metals – tungsten, antimony and silver – for the period 2026-2027. The move reflects China’s intensifying resource-security agenda and tighter export controls over strategic materials.

The Chinese want to ensure that they will have enough physical silver for the data centers that they will need to win the global race for AI dominance.

Supplies of physical silver have been getting tighter and tighter, existing mines can only produce so much, and we are being told that “it takes many years to get a new one up and running”…

The world’s mines are expected to produce only about 813 million ounces of silver this year, slightly less than they did in 2021, according to the Silver Institute. Mines can only produce so much each year, and it takes many years to get a new one up and running — something that puts a cap on supply.

Right now, approximately 50 percent of global silver production comes from Central America and South America.

In fact, Mexico produces more silver than anyone else.

So that suddenly makes Mexico a much more important piece on the global chessboard.

Thanks to the AI boom and the behavior of the BRICS nations, silver is now the hottest precious metal on the entire planet.

And if you think that things have been crazy this year, just wait until you see what happens in 2026.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

I don’t want China to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. I am an American, and so I want the United States to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. Unfortunately, the facts that I am about to share with you in this article cannot be denied. We consume far more than we produce, and we go into colossal amounts of debt in order to make that possible. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that this makes us an economic superpower. Meanwhile, the Chinese produce far more than they consume, and as a result they have far more money coming in than they do going out. This allows them to loan vast amounts of money to nations all over the planet, and that gives them tremendous economic leverage.

Despite everything that has happened this year, China has run a trade surplus of more than a trillion dollars for the first time ever in 2025…

China’s trade surplus roared above $1 trillion in November for the first time ever, despite the ongoing global trade war that has resulted in a steep drop in exports to the U.S.

In the first 11 months this year, China’s overall exports grew 5.4% compared to the same period in 2024 while imports fell 0.6%, taking its trade surplus to $1.076 trillion this year as of November, up 21.6% year on year.

This is what economic dominance looks like.

If you want to have a great economy, you have got to be great at making stuff.

And China is better at making stuff than anyone else.

China sells far more stuff to the rest of the world than it buys from the rest of the world, and that means that it has far more money coming in than it does going out.

This enables China to lend out vast amounts of cash.  In fact, at this point the rest of the world owes China about 5 trillion dollars.

It is often said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and that is certainly true in this case.

The primary reason why China sells so much stuff to the rest of the world is because they are able to make things very inexpensively…

“Put simply, China’s price competitiveness is extremely strong,” said Xu Tianchen, a senior economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing. “The main reason behind the continued growth of China’s exports … is not … because the overall size of global trade has expanded, but because China is claiming a larger share of the existing trade landscape.”

For a long time, cheap human labor was China’s main competitive edge.

But now Chinese factories are replacing human workers with ultra-efficient robots.

In fact, today there are more robots working in China than the rest of the world combined.

Just think about that for a moment.

That is crazy.

And the gap between China and the western world just continues to grow.

If you can believe it, Chinese factories added almost 10 times as many robots last year as U.S. factories did…

China is the world’s most dominant power in automating its manufacturing — installing nearly 10 times as many robots in its factories as the United States, according to new data.

Last year, more than half a million industrial robots were put to work in global factories — with 54% of them in China alone.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, China, which is home to nearly a third of all global manufacturing capacity, installed 295,000 industrial robots, the highest annual total on record.

We are getting absolutely monkey-hammered by the Chinese.

Shockingly, the total number of robots that U.S. factories added last year was actually lower than the total number for the year before…

In the US, meanwhile, companies put to work just 34,200 robots last year, according to the World Robotics 2025 Report.

The 34,200 figure is 9% lower than the previous year, the report found.

Of course the Chinese are not just using more robots than anyone else.

They are also producing more robots than the rest of the planet combined…

The move comes as Beijing accelerates its broader industrial strategy to lead in advanced manufacturing, a key pillar of the “Made in China 2025” initiative. As bne IntelliNews reported, China now produces more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, with domestic players rapidly gaining ground in both hardware and AI-driven control systems.

China is moving beyond being just the largest market for robots — it is becoming the core of global robot production. Chinese firms accounted for over 60% of global robot output in 2024, driven by subsidies, procurement programmes, and access to vast domestic datasets for training machine learning models.

Robots do not call in sick.

Robots do not need to take breaks.

Robots never complain.

Robots do not need health plans.

Robots don’t play around on the Internet when they should be working.

Robots do not need to take vacations.

Robots can work 24 hours a day.

And many of the robots that the Chinese are now producing can actually recharge their own batteries.

How can human workers possibly compete?

The Chinese can now make things at about a third of the cost that we can, and that gap is only going to get wider.

When a group of top western executives recently visited China, they were “humbled” and “terrified” by what they witnessed…

Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled — and even terrified.

As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.

“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”

Many are hoping that winning the AI race will halt the decline of western economies.

But that is far from certain.

Today, approximately 50 percent of the world’s AI researchers are in China.

We have some really good AI researchers too, but without a doubt it is going to be a very competitive race.

In fact, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang created quite a firestorm of controversy when he recently stated that he believes that “China is going to win the AI race”…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Washington has lost its edge in artificial intelligence and warns that China will win the AI race. He cited the West’s cynicism, export controls, and favorable energy circumstances in China as the reason, claiming it is much easier for companies to access energy in the country.

The chief of the most valuable company in the world by market cap has long been saying that the U.S. ban on chip exports is a failure, and that the spread of its advanced semiconductors is vital for it to retain its competitive advantage globally. However, the ongoing trade war between the two powers has resulted in export bans of Blackwell chips from the White House on the one hand, and the CCP banning foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers on the other. Because of this, Nvidia’s market share in China has since dropped to basically zero, which probably led to Huang’s statement to the Financial Times.

“China is going to win the AI race,” Jensen commented. He also added that “we need more optimism,” saying that the West’s cynicism is holding it back.

Winning the AI race is going to require vast amounts of energy, and this is one of the reasons why China may have an edge.

Most Americans don’t even realize that China now produces approximately two and a half times as much energy as the United States does…

Meanwhile, China has dramatically expanded its energy output. The country now produces 2.5 times more power than the U.S., despite surpassing America only 15 years ago, Lord said.

“America can’t out-AI China if China out-powers us, so the U.S. must prioritize developing reliable power,” he said.

The Chinese are feverishly constructing more nuclear power facilities, and they are way ahead of us when it comes to clean nuclear energy research.

The bottom line is that we are in enormous trouble.

We need to stop watching so much Netflix and start getting serious about competing with China.

In 2026, I expect our trade war with China to continue to heat up.

And history has shown us that trade wars have a way of evolving into shooting wars.

Let us hope that a military conflict with China can be avoided for as long as possible, because at this stage I don’t think that such a conflict would go well for us.

Because the Chinese have been rapidly modernizing their military as well.

In just about every area, the Chinese are either catching up with us or have already surpassed us.

Sadly, most Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they don’t even realize that this is happening.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

All over the globe, the digital control grid that we are all living in just continues to get even tighter. They are using facial recognition technology to scan our faces, they are using license plate readers to track where we travel, they are systematically monitoring the conversations that we are having on our phones, and they are watching literally everything that we post on social media. At this stage, many of us just assume that nothing that we do or say is ever truly private. We really do live in a “Big Brother society”, and the potential for tyranny is off the charts. In fact, people are already getting arrested for “thought crimes” all over the world. If we do not take a stand now, someday soon we could wake up in a world where there is essentially no freedom left at all.

The exponential growth of AI technology is allowing authorities to watch, track, monitor and control us like never before.  If you are not alarmed by this, you might want to check if you are still alive.  The following are 11 signs that our world is rapidly becoming a lot more Orwellian…

#1 UK authorities are rolling out “a country-wide facial recognition system” that will use AI facial recognition cameras to watch the entire population…

On Thursday, officials in the UK pledged to roll out a country-wide facial recognition system to help police track down criminals. The country’s ministers have launched a 10-week consultation to analyze the regulatory and privacy framework of their AI-powered surveillance panopticon — but one way or another, the all-seeing eye is on its way.

There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.

New reporting by The Guardian notes that testing of the AI tech conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found that it‘s “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results” — specifically Black and Asian people.

#2 Of course the control freaks in the UK also monitor everything that gets posted on social media.  One British man recently found this out the hard way when he was arrested for posing with a legally-owned gun in the United States…

A Yorkshire man was arrested over a photo he posted on social media featuring him holding a legally owned gun in the US.

Jon Richelieu-Booth posted a photo of himself in August holding a gun on LinkedIn while he was on a holiday in Florida.

He said he held the firearm lawfully, on private land and with full permission from its owner.

#3 If you do not believe that “thought crime” is real, just consider this next example.  11 police officers recently barged in and arrested a 34-year-old woman that was sitting naked in her own bathtub because she used offensive words while texting another woman on her phone…

The United Kingdom has become an authoritarian nightmare, and the United States must remain vigilant if it does not want to go down the same course.

Elizabeth Kinney, a 34-year-old care assistant, was naked in the bathtub when 11 police officers barged into her home to arrest her.

Her crime was sending insults to another woman via text.

How would you feel if 11 police officers were staring at you while you were naked?

As she was being informed that she had engaged in “malicious communications”, tears started flowing from Kinney’s eyes…

Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.” “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted. Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency. She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.

#4 French President Emmanuel Macron wants the power to determine which media outlets will be allowed to speak to the public and which media outlets will be silenced…

Macron has in the last weeks intensified warnings on the risks of disinformation, on Friday calling for changes to French legislation that would allow “false information” online to be urgently blocked.

He has also called for “professional certification” of outlets to distinguish sites and networks that provide reliable information according to ethical rules from others that do not.

But at the weekend, the Journal du Dimanche Sunday newspaper, part of the influential media stable of right-wing tycoon Vincent Bollore, accused Macron in a front-page story of a “totalitarian drift” on the issue.

#5 Because he is a champion of free speech, the EU has been coming after Elon Musk for years.  So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the European Commission just fined his company 140 million dollars for supposed violations of the Digital Services Act…

The European Commission has issued a $140 million fine to Elon Musk’s X for violating the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine is likely to escalate tensions between the EU and America over free speech online.

Bloomberg reports that the European Commission has imposed a €120 million ($140 million) fine on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This marks the first penalty issued under the new censorship law, which aims to regulate online platforms and “protect” users from illegal content and disinformation.

#6 In recent years, we have seen so many controversial voices suddenly have their bank accounts shut down.  Shockingly, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is now publicly admitting that his company does “debank” people…

As JPMorgan Chase Bank is under investigation by the state of Florida for alleged coordination with the Biden Department of Justice and Operation Arctic Frost, the chairman of the company is admitting to debanking certain customers, but says it has nothing to do with their political or religious affiliations.

“We do debank them,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon who appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel.

“People have to grow up here and stop making up things and stuff like that. I can’t talk about an individual account.

#7 India wants to require that phone location services are always on so that the government can track people through their phones wherever they go…

You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run “cybersecurity” app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).

The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location. According to Reuters, India’s home ministry was set to meet with smartphone industry executives on Friday, but the meeting was postponed.

#8 A journalist in the Netherlands has tested AI-powered glasses “that can instantly identify strangers on the street”…

A Dutch journalist just tested a pair of AI-powered glasses that can instantly identify strangers on the street.

No government database. No police system. Just public data and off-the-shelf AI.

You look at someone and in seconds, their name, LinkedIn, and background appear before your eyes.

The scariest part? You can’t really stop it.

You can ban it, regulate it, add blinking red lights… but once tech like this exists, someone will always find a way to use it.

Once these sorts of devices become widely available, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

#9 A nationwide digital ID is being introduced in the UK, and soon you will not be able to get a new job without one…

Once introduced, digital ID will be used to verify a person’s right to live and work in the UK.

It will take the form of an app-based system, stored on smartphones in a similar way to the NHS App or digital bank cards.

The ID will include information on the holders’ residency status, name, date of birth, nationality and their photo.

When he first announced the scheme, Sir Keir said: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”

#10 The digital ID program in France “is moving from pilot to scale”…

France’s national digital identity app, France Identité, has enabled the creation of more than 3.2 million digital IDs, according to new figures.

Among these, approximately 525,000 identities have been fully certified, meaning that users have completed an in-person verification process at their local town halls. This means that more than half a million French digital IDs are ready for the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, according to Joerg Lenz, head of marketing at Namirial Group.

“France Identité is moving from pilot to scale,” Lenz wrote on LinkedIn, following the TRUSTECH Event held in Paris on Wednesday.

#11 In Illinois, there is such overwhelming demand for digital IDs that some people are being forced to wait…

Mobile IDs became available in Illinois on Wednesday, but due to the high demand, some residents are finding themselves waiting a little bit longer.

A number of residents trying to download the digital ID to their Apple wallet received the following message: “Due to the high volume, your state’s service is currently busy.”

Users can then answer the question, “Do you want to be notified when it becomes available?”

This is where the entire world is heading.

As the Big Brother control grid gets tighter and tighter, the stage is being set for unprecedented tyranny on a global scale.

Tyrants of the past could only dream of having the sort of AI-powered tools that we possess today.

If you do not submit to the digital gulag that is being constructed all around us, eventually you may not be able to buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper digital identification.

What would you do then?

You might want to start thinking about that, because things are only going to get crazier from here.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.