SocietyWatch
COVID-19 making Big Tech and Big Pharma even bigger
Economists estimate that the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns are a staggering $16 trillion. Eighty percent of small-business owners say lockdowns have hurt their businesses. While money has flowed out of the middle class, it has flowed in torrents into huge technology and pharmaceutical companies, which are making record profits. Apple, Microsoft and Google have more than doubled in value since the pandemic was declared, and government pressure and mandates for vaccinations are providing Merck, Moderna, Sanofi, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson with an estimated $40 billion in profits.
The pharmaceuticals and health products industry donated more than $5.9 million to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and now it is reaping dividends. On February 11, Biden agreed to purchase 600 million COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. On February 27, he approved Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for emergency use.
Government responses to a disease similar in significance and scale to the regular flu have consistently destroyed the finances and independence of the middle and lower classes and consistently benefited Big Tech and big pharma. Before this is over, giant corporations may be the only businesses left.
This economic transformation is reminiscent of a transformation that occurred in ancient Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam II. Israel expanded in power, but a new class of powerful elites arose and used their wealth to exploit their own people, and the gap between the rich and the poor grew larger (Amos 6:1-7). This history is also prophecy, and Amos condemned these elites in Amos 8:4-7 as they that “swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail.”
Biden’s spending has stolen your savings
Joe Biden and Congress have authorized huge amounts of spending since taking power. Democrats have claimed that this manufacturing of money has not caused the inflation that Americans are experiencing, and that those rising prices are temporary. But many Americans see that this is false.
On July 13, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index had risen 5.4 percent over 12 months, the most significant jump since the 2008 Great Recession. John Williams, of shadowstats.com, says that if inflation were still calculated the way it was back in 1980, the official inflation rate over that period would be about 13 percent.
Forty years ago, the late news forecaster Herbert W. Armstrong wrote an article titled “What’s Happening to the U.S. Standard of Living—and Why?” This article addressed the causes of American economic decline and explained that God blessed America with the highest per capita income on the planet because of a promise He made to Abraham in response to his faith and obedience. Abraham’s descendants in America have shown neither faith nor obedience, and will therefore see their inherited financial blessings evaporate.
Biden’s White House tells Facebook what to censor
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on July 15 that the American government is working with Facebook to censor certain information. Speaking about the government’s response to COVID-19, she said the president’s team is “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” She defined “health misinformation” as “false, inaccurate or misleading information about health, according to the best evidence at the time.”
“[T]oday we live in a world where misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health,” she said. “[T]he truth is that misinformation takes away our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and the health of our loved ones.” Psaki called for an “all-of-society approach to fight misinformation.”
Despite the spin, the fact is that the federal government has admitted that it pressures a powerful private company to censor certain information—while that company enjoys immunity from many lawsuits thanks to a special federal law. Facebook claims it is not responsible for what its users write and therefore cannot be sued, yet it acts as a publisher, working with partisan federal bureaucrats, and actively edits out content. This collusion against freedom of speech is out in the open, and many have protested against it, yet the Biden administration feels bold enough not only to continue the practice but to chide Facebook for not censoring what it considers “violative posts” quickly enough.
A prophecy in Amos 8:11 foretells of a time when government censorship will grow so bad that even those preaching the truths of the Bible will be silenced. Society is swiftly approaching this “famine … of hearing the words of the Lord.”
