“Warning lights should be flashing. Less than a month in, it’s becoming evident that President Joe Biden’s economic policies are likely to end in disaster.” —columnist Rupert Darwall

Mr. Darwall is half right, and no one (inadvertently) explains it better than columnist Keven Williams. He wonders aloud about a “mystery economy” that has simultaneously produced a “U.S. GDP plunging at a rate of 32 percent while unemployment spiked to 15 percent,” and “12 million renting households who collectively owe back rent that may add up to more than $70 billion,” even as the “Dow closed at a record high last week, car dealers and art dealers both are enjoying record profits, commodities prices from oil to soybeans to copper are soaring, and, as though some rank symbolism were needed, the display cases of the nation’s Rolex boutiques are stripped as bare as a San Antonio supermarket after a polar vortex.”

In reality, there’s no mystery about it. While millions of Americans struggle — with no real end in sight other than a $1,400 stimulus check — the wealth of the nation’s billionaire class has skyrocketed. “After 11 months of pandemic misery, where millions have lost their jobs, health and wealth, total US billionaire wealth increased $1.3 trillion since mid-March, 2020, an increase of 44 percent,” Inequality.org explains on its website.

In other words, there are really two economies: one for the select few who have amassed historically unprecedented levels of wealth, and the other for everyone else. Tragically, that bifurcation has also produced something else: a progressive-dominated, government-corporate cartel determined to make sure it remains that way.

Forever.

In the meantime, Americans will be fed a steady diet of “bread and circuses” designed to obscure it all. In service to “saving the planet,” one of the first executive orders enacted by President Biden was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline project, costing the nation thousands of jobs. The skilled workers who lost those jobs were told by climate czar John Kerry they could “transition” to making solar panels in some unspecified future.

Soon, there will be a lot more transitioning going on, as this is only the opening gambit in the administration’s efforts to impose a Green New Deal on America — one that will inevitably produce a dubious trifecta of rising gas prices, soaring energy bills for millions, and a return to energy dependence along with the inevitable permutations (read: Middle East conflicts) that arise when we go back to needing energy from nations that hate us.

Next up, a $15 minimum wage. Much to Nancy Pelosi’s disappointment, the Senate’s chief parliamentarian ruled that such a wage hike could not be included in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, because major economic bills cannot be passed via “budget reconciliation” — a process that allows passage of bills with a simple Senate majority.

Nonetheless, House Democrats included it anyway when they passed the bill early Saturday morning, undoubtedly based on the idea that Vice President Kamala Harris, who can override the parliamentarian’s ruling, will do so. Never mind that the CBO estimates raising the minimum wage would cost America another 1.4 million jobs, as many small business operators who can’t afford such an increase will lay off workers.

Eliminating those small businesses is okay with California Democrat Representative Ro Khanna. When asked by CNN’s Abby Phillip what affect this will have on “mom and pop businesses who are just struggling to keep their doors open, keep workers on the payroll right now,” Khanna made it clear they were completely expendable. “We don’t want low-wage businesses,” he asserted. “Most successful small businesses can pay a fair wage.”

Undoubtedly in Khanna’s universe, Target, Amazon, and a host of other multinationals will fill the gap created by the extermination of these “unfair” small businesses, further enriching the mega-rich at the expense of those foolish enough to believe that risk, hard work, and determination are the real elements of success.

Which brings us to the next effort to crush the future of millions of Americans, namely the Biden administration’s determination to legalize “11 million” illegal aliens. The quotation marks are intended to be sarcastic, as that number has remained unchanged for 17 straight years despite sustained caravans, border surges, and visa over-stayers. Even the most basic economic reality — when you have more of something, each unit of that something is worth less — will not deter a Democrat Party wholly determined to make sure its power remains unassailable, even if millions of lower- and middle-class Americans see their wages remain stagnant or get cut, or have their jobs taken by those who have no business being here in the first place.

But don’t worry, America. That $1,400 stimulus check will be arriving in short order, courtesy of that $1.9 trillion stimulus package. One that follows the $900 billion stimulus package passed in December — even as Democrats are discussing another $2 trillion in additional stimulus spending. “In order to grow the economy a year or two, three, and four down the line, we can’t spend too much,” said President Biden said during a CNN town hall. “Now is the time we should be spending. Now is the time to go big.”

How big? “We are looking carefully, very carefully, at the question of whether we should issue a digital dollar,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress last Tuesday. Powell further noted that it’s a “very high-priority project for us.”

Who’s “us”? Certainly not the millions of Americans who understand the implications of moving to the cashless — and wholly totalitarian — society envisioned by those who wish to control every aspect of peoples’ lives.

Can Universal Basic Income or some more “creative” alternative that produces the same wholesale dependency on government be far behind?

Looking at the above, many Americans might wonder why Democrats and more than a few Republicans would sign on to policies virtually certain to produce disaster for millions of Americans. It might be better if they wondered something else: What if it’s all intentional? What if crushing the middle and lower classes — along with the American Dream itself — is the real purpose here?

Too farfetched? If there is one thing above all else our Ruling Class learned during the pandemic, it’s that frightened and desperate Americans are increasingly pliable Americans, millions of whom have been more than willing to trade Liberty for security. So, we could endure a long recession/depression, buffeted by stimulus after stimulus. All the while, leftists know their corporate allies in media and Big Tech can control the national conversation and weed out everything they deem “misinformation” — as well as any remaining recalcitrants still naïve enough to believe the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the integrity of the election process still matter.

It’s what the quest for unabashed tyranny is all about.