The U.S. tax code is a complete and utter abomination and it needs to be thrown out entirely. Nobody in their right mind would ever read the whole thing – it is over 3 million words long. Each year, Americans spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to comply with federal tax requirements. Sadly, it is the honest, hard working Americans in the middle class that always get hit the hardest. The tax code is absolutely riddled with loopholes that big corporations and the ultra-wealthy use to minimize their tax burdens as much as possible. Many poor people do not pay any income taxes at all. The dishonest are rewarded for cheating on their taxes (if they can get away with it) and the ultra-wealthy have moved trillions of dollars to offshore tax havens where they can avoid U.S. taxation altogether. Our system is incredibly unfair to the millions of hard working people in the middle class and upper middle class that drag themselves out of bed and go to work each day and try to do the right thing. In addition, the current U.S. tax system is incredibly inefficient, it diverts a tremendous amount of resources away from more valuable economic activities, and it has chased thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars out of the United States. The U.S. tax code is such a complete and utter mess at this point that it can never be “fixed”. The only rational thing to do is to abolish it completely, and any politician that tells you otherwise is lying to you.
The following are 24 outrageous facts about taxes in the United States that will blow your mind….
1 – The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.
2 – According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.
3 – 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.
4 – There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.
5 – According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.
6 – Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.
7 – In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.
8 – The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes.
9 – According to The Tax Foundation, the average American has to work until April 17th just to pay federal, state, and local taxes. Back in 1900, “Tax Freedom Day” came on January 22nd.
10 – When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent, and the highest marginal tax rate was just 7 percent.
11 – Residents of New Jersey pay $1.64 in taxes for every $1.00 of federal spending that they get back.
13 – According to Forbes, the 400 highest earning Americans pay an average federal income tax rate of just 18 percent.
14 – Warren Buffett had an effective tax rate of just 17.4 percent for 2010.
15 – The top 20 percent of all income earners in the United States pay approximately 86 percent of all federal income taxes.
16 – Sadly, as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
17 – The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world (35 percent). In Ireland, the corporate tax rate is only 12.5 percent. This is causing thousands of corporations to move operations out of the United States and into other countries.
18 – Some tax havens are doing a booming business in setting up sham headquarters for U.S. corporations. For example, the city of Zug, Switzerland only has a population of 26,000 people but it is the headquarters for 30,000 companies.
19 – In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
20 – In a previous article, I discussed how many of our largest corporations make huge profits and yet pay less than nothing in taxes….
What U.S. corporations are able to get away with is absolutely amazing.
During those three years, all of the corporations below made a lot of money. Yet all of them paid net taxes that were below zero for those three years combined.
How is that possible? Well, it turns out that instead of paying in taxes to the federal government, they were actually getting money back.
So for these corporations, their rate of taxation was actually below zero.
If you have not seen these before, you are going to have a hard time believing some of these statistics…..
*Honeywell*
Profits: $4.9 billion
Taxes: -$34 million
*Fed Ex*
Profits: $3 billion
Taxes: -$23 million
*Wells Fargo*
Profits: $49.37 billion
Taxes: -$681 million
*Boeing*
Profits: $9.7 billion
Taxes: -$178 million
*Verizon*
Profits: $32.5 billion
Taxes: -$951 million
*Dupont*
Profits: $2.1 billion
Taxes -$72 million
*American Electric Power*
Profits: $5.89 billion
Taxes -$545 million
*General Electric*
Profits: $7.7 billion
Taxes: -$4.7 billion
Are you starting to get the picture?
21 – Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, but not a single penny went to the U.S. government.
22 – Many wealthy Americans hide enormous amounts of money outside the country in order to avoid paying taxes. According to the IMF, a total of 18 trillion dollars is currently being hidden in offshore banks.
23 – The number of traffic accidents spikes each year right around April 15th. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….
Deaths from traffic accidents around April 15, traditionally the last day to file individual income taxes in the U.S., rose 6 percent on average on each of the last 30 years of tax filing days compared with a day during the week prior and a week later, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
24 – Most of the tax debate is focused on income taxes, but the truth is that Americans pay dozens of other taxes every single year. The following are just a few of the taxes that many Americans pay….
#1 Building Permit Taxes
#2 Capital Gains Taxes
#3 Cigarette Taxes
#4 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#5 Dog License Taxes
#6 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#7 Fishing License Taxes
#8 Food License Taxes
#9 Gasoline Taxes
#10 Gift Taxes
#11 Hunting License Taxes
#12 Inheritance Taxes
#13 Inventory Taxes
#14 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#15 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#16 Liquor Taxes
#17 Luxury Taxes
#18 Marriage License Taxes
#19 Medicare Taxes
#20 Property Taxes
#21 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#22 Toll Booth Taxes
#23 Sales Taxes
#24 Self-Employment Taxes
#25 School Taxes
#26 Septic Permit Taxes
#27 Service Charge Taxes
#28 Social Security Taxes
#29 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#30 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#31 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#32 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#33 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#34 Tire Taxes
#35 Toll Bridge Taxes
#36 Toll Tunnel Taxes
#37 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#38 Utility Taxes
#39 Vehicle License Registration Taxes
#40 Vehicle Sales Taxes
#41 Workers Compensation Taxes
When you account for all forms of taxation on the federal, state and local levels there are many Americans that pay out more than half of their incomes in taxes.
We are being taxed into oblivion, and yet most Americans do not even realize that it is happening.
It is kind of like being killed by thousands of tiny cuts.
Millions of Americans work for the federal government, and yet most of them produce very little of real economic value. The following comes from a recent National Review article….
By 2005, the federal government employed 14.6 million people: 1.9 million civil servants, 770,000 postal workers, 1.44 million uniformed service personnel, 7.6 million contractors, and 2.9 million grantees. This amounted to a ratio of five and a half “shadow” government employees for every civil servant on the federal payroll. Since 1999, the government had grown by over 4.5 million employees.
According to that same article, when you add in state and local government workers the numbers are even more dramatic….
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 3.8 million full-time and 1.5 million part-time employees on state payrolls. Local governments add a further 11 million full-time and 3.2 million part-time personnel. This means that state and local governments combined employ 19.5 million Americans.
Yes, we do need some government. For example, without any law enforcement at all our society would descend into complete chaos, and without any military at all we would be completely open to foreign conquest.
In order to have a stable, secure society we do need some government.
However, we definitely do not need the massively bloated government that we have today.
The truth is that most government employees are a drain on the system. Most of them just push paper around. I used to work in Washington D.C. so I know what pushing paper around is all about.
And as I wrote about yesterday, there are millions of other Americans that enjoy a comfortable existence at the expense of the federal government without doing any work whatsoever.
Of course the biggest welfare recipients of all are the big corporations. All forms of corporate welfare should be eliminated immediately.
When are U.S. taxpayers going to get sick and tired of paying for all of this?
Every single year, the federal government, state governments and local governments drain massive amounts of desperately needed money from hard working middle class families.
Most Americans have no idea how much economic trouble is heading our way. Most of them just assume that everything will eventually “return to normal” just like it always has before and that those running our economy “know what they are doing” and that we should trust them to do their jobs. Unfortunately, these beliefs are being reinforced by the bubble of false hope that we are experiencing right now. For example, it is being reported that weekly unemployment claims in the United States have fallen to a four-year low. That is a very good thing. Let us hope that unemployment claims go even lower and that the current period of stability lasts for as long as possible. We should enjoy these last fleeing moments of tremendous prosperity for as long as we can, because when they are gone they won’t be coming back. As I noted the other day, all of this false prosperity in the United States has been financed by the 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying. We are adding about 150 million dollars to our debt every single hour so that we can continue to enjoy an inflated standard of living. Unfortunately, nobody in the history of the world has ever been able to keep a debt spiral going indefinitely, and our debt bubble will burst eventually as well.
Sadly, when you attempt to end (or even slow down) a debt spiral the consequences can be extremely painful. Just look at what is happening in Greece. Several waves of austerity measures have been implemented, the Greek economy has been plunged into a full-blown depression and Greek debt is still going up.
The rest of the nations of the eurozone are also now implementing austerity measures, and most of them are also starting to fall into recession. The economic pain in Europe is just beginning and it will go on for quite a long time.
And eventually the United States is going to join the pain. Right now the U.S. government can still borrow trillions of dollars at super low interest rates thanks to games being played by the Federal Reserve. But it is simply not possible for this Ponzi scheme to last too much longer. When it ends, the pain will be extremely great.
And even in the short-term there are some extremely troubling signs for the U.S. economy.
The following are 19 signs of very serious economic trouble on the horizon….
#1 According to one new survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
#2 The U.S. housing industry is bracing for another huge wave of foreclosures in 2012. The following is from a recent Reuters article….
“We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio.
#3 The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index, a key indicator watched by many economists, is on the verge of heading into negative territory.
#4 We are supposed to be in the middle of an economic recovery in the United States, but bad news just keeps pouring in from major companies. For example, Yahoo is firing thousands of workers and Best Buy is closing dozens of stores.
#5 Richard Russell says that the “big money” is starting to quietly exit from the financial markets….
“My guess is that this is the big money that has been holding off as long as it decently can — and then dumping their goods just before the close. I don’t think the big money likes this market, and I think they have been slowly exiting this market, as quietly as they can.”
#6 Goldman Sachs is projecting that the S&P 500 will fall by about 11 percent by the end of 2012.
#7 All over the country, local governments are going into default and we have not even entered the next recession yet.
#8 The U.S. government will add more to the national debt in 2012 than it did from the time that George Washington became president to the time that Ronald Reagan became president.
#9 The Federal Reserve is desperately trying to control interest rates. The Fed purchased approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011. This is the only thing that is keeping interest rates in the United States from soaring dramatically.
#16 In the aftermath of a 77-year-old retiree killing himself in front of the Greek parliament in protest over pension cuts, the economic rioting in Greece has flared back up dramatically.
#17 At this point, Greece is experiencing an economic depression with no end in sight. Some of the statistics coming out of Greece are really hard to believe. For example, one port town in Greece now has an unemployment rate of approximately 60 percent.
#19 At this point, even some of our top scientists are projecting economic trouble. For example, researchers at MIT are projecting a “global economic collapse” by the year 2030 if current trends continue.
But the truth is that we will experience a “global economic collapse” long before 2030 comes rolling around.
Let us hope that we still have at least several more months of economic prosperity in the United States before things really fall apart.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans need more time to prepare for what is coming.
Sadly, most Americans are not preparing. Most Americans have blind faith that those in positions of power are going to fix everything and set us on the path to even greater prosperity than ever before.
Unfortunately, all Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama have been doing is kicking the can down the road and making our eventual collapse much worse.
As many of us have painfully learned, you can run from debt for a while, but you can’t hide from it forever. Eventually debt catches up with you, and when it does it can be very cruel.
The 15 trillion dollar party is coming to an end, and the consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are going to fall on this generation.
What in the world is going on in the heartland of America? Spring has barely even begun and we are seeing communities all over America being ripped to shreds by gigantic tornadoes. A lot of meteorologists claimed that the nightmarish tornado season of 2011 was an “anomaly”, but 2012 is shaping up to be just as bad or even worse. These tornado outbreaks just seem to keep getting more frequent and more powerful. For example, several “supercell” tornadoes ripped across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area on Tuesday. People all over America were absolutely horrified as they watched footage of these tornadoes toss around tractor trailers as if they were toy trucks. Personally, I have never seen a tractor trailer tossed 100 feet into the sky before. This is not normal. CBS 11 meteorologist Larry Mowry told his viewers that one of these torandoes was “as serious of a tornado we’ve seen in years“. So why is this happening? Why is the heartland of America being ripped to shreds by gigantic tornadoes that are becoming more frequent and more powerful?
Up to this point in 2012, at least 57 people have been killed by tornadoes across the country. Thousands more have been injured and countless homes have been reduced to splinters. In fact, there have been a couple of small towns that have been essentially wiped off the map by giant tornadoes.
What we are witnessing is not normal. Prior to the horrific tornadoes that we saw on Tuesday, there had been 326 tornadoes in the United States so far in 2012. That is about twice as many as usual for this time of the year.
Overall, the United States only sees about 1,200 tornadoes for the entire year usually. The busiest time of the year for tornadoes is still a way off, and we are on pace for a truly historic year.
But it is not just the number of tornadoes that is the problem. Many of these tornadoes are immensely powerful. The following is how the local CBS affiliate described the damage done by the recent tornadoes in Texas….
Multiple tornadoes threw tractor-trailers in the air, ripped the roof off an elementary school, leveled houses and shut down airline traffic out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as one of the worst storms in years hit North Texas Tuesday.
Baseball-sized hail punched holes through car roofs, and a Red Cross spokeswoman warned the breadth of the destruction may not be cleared until well into Wednesday. The mayors of Arlington and Lancaster declared a state of disaster following the storm strike.
There were even reports of massive “debris balls” in Dallas, Ellis, Johnson and Tarrant counties. These tornadoes picked up huge amounts of debris into the air that were just carried along by the storms. That must have been an absolutely horrifying sight to behold.
A lot of jaw-dropping footage from these tornadoes has already been posted on the Internet. For example, the following video shows tractor trailers being tossed about like rag dolls….
Have you ever seen anything like that before in your life?
I know that I haven’t.
Look, one bad year can be dismissed as a coincidence.
But two historically bad years in a row?
Many would call that a trend.
Last year, America experienced one of the worst tornado seasons of all time. Many Americans will never, ever forget the devastation caused by the tornadoes of 2011.
For example, National Geographic reported that a gigantic F5 tornado that ripped through the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area had winds of up to 260 miles an hour. If you drive through Tuscaloosa today you can see that they are still trying to recover.
And Joplin, Missouri may never be the same again after what happened to that city last year. The gigantic tornado that ripped through Joplin was called by some the deadliest single tornado in more than 60 years.
That mammoth tornado ripped a path of destruction through Joplin that was more than a mile wide and more than 6 miles long. You can see some amazing before and after photographs of Joplin right here.
But people don’t think about what happened to Joplin much anymore because there have been so many other horrific disasters since then.
Overall, 2011 was the worst year for natural disasters in U.S. history.
Many were hoping that there would be a return to normalcy in 2012.
Do you believe that preppers are a few cards short of a full deck? Do you assume that anyone that is “preparing for doomsday” does not have their elevator going all the way to the top floor? Well, you might want to read this first before you make a final decision that all preppers are crazy. The information that you are about to read shook me up a bit when I first looked it over. To be honest, I had no idea how incredibly vulnerable our economic system is to a transportation disruption. I am continually getting emails and comments on my websites asking “how to prepare” for what is coming, so when I came across this information I knew that I had to share it with all of you. Hopefully what you are about to read will motivate you to prepare like never before, and hopefully you will share this information with others.
Originally, I was going to write an article about the rising unemployment in Europe today. Did you know that unemployment in the eurozone is now at a 15 year high? It has risen for 10 months in a row with no end in sight.
But I have written dozens of articles about the economic crisis in Europe already. So before starting on that article I started thinking of all the “preparation” questions I have been getting lately and I went over and checked out one of my favorite preparation websites: shtfplan.com.
I went and found that original report and I was stunned as I read it.
The truth is that our “just in time” inventory and delivery systems leave us incredibly vulnerable to a nationwide disaster.
You see, it is very expensive to hold and store inventory, so most manufacturers and retailers rely on a continual flow of deliveries that are scheduled to arrive “just in time”, and this significantly reduces their operating expenses.
This is considered to be good business practice for manufacturers and retailers, but it also means that if there was a major nationwide transportation disruption that our economic system would grind to a halt almost immediately.
Once store shelves are picked clean, they would not be able to be replenished until trucks could get back on the road. In the event of a major nationwide disaster, that could be quite a while.
So what could potentially cause a nationwide transportation shutdown?
Well, it is easy to imagine a lot of potential scenarios – a volcanic eruption, a historic earthquake, an EMP attack, a solar megastorm, a war, a major terror attack, an asteroid strike, a killer pandemic, mass rioting in U.S. cities, or even martial law.
If something caused the trucks to stop running, life in America would immediately start changing.
So exactly what would that look like?
The following is an excerpt from the report mentioned above put out by the American Trucker Associations entitled “When Trucks Stop, America Stops“….
*****
A Timeline Showing the Deterioration of Major Industries Following a Truck Stoppage
The first 24 hours
• Delivery of medical supplies to the affected area will cease.
• Hospitals will run out of basic supplies such as syringes and catheters within hours. Radiopharmaceuticals will deteriorate and become unusable.
• Service stations will begin to run out of fuel.
• Manufacturers using just-in-time manufacturing will develop component shortages.
• U.S. mail and other package delivery will cease.
Within one day
• Food shortages will begin to develop.
• Automobile fuel availability and delivery will dwindle, leading to skyrocketing prices and long lines at the gas pumps.
• Without manufacturing components and trucks for product delivery,
assembly lines will shut down, putting thousands out of work.
Within two to three days
• Food shortages will escalate, especially in the face of hoarding and consumer panic.
• Supplies of essentials—such as bottled water, powdered milk, and
canned meat—at major retailers will disappear.
• ATMs will run out of cash and banks will be unable to process
transactions.
• Service stations will completely run out of fuel for autos and trucks.
• Garbage will start piling up in urban and suburban areas.
• Container ships will sit idle in ports and rail transport will be disrupted, eventually coming to a standstill.
Within a week
• Automobile travel will cease due to the lack of fuel. Without autos and busses, many people will not be able to get to work, shop for groceries, or access medical care.
• Hospitals will begin to exhaust oxygen supplies.
Within two weeks
• The nation’s clean water supply will begin to run dry.
Within four weeks
• The nation will exhaust its clean water supply and water will be safe for drinking only after boiling. As a result gastrointestinal illnesses will increase, further taxing an already weakened health care system.
This timeline presents only the primary effects of a freeze on truck travel. Secondary effects must be considered as well, such as inability to maintain telecommunications service, reduced law enforcement, increased crime, increased illness and injury, higher death rates, and likely, civil unrest.
*****
Earlier in the report, the reasons why America’s water supply would be in such jeopardy are described in greater detail….
According to the American Water Works Association, Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water per day. For safety and security reasons, most water supply plants maintain a larger inventory of supplies than the typical business. However, the amount of chemical storage varies significantly and is site specific. According to the Chlorine Institute, most water treatment facilities receive chlorine in cylinders (150 pounds and one ton cylinders) that are delivered by motor carriers. On average, trucks deliver purification chemicals to water supply plants every seven to 14 days. Without these chemicals, water cannot be purified and made safe for drinking. Without truck deliveries of purification chemicals, water supply plants will run out of drinkable water in 14 to 28 days. Once the water supply is drained, water will be deemed safe for drinking only when boiled. Lack of clean drinking water will lead to increased gastrointestinal and other illnesses, further taxing an already weakened healthcare system.
Can you see why I always recommend that you make sure that you and your family have access to fresh water and a way to purify it?
This report should be very sobering for all of us.
What would you and your family do if you had no food, no clean water and the stores were shut down because their supplies were gone?
An article by Tess Pennington entitled “Emergency Items: What Will Disappear First” contains a list of 100 things that are likely to disappear from store shelves first. The following are the first 10 things on her list….
1. Generators (Good ones cost dearly. Gas storage, risky. Noisy…target of
thieves; maintenance etc.)
2. Water Filters/Purifiers
3. Portable Toilets
4. Seasoned Firewood. Wood takes about 6 – 12 months to become dried, for home
uses.
5. Lamp Oil, Wicks, Lamps (First Choice: Buy CLEAR oil. If scarce, stockpile
ANY!)
6. Coleman Fuel. Impossible to stockpile too much.
7. Guns, Ammunition, Pepper Spray, Knives, Clubs, Bats & Slingshots.
8. Hand-can openers, & hand egg beaters, whisks.
9. Honey/Syrups/white, brown sugar
10. Rice – Beans – Wheat
Most Americans just assume that they will always be able to run out to the supermarket or to Wal-Mart and buy anything that they need.
But if the trucks stop running that will change almost overnight.
After reading the information above, does anyone out there still believe that preppers are crazy?
The truth is that there are good, solid reasons why millions of Americans have been storing up food, water filters and other supplies.
Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and all of us need to get educated about how to prepare for the difficult years that are coming.
One nightmarish event can change everything that we take for granted in a single moment.
Just remember what happened after Hurricane Katrina. Even though that was only a regional disaster, millions of people had their lives completely turned upside down by that tragedy.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because the U.S. has always known tremendous peace and prosperity since World War II that things will always be that way.
Our lives will only continue to be “normal” as long as the trucks continue running.
When the trucks stop running in America, there will be mass chaos.
Most people think of a cashless society as something that is way off in the distant future. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The truth is that a cashless society is much closer than most people would ever dare to imagine. To a large degree, the transition to a cashless society is being done voluntarily. Today, only 7 percent of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money. Just think about it for a moment. Where do you still use cash these days? If you buy a burger or if you purchase something at a flea market you will still use cash, but for any mid-size or large transaction the vast majority of people out there will use another form of payment. Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We live in a digital world, and national governments and big banks are both encouraging the move away from paper currency and coins. But what would a cashless society mean for our future? Are there any dangers to such a system?
Those are very important questions, but most of the time both sides of the issue are not presented in a balanced way in the mainstream media. Instead, most mainstream news articles tend to trash cash and talk about how wonderful digital currency is.
For example, a recent CBS News article declared that soon we may not need “that raggedy dollar bill” any longer and that the “greenback may soon be a goner”….
It’s what the wallet was invented for, to carry cash. After all, there was a time when we needed cash everywhere we went, from filling stations to pay phones. Even the tooth fairy dealt only in cash.
But money isn’t just physical anymore. It’s not only the pennies in your piggy bank, or that raggedy dollar bill.
Money is also digital – it’s zeros and ones stored in a computer, prompting some economists to predict the old-fashioned greenback may soon be a goner.
“There will be a time – I don’t know when, I can’t give you a date – when physical money is just going to cease to exist,” said economist Robert Reich.
So will we see a completely cashless society in the near future?
Of course not. It would be wildly unpopular for the governments of the world to force such a system upon us all at once.
Instead, the big banks and the governments of the industrialized world are doing all they can to get us to voluntarily transition to such a system. Once 98 or 99 percent of all transactions do not involve cash, eliminating the remaining 1 or 2 percent will only seem natural.
The big banks want a cashless society because it is much more profitable for them.
The big banks earn billions of dollars in fees from debit cards and they make absolutely enormous profits from credit cards.
But when people use cash the big banks do not earn anything.
So obviously the big banks and the big credit card companies are big cheerleaders for a cashless society.
Most governments around the world are eager to transition to a cashless society as well for the following reasons….
-Cash is expensive to print, inspect, move, store and guard.
-Counterfeiting is always going to be a problem as long as paper currency exists.
-Cash if favored by criminals because it does not leave a paper trail. Eliminating cash would make it much more difficult for drug dealers, prostitutes and other criminals to do business.
-Most of all, a cashless society would give governments more control. Governments would be able to track virtually all transactions and would also be able to monitor tax compliance much more closely.
When you understand the factors listed above, it becomes easier to understand why the use of cash is increasingly becoming demonized. Governments around the world are increasingly viewing the use of cash in a negative light. In fact, according to the U.S. government paying with cash in some circumstances is now considered to be “suspicious activity” that needs to be reported to the authorities.
This disdain of cash has also grown very strong in the financial community. The following is from a recent Slate article….
David Birch, a director at Consult Hyperion, a firm specializing in electronic payments, says a shift to digital currency would cut out these hidden costs. In Birch’s ideal world, paying with cash would be viewed like drunk driving—something we do with decreasing frequency as more and more people understand the negative social consequences. “We’re trying to use industrial age money to support commerce in a post-industrial age. It just doesn’t work,” he says. “Sooner or later, the tectonic plates shift and then, very quickly, you’ll find yourself in this new environment where if you ask somebody to pay you in cash, you’ll just assume that they’re a prostitute or a Somali pirate.”
Do you see what is happening?
Simply using cash is enough to get you branded as a potential criminal these days.
Many people are going to be scared away from using cash simply because of the stigma that is becoming attached to it.
This is a trend that is not just happening in the United States. In fact, many other countries are further down the road toward a cashless society than we are.
Up in Canada, they are looking for ways to even eliminate coins so that people can use alternate forms of payment for all of their transactions….
The Royal Canadian Mint is also looking to the future with the MintChip, a new product that could become a digital replacement for coins.
In Sweden, only about 3 percent of all transactions still involve cash. The following comes from a recent Washington Post article….
In most Swedish cities, public buses don’t accept cash; tickets are prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but growing number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices — which make money on electronic transactions — have stopped handling cash altogether.
“There are towns where it isn’t at all possible anymore to enter a bank and use cash,” complains Curt Persson, chairman of Sweden’s National Pensioners’ Organization.
In Italy, all very large cash transactions have been banned. Previously, the limit for using cash in a transaction had been reduced to the equivalent of just a few thousand dollars. But back in December, Prime Minister Mario Monti proposed a new limit of approximately $1,300 for cash transactions.
And that is how many governments will transition to a cashless society. They will set a ceiling and then they will keep lowering it and lowering it.
But is a cashless society really secure?
Of course not.
Bank accounts can be hacked into. Credit cards and debit cards can be stolen. Identity theft all over the world is absolutely soaring.
So companies all over the planet are working feverishly to make all of these cashless systems much more secure.
In the future, it is inevitable that national governments and big financial institutions will want to have all of us transition over to using biometric identity systems in order to combat crime in the financial system.
Many of these biometric identity systems are becoming quite advanced.
For example, just check out what IBM has been developing. The following is from a recent IBM press release….
You will no longer need to create, track or remember multiple passwords for various log-ins. Imagine you will be able to walk up to an ATM machine to securely withdraw money by simply speaking your name or looking into a tiny sensor that can recognize the unique patterns in the retina of your eye. Or by doing the same, you can check your account balance on your mobile phone or tablet.
Each person has a unique biological identity and behind all that is data. Biometric data – facial definitions, retinal scans and voice files – will be composited through software to build your DNA unique online password.
Referred to as multi-factor biometrics, smarter systems will be able to use this information in real-time to make sure whenever someone is attempting to access your information, it matches your unique biometric profile and the attempt is authorized.
Are you ready for that?
It is coming.
In the future, if you do not surrender your biometric identity information, you may be locked out of the entire financial system.
Another method that can be used to make financial identification more secure is to use implantable RFID microchips.
Yes, there is a lot of resistance to this idea, but the fact is that the use of RFID chips in animals and in humans is rapidly spreading.
Some U.S. cities have already made it mandatory to implant microchips into all cats and all dogs so that they can be tracked.
All over the United States, employees are being required to carry badges that contain RFID chips, and in some instances employers are actually requiring employees to have RFID chips injected into their bodies.
Increasingly, RFID chips are being implanted in the upper arm of patients that have Alzheimer’s disease. The idea is that this helps health care providers track Alzheimer’s patients that get lost.
In some countries, microchips are now actually being embedded into school uniforms to make sure that students don’t skip school.
Can you see where all of this is headed?
Some companies are even developing RFID technologies that do not require an injection.
One company called Somark has developed chipless RFID ink that is applied directly to the skin of an animal or a human. These “RFID tattoos” are applied in about 10 seconds using micro-needles and a reusable applicator, and they can be read by an RFID reader from up to four feet away.
Would you get an “RFID tattoo” if the government or your bank asked you to?
Some people out there are actually quite excited about these new technologies.
For example, a columnist named Don Tennant wrote an article entitled “Chip Me – Please!” in which he expressed his unbridled enthusiasm for an implantable microchip which would contain all of his medical information….
“All I can say is I’d be the first person in line for an implant.”
But are there real dangers to going to a system that is entirely digital?
For example, what if a devastating EMP attack wiped out our electrical grid and most of our computers from coast to coast?
How would we continue to function?
Sadly, most people don’t think about things like that.
Our world is changing more rapidly than ever before, and we should be mindful of where these changes are taking us.
Just because our technology is advancing does not mean that our world is becoming a better place.
There are millions of Americans that want absolutely nothing to do with biometric identity systems or RFID implants.
But the mainstream media continues to declare that nothing can stop the changes that are coming. A recent CBS News article made the following statement….
“Most agree a cashless society is not only inevitable, for most of us, it’s already here.”
What do you do when an entire nation begins to lose the capacity to think rationally? Many Americans spend a great deal of time criticizing the government, and there is certainly a lot to complain about, but it is not just the government that is the problem. All over America, people appear to be going insane. It is almost as if we have been cursed with stupidity. Sadly, this applies from the very top of our society all the way down to the very bottom. A lot of us find ourselves asking the following question much more frequently these days: “How could they be so stupid?” Unfortunately, we are witnessing a complete collapse of common sense all over America. Many people seem to believe that if we could just get Obama out of office or if we could just reform our economic system that our problems as a nation would be solved, but that is simply not true. Our problems run much deeper than that. The societal decay that is plaguing our country is very deep and it is everywhere. We are a nation that is full of people that do not care about others and that just want to do what is right in their own eyes. We hold ourselves out to the rest of the world as “the greatest nation on earth” and an example that everyone else should follow, and yet our own house is rotting all around us. The words “crazy”, “insane” and “deluded” are not nearly strong enough to describe our frame of mind as a country. America has become a sad, delusional old man that can’t even think straight anymore. The evidence of our mental illness is everywhere.
The following are 20 signs that we are witnessing the complete collapse of common sense in America….
#1 According to Wired Magazine, FBI agents have been taught that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they pursue criminals and terrorists. But when they break the law they become criminals themselves.
#2 A TSA manager (not just an agent) at Dulles International Airport was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of a local hotel room. TSA agents have been charged with crime after crime after crime and yet we continue to allow them to be in charge of airport security.
#3 CBS News is reporting that approximately 200 pieces of luggage a day are being stolen by employees at John F. Kennedy International Airport and authorities still have not been able to stop it.
#4 Visitors to the United States must now pay $14 to complete an online form that asks them a series of really bizarre questions. For example, one of the questions asks visitors to the U.S. if they ever “collaborated with the Nazis”.
#5 The U.S. military is buying huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number one) and a government investigation has uncovered the fact that a large percentage of these parts are counterfeit. Yet the U.S.military continues to buy huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number two).
#6 A high school senior in Indiana was recently expelled from school for cussing on Twitter.
#8 Americans are becoming very cruel to one another. This is especially true when it comes to the weak and the elderly. For example, two “caregivers” down in Georgia were recently charged with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman that had been entrusted to their care….
Police charge two caregivers at a Jonesboro facility with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman.
Clayton County police said Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed held down Anna Foley after an argument that started over ice cream.
#9 An increasing number of American families are taking out student loans in order to pay for their children’s kindergarten tuition.
#11 Children in America are exposed to enormous amounts of sexual material on television these days, but we are always so shocked when they try to act out on it. The following is one very disturbing example that happened recently in Ohio….
Authorities in southwest Ohio have charged a 13-year-old boy with raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald’s play area.
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the alleged assault occurred Oct. 29 at a McDonald’s in the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson Township. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett says the girl’s grandmother was nearby in the restaurant at the time.
#12 The following is another example from Indiana of how our sexualized society is affecting our young children….
Fishers police said an 8-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy were caught in a sexual act on a school bus.
The girl’s parents are now trying to determine if the February incident was a rape or molestation.
In a statement, police said a bus aid caught the girl and the boy “trying to have intercourse,” and that the “bus aid immediately separated the juveniles and informed the bus driver.”
#13 According to Natural News, the Michigan state government intends to raid private farms and kill pigs that have “the wrong hair color” even though some of these farmers have been raising these pigs for decades.
#14 An executive order recently updated by the Obama administration would give the federal government complete control over all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and “all other materials, services, and facilities” at the discretion of Barack Obama. The wording of the executive order has been changed so that this can now be done even in “non-emergency” situations. Very few Americans seem concerned by this.
#15 These days many Americans are very hesitant to get involved with helping out anyone else. For example, an 86-year-old World War II veteran living near Detroit was recently brutally carjacked in broad daylight at a gas station. He could not walk after the attack because his leg was shattered so he began to crawl across the concrete pavement to get help. Sadly, many people walked past and drove past as if he was not even there.
#16 At one airport in Hawaii, TSA agents recently required one new mother to go to a public restroom and fill up the empty baby bottles she was carrying with her own breast milk before they would allow her to get on to her flight. The following is how one local news station described the incident….
She claims agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.
“I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women’s bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.
When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.
#17 Massive brawls have been erupting at Chuck E. Cheese restaurants all over the nation. Police responded to violence at one particular Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Pennsylvania 17 times in just one recent 18 month time period.
#18 Thieves in New Jersey have become so desperate for scrap metal that they have started breaking into churches and ripping the copper piping right out of the walls.
#19 Tide detergent has become an alternative form of currency on the streets of America and there has been an epidemic of Tide thefts all over the nation. The following is from a recent article in The Daily….
Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid.
One Tide taker in West St. Paul, Minn., made off with $25,000 in the product over 15 months before he was busted last year.
“That was unique that he stole so much soap,” said West St. Paul Police Chief Bud Shaver. “The name brand is [all] Tide. Amazing, huh?”
Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes.
#20 New federal rules will severely restrict the kind of work that children can do on farms in America. Kids will be banned from doing many of the most basic kinds of farm chores under the new regulations. Perhaps the children can just sit inside and watch television while the adults do all the work.
As mentioned earlier, what America is experiencing is not just an economic collapse. The truth is that our entire society is collapsing.
For many years our great prosperity masked much of our decline, but now our great economic strength is rapidly fading and it is becoming very difficult to deny how far we have fallen as a nation.
You can find more examples of how American society is decaying right here and right here. Anyone with half a brain can see what is happening to the United States. It really is sad, because America was once a truly great nation.
The largest oil exporter in the Middle East has teamed up with the second largest consumer of oil in the world (China) to build a gigantic new oil refinery and the mainstream media in the United States has barely even noticed it. This mammoth new refinery is scheduled to be fully operational in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu by 2014. Over the past several years, China has sought to aggressively expand trade with Saudi Arabia, and China now actually imports more oil from Saudi Arabia than the United States does. In February, China imported 1.39 million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia. That was 39 percent higher than last February. So why is this important? Well, back in 1973 the United States and Saudi Arabia agreed that all oil sold by Saudi Arabia would be denominated in U.S. dollars. This petrodollar system was adopted by almost the entire world and it has had great benefits for the U.S. economy. But if China becomes Saudi Arabia’s most important trading partner, then why should Saudi Arabia continue to only sell oil in U.S. dollars? And if the petrodollar system collapses, what is that going to mean for the U.S. economy?
Those are very important questions, and they will be addressed later on in this article. First of all, let’s take a closer look at the agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and China recently.
In what Riyadh calls “the largest expansion by any oil company in the world”, Sinopec’s deal on Saturday with Saudi oil giant Aramco will allow a major oil refinery to become operational in the Red Sea port of Yanbu by 2014.
The $8.5 billion joint venture, which covers an area of about 5.2 million square meters, is already under construction. It will process 400,000 barrels of heavy crude oil per day. Aramco will hold a 62.5 percent stake in the plant while Sinopec will own the remaining 37.5 percent.
At a time when the U.S. is actually losing refining capacity, this is a stunning development.
Yet the U.S. press has been largely silent about this.
Very curious.
But China is not just doing deals with Saudi Arabia. China has also been striking deals with several other important oil producing nations. The following comes from a recent article by Gregg Laskoski….
China’s investment in oil infrastructure and refining capacity is unparalleled. And more importantly, it executes a consistent strategy of developing world-class refining facilities in partnership with OPEC suppliers. Such relationships mean economic leverage that could soon subordinate U.S. relations with the same countries.
Egypt is building its largest refinery ever with investment from China.
Shortly after the partnership with Egypt was announced, China signed a $23 billion agreement with Nigeria to construct three gasoline refineries and a fuel complex in Nigeria.
Essentially, China is running circles around the United States when it comes to locking up strategic oil supplies worldwide.
And all of these developments could have tremendous implications for the future of the petrodollar system.
If you are not familiar with the petrodollar system, it really is not that complicated. Basically, almost all of the oil in the world is traded in U.S. dollars. The origin of the petrodollar system was detailed in a recent article by Jerry Robinson….
In 1973, a deal was struck between Saudi Arabia and the United States in which every barrel of oil purchased from the Saudis would be denominated in U.S. dollars. Under this new arrangement, any country that sought to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia would be required to first exchange their own national currency for U.S. dollars. In exchange for Saudi Arabia’s willingness to denominate their oil sales exclusively in U.S. dollars, the United States offered weapons and protection of their oil fields from neighboring nations, including Israel.
By 1975, all of the OPEC nations had agreed to price their own oil supplies exclusively in U.S. dollars in exchange for weapons and military protection.
This petrodollar system, or more simply known as an “oil for dollars” system, created an immediate artificial demand for U.S. dollars around the globe. And of course, as global oil demand increased, so did the demand for U.S. dollars.
Once you understand the petrodollar system, it becomes much easier to understand why our politicians treat Saudi leaders with kid gloves. The U.S. government does not want to see anything happen that would jeopardize the status quo.
A recent article by Marin Katusa described some more of the benefits that the petrodollar system has had for the U.S. economy….
The “petrodollar” system was a brilliant political and economic move. It forced the world’s oil money to flow through the US Federal Reserve, creating ever-growing international demand for both US dollars and US debt, while essentially letting the US pretty much own the world’s oil for free, since oil’s value is denominated in a currency that America controls and prints. The petrodollar system spread beyond oil: the majority of international trade is done in US dollars. That means that from Russia to China, Brazil to South Korea, every country aims to maximize the US-dollar surplus garnered from its export trade to buy oil.
The US has reaped many rewards. As oil usage increased in the 1980s, demand for the US dollar rose with it, lifting the US economy to new heights. But even without economic success at home the US dollar would have soared, because the petrodollar system created consistent international demand for US dollars, which in turn gained in value. A strong US dollar allowed Americans to buy imported goods at a massive discount – the petrodollar system essentially creating a subsidy for US consumers at the expense of the rest of the world. Here, finally, the US hit on a downside: The availability of cheap imports hit the US manufacturing industry hard, and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs remains one of the biggest challenges in resurrecting the US economy today.
So what happens if the petrodollar system collapses?
Well, for one thing the value of the U.S. dollar would plummet big time.
U.S. consumers would suddenly find that all of those “cheap imported goods” would rise in price dramatically as would the price of gasoline.
If you think the price of gas is high now, you just wait until the petrodollar system collapses.
In addition, there would be much less of a demand for U.S. government debt since countries would not have so many excess U.S. dollars lying around.
So needless to say, the U.S. government really needs the petrodollar system to continue.
But in the end, it is Saudi Arabia that is holding the cards.
If Saudi Arabia chooses to sell oil in a currency other than the U.S. dollar, most of the rest of the oil producing countries in the Middle East would surely do the same rather quickly.
And we have already seen countries in other parts of the world start to move away from using the U.S. dollar in global trade.
For example, Russia and China have agreed to now use their own national currencies when trading with each other rather than the U.S. dollar.
That got virtually no attention in the U.S. media, but it really was a big deal when it was announced.
A recent article by Graham Summers summarized some of the other moves away from the U.S. dollar in international trade that we have seen recently….
Indeed, officials from China, India, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa (the latest addition to the BRIC acronym, now to be called BRICS) recently met in southern China to discuss expanding the use of their own currencies in foreign trade (yet another move away from the US Dollar).
To recap:
China and Russia have removed the US Dollar from their trade
China is rushing its trade agreement with Brazil
China, Russia, Brazil, India, and now South Africa are moving to trade more in their own currencies (not the US Dollar)
Saudi Arabia is moving to formalize trade with China and Russia
Singapore is moving to trade yuan
The trend here is obvious. The US Dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency is ending. The process will take time to unfold. But the Dollar will be finished as reserve currency within the next five years.
Yes, the days of the U.S. dollar being the primary reserve currency of the world are definitely numbered.
It will not happen overnight, but as the U.S. economy continues to get weaker it is inevitable that the rest of the world will continue to question why the U.S. dollar should automatically have such a dominant position in international trade.
Over the next few years, keep a close eye on Saudi Arabia.
When Saudi Arabia announces a move away from the petrodollar system, that will be a major trigger event for the global financial system and it will be a really, really bad sign for the U.S. economy.
The level of prosperity that we are enjoying today would not be possible without the petrodollar system. Once the petrodollar system collapses, a lot of our underlying economic vulnerabilities will be exposed and it will not be pretty.
Tough times are on the horizon. It is imperative that we all get informed and that we all get prepared.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the United States is a really weird place. Not that “weird” is always bad. Sometimes “weird” can keep life interesting. But without a doubt, the United States is one of the most unique nations in the history of the world. Some of the weird facts about the United States listed below may be difficult for you to believe. Others are likely to completely shock you. Hopefully there is a little something for everyone in this article, and hopefully you will learn some new things from reading it. I know that I certainly learned some new things as I wrote it. In general, everything tends to be larger in America. The people are larger, the cars are larger, the divorce rate is the highest on the planet and the U.S. government has piled up the largest debt in the history of the world. Whether America does something good or bad, it usually does it in a very “big” way. It is easy to love the United States and all the good that it has done, but it is also easy to be horrified by how far this nation has fallen and by the direction that this country is currently headed. So where does America go from here? That is a very good question.
The following are 40 weird facts about the United States that are almost too crazy to believe….
#1 The highest point in the state of Florida is only 345 feet (115 yards) above sea level.
#2 Today, 66 percent of all Americans are considered to be overweight.
#5 Approximately 48 percent of all Americans are currently either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
#6 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.
#7 In the UK, an average of about $3,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year. In the United States, an average of about $8,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year.
#8 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.
#9 The average U.S. citizen drinks the equivalent of more than 600 sodas each year.
#10 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.
#11 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people. Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people.
#12 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California. But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.
#13 For many years it was the other way around, but today a majority of all Americans (including Pat Robertson) actually support the legalization of marijuana.
#14 Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.
#15 In the middle of the last century, the United States was #1 in the world in GDP per capita. Today, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.
#16 Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
#17 One survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit pornography websites while they are at work.
#18 In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
#32 In 1940, 68.0% of all women in the 20 to 34 year old age group in the United States were married. In 2010, only 39.2% of women in that age group were married.
#33 The United States has a teen pregnancy rate of 22 percent – the highest in the world. New Zealand is number two at 14 percent.
#34 According to the CDC, there are 19 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in the United States every single year.
#35 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin. Puerto Rico is number two. Perhaps Puerto Rico really would fit in as the 51st state.
#36 More people have been diagnosed with mental disorders in the United States than in any other nation on earth.
#37 The United States has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
#38 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
#39 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
#40 It took from the founding of the nation until 1981 for the U.S. national debt to cross the one trillion dollar mark. Today, our national debt is well over 15 trillion dollars and we add more than a trillion dollars to our debt every single year.
Do you have any other weird facts that you think should be added to this list? Please feel free to leave a comment with your feedback below….
All over America, there are millions of Americans that are quietly preparing for doomsday. They are turning spare rooms into long-term food storage pantries, they are planting survival gardens, they are converting their homes over to alternative sources of energy, they are taking self-defense courses and they are stocking up on just about anything you can imagine. They are called “preppers”, and their numbers have absolutely exploded in recent years. In fact, you might be living next door to one and never even realize it. According to a recent Daily Mail article, there are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today. Others believe that the true number is significantly higher than that. This movement has become so popular that there are now even television shows being done about preppers. The most popular is probably “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. This movement is still growing and is not going to go away any time soon. In fact, as the world continues to become even more unstable it is likely that a lot more Americans will find themselves becoming preppers in the years ahead.
So what exactly are all these people so concerned about? Exactly why are there millions of Americans that are feverishly preparing for doomsday?
Well, the truth is that you will never find two preppers that are exactly alike. Some are deeply concerned about the potential for natural disasters and believe that we are now entering into a time when there will be catastrophic earth changes. Other preppers believe that terrorism is the most significant threat to our way of life. Killer pandemics, an EMP attack, World War III, martial law, solar megastorms, asteroid strikes and societal chaos are some of the other things that some preppers are worried about.
Of course an economic collapse is one of the biggest concerns for preppers, and without a doubt the U.S. economy is deeply troubled. A collapse of the financial system would change all of our lives permanently.
But it isn’t just preppers that are concerned about these things.
A recent survey conducted by National Geographic asked Americans the following question….
“Which of the following, if any, do you think might happen in the United States in the next 25 years? Please choose all that apply.”
These were the results….
Significant Earthquake 64%
Significant Hurricane 63%
Terrorist Attack 55%
Financial Collapse 51%
Significant Blackout 37%
Pandemic, Such as From a Super-Virus 29%
Nuclear Fallout 14%
None of These 13%
Obviously there are a whole lot of people out there that feel as though we are heading for some really bad stuff.
So if hard times are coming, why not prepare for them?
After all, none of us want to end up like the poor people of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Large numbers of people were herded into the Superdome and food and water ran out really fast. There was rampant looting of stores and people were shooting each other in the streets. It was mass chaos.
Last night was horrendous. I heard shouting, and drinks machines being smashed. There’s no sanitation and it’s so smelly. My hair is greasy and I feel a wreck. There are crack alleys among the maze of corridors. The lights are broken in the loos which, as well as being disgusting, have become dangerous, so we now only go as a big group.
More people are arriving, and the dome is like a refugee camp. I see two soldiers carrying a corpse and we hear there are more dead in the basement.
As an article in the New York Times from that time period detailed, food and water were in very short supply and those cramped into the Superdome were rapidly becoming impatient….
Desperation was in the air. Danielle Shelby tugged at a reporter’s arm. “I have a handicapped daughter,” she said. “She’s over there with her wheelchair. She’s hot. We don’t have any water. I’m afraid she’s going to have a seizure.”
Others crowded around. “I’ve been in the food line twice, and every time I get to the front they tell me they don’t have any left,” said Juanita McFerrin, 80.
Later on in that same article, we are told that there were fights, rapes and at least one suicide in the Superdome during that time….
It got worse. Ms. Rousell recalled hearing a loud bang Tuesday afternoon as the body of a man slapped the concrete at the edge of the football field in a fatal suicidal plunge, after he apparently learned that his home had been destroyed. Others told of fights that broke out in food lines, and of a husband and wife who slugged each other in a wild argument.
Several residents said they had heard of children being raped, though it was not clear whether anyone reported such incidents to the authorities, and no officials could be found who could confirm the accounts.
To get an even better idea of what life in New Orleans was like in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, just check out this video.
Within just a few days food, water and supplies started pouring into New Orleans and things started slowly getting back to normal, but imagine what things would look like in this country if we had to deal with a national disaster that stretched on for months or even years?
Many preppers are not taking any chances. Many are absolutely determined to be able to take care of their families and friends no matter what the years ahead may bring.
Tim Ralston, a married father of two from Arizona, is one such “prepper.”
“There’s a lot of different things that could happen,” Ralston said. “For me, I look at prepping as kind of like insurance. You have car insurance, health insurance, life insurance.”
Call it Apocalypse insurance. Ralston turned his family’s two-car garage into a staging area. Inside is a trailer, which he keeps packed and ready to go at all times, stockpiles of freeze-dried food, including cartons of canned chicken with a shelf life of 15 years, survival gear, such as a system for purifying polluted water, first aid kits and lots of weapons and ammunition. His son has his own AK-47.
Some preppers are going to the extreme and are spending huge amounts of money on their prepping.
CNN recently profiled one Australian prepper that has spent about $350,000 preparing for doomsday….
Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that’s a 75-minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his “safe spot” in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000.
He’s also spent $10,000 on an 8-year old Toyota HiLux pickup truck to drive to his safe spot.
But the truth is that prepping does not have to be expensive.
The key is to start by focusing on the five basics….
1) Food
2) Water
3) Shelter
4) Energy
5) Self-Defense
There are some practical things that just about anyone can do even if you don’t have a lot of money.
For example, when you go to the store try to pick up a few extra items that are on sale and add them to your supplies. If you rotate your food supplies, they won’t go bad.
In addition, just about anyone can plant a garden. Often fruits and vegetables are some of the most expensive items at the grocery store, and so growing a garden can end up saving you a lot of money.
Get educated. There are dozens of prepper websites out there where you can get an education in prepping for free. The following are a few examples of some of the excellent prepper websites that are out there today….
The truth is that our world is becoming increasingly unstable in a whole bunch of different ways and we all need to learn how to prepare for the difficult years ahead.
As the economy continues to fall apart, America is going to become a very heartless place. You don’t want to be caught in the middle of societal chaos without a plan.
None of us should be relying on the government to save us when things hit the fan. We all saw what happened after Hurricane Katrina. Those that were depending on the government were deeply disappointed.
We should all try to become as independent of the system as we can, because the system is failing. In the years ahead there might not be anybody to help you and your family, so you need to be working hard right now to ensure that you and your family will be taken care of.
Yes, as you may have guessed by now, I am a prepper too. My wife and I moved to an entirely different state and totally changed our lifestyle to prepare for what is coming.
Hopefully this article will inspire many more Americans to prepare for what is coming. A great economic collapse is on the horizon and time is rapidly running out.
Most Americans have no idea how much economic trouble is heading our way. Most of them just assume that everything will eventually “return to normal” just like it always has before and that those running our economy “know what they are doing” and that we should trust them to do their jobs. Unfortunately, these beliefs are being reinforced by the bubble of false hope that we are experiencing right now. For example, it is being reported that weekly unemployment claims in the United States have fallen to a four-year low. That is a very good thing. Let us hope that unemployment claims go even lower and that the current period of stability lasts for as long as possible. We should enjoy these last fleeing moments of tremendous prosperity for as long as we can, because when they are gone they won’t be coming back. As I noted the other day, all of this false prosperity in the United States has been financed by the 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying. We are adding about 150 million dollars to our debt every single hour so that we can continue to enjoy an inflated standard of living. Unfortunately, nobody in the history of the world has ever been able to keep a debt spiral going indefinitely, and our debt bubble will burst eventually as well.
24 Outrageous Facts About Taxes In The United States That Will Blow Your Mind
The following are 24 outrageous facts about taxes in the United States that will blow your mind….
1 – The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.
2 – According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.
3 – 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.
4 – There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.
5 – According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.
6 – Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.
7 – In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.
8 – The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes.
9 – According to The Tax Foundation, the average American has to work until April 17th just to pay federal, state, and local taxes. Back in 1900, “Tax Freedom Day” came on January 22nd.
10 – When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent, and the highest marginal tax rate was just 7 percent.
11 – Residents of New Jersey pay $1.64 in taxes for every $1.00 of federal spending that they get back.
12 – The United States is the only nation on the planet that tries to tax citizens on what they earn in foreign countries.
13 – According to Forbes, the 400 highest earning Americans pay an average federal income tax rate of just 18 percent.
14 – Warren Buffett had an effective tax rate of just 17.4 percent for 2010.
15 – The top 20 percent of all income earners in the United States pay approximately 86 percent of all federal income taxes.
16 – Sadly, as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
17 – The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world (35 percent). In Ireland, the corporate tax rate is only 12.5 percent. This is causing thousands of corporations to move operations out of the United States and into other countries.
18 – Some tax havens are doing a booming business in setting up sham headquarters for U.S. corporations. For example, the city of Zug, Switzerland only has a population of 26,000 people but it is the headquarters for 30,000 companies.
19 – In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
20 – In a previous article, I discussed how many of our largest corporations make huge profits and yet pay less than nothing in taxes….
21 – Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, but not a single penny went to the U.S. government.
22 – Many wealthy Americans hide enormous amounts of money outside the country in order to avoid paying taxes. According to the IMF, a total of 18 trillion dollars is currently being hidden in offshore banks.
23 – The number of traffic accidents spikes each year right around April 15th. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….
24 – Most of the tax debate is focused on income taxes, but the truth is that Americans pay dozens of other taxes every single year. The following are just a few of the taxes that many Americans pay….
#1 Building Permit Taxes
#2 Capital Gains Taxes
#3 Cigarette Taxes
#4 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#5 Dog License Taxes
#6 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#7 Fishing License Taxes
#8 Food License Taxes
#9 Gasoline Taxes
#10 Gift Taxes
#11 Hunting License Taxes
#12 Inheritance Taxes
#13 Inventory Taxes
#14 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#15 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#16 Liquor Taxes
#17 Luxury Taxes
#18 Marriage License Taxes
#19 Medicare Taxes
#20 Property Taxes
#21 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#22 Toll Booth Taxes
#23 Sales Taxes
#24 Self-Employment Taxes
#25 School Taxes
#26 Septic Permit Taxes
#27 Service Charge Taxes
#28 Social Security Taxes
#29 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#30 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#31 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#32 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#33 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#34 Tire Taxes
#35 Toll Bridge Taxes
#36 Toll Tunnel Taxes
#37 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#38 Utility Taxes
#39 Vehicle License Registration Taxes
#40 Vehicle Sales Taxes
#41 Workers Compensation Taxes
When you account for all forms of taxation on the federal, state and local levels there are many Americans that pay out more than half of their incomes in taxes.
We are being taxed into oblivion, and yet most Americans do not even realize that it is happening.
It is kind of like being killed by thousands of tiny cuts.
So what do all of these taxes buy us?
They buy us a massively bloated government that wastes money on some of the craziest things imaginable.
Millions of Americans work for the federal government, and yet most of them produce very little of real economic value. The following comes from a recent National Review article….
According to that same article, when you add in state and local government workers the numbers are even more dramatic….
Yes, we do need some government. For example, without any law enforcement at all our society would descend into complete chaos, and without any military at all we would be completely open to foreign conquest.
In order to have a stable, secure society we do need some government.
However, we definitely do not need the massively bloated government that we have today.
The truth is that most government employees are a drain on the system. Most of them just push paper around. I used to work in Washington D.C. so I know what pushing paper around is all about.
And as I wrote about yesterday, there are millions of other Americans that enjoy a comfortable existence at the expense of the federal government without doing any work whatsoever.
Of course the biggest welfare recipients of all are the big corporations. All forms of corporate welfare should be eliminated immediately.
When are U.S. taxpayers going to get sick and tired of paying for all of this?
Every single year, the federal government, state governments and local governments drain massive amounts of desperately needed money from hard working middle class families.
Then they take that money and spend it on incredibly foolish things.
When are American voters going to stand up and boldly declare that they have been taxed enough already and they aren’t going to take it anymore?
The current tax code is completely and utterly broken and it is beyond repair.
Unfortunately, neither the Republicans or the Democrats are proposing that we should get rid of it.
So we are just going to continue to get more of the same year after year, and it is the middle class that will feel the pain.