Klaus Schwab, the infamous leader of the WEF (World Economic Forum), who bears a striking semblance to Dr. Evil, proclaimed in 2016: “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”
While some write off the concern for the WEF’s agenda as nothing more than the rants of conspiracy theorists, Schwab’s words are less prophetic than they are an inevitable outcome of orchestrated urban planning.
Housing Bust
Take real estate, for example. Several monumental events have set the stage for a large buyout of individual family homes and along with it, a huge transfer of wealth.
The Great Recession (2007 – 2009), largely precipitated by the burst of the housing market and subprime mortgage crisis, was probably the largest contributor to the shift away from home ownership to rental in recent history.
Millions of homes entered foreclosure and the government did what it does best: intervene.
Many financial institutions and investment firms either shut down, merged – consolidating assets into more centralized command centers – or were bailed out by the government.
The Obama administration launched a pilot program for investors to buy foreclosed homes in bulk and convert them into rentals.
“It was ‘get this off of our balance sheet and our plate’ kind of thinking,” says Desiree Fields, an associate professor at the University of California-Berkeley. “And it was a real once in a generation opportunity for these investors.”
Private equity firms like Blackstone Group (Invitation Homes), Pretium Partners (Progress Residential), and Amherst (Main Street Renewal) convinced public pension funds and other large institutional investors to bankroll their homebuying sprees.
Their sales pitch: With tighter lending standards, slow wage growth, and a mountain of student debt, many millennials might never be able to afford a home of their own.
Blackstone Buyouts
One of the biggest profiters from these buyouts has been the goliath investment firm, Blackstone.
While the group exited from the single-family rental business when it sold its last shares in Invitation Homes, it dipped its toe back into the industry in 2020.
The privately held firm and the largest owner of commercial real estate in the world invested $395 million in the Canadian firm Tricon Residential, Atlanta’s fourth-largest homeowner. A year later, it bought Home Partners of America, Atlanta’s eighth-largest, for $6 billion.
In 2021, Blackstone bought 66 relatively low-rent apartment buildings in San Diego County from a charitable foundation. Tenants of those 5,800 dwellings say they see rent increases, maintenance issues, and evictions in their future.
Also in 2021, the firm acquired Home Partners of America Inc., which owns more than 17,000 houses throughout the U.S.
In early 2022 Blackstone expanded its portfolio of rental housing and commercial real estate in the United States. The firm spent roughly $6 billion to acquire Preferred Apartment Communities, a real estate investment trust based in Atlanta that owns 44 multifamily communities and about 12,000 housing units in the Southeast.
Not surprisingly, Blackstone is a partner of the WEF.
You’ll Own Nothing
Recently, a video of a woman lamenting about the unattainable American dream – even rentals – went viral. The woman from Alabama asked, “Why are one bedroom studio apartments almost $2,000 a month? Why? I just don’t get it.”
Now you know why. Or at least one of the reasons why.
It’s not hard to imagine with the astronomical rising costs of housing, in the near future no one except the uber-wealthy, such as men like Klaus Schwab and heads of firms like Blackstone, will be able to afford to own their home. In fact, they’ll likely own several homes while you continue to rent at a considerable cost, paving the way for re-imagined communities.
Globalists like Schwab tout a shared economy where everything belongs to everyone and we all ride off in the sunset on our electric bikes on impeccably paved, tree-lined streets within the borders of a 15-minute city.
The design is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city. This approach aims to reduce car dependency, promote healthy and sustainable living, and improve the well-being and quality of life of city dwellers.
Fun fact: the concept was initially designed and advocated by the Chinese government to improve overall health and reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases.
However, what the masterminds don’t tell you is everything doesn’t actually belong to everyone – it belongs to a select few. Everyone else is borrowing just about everything from elite owners, or ultimately, the state, as governments increasingly cozy up to private investment firms.
In the aforementioned video, the same woman ranted, “I don’t even think there is even classes anymore. There used to be upper class, middle class, lower class. It’s literally turning into the ultra-wealthy and everybody else is just poor.”
Exactly.
More Than the Destruction of the American Dream
The inability to own property not only destroys the American dream, it runs counter to human flourishing.
It strips individuals of all meaning and purpose often found in the struggles to achieve. It minimizes their desire to strive and be productive, not to mention creative, citizens. It dulls everybody down to mindless bots, relegated merely to the tasks in front of them and basic human functions.
What a drab, and indeed meaningless existence a life without the success that comes through hardship and failures would be. It is, indeed, inhumane and that is why the end result of the WEF’s agenda is dubbed transhumanism – beyond human.
As the woman in the video so aptly points out, there is a difference between struggling and drowning. The point of challenges is to overcome them to eventually reach the carrot dangling in front of you. But when organizations in collusion with the government yank the carrot every time you reach for it, it’s demoralizing.
If you still think this is all just a conspiracy theory, watch a video entitled “8 Predictions for the World in 2030” from the WEF. Again, less predictions and more deliberate planning.
Western values, the video says – undoubtedly including free markets, individual liberty, religious freedom, and private property – “will be tested to the breaking point.”
In the wise words of Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Jennifer Galardi is the politics and culture editor and opinion writer for 19FortyFive.com. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University and produces and hosts the podcast Connection with conversations that address health, culture, politics, and policy. In a previous life, she wrote for publications in the health, fitness, and nutrition space. In addition, her pieces have been published in the Epoch Times and Pepperdine Policy Review. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
