A higher percentage of the American population is receiving government benefits than ever before. Yes, there have always been poor people that have needed our assistance, but what does it say about our economy that the number of Americans dependent on the government is at an all-time high? Every night on the evening news we are told that the economy is improving, and Barack Obama is endlessly giving speeches about the “economic recovery” that is supposedly underway. But that is not the reality on the ground for those on the bottom rungs of the income ladder in America. People are really hurting out there, and the number of Americans that are turning to the government for financial assistance just continues to increase. Yes, we should always have a “safety net”, but right now our “safety net” is becoming massively overloaded as millions more Americans jump on to it every single year. What all of these impoverished Americans really need are jobs, but the U.S. Congress and the past several administrations have been systematically killing job growth in America. So unfortunately the number of poor Americans is going to continue to rise, and that is really bad news for a nation that is already drowning in debt.
Some people out there want to blame the poor for the statistics that you are about to read, but that is a mistake. Yes, there are a lot of people out there that are abusing the system, and that needs to be stopped.
But many Americans that are dependent on the government are in that situation because there simply are not enough jobs in this country.
And unfortunately, the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress continue to pursue the same job-killing policies that have gotten us into this mess in the first place. So millions of Americans that have learned to survive as government dependents are not being given the opportunity to break out of that cycle. When there is a shortage of decent jobs, it is easy to give up. Many tend to become more and more comfortable being dependent on the government as time goes by.
Once you become addicted to getting a government check in the mail, it can be very difficult to give that up. There are some that get trapped in a life of government dependence for years or even decades.
The following are 16 statistics which show that the number of Americans dependent on the government is at an all-time high….
#1 According to the Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that gets direct monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.
#2 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
#3 The number of Americans receiving Social Security disability benefits has increased by 10 percent since Barack Obama first took office.
#4 Back in 1990, the federal government accounted for 32 percent of all health care spending in America. Today, that figure is up to 45 percent and it is projected to surpass 50 percent very shortly.
#5 The number of Americans on food stamps recently hit a new all-time high. It has increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama first entered the White House.
#6 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps. This is unprecedented in American history.
#7 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#8 Back in 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. In 2010, government transfer payments accounted for 18.4% of all income, which was a new all-time high.
#9 By the end of 2011, approximately 55 million Americans received a total of approximately 727 billion dollars in Social Security benefits. As the retirement crisis becomes much worse, that dollar figure is projected to absolutely skyrocket.
#11 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#12 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than previously anticipated.
#13 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars.
#14 It is being projected that entitlement spending by the federal government will nearly double by the year 2050.
#15 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
Once again, I am not blaming the poor. Almost all of us know of someone that is on government assistance. Most of them are not dependent on the government because they are lazy or because they want to cheat the system. Most of them have just had their dreams crushed by this horrible economy and need a helping hand.
It is incredible how anyone can run around claiming that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction with all of this going on.
Yes, things are going fairly well for the boys and girls down on Wall Street, but for the vast majority of Americans things are looking quite bleak.
For example, things have gotten so bad that the state of Florida is actually considering using ballparks and sports stadiums as shelters for the homeless.
But when it comes to so many people being financially dependent on the federal government, there is a major problem.
The problem is that the federal government is absolutely drowning in debt.
So why don’t our politicians just explain to the American people that we need to start cutting back and reducing the size of some of these programs?
Well, if any of our politicians try to do that they won’t get elected next time around.
The truth is that the American people are deeply addicted to government money.
Any politician that proposes significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare is a goner.
Every poll or survey that is done on this subject shows that the American people are overwhelmingly against cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare.
So politicians will just keep spending money like there is no tomorrow, and the American people will just keep sending them back to Washington.
But just like we saw in Greece, a day of reckoning comes eventually.
There will come a time when the federal government will not be able to steal 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren.
There will come a time when there will not be enough money for all of these growing social programs.
So once the government checks stop rolling in, what is going to happen then?
Everywhere you turn these days, someone is proclaiming that the economy is improving. Barack Obama is endlessly touting the “improvement” in the economy, the mainstream media is constantly talking about “the economic recovery” and an increasing number of Americans seem to be buying into this line of thinking. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe that the economy will improve over the next year, while only 17 percent of Americans believe that it will get worse. But is the economy actually improving? Not really. At the moment things are relatively stable. Some economic statistics are improving slightly and some continue to get even worse. However, it is very important to keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons why things have stabilized is because the federal government is pumping more than a trillion dollars a year into the economy that it does not have. The Obama administration is engaging in a debt binge unlike anything America has ever seen before, and yet many economic indicators are still in decline. So what is going to happen when the federal government stops injecting gigantic waves of borrowed money into the economy? That is a frightening thing to think about. The best efforts of our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are not accomplishing a whole lot. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as low as they can go and the federal government is spending unprecedented amounts of money. But even with the federal government and the Federal Reserve pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, the economy is still not improving much at all. Millions upon millions of Americans out there are anticipating some sort of a “great economic recovery”, and they are going to be bitterly disappointed.
But right now there are some “bright spots” in the economy, and you are bound to run into family and friends that will repeat to you the nonsense that they are hearing on the television about how the economy is recovering.
When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions….
If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?
If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?
If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?
If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?
If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of “long-term unemployed workers” stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.
But there is some good news.
When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today, the price of an ounce of gold is over $1700.
The era of great prosperity that America has enjoyed for so long is coming to an end.
In fact, our long-term economic decline is about to accelerate.
So enjoy this “bubble of hope” while you can, because it won’t last long.
As I have written about previously, many are warning that Europe is on the verge of a nightmarish financial crisis that could potentially plunge us into a global recession even worse than 2008.
Just because the economy is about to go through hard times does not mean that you have to go through hard times personally.
Right now, you can decide to make an investment or start a business that will thrive in a tough economic environment.
Victory often goes to the most prepared. So don’t just sit there while the storm clouds gather. Instead, this should be a time when you are gathering resources and developing a gameplan for the coming economic chaos.
Those that choose to have blind faith in “the system” are going to be tremendously disappointed in the years ahead. Just because you have a job right now does not mean that it is always going to be there. Just because your stock portfolio is doing well right now does not mean that will always be the case.
Hopefully we all learned some important lessons from 2008. The global financial situation can turn on a dime. When markets fall apart, they tend to do so very rapidly.
Ultimately, the debate about whether the economy is improving or not is going to be ended very emphatically. When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, there will be no doubt about what direction things are going.
Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing. The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012. The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades. Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace. As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.
Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices. I honestly don’t know how most families make it these days. I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food. That was after I “saved” 67 dollars on sale items.
When the cost of the basic things that we need – housing, food, gas, electricity – go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.
Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge….
-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.
-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.
-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.
-The number of Americans that are considered to be “poor” continues to grow.
-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.
After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.
The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012….
#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.
#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are working.
#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.
#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.
#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or “near poverty”, and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or “near poverty”.
#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger. Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.
#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today. Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.
#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns. Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent. In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.
#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.
#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by 18,000% since 1913. The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.
#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.
#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace. The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.
#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.
#22 If the number of Americans considered to be “looking for work” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012. Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.
#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.
#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.
#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”. By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.
#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.
What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.
We have already had “the economic recovery”, such as it was.
Now we are heading for another major financial crisis. Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.
But we never recovered from the last financial crisis. We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.
And who is going to get hurt the most? It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course. Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.
If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it. If you don’t have a job, do your best to get one while you still can. Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.
But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system. Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side. Yes, it will likely cut into your television time. If someday you were to lose your job you don’t want to be left with zero income.
Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.
Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.
I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.
Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.
But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.
For a lot of Americans, this is the worst time of the year. If you don’t have any money, it can be really hard to hear others go on and on about how good “Santa Claus” was to them this year. For many, there is simply not much to be cheerful about as the year ends. There are millions of people in this country that do not have a “happy family” to spend the holidays with, there are millions of people in this country that do not have any money to spend on gifts, and there are millions of people that are either already sleeping in the streets or that are in imminent danger of losing their homes. It can be really difficult to feel “holiday cheer” when you are freezing cold and you don’t have any food in your stomach. The realization that you are not going to enjoy any of the good things that other people get to enjoy this time of the year is enough to push many people over the edge. Yes, for most of the country this time of the year is filled with food, family and fun but for millions of others this time of the year tends to magnify despair, depression and thoughts of suicide. If you are blessed as we get ready to enter 2012, please remember those out there that are really hurting. If someone does not help them, they might not make it to 2013.
In our society today, the “holiday season” is held up as the ultimate time of the year. Often expectations are so high that they are almost impossible to fulfill. The truth is that materialism is never going to bring anyone true fulfillment, and once Christmas is over many Americans are left with a very hollow feeling.
But all of the “Christmas hype” on television and in the movies can make it seem like this is a “magical” time of the year for most people. For those that are in a tremendous amount of emotional pain, the holidays can be excruciating because they can feel as though they are “missing out” on all the fun and happiness that everyone else is experiencing. That is why for many Americans that are “on the edge”, this can be the absolute worst time of the year.
When people go “over the edge”, the consequences can be devastating.
For example, have you noticed how there always seems to be a rash of murder-suicides at this time of the year?
One murder-suicide that made national headlines happened down in Texas. It turns out that the killer actually dressed up as Santa Claus. The following description of this stunning incident comes from an article posted on USA Today….
Police said the man they believe is responsible for a Christmas Day shooting that left him and six members of his extended family dead was dressed as Santa Claus.
Grapevine police spokesman Sgt. Robert Eberling said Monday the shooter “showed up shortly before the incident took place” in the Santa outfit and was a member of the family opening gifts in the apartment.
Could you imagine being killed by a family member dressed as Santa Claus?
But sometimes people do not snap in a family setting. For some, it is the work environment that sets them off. Just consider the following example from a recent article in the Washington Post….
A Southern California Edison employee chatted calmly with co-workers in the moments between gunning down four managers during a rampage at an office complex, authorities said as the building reopened Tuesday.
Investigators still were trying to determine what pushed gunman Andre Turner to finish a normal workday by shooting the workers with a semiautomatic handgun before turning it on himself.
Every year we also see reports of Christmas presents being stolen right out from under the tree. The following comes from an article in the Los Angeles Times….
A Northern California family victimized in a burglary a few days before Christmas is hoping to at least get their dog back.
The Lancers lost all of the presents under the tree along with their dog when their home in Morgan Hill, southeast of San Jose, was broken into last week, authorities said Sunday.
There are a lot of people out there that do not have any hesitation about stealing from others. Desperate people do desperate things, and right now the number of desperate people in America is growing.
Tonight, there are millions upon millions of Americans that cannot find work and that are incredibly stressed. The truth is that there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. If the number of Americans considered to be “looking for work” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate would be up to 11 percent.
But the Obama administration does not want to report such a depressing number.
8.6 percent just sounds so much more pleasant.
For even more crazy economic numbers that show just how bad the U.S. economy really was in 2011, just check out this article.
But of course our leaders are enjoying a good, long break from all of the “hard work” that they have put in toward fixing the economy.
Nancy Pelosi has jetted off to Hawaii and is spending her holidays in a suite that rents for $10,000 a night.
Barack Obama and his family are in Hawaii as well. It has been estimated that their Hawaiian vacation will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million dollars.
It is shameful that our “leaders” are enjoying such luxury at a time when so many millions of Americans are barely surviving.
One of the reasons why my site has struck such a nerve is because the pain that millions of Americans are going through right now is very real.
I sleep in my car. I have nowhere else to go. It gets really cold and hurts my bones. I would love love love to go back to work but I was hospitalized 12 times in two years. I wouldn’t be able to keep a job because of my health i’m not dependable. THESE are the people who are homeless. It’s also a LOT of veterans that are homeless. But I sleep in my car. Often on family property and I’m still stalked and harassed by police and I’m sick of it.
In another comment, Ricci shared even more of her story….
Wow….do you really think that? I am a licensed social worker for 10 years. In 2005 I lost a son & daughter 3 hours after they were born. For 3 years I suffered in pain, still working my ass off, but found I was very ill. After chemo, immuno-suppressants, and a myriad of other medications I could not afford, I went bankrupt and lost my house. By this time, I was awarded disability on the first try w/o an attorney. I wasn’t expected to live. But here I am. I can barely move somedays I hurt so much. I don’t have family willing to take me in. I look fine on the outside you know. If I would just have more faith or exercise more or eat the right foods I would be cured. Whatever. I often worked 50 to 60 hours a week to protect kids from real problems (not taken away for poverty as people say……so sick of the myths about social services). Anyway, before that I worked mental health, and worked in the school district. I have busted my ass to care for other people. My husband left, children died, and when my health failed I lost everything and fell through the cracks. It’s people like me who are homeless…I do not drink. I do not use drugs. I can barely get the medications I need even w/ supplemental insurance. I get stalked and harassed by police if I so much as get tired and pull over so I don’t wreck. I was on my dad’s property in my car 3 times in two months I was approached by police…one time there were 4 cops that came to my car……on our family’s private property. My car has totally been profiled. I’m so sick of it. At this point, I would be better off dead.
So what do you say to someone like Ricci?
I have never slept in my car. I have never lost a son or daughter. I have never lost a house. I have never been homeless.
How can I identify with someone who has gone through all of that?
But we do need to tell people like Ricci not to ever give up. The vast majority of us have been at very low points in our own lives, and the secret is to keep on fighting and to never, ever give up. No matter how bad things get, they can always be turned around if you will just have faith.
We should remember to pray for people like Ricci and the millions of other Americans that are going through similar trials. We should also look for ways to help people that are really hurting in our own communities.
Yes, we cannot possibly rescue everyone is hurting. But what we can do is love the one that is in front of us.
Unfortunately, our economic problems are only going to get worse. America is in the middle of a long-term decline that is rapidly accelerating. That means that there are going to be lots more people that are going to lose their jobs and their homes.
So let us do what we can to focus on real world solutions and to focus on preparing for the hard times that are coming.
We waste so much time on unnecessary things. For example, did you know that there are over 695,000 status updates on Facebook every single minute?
Every 60 seconds.
Amazing.
As bad as 2011 was, it looks like 2012 is going to be significantly worse. It won’t be the end of the world of course, but huge challenges are ahead. Now is the time to get our priorities in order and to start focusing on the things that really matter.
If the U.S. economy is improving, then why is child poverty in America absolutely exploding? If we are experiencing “economic growth”, then why are more than half of all children in major U.S. cities like Cleveland and Detroit living in poverty? If we are the “greatest economy on earth”, then why are one out of every four American children on food stamps? The shocking statistics that you are about to read below should absolutely break your heart. Tonight, millions of precious American children will go to bed without any dinner. Tonight, millions of American children will shiver as they try to go to sleep because their families cannot afford any heat. How bad does child poverty have to get before we all finally admit that our economic system is completely failing many of the most vulnerable members of our society? If you want someone to blame, you can blame Congress, the Obama administration, the Bush administration and the corrupt Wall Street bankers. But most of all, blame the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that the Fed administers. Our economy is in the midst of a long-term decline and is slowly but surely dying. Many of those that are suffering the most from this decline are children.
The following are 16 shocking statistics about child poverty in America that will break your heart….
#1 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.
#2 According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, 1.6 million American children “were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year”.
#3 The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010. In the UK and in France the child poverty rate is well under 10 percent.
#4 A higher percentage of American children is living in poverty today than was living in poverty back in 1975.
#5 The number of children living in poverty in the U.S. has risen for four years in a row.
#6 There are 10 different U.S. states where at least one out of every four babies is born to a family living in poverty.
#7 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.
#8 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#9 In the United States today, more than 35 percent of all African-American children are living in poverty and more than 33 percent of all Hispanic children are living in poverty.
#10 There are seven million children in the United States today that are not covered by health insurance at all.
#11 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#12 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
#13 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#15 In Washington D.C., the “child food insecurity rate” is 32.3%.
#16More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.
So why are so many children suffering so badly?
Well, one reason is that millions of parents are unemployed. The government tells us that the official unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, but when you take an honest look at the numbers the truth is that the situation is much worse than that.
A recent Washington Post article included the following quote from Ed Luce of the Financial Times….
“According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”
The U.S. government has artificially reduced “official” unemployment numbers by claiming that millions upon millions of Americans have “left the workforce” over the past 4 years.
In addition, millions upon millions of American parents have been forced to take crappy, low paying jobs because they simply cannot find anything else.
At this point, the share of the economic pie being taken home by U.S. workers has fallen to record lows.
The labor share — the amount paid to workers instead of businesses and other income-earning entities — was reported to have fallen to 57.1 cents on the dollar for the business sector, its lowest level since it was first reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1947.
Median household income in the United States has fallen for several years in a row, and yet the cost of household basics just seems to keep going up and up. For example, electricity bills have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
American families are being squeezed by this economy, and millions of children are feeling the pain.
Every single day, large numbers of American families get dumped out of the middle class and into poverty. According to the latest figures, extreme poverty in the United States is now at the highest level ever recorded. The number of good jobs continues to shrink and the poor are getting poorer. Things are really bad in America today, and unfortunately it looks like the economy is going to get a lot worse in the years ahead.
But most Americans still do not understand what is happening. One of the biggest problems we are facing is something called “normalcy bias”.
The following is how Wikipedia defines normalcy bias….
The normalcy bias, or normality bias, refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Most Americans still believe that things will eventually return to “normal”.
After all, every time the U.S. has had a recession in the past we have always recovered and gone on to better things, right?
Well, the cold, hard truth of the matter is that this is not just another economic downturn. There are a whole host of very bad long-term economic trends that are ripping our economy to shreds. We are a nation that is drowning in debt even as our economic guts are being ripped out. The greatest economic machine in the history of the world is being destroyed right in front of our eyes, and most Americans don’t even realize it.
Sadly, most Americans are so brainwashed by the mainstream media that they are not going to believe you the first time that you tell them about all the statistics that point to a coming economic collapse.
Many of them are going to have to be hammered with articles like this time and time again until they finally get it.
America is in a massive amount of trouble, and because of the economic mistakes that we have made millions of children are going to needlessly suffer.
Please share this article with as many people as you can. The more people that we wake up, the better off America is going to be.
Have you ever been so poor that you had to live in your car? Have you ever been so low on funds that the only place you could afford to live was a rat-infested motel? Have you ever spent a night living in a tent city or sleeping in the streets? If not, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. As the recent Black Friday madness demonstrated, there are still lots of Americans that are doing well enough to go on wild shopping sprees, but the reality is that there are also millions of American families that are falling through the “safety net” to a place of total desperation. In a previous article I talked about the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced that a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than has ever been measured before. Not only that, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty last year. That was also a new all-time record. As you read this, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four U.S. children is on food stamps. Tens of millions of American families are living on the edge of desperation. In many communities across the United States, there is so much despair in the air that it is almost tangible. When you look into the eyes of many Americans these days, it almost seems as if all the hope has been sucked right out of their hearts. Economic despair is at epidemic levels, and unfortunately the economy is about to get a whole lot worse.
Did you see the report on families that are living in their cars that Scott Pelley did for 60 Minutes the other night?
If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend that you take a few minutes to check it out.
At one school in Florida alone, Pelley met 15 children who had been living in their cars.
The following is a brief excerpt from Pelley’s report….
This is the home of the Metzger family. Arielle,15. Her brother Austin, 13. Their mother died when they were very young. Their dad, Tom, is a carpenter. And, he’s been looking for work ever since Florida’s construction industry collapsed. When foreclosure took their house, he bought the truck on Craigslist with his last thousand dollars. Tom’s a little camera shy – thought we ought to talk to the kids – and it didn’t take long to see why.
Pelley: How long have you been living in this truck?
Arielle Metzger: About five months.
Pelley: What’s that like?
Arielle Metzger: It’s an adventure.
Austin Metzger: That’s how we see it.
Pelley: When kids at school ask you where you live, what do you tell ’em?
Austin Metzger: When they see the truck they ask me if I live in it, and when I hesitate they kinda realize. And they say they won’t tell anybody.
You can view the entire 60 Minutes report below….
Did you ever think that this would happen to America?
What makes things even sadder is that there are millions upon millions of empty homes right now in the United States.
Millions of American families have been foreclosed upon in recent years and home prices keep falling with no end in sight.
In fact, today it was reported that home prices are now the lowest that they have been in eight years.
So why aren’t people renting or buying more homes?
Well, the truth is that you can’t afford a mortgage payment or a rent payment if you don’t have a decent job.
When someone can’t find a good job, then none of the other economic statistics that many of us love to talk about so much really matter.
That is why I write about what is happening to American jobs so often. Today, big corporations are shipping as many jobs as they can out of the country. An average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year. Even though our population is rapidly increasing, there are 10 percent fewer middle income jobs in the U.S. today than there were a decade ago. Until this trend gets reversed, the number of American families living in their vehicles is only going to increase.
Unfortunately, the U.S. economy is about to get even worse.
Today, it was announced that American Airlines has filed for bankruptcy. Sadly, there will be many more companies filing for bankruptcy during the upcoming economic downturn.
Jim Cramer of CNBC says that because of what is happening in Europe, the global financial system is at “DEFCON 3, two stages from a financial collapse that is so huge it’s hard to get your mind around.”
Unfortunately, Jim Cramer is not exaggerating. The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble if something dramatic is not done immediately.
This is not a drill. Bert Van Roosebeke, an economist with the Center for European Policy, recently made the following statement about the cold, hard reality now facing Europe….
“We’re actually really running out of money”
Back during the early 1930s, the flow of credit was greatly restricted and that was one of the primary causes of the Great Depression. Back in 2008, another massive credit crunch just about brought the financial world to its knees.
Well, now it is starting to happen again. A nightmarish credit crunch has already begun in Europe, and nobody seems to have any answers about how to stop it.
From global airlines and shipping giants to small manufacturers, all kinds of companies are feeling the strain as European banks pull back on lending in an effort to hoard capital and shore up their balance sheets.
The result is a credit squeeze for companies from Berlin to Beijing, edging the world economy toward another slump.
When there is a credit crunch of this magnitude, it causes the money supply to start to shrink. This is already happening all over Europe as a recent article in the Telegraph noted….
All key measures of the money supply in the eurozone contracted in October with drastic falls across parts of southern Europe, raising the risk of severe recession over coming months.
Right now, we are seeing the money supply in each of the “PIIGS” nations fall at a staggering rate. The following comes from the same Telegraph article referenced above….
Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors said “narrow” M1 money – which includes cash and overnight deposits, and signals short-term spending plans – shows an alarming split between North and South.
While real M1 deposits are still holding up in the German bloc, the rate of fall over the last six months (annualised) has been 20.7pc in Greece, 16.3pc in Portugal, 11.8pc in Ireland, and 8.1pc in Spain, and 6.7pc in Italy. The pace of decline in Italy has been accelerating, partly due to capital flight. “This rate of contraction is greater than in early 2008 and implies an even deeper recession, both for Italy and the whole periphery,” said Mr Ward.
Those numbers are really, really bad.
But instead of doing something to prepare for the coming economic crisis, members of the U.S. Congress are focused on stripping even more of our liberties and freedoms away from us.
As I wrote about yesterday, a new law (S. 1867) is being pushed through the U.S. Senate that is extremely frightening.
If this bill becomes a law, the United States of America would officially become part of the “battlefield” in the war on terror, and any American citizen could easily be flagged as a “potential terrorist”.
Once identified as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military would be able to arrest you, take you to a foreign prison and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything.
What in the world is happening to America?
Unfortunately, as the economy gets even worse civil unrest in this country is going to intensify and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is going to start to disappear.
In response to the coming civil unrest, the U.S. Congress will try to pass laws that will be even more repressive than S. 1867.
Our nation has entered a downward spiral and things are going to become very frightening if this thing is not turned around.
So what do all of you see happening as we get ready to enter 2012? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than they have ever measured before. In 2010, we were told that the economy was recovering, but the truth is that the number of the “very poor” soared to heights never seen previously. Back in 1993 and back in 2009, the rate of extreme poverty was just over 6 percent, and that represented the worst numbers on record. But in 2010, the rate of extreme poverty hit a whopping 6.7 percent. That means that one out of every 15 Americans is now considered to be “very poor”. For many people, this is all very confusing because their guts are telling them that things are getting worse and yet the mainstream media keeps telling them that everything is just fine. Hopefully this article will help people realize that the plight of the poorest of the poor continues to deteriorate all across the United States. In addition, hopefully this article will inspire many of you to lend a hand to those that are truly in need.
Tonight, there are more than 20 million Americans that are living in extreme poverty. This number increases a little bit more every single day. The following statistics that were mentioned in an article in The Daily Mail should be very sobering for all of us….
About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 per cent or less of the official poverty level.
Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four.
That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent.
Sadly, the wealthy and the poor are being increasingly segregated all over the nation. In some areas of the U.S. you would never even know that the economy was having trouble, and other areas resemble third world hellholes. In most U.S. cities today, there are the “good neighborhoods” and there are the “bad neighborhoods”.
According to a recent Bloomberg article, the “very poor” are increasingly being pushed into these “bad neighborhoods”….
At least 2.2 million more Americans, a 33 percent jump since 2000, live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is 40 percent or higher, according to a study released today by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
Of course they don’t have much of a choice. They can’t afford to live where most of the rest of us do.
Today, there are many Americans that openly look down on the poor, but that should never be the case. We should love the poor and want to see them lifted up to a better place. The truth is that with a few bad breaks any of us could end up in the ranks of the poor. Compassion is a virtue that all of us should seek to develop.
Not only that, but the less poor people and the less unemployed people we have, the better it is for our economy. When as many people as possible in a nation are working and doing something economically productive, that maximizes the level of true wealth that a nation is creating.
But today we are losing out on a massive amount of wealth. We have tens of millions of people that are sitting at home on their couches. Instead of creating something of economic value, the rest of us have to support them financially. That is not what any of us should want.
It is absolutely imperative that we get as many Americans back to work as possible. The more people that are doing something economically productive, the more wealth there will be for all of us.
That is why it is so alarming that the ranks of the “very poor” are increasing so dramatically. When the number of poor people goes up, the entire society suffers.
So just how bad are things right now?
The following are 19 statistics about the poor that will absolutely astound you….
#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
#2 Last year, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
#3 It isn’t just the ranks of the “very poor” that are rising. The number of those just considered to be “poor” is rapidly increasing as well. Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
#4 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.
#15 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
#16 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#17 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program.
#18 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#19 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.
Sadly, we don’t hear much about this on the nightly news, do we?
This is because the mainstream media is very tightly controlled.
I came across a beautiful illustration of this recently. If you do not believe that the news in America is scripted, just watch this video starting at the 1:15 mark. Conan O’Brien does a beautiful job of demonstrating how news anchors all over the United States are often repeating the exact same words.
So don’t rely on the mainstream media to tell you everything.
In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all think for ourselves.
It is also absolutely imperative that we have compassion on our brothers and sisters.
Winter is coming up, and if you see someone that does not have a coat, don’t be afraid to offer to give them one.
All over the United States (and all around the world), there are orphans that are desperately hurting. As you celebrate the good things that you have during this time of the year, don’t forget to remember them.
We should not expect that “the government” will take care of everyone that is hurting.
The reality is that millions of people fall through the “safety net”.
Being generous and being compassionate are qualities that all of us should have.
Yes, times are going to get harder and an economic collapse is coming.
That just means that we should be more generous and more compassionate than we have ever been before.
If you want to know what the early stages of an economic collapse look like, just walk around some of the downtown areas of our major cities. Today, nearly all large U.S. cities are either flat broke or they are on the way to being flat broke. Yes, New York City and Washington D.C. (and a few others) are still doing fairly well, but for most U.S. cities economic reality is catching up with them very quickly. Right now, there are a number of major cities that are so broke that they cannot keep the street lights operating. Down in St. Louis, parents in some areas are carrying golf clubs with them as they walk their kids to school in order to fend off roving packs of wild dogs. In other major U.S. cities, open-air drug markets conduct business without fear. All over the United States, cities that used to be clean and prosperous and full of hope are now being transformed into post-industrial wastelands. We are certainly not in “Mad Max” territory yet, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to see where all of this is headed.
I have previously written about how Detroit is literally coming apart at the seams. Well, now in many areas of the city they can’t even keep the street lights on anymore. There simply is not enough money, and even if there was, thieves are stealing the copper wiring out of the street lights faster than the city can repair them.
At this point, there are some neighborhoods in Detroit where up to 50 percent of the street lights are not functioning.
The following is from a recent article in The Detroit News about this crisis….
The war to keep the lights on in Detroit is a serious one. Thieves, antiquated equipment and a lack of funding have made it impossible for city officials to catch up to the problem.
City officials estimate 15-20 percent of the 88,000 lights in the Motor City are not working, and they acknowledge that figure could be as high as 50 percent in some neighborhoods.
But it is not just Detroit that is having a major problem. Over in Highland Park, Michigan the majority of the street lights have been repossessed because the city was not keeping up with the electricity bill.
So what are residents of Highland Park supposed to do?
Are they supposed to lock themselves in their own homes at night?
In Fresno, California the theft of copper wire from street lights has become a total nightmare. At this point, the loss of copper wire and the cost of repairing the street lights is costing Fresno about $50,000 a month. So far, approximately 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring.
Down in St. Louis they are having a different problem. In some of the worst areas of the city, roving packs of wild dogs are a serious threat to children that are walking to school.
…Lewis Reed is sounding the alarm. “I’ve witnessed packs of dogs, 10 and 15 dogs running together, and I’ve seen all these dogs I’m talking about they don’t have collars, they don’t have tags, these are truly wild dogs,” he said.
Reed says stray dogs are terrorizing the north side. “It’s obscene that parents have to walk their kids to school, in some parts of the city, with a golf club to fend off wild dogs.”
Can you imagine that?
They say that they are going to try to put more money into animal control efforts if they can find it. But like most major U.S. cities, St. Louis is a financial basket case.
Moving west a bit, Las Vegas is a different kind of a problem. It was once a mighty symbol of American luxury and decadence, but now it is a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with our economy.
But Las Vegas’s days as a boom town are long gone. At 14 percent, unemployment is the highest in America (the national average is 9.1 per cent). House prices have fallen 58.1 per cent since their 2006 high – the biggest losses of anywhere in America, while according to the website RealtyTrac, which specialises in foreclosed properties, Las Vegas is the nation’s foreclosure capital. Some 70 per cent of homes in Las Vegas are thought to be ‘under water’, or in negative equity, meaning their value is worth less than the amount owed on the mortgage, while foreclosure notices have been served on one in 16 properties. A survey last year by the local Las Vegas Review-Journal and Channel 8 News Now found that 34 per cent of locals would leave Las Vegas if they could find a job elsewhere, or if they weren’t underwater on their home loan.
Last year, I wrote a piece entitled “The Death of Las Vegas“. Since then, things have gotten even worse for the city in many ways.
Today, there are hundreds of people living in the tunnels underneath the streets of Las Vegas. You can see CNN video of some of these people right here.
But at least the “tunnel people” have a “roof” over their heads.
Over in “Lost Angeles”, homelessness is absolutely exploding and there are thousands of people living in the streets.
The following is from a recent article by Nick Allen….
In Skid Row, a grimy pocket of downtown Los Angeles, the prostrate forms of homeless people lie strewn across the pavements.
The lucky ones have tents for shelter but others make do with a sliver of cardboard for a bed and a supermarket trolley to carry their rags.
At the last police count 1,662 people live on these streets, twice as many as a year ago.
And now amid the drug addicts and the drunks there are families who not so long ago had homes and ordinary suburban lives.
Wait, wasn’t the economy supposed to be getting better?
So why has the number of people living on Skid Row doubled over the past year?
Los Angeles, like much of California, is rapidly falling apart. Decades of very foolish policies have turned the “California Dream” into the “California Nightmare“.
Unemployment is rampant, crime is seemingly everywhere and the gangs appear to be getting bolder by the day. For example, 21 machine guns were recently stolen right out of an LAPD training facility.
But there are cities in California that are in even worse shape than Los Angeles is. If you go east of Los Angeles about 100 miles, you will come to the city of San Bernardino. 34.6 percent of the residents of San Bernardino are currently living below the poverty line. Among major U.S. cities, only Detroit has a worse poverty rate.
Heading back to the east coast, the city of Camden, New Jersey is representative of the post-industrial hellholes that you will find all over the mid-Atlantic region and up into New England.
In an extraordinary article entitled “City of Ruins“, Chris Hedges did an amazing job of documenting how bad things have gotten in Camden. Today it is estimated that the actual rate of unemployment in Camden is somewhere around 30 or 40 percent. For most young people in Camden, there are very few legitimate opportunities for a better life, so many of them have resorted to selling drugs or selling their bodies in a desperate attempt to survive.
The following is a brief excerpt from “City of Ruins”….
There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13. Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city’s few thriving businesses. A weapon, police say, is never more than a few feet away, usually stashed behind a trash can, in the grass or on a porch.
The era of “American exceptionalism” is over. We have rejected the things that made us great. We have forsaken the truth and now we are paying the price.
At this point, we are rapidly becoming a joke to the rest of the world.
You know that things are bad when headlines such as this start showing up in major international publications: “America Must Manage Its Decline“.
Is that what we are going to tell our kids and our grandkids?
Are we going to tell them that we must “manage” our decline?
Most Americans also realize that something is fundamentally wrong. According to a recent Time Magazine poll, 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the wrong track.
So why don’t our cities just spend more money and fix all of these problems?
Well, it is because most of them are drowning in a sea of red ink. Instead of spending more money, most of them are desperately searching for more places to cut. If you can believe it, 72 percent of all U.S. cities are laying workers off this year.
The federal government has been pumping massive amounts of money into state and local governments in recent years, but that can’t last much longer. As I wrote about yesterday, the federal government is in debt up to its eyeballs. In fact, the national debt has become so large that it threatens to collapse our entire financial system.
Sadly, the cold, hard truth is that we are now going to pay the price for decades of financial foolishness.
We thought that it would be our children and our grandchildren that would pay the price for our financial recklessness, but the reality is that we are going to pay the price too.
America is in a serious state of decline and things are going to get a lot worse in the years to come.
Take advantage of the relative prosperity that we are enjoying now to prepare for the lean years which are ahead.
Uh oh – are we rapidly reaching another major economic tipping point? According to a new CNN/ORC International Poll, 90 percent of the American people believe that economic conditions in the United States are “poor”. This represents a significant increase from when the same question was asked in June. Back then, 81 percent of the American people considered economic conditions to be “poor”. To put this in perspective, only 11 percent of Americans rated economic conditions in the U.S. as “poor” back in January of 1999. The Federal Reserve and the Obama administration keep telling us that we are in the middle of an “economic recovery”, but obviously what average Americans are experiencing on the street is a different story. Millions of families have been absolutely devastated by mass layoffs, heartless foreclosures or bad debts. All of the recent polls show that satisfaction with government is at an all-time low and anger at Wall Street and the financial community is rising to dangerous levels. In the United States today, the economy is the most important issue for most Americans. When you have 9 out of 10 Americans rating economic conditions as “poor”, that is a very troubling sign.
Many wealthy Americans consider it to be very painful when their investment portfolios go down by a few percentage points, but that is not the kind of economic pain that we are talking about.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans in the bottom half of society do not even have investment portfolios.
What we are talking about is real economic pain.
As I have written about previously, the average American family is barely making it right now. Tonight, a whole lot of American families will gather around their kitchen tables and will have some very nervous conversations about things such as making the next mortgage payment or how to pay the heating bill this upcoming winter.
Have you ever been at a point where you work as hard as you can and yet it is still not good enough to provide for your family?
If you have never been completely broke and at the end of your rope financially, then you should not judge the people who are going through it right now.
There are very real reasons why so many Americans are so incredibly depressed about the economy at the moment.
One recent poll found that 80 percent of the American people believe that we are actually in a recession right now.
Things have gotten so bad that Hallmark recently unveiled a 6 card line of “job loss” greeting cards.
Yes, that really is true.
Every month, tens of thousands of American families are still losing their homes to foreclosure, and we are on pace for record low new home sales once again in 2011.
Many families have gotten in debt up to their eyeballs in an effort to stay afloat. According to a new study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.
In case you are wondering, that is not good.
Our founders intended for us to live in a capitalist system that allows all Americans to have an opportunity to better themselves, but instead what we have developed is a system where the vast majority of the money and the vast majority of the economic power are in the hands of the biggest banks and the biggest corporations.
If you work for the system and you are near the top of the pyramid, life is good.
For nearly everyone else, life is a struggle.
Back in 1980, the top 1% of all income earners in America brought in about 10% of all income. Today, the top 1% of all income earners bring in about 20% of all income.
If the ranks of the top income earners were populated by a huge number of entrepreneurs and small business owners, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
But instead, the reality is that most of the very wealthy either work in the financial community or they work for the biggest corporations.
True capitalism is supposed to create a very healthy environment for small businesses.
Instead, our current system suffocates them out of existence.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
Our entire system is now tremendously slanted in favor of “the big guy” and against “the little guy”.
Millions of Americans are starting to get sick and tired of all of the economic injustice and the vast corruption that is endemic in our financial system.
As the economy has continued to decline, the anger and the frustration of average of Americans has reached a boiling point.
This is a big reason why we have seen the rise of new political movements in recent years.
First, we saw the Tea Party arise to challenge the establishment in the Republican Party. But sadly there are already signs that the establishment has taken over the Tea Party to a large extent.
Now, we are seeing the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Large numbers of frustrated Americans are flocking to these protests because they want an outlet for expressing the anger and frustration that they are feeling. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of evidence that the Occupy Wall Street movement was started and is being greatly aided by the liberal political establishment in this country.
What the American people need to do is to wake up and break out of the stale two party system.
Unfortunately, the American people have become so “dumbed down” that large chunks of them are absolutely clueless about what is really going on in this country.
For example, according to the new CNN/ORC International Poll mentioned above, 27 percent of Americans have never heard of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and 15 percent of Americans have no opinion about him at all.
Do you understand what that means?
It means that only 58 percent of Americans know enough about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to have an opinion about him.
According to the survey, the way that the 58 percent breaks down is that 28 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Bernanke and 30 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of him.
That is so sad.
Ben Bernanke has more power over our economic problems than anyone else in the country, and yet only 30 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of him.
Nearly as many Americans say that they have never heard of him as say that they do not view him favorably.
How pathetic is that?
That is one of the reasons why I write about the Federal Reserve so much.
We need to get the American people educated.
If the American people get educated, they will feel empowered.
Where there is a lack of knowledge, the people perish.
The other day, a 51-year-old father of three daughters up in Minnesota that had just lost his job locked himself in his car and shot himself in the head in front of some of his former co-workers.
I don’t want to see anymore of that.
We need to give the American people some hope. We need to explain to them exactly why this economic crisis is happening and what can be done to turn things around.
We also need to reach out to people that are in pain and love them and let them know that there is always hope.
All of us know people out there that are really hurting right now. Please don’t forget about them. Please don’t let them quietly slip into depression. Please don’t let them become the next victims of this economy.
There is always hope. A reader of this column named “JD” went through all kinds of hell in recent years. He lost his job, he lost his lady, he stayed in run down motels, he got meals wherever he could and he even slept in his car for a time. But today he has a new job and his outlook on life is brighter than it has been in ages.
In 1941, Winston Churchill gave a speech during which he uttered the following words: “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Things may not look good for you right now, but you must never give in.
No matter how bad things are, they can always be turned around.
Yes, the U.S. economy is going to continue to decline if we stay on our current path, but none of us must ever use that as an excuse to give up.
There is always hope. You just have to keep on fighting.
A higher percentage of the American population is receiving government benefits than ever before. Yes, there have always been poor people that have needed our assistance, but what does it say about our economy that the number of Americans dependent on the government is at an all-time high? Every night on the evening news we are told that the economy is improving, and Barack Obama is endlessly giving speeches about the “economic recovery” that is supposedly underway. But that is not the reality on the ground for those on the bottom rungs of the income ladder in America. People are really hurting out there, and the number of Americans that are turning to the government for financial assistance just continues to increase. Yes, we should always have a “safety net”, but right now our “safety net” is becoming massively overloaded as millions more Americans jump on to it every single year. What all of these impoverished Americans really need are jobs, but the U.S. Congress and the past several administrations have been systematically killing job growth in America. So unfortunately the number of poor Americans is going to continue to rise, and that is really bad news for a nation that is already drowning in debt.
If The Economy Is Improving….
But right now there are some “bright spots” in the economy, and you are bound to run into family and friends that will repeat to you the nonsense that they are hearing on the television about how the economy is recovering.
When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions….
If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?
If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?
If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?
If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?
If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of “long-term unemployed workers” stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.
But there is some good news.
When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today, the price of an ounce of gold is over $1700.
The era of great prosperity that America has enjoyed for so long is coming to an end.
In fact, our long-term economic decline is about to accelerate.
So enjoy this “bubble of hope” while you can, because it won’t last long.
As I have written about previously, many are warning that Europe is on the verge of a nightmarish financial crisis that could potentially plunge us into a global recession even worse than 2008.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
Just because the economy is about to go through hard times does not mean that you have to go through hard times personally.
Right now, you can decide to make an investment or start a business that will thrive in a tough economic environment.
Victory often goes to the most prepared. So don’t just sit there while the storm clouds gather. Instead, this should be a time when you are gathering resources and developing a gameplan for the coming economic chaos.
Those that choose to have blind faith in “the system” are going to be tremendously disappointed in the years ahead. Just because you have a job right now does not mean that it is always going to be there. Just because your stock portfolio is doing well right now does not mean that will always be the case.
Hopefully we all learned some important lessons from 2008. The global financial situation can turn on a dime. When markets fall apart, they tend to do so very rapidly.
Ultimately, the debate about whether the economy is improving or not is going to be ended very emphatically. When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, there will be no doubt about what direction things are going.
Don’t let the next wave catch you by surprise.
Now is the time to prepare.