New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 How can anyone not see that the U.S. economy is collapsing all around us? It just astounds me when people try to tell me that “everything is just fine” and that “things are getting better” in America. Are there people out there that are really that blind? If you want to see the economic collapse, just open up your eyes and look around you. By almost every economic and financial measure, the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for many years. But most Americans are so tied into “the matrix” that they can only understand the cheerful propaganda that is endlessly being spoon-fed to them by the mainstream media. As I have said so many times, the economic collapse is not a single event. The economic collapse has been happening, it is is happening right now, and it will continue to happen. Yes, there will be times when our decline will be punctuated by moments of great crisis, but that will be the exception rather than the rule. A lot of people that write about “the economic collapse” hype it up as if it will be some huge “event” that will happen very rapidly and then once it is all over we will rebuild. Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works. We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and once it completely bursts there will be no going back to how things were before. Right now, we are living in a “credit card economy”. As long as we can keep borrowing more money, most people think that things are just fine. But anyone that has lived on credit cards knows that eventually there comes a point when the game is over, and we are rapidly approaching that point as a nation.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever desperately hoped that you could just get one more credit card or one more loan so that you could keep things going?
At first, living on credit can be a lot of fun. You can live a much higher standard of living than you otherwise would be able to.
But inevitably a day of reckoning comes.
If the federal government and the American people were forced at this moment to live within their means, the U.S. economy would immediately plunge into a depression.
That is a 100% rock solid guarantee.
But our politicians and the mainstream media continue to perpetuate the fiction that we can live in this credit card economic fantasy land indefinitely.
And most Americans could not care less about the future. As long as “things are good” today, they don’t really think much about what the future will hold.
As a result of our very foolish short-term thinking, we have now run up a national debt of 16.4 trillion dollars. It is the largest debt in the history of the world, and it has gotten more than 23 times larger since Jimmy Carter first entered the White House.
The chart that you see below is a recipe for national financial suicide…
Of course things have accelerated over the past four years. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government has run a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars every single year, and we have stolen more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.
It is the biggest theft of all time. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal.
And now our debt is at a level that most economists would consider terminal. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 103 percent.
We are officially in “the danger zone”.
If things really were “getting better” in America, we would not need to borrow so much money.
Our politicians are stealing from the future in order to make the present look better. During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
That is utter insanity!
If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.
So what is the solution?
Get ready to laugh.
The most prominent economic journalist in the entire country, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, recently suggested the following in an article that he wrote entitled “Kick That Can“…
Realistically, we’re not going to resolve our long-run fiscal issues any time soon, which is O.K. — not ideal, but nothing terrible will happen if we don’t fix everything this year. Meanwhile, we face the imminent threat of severe economic damage from short-term spending cuts.
So we should avoid that damage by kicking the can down the road. It’s the responsible thing to do.
You mean that we might actually do damage to the debt-fueled economic fantasy world that we are living in if we stopped stealing so much money from future generations?
Oh the humanity!
It is horrifying to think that all that one of the “top economic minds” in America can come up with is to “kick the can” down the road some more.
Unfortunately, neither Paul Krugman nor most of the American people understand that our financial system is actually designed to create government debt.
The bankers that helped create the Federal Reserve intended to permanently enslave the U.S. government to a perpetually expanding spiral of debt, and their plans worked.
At this point, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
So why don’t the American people understand what the Federal Reserve system is doing to us?
It is because most of them are still plugged into the matrix. A Zero Hedge article that I came across today put it beautifully…
US society in a nutshell: Chris Dorner has been around for a week and has 222 million results on Google; the Federal Reserve has been around for one hundred years and has 187 million results.
If nothing is done about our exploding debt, it is only a matter of time before we reach financial oblivion.
According to Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, the U.S. government is facing a “present value difference between projected future spending and revenue” of 222 trillion dollars in the years ahead.
So how in the world are we going to come up with an extra 222 trillion dollars?
But it is not just the U.S. government that is drowning in debt.
Just check out this chart which shows the astounding growth of state and local government debt in recent years…
All over the United States there are state and local governments that are on the verge of bankruptcy. Just check out what is going on in Detroit. The only way that most of our state and local governments can keep going at this point is to also “kick the can” down the road some more.
And of course most of the rest of us are drowning in debt as well.
40 years ago, the total amount of debt in the U.S. economic system (government + business + consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars.
Today, the total amount of debt in the U.S. economic system has grown to more than 55 trillion dollars.
Can anyone say bubble?
The good news is that U.S. GDP is now more than 12 times larger than it was 40 years ago.
The bad news is that the total amount of debt in our financial system is now more than 30 times larger than it was 40 years ago…
At the same time that we are going into so much debt, our ability to produce wealth continues to decline.
According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001. That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011. That is not just a decline – that is a nightmarish freefall. Just check out the chart in this article.
We are becoming less competitive as a nation with each passing year. In fact, the U.S. has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
Most Americans don’t understand this, but the United States buys far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us each year. In 2012, we had a trade deficit of more than 500 billion dollars with the rest of the world.
That means that more than 500 billion dollars that could have gone to U.S. workers and U.S. businesses went out of the country instead.
So how does our country survive if hundreds of billions of dollars more is flowing out of the country than is flowing into it?
Well, to make up the shortfall we go to the countries that we sent our money to and we beg them to lend it back to us. If that doesn’t work, we just print and borrow even more money.
Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.
That is 8 trillion dollars that could have saved U.S. businesses, paid the salaries of U.S. workers and that would have helped fund government.
But instead, our foolish policies have greatly enriched China and the oil barons of the Middle East.
Sadly, politicians from both political parties continue to boldly support the one world economic agenda of the global elite.
Just consider how destructive many of these “free trade” deals have been to our economy…
When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars.
By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year.
In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
In particular, our trade with China is extremely unbalanced. Today, U.S. consumers spend approximately 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that Chinese consumers spend on goods and services from the United States.
But isn’t getting cheap stuff from China good?
No, because it costs us good paying jobs.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001. During 2010, manufacturing facilities in the United States were shutting down at a rate of 23 per day. How can anyone say that “things are getting better” when our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted?
The truth is that there are never going to be enough jobs in America ever again, because millions of our jobs are being sent overseas and millions of our jobs are being lost to technology.
You won’t hear this on the news, but the percentage of the civilian labor force in the United States that is employed has been steadily declining every single year since 2006.
Younger workers have been hit particularly hard. In 2007, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 29 age bracket was about 6.5 percent. Today, the unemployment rate for that same age group is about 13 percent.
If you are under the age of 30 and you aren’t living with your parents, there is a really good chance that you are living in poverty. If you can believe it, U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
Our economy has been steadily bleeding huge numbers of middle class jobs, and many of those jobs have been replaced by low paying jobs in recent years.
According to one study, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
And at this point, an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
Oh, but “things are getting better”, right?
Maybe if you live on Wall Street or if you are an employee of the federal government.
But for most families this economic decline has been a total nightmare. Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
Sometimes people forget how good things were about a decade ago. About three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as were sold in 2012.
But we like to live in denial.
In fact, a lot of families are trying to keep up their standards of living by going into tremendous amounts of debt.
Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned. By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
Fake it until you make it, right?
But how much debt can our system possibly handle?
Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
We are a nation that is completely addicted to debt, but as the financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated, all of that debt can have horrific consequences.
As the economy has slowed in recent years, the Federal Reserve has decided that “the solution” is to recklessly print money in an attempt to get the debt spiral cranked up again.
Have they gone overboard? You be the judge…
And of course this won’t have any affect on the value of the money that you have been saving up all these years right?
Wrong.
Every single dollar that you own is continually losing value…
Overall, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.
As the cost of living continues to go up and wages continue to go down, millions of American families have fallen out of the middle class and into poverty.
If you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from about 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.
But “things are getting better”, right?
Incredibly, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
But “things are getting better”, right?
There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
But “things are getting better”, right?
In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
But “things are getting better”, right?
Today, more Americans than ever have found themselves forced to turn to the federal government for help.
Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and at this point more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one of them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives 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.
So is it a good sign or a bad sign that the percentage of Americans that are financially dependent on the federal government is at an all-time high?
And in future years the number of Americans that are receiving benefits from the federal government is projected to absolutely skyrocket.
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.
If you take a look at Medicare, things are very more sobering.
As I wrote recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.
At this point, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately $328,404 for every single household in the United States.
Are you ready to contribute your share?
Social Security is a complete and total nightmare as well.
Right now, there are approximately 56 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits.
By 2035, that number is projected to soar to an astounding 91 million.
Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years.
Oh, but don’t worry because “things are getting better”, right?
I honestly do not know how anyone can look at the numbers above and come to the conclusion that the economy is in good shape.
We have accumulated the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, we are bleeding good jobs, government dependence is at an all-time high and we are getting poorer as a nation with each passing day.
But other than that, everything is rainbows and lollipops, right?
If you want to see the economic collapse, just open up your eyes.
And if dramatic changes are not made quickly, things are going to get much, much worse from here.
Please share this article with as many people as possible. Time is quickly running out and there are a whole lot of people out there that we need to wake up while we still can.
 The mainstream media is heralding the decline of the official unemployment rate to 7.7 percent as evidence that the U.S. economy is improving. But it is a giant lie. The truth is that unemployment in America is not actually going down. The percentage of working age Americans with a job actually dropped slightly in November. During the last recession, the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell from about 63 percent to under 59 percent and it has stayed there for 39 months in a row. In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place! So how in the world are they able to pretend that the “unemployment rate” is going down steadily? Well, they get there by pretending that hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers “leave the labor force” each month. According to the government, another 350,000 Americans left the labor force during November, and when you keep pretending that huge chunks of workers “disappear” each month it is easy to get the “unemployment rate” to go down. But any idiot can see that there is something really funny about these numbers. Barack Obama has been president for less than four years, and during that time the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million. Something seems really “off” about that number, because during the entire decade of the 1980s the number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose by about 2.5 million. At this point the official unemployment rate is so manipulated that it is of very little value at all.
But the mainstream media is just eating up this “good news”. They are very excited that the “unemployment rate” has fallen from its peak of 10.0 percent in October 2009 to 7.7 percent now…
But if unemployment was actually going down, we should be seeing the percentage of Americans with a job go up.
Unfortunately, that is NOT happening.
As I mentioned above, the “employment rate” fell below 59 percent during the last economic crisis and it has stayed there for 39 consecutive months…
So all of that stuff about the employment situation getting better is just a load of nonsense. The percentage of Americans with a job has stayed very, very steady since the end of 2009. It is almost as if someone has hit a “pause button” and won’t let unemployment get better or get worse.
This is the first time since the end of World War II that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back in a significant way after a recession has ended.
To me, that is a very bad sign.
I also find it very interesting that the government revised the “job gains” for September and October downward in this recent report…
The government revised down job gains for September and October by a total 49,000. September’s additions were revised from 148,000 to 132,000 and October’s, from 171,000 to 138,000.
So it turns out that the glowing employment reports from those months that helped get Obama re-elected were really not that great after all.
The truth is that it takes somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the population. So at best we are treading water.
And who is “creating” those new jobs?
According to an analysis performed by CNSNews.com, 73 percent of the jobs “created” over the past 5 months have been “created” by government.
But government does not create real wealth.
Real wealth is only created by the private sector.
It would be very nice if I could report a major employment turnaround, but it simply is not happening.
Instead, we continue to see an increase in the number of Americans living in poverty.
If things are getting better, then why are organizations like the Salvation Army seeing record numbers of families coming to them for help this holiday season?
For much more on the continued growth of poverty in the United States, just see this article.
Sadly, an increasing number of Americans find themselves forced to turn to the government for assistance, and the cost of caring for all of them has become extremely expensive…
According to the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, welfare spending per day per household in poverty is $168, which is higher than the $137 median income per day. When broken down per hour, welfare spending per hour per household in poverty is $30.60, which is higher than the $25.03 median income per hour.
But if you think that things are bad now, you should brace yourself, because things are going to get even worse.
For example, how much worse will things get if a fiscal cliff deal is not reached and millions more Americans find themselves in desperate need of help? According to ABC News, more than 3 million Americans will lose unemployment benefits by the beginning of April if Congress does not do something…
Millions of unemployed Americans have another reason to worry about “fiscal cliff” budget talks that seek to avoid looming tax increases and dire spending cuts come January.
About 2.1 million people will stop receiving jobless benefits immediately if Congress doesn’t reauthorize federal unemployment insurance programs by year’s end. Another 1 million will lose benefits over the first three months of 2013.
2013 is already shaping up to be a very tough year.
But the mainstream media is not really talking about how the middle class is systematically being destroyed or about how our once great manufacturing cities are being turned into desolate wastelands.
They just want us all to be happy, but the cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy no longer produces enough jobs for everybody and it never will again.
Both of our major political parties have fully embraced the emerging one world economic system which puts average American workers into direct competition for jobs with workers in third world countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.
Millions of good paying American jobs have been shipped to countries where workers work very long hours in absolutely horrific conditions for as little as 45 dollars a month.
Are you willing to work for 45 dollars a month?
Meanwhile, Americans that still do have jobs are piling up more debt than ever before. It appears that most people have not learned any lessons from the last major economic crisis. It has just been reported that consumer borrowing in the United States has hit a new record high…
Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high.
The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion.
Isn’t that lovely?
And of course the biggest offender of all is our federal government. They just keep borrowing money as if there was no tomorrow.
During the first two months of fiscal year 2013, the U.S. government has run a deficit of $292 billion dollars ($57 billion worse than last year) and during that time it has borrowed an average of $4.8 billion dollars a day.
30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about 1.1 trillion dollars.
Now it is more than 16.3 trillion dollars.
To get an idea how much money 16 trillion dollars is, just watch this 2 minute video.
How could we be so stupid?
Yes, much of America is still experiencing “prosperity” right now. But it is a prosperity that has been fueled by the greatest debt bubble that the world has ever seen.
When that debt bubble bursts the pain is going to be unbelievable.
If you actually believe that America is going to prosper in the years to come, you are just fooling yourself.
Our economy is declining and has been declining for quite some time. If you doubt this, just read this: “34 Signs That America Is In Decline“.
So that is the bad news.
But the good news is that even though the entire nation is not going to prosper, there will be those that will have prepared and that will have gotten themselves into position to take advantage of what is coming. During the coming crisis a massive amount of money and wealth will change hands. Instead of living in fear and cowering under a blanket, now is the time to figure out how you and your family can thrive during the hard times that are on the horizon.
During the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, there were some people that actually did amazingly well. So don’t lose hope just because the U.S. economy is headed for disaster.
Everything that can be shaken will be shaken. But if you understand what is happening and you prepare for it, the times that are coming can actually be a great adventure and a great blessing for you and your family.
But if you just stick your head in the sand and have blind faith in the system and pretend that everything is going to be okay somehow, then you will be blindsided by the coming crisis and you will only have yourself to blame.
 With everything else that is going on in the world, a lot of people have failed to notice that we are seeing some of the worst economic numbers that we have seen in more than a year. For example, it was announced on Thursday that initial claims for unemployment benefits have hit their highest level in a year and a half. Hopefully this is just a temporary blip in the data, because initial unemployment claims tend to have a very strong correlation with the overall performance of the economy. We also continue to see poverty statistics rise. According to government statistics released earlier this month, the number of Americans living in poverty and the number of Americans on food stamps are both at all-time record highs. Meanwhile, the Dow and the S&P 500 are both down more than 5 percent since the election and the U.S. government rolled up 22 billion dollars more debt in October 2012 than it did in October 2011. The unfortunate truth is that things are not getting better. The U.S. economy continues to become weaker and more unstable, and there are a whole lot of reasons to be very pessimistic about our economic situation as we move into the winter months.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the troubling economic numbers that have been released in recent days…
Initial Claims For Unemployment Benefits
The optimism that many analysts had about jobs is rapidly dissipating. Over the past few weeks there has been a huge wave of companies announcing layoffs. Just check out this article and this article.
But now we are actually seeing a significant rise in the number of American workers applying for unemployment benefits. Initial claims for unemployment benefits soared to 439,000 for the week ending November 10th. This is the highest level that we have seen in more than a year. The last time initial claims were this high was April 2011. It is interesting to note that the largest numbers of new unemployment claims came from the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Record Food Stamp Numbers
In dozens of articles I have carefully documented the steady rise of poverty in America and the steady decline of the middle class.
Even though our politicians insist that we are in the middle of an “economic recovery”, the number of Americans dependent on the government for their very survival just continues to keep going up.
A few days ago, the latest food stamp numbers were released. It turns out that the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 420,947 from July to August. That was the largest one month increase that we have seen in a year. At this point, an all-time record 47.1 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program. What would that look like if all of those people had to actually stand outside in bread lines like in the old days?
Stunning Stock Market Declines
A few days ago, I wrote about how many wealthy Americans are dumping stocks and other financial assets in anticipation of the looming “fiscal cliff”.
Well, if things get much worse we may soon have a “market crash” on our hands.
The Dow and the S&P 500 are both down by more than 5 percent since the election and many are wondering if things are about to get a whole lot worse.
Shares of Apple are down by 25 percent since late September. Some analysts are actually using the term “panic selling” to describe what is happening to the stock.
Slowing Economic Activity
All over America there are indications that economic activity is starting to slow down. Is Superstorm Sandy responsible for this, or are there other factors at work?
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, economic activity appears to be contracting in areas that were hit particularly hard by Superstorm Sandy…
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index was minus 5.2 this month after minus 6.2 in October. Readings of less than zero signal contraction in New York, northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut.
Things appear to be slowing down in the mid-Atlantic region as well. According to CNBC, manufacturing activity in the mid-Atlantic region has contracted much faster than analysts were projecting…
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index slumped to -10.7 from 5.7 the month before. The fall was much steeper than economists’ expectations for slippage to a reading of 2.0, according to a Reuters poll.
Any reading above zero indicates expansion in the region’s manufacturing. The survey covers factories in eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware.
New Poverty Numbers
More American families are falling out of the middle class every single day.
New numbers that were just released by the U.S. Census Bureau show that the number of Americans living in poverty rose to a new all-time record of 49.7 million last year.
Once upon a time, people would have laughed at you if you suggested that someday 50 million Americans would be living in poverty.
But here we are.
Soaring Government Debt
Anyone that follows my columns on a regular basis knows that government debt is one of my major pet peeves.
Well, despite all of the “budget deals” that have been made between the Republicans and the Democrats, the amount of debt that we are accumulating just continues to balloon in size.
The federal budget deficit for October 2012 was 120 billion dollars. That was a huge increase over the October 2011 federal budget deficit of 98 billion dollars.
How long can we possibly continue to do this?
Things In Europe Are Getting Worse Too
In case you had not noticed, the economic situation in Europe continues to unravel as well. The eurozone is officially in a recession once again, and unemployment in the eurozone is at an all-time record high. Violent protests and rioting happen on an almost daily basis over in Europe now. The largest economy on the planet continues to implode right in front of our eyes, and this is another factor that will continue to drag down the U.S. economy.
So is there anyone out there that actually still believes that things are “getting better”?
The brief period of economic stability that we have been experiencing is rapidly coming to an end. The “recovery” turned out to be extremely disappointing, and now the next major downturn is almost here.
 Are we on the verge of societal collapse? Many of the greatest empires throughout world history were not conquered by outside forces. Rather, they crumbled inwardly as extreme social decay set in. There have been many that have compared the last days of the Roman Empire to what America is going through right now. In the decades following World War II, the United States was the most powerful and the most prosperous nation on the entire planet, but now things are rapidly changing. There are literally thousands of signs that our society is collapsing all around us. All you have to do to see this is turn on a television or pick up a newspaper. I spend a lot of time discussing our nightmarish economic and political headaches in this column, but the truth is that our problems go much deeper than that. Even if a major miracle happened and we got the “right person” into the White House, the Federal Reserve was shut down, our 16 trillion dollar national debt was paid off, our trade deficit went to zero, a solution was found for the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble and the “too big to fail” banks were broken up, we would still be facing a national crisis of unprecedented magnitude. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that America has become an absolute cesspool of filth and corruption, and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is rapidly disappearing. Until we get our hearts right, there is not much hope for the future of this once great nation.
So are these the last days of America? The following are 25 signs of extreme social decay….
#1 We have come to accept that it is “normal” that security goons should be allowed to touch the private parts of our women and our children in the name of “national security”. Just check out the ordeal that conservative radio host and Breitbart editor Dana Loesch suffered through recently at the hands of the TSA…
They performed the regular pat-down and then the agent informed me that she would be using the front of her hands to “sweep” my groin. She pressed and swept across my crotch three times horizontally and three times vertically. In any other circumstance this would be sexual assault.
The agents themselves were friendly and smiled, yet I was still denied a public screening and no witness of my own present for the screening itself (a second agent was in the room at the time). I had no reason to be angry with the agents themselves, yet I was angry, and still am, at the regulations which require them to routinely violate men, women, and children in the name of a false sense of security.
#2 Police up in New Jersey say that a man kept his girlfriend padlocked in a bedroom for most of the last 10 years.
#3 It is hard to imagine some of the sick things that people do behind closed doors. Down in Florida, one former medical examiner was apparently collecting human body parts…
In what could be described as an episode of “Auction Hunters” turned reality horror show, authorities in Pensacola are investigating after finding human brains, hearts and lungs in a storage unit they say belonged to a former medical examiner.
Someone bought the storage unit at an auction last week and noticed a foul smell as they were sifting through furniture and boxes.
Officials at the medical examiner’s office in Pensacola say the remains of more than 100 people were found crudely stored in Tupperware containers, garbage bags and drink cups.
#4 A former fifth grade teacher down in Atlanta has admitted that she helped her students cheat because they were “dumb as hell“.
#5 Many debt collectors are willing to say absolutely despicable things in order to collect debts. One debt collector recently told a disabled military veteran that if he would have “served our country better” he would not be disabled and that he “should have died“…
“If you would have served our country better you would not be a disabled veteran living off Social Security while the rest of us honest Americans work our asses off,” one of the agency’s debt collectors allegedly told the vet. “Too bad, you should have died.”
Michael Collier was declared 100 per cent disabled after suffering permanent spine and head injuries while in the Army. As a result, both Collier and his wife receive disability payments from the federal Social Security Administration, which are exempt from seizure by debt collectors.
#6 In many areas of the country, street drugs have become so powerful that they are pushing users completely over the edge. Of course there is never any excuse for murdering children, but would any rational person do this kind of thing without being high on drugs?…
A Camden, N.J. man was charged with murder for allegedly slashing the throat of a 6-year-old Camden boy. Police say he told investigators he was smoking a combination of marijuana and PCP, known as “Wet” just before the killing.
Osvaldo “Popeye” Rivera, 31, was arrested Sunday afternoon and charged with murder and attempted murder.
Police say Rivera was trying to sexually assault the boy’s 12-year-sister and the little boy tried to come to her defense. Investigators say Rivera slashed the throats of both children.
#7 A school bus driver in Wisconsin recently told a 12-year-old boy that “maybe your mother should have chosen abortion for you” because he didn’t like the Romney campaign sign standing in his front yard.
#8 We are continuing to see a rash of “zombie attacks” all over the nation. The following is one recent example from Pennsylvania….
A Doylestown man, who was naked and bleeding profusely, gnawed on woman’s head all while “screaming like an animal” during a wild neighborhood rampage, state police said.
#9 A beekeeper over in North Carolina says that someone recently stole 20,000 bees from his property.
#10 Evidence of social decay extends to the highest levels of the federal government. Just check out what some highly paid federal workers have been doing when they were supposed to be working…
In 2006, the deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested for trying to seduce online someone he thought was a teenage girl. Four years later, the Securities and Exchange Commission found that 17 of 31 employees caught accessing porn at work since 2008 — one for up to eight hours a day — were senior staff.
In 2010, the Boston Globe reported that senior Pentagon staff were downloading child porn. Instead of generating a media storm, the story died. Senior staff were watching the sexual torture of small children on Pentagon computers, and Americans were not outraged?
#11 In a shocking murder trial in southern California, prosecutors have played a tape of a former chef admitting to police that he slow cooked the body of his wife for four days.
#12 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, and many of our prisons are absolute hellholes. The following is what a former inmate named Daniel Miller recently told Business Insider about what really goes on inside our prisons…
“When they found out the black homosexual had approached me talking that homosexual stuff, I was told ‘Look you have to stab him or pipe him down,'” Miller recently told Business Insider about his first experiences during two decades spent in and out of prison, most recently for robbery.
“The guys were there just to make sure I actually split this guy’s head open.”
Those “guys” were the Aryan Brotherhood, one of the most famous and feared jailhouse gangs.
Miller, now 38, joined up when he first entered the correctional system in Kansas as a teen. He bounced around a number of different facilities before being released on Sept. 19 this year.
“At 16 years old, I wanted to be accepted in prison,” he said. “I would fight everybody.”
He grew so cold and so good at fighting he became the one ordering attacks on fellow inmates — something that still haunts him.
#13 A 7-year-old boy was part of a gang of youths that recently invaded the home of a 51-year-old woman and beat the living daylights out of her.
#14 What in the world has gotten into our kids? Many of them have literally turned into little monsters. Just check out what two little boys recently did to a church in Virginia…
Two little boys caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to a Loudon County church, according to officials.
The vandals used the children’s toys and art supplies to damage the sanctuary, fellowship hall, and Sunday school rooms. They also smeared food for needy families and their own feces and urine on walls and floors.
According to Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guider, all that damage was done by two boys, aged 6 and 7.
#15 A former high school English teacher has been accused of having sex with five different male students. The most disturbing part is that she is a mother of three children and her husband is serving this country in the U.S. Army.
#16 You might want to think twice before becoming a pizza delivery worker. Just check out what happened over in Dallas recently…
Two Dallas teens called in a pizza order to lure a delivery worker to a Grand Prairie house, then beat the woman in the head with a pistol and sexually assaulted her on the porch, according to Grand Prairie police reports released Wednesday.
Bleeding and wearing just a bra, the 30-year-old woman drove herself back to a Grand Prairie Pizza Hut, the reports stated.
The 17-year-olds accused in the July 24 robbery and sexual assault were in custody Wednesday at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center in Dallas in what Grand Prairie police are calling one of the city’s “most heinous offenses” in recent memory.
#17 According to shocking new research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately two-thirds of all Americans in the 15 to 24 year old age bracket have engaged in oral sex.
#18 Last year it was reported that 86 teen girls at one high school in Memphis, Tennessee were either pregnant or had recently given birth.
#19 Sex trafficking has become a raging epidemic in America. It is estimated that there are now approximately a million prostitutes in the United States. Most of them are being trafficked by male “pimps”.
#20 As our social decay gets even deeper, it is going to become more important than ever to secure our homes. Just check out what happened over in Kansas City, Missouri recently…
An elderly couple is recovering Tuesday after they were brutally beaten inside their south Kansas City home.
The woman was also raped, according to a police report.
Tony L. Putman, 18, of Kansas City was charged with six felonies Tuesday afternoon. The charges include one count of rape and two counts of robbery.
The couple’s ordeal began about 1:30 p.m. Monday when a man broke into their home near 73rd Street and Campbell Avenue. Entry was gained through a basement window, which was broken.
#21 It is becoming easy to understand why so many Americans are arming themselves these days. Even Brad Pitt says that he “doesn’t feel safe” without a gun.
#22 In this day and age you often can’t even trust the police. Just check out this recent example…
Police in Cherryville took bribes, helped transport stolen goods and extorted money in a multi-state operation that raked in at least $750,000, according to federal indictments unsealed Wednesday.
FBI agents flocked to the Cherryville Police Department and several homes in Cherryville Wednesday morning, loading up boxes of evidence and making arrests.
#23 Overall, more than 50 million abortions have been performed in the United States since Roe vs. Wade was decided back in 1973. At this point, the number of babies killed by abortion in America every year is almost as high as the total number of military deaths in all of U.S. history.
#24 Respect for parents has declined to shockingly low levels in America. Just check out what one son down in Florida recently did to his own mother…
A Florida man yesterday rubbed dog feces in his mother’s face during an argument in the home they share, police report.
Cops arrested William Jenkins, 22, on a felony domestic battery charge for pushing his mother, 53, to the floor during the dispute, according to a Palmetto Police Department report.
When questioned by cops, Jenkins denied pushing his mother, but admitted that he “did rub dog defecation on her face because she yelled at him,” investigators noted.
#25 A 21-year-old Utah man is being accused of stabbing his grandmother 111 times and then removing some of her organs. But news like this hardly makes headlines anymore because crimes such as this one have become so common.
Sadly, a list like this one could go on indefinitely. More examples of extreme social decay pop up in the news almost hourly.
But we don’t like to admit that we have problems. Our politicians continue to proclaim how we are “the greatest nation on earth” and that the rest of the world should follow our example.
Rarely do you ever hear politicians talk about how we are the most obese nation on the planet, about how we have the highest divorce rate on the planet or about how we have the highest teen pregnancy rate on the planet.
Until we are willing to admit just how bad things have gotten, we will never be willing to accept the solutions that are necessary to start fixing things.
Many Americans are pinning their hopes on the upcoming election, but instead of making things better I am concerned that this election may trigger a lot of the anger that is boiling just under the surface in this country.
If we continue down the path that we are currently on, the social decay that we are now experiencing is going to accelerate.
The fundamental level of trust that any society needs in order to operate efficiently is breaking down, and more Americans than ever are living in fear. You can see it in their eyes.
Our politicians can pile on millions more laws, rules and regulations and they can put a police officer on every corner, but that isn’t going to make Americans trust one another. Once confidence in our societal institutions and our faith in one another is gone, it is going to be incredibly difficult to ever rebuild it.
Yes, we really are on the verge of societal collapse. What we are experiencing right now is just the leading edge of the coming crisis.
Things are going to get a whole lot worse from here.
 Are you good at flipping burgers , waiting tables or stocking shelves? Are you proficient with a cash register? Do you enjoy doing mindless work for very low pay? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you are probably going to fit in very well in the new U.S. economy. According to a report that has just been released by the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created since the end of the recession have been low paying jobs. So exactly what is a low paying job? Well, the National Employment Law Project defines it as a job with an hourly wage between $7.69 and $13.83. But of course you can’t pay a mortgage or support a family on $13.83 an hour. Even if you got full-time hours the entire year, you would make less than $28,000 on an annual basis. The federal poverty level for a family of five is $27,010. So needless to say, most of these new jobs are not paying enough to support a middle class lifestyle. This represents an economic failure on a fundamental level. Our economy is producing very few good jobs that enable people to be able to raise families and live the American Dream. The ranks of “the working poor” are exploding and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government is sitting at an all-time record. Sadly, if current trends continue things are going to get a lot worse.
The numbers compiled by the National Employment Law Project are absolutely stunning. Most of the jobs lost during the recent recession were mid-wage jobs, and most of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs. This represents a fundamental shift in our economy. Just check out these figures….
–21 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were low wage jobs paying between $7.69 and $13.83 an hour.
–58 percent of the jobs created since the end of the recession have been low wage jobs paying between $7.69 and $13.83 an hour.
–60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs paying between $13.84 and $21.13 an hour.
–22 percent of the jobs created since the end of the recession have been mid-wage jobs paying between $13.84 and $21.13 an hour.
But even the high end of the mid-wage pay scale is not that great.
If you make $21.13 an hour and you work full-time hours for the entire year you will end up making about 42,000 for an entire year.
Yes, that can probably support a family of four in most areas of the country, but you really have to scrimp and save to do it.
And keep in mind that 80 percent of all the jobs being created now pay at that level or less.
Welcome to the new U.S. economy.
It really stinks for workers.
The truth is that there has been a fundamental cultural change in our economy. Workers are no longer valued. They are viewed as expensive liabilities that should be disposed of as rapidly as possible once their usefulness has ended.
There is very little loyalty to workers these days, and most big corporations do not really care about the quality of the lives of their workers. The number of companies offering health insurance to their workers continues to decline (and thanks to Obamacare that decline is accelerating even further), and the number of companies offering pension plans to their workers continues to decrease as well.
At this point, less than 25 percent of all jobs in the United States are good jobs, and that number continues to shrink.
Is this because the big corporations are not making enough money?
Not at all.
In fact, corporate profits have been setting all-time records in recent years….
Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of the economy are at an all-time low….
So why is this happening?
Well, I already talked about the fundamental cultural shift that is happening. Companies simply do not care about their workers like they used to. America is becoming a very cold place.
Another major factor is that millions upon millions of our good jobs have been shipped overseas thanks to the emerging one world economy.
In the old days, U.S. corporations were more or less forced to hire American workers and the wages earned from a typical manufacturing job could easily support a growing family.
That has entirely changed now.
The big corporations no longer need American workers to make stuff. They can just close up shop and move their facilities to the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to very desperate workers.
And now there is greatly increased competition for the jobs that we still have in this country because so many of our jobs have disappeared.
If you don’t like how your employer is treating you that is just too bad. In most cases your employer would have absolutely no problem finding a replacement for you. In fact, there are probably thousands of people in your community that are desperate for a job such as yours.
So what does all of this mean?
It means that the decline of the middle class in America is going to get a lot worse.
American families are rapidly getting poorer. Real median household income has fallen another 4.8 percent since the last recession ended.
Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to go up and American family budgets are being stretched to the limit.
In a previous article, I noted that 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
Things have fundamentally changed. The days of endless prosperity for the middle class are gone for good. You are going to have to adjust.
At this point, 77 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
If you are relying solely on a job for the financial survival of your family, then you are probably in a similar situation.
Do you know why they call it a “job”?
It is because you will mostly likely end up living “Just Over Broke” for most of your life.
A major shift in our economy is happening.
We are transitioning from an “employment economy” to an “ownership economy”.
Most Americans that are currently working for others are not going to have a bright economic future.
That may sound harsh, but it is the truth.
Even if you are still one of the fortunate Americans that still has a good job, you need to start thinking about what you are going to do when you lose that job someday.
The system is failing, and if you have blind faith that it is always going to take care of you and provide a job for you then you are likely to be bitterly disappointed someday.
 If you could live in any state in America, where would you go? During troubled times like these, what is the best place in the United States to live? A lot of people are asking these kinds of questions these days. Our economy is on the verge of collapse, natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense, the U.S. population is becoming angrier and more frustrated by the day, our government has become incredibly oppressive and controlling, war could break out at any time and evidence that society is breaking down is all around us. As our world becomes increasingly unstable, many families are considering moving somewhere else. But what areas are best and what areas should be avoided? Is there really a “best place to live” in America? Well, the truth is that each family is facing a different set of circumstances. If you have a great support system where you live, it can be really tough to pick up and move 3000 miles away from that support system. If you have a great job where you live now, it can be really tough to move some place where there may be no job at all for you. But without a doubt there are some areas of the country that will be far better off than others in the event of a major economic collapse. This article will take a look at each of the 50 U.S. states and will list some of the pros and cons for moving to each one.
Not all of the factors listed below will be important to you, and a few have even been thrown in for humor. But if you are thinking of moving in the near future hopefully this list will give you some food for thought.
A few years ago when my wife and I were living near Washington D.C. we knew that we wanted a change and we went through this kind of a process. We literally evaluated areas from coast to coast. In the end, we found a place that is absolutely perfect for us. But different things are important to different people.
And if I gave your particular state a low rating, please don’t think that I am trashing the entire state or all of the people who live there.
For example, there are some absolutely wonderful people that live in the state of California, and there are some areas of California that I would not mind visiting at all. But for the times that are coming I am convinced that it is going to be a really bad place to live.
Not that I have all the answers either. Hopefully this article can get some debates started, and hopefully those debates will help people that are thinking of moving to another state to be more informed.
The following are some pros and cons for all 50 states….
Alabama
Pros: warm weather, southern hospitality, relatively low population density
Cons: hurricanes, tornadoes, crime, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: C+
Alaska
Pros: great fishing, lots of empty space, low population density, great for rugged individualists
Cons: very high cost of living, earthquakes, volcanoes, extremely cold, short growing season, too much snow, potentially cut off from supplies from the lower 48 states during an emergency situation
Overall Rating: B
Arizona
Pros: warm weather
Cons: illegal immigration, wildfires, return of dust bowl conditions, not enough jobs, not enough rain, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence, Phoenix
Overall Rating: D+
Arkansas
Pros: southern hospitality, warm weather, Ozark National Forest
Cons: tornadoes, Clintons, New Madrid fault zone, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: C
California
Pros: Disneyland, warm weather, Malibu
Cons: high taxes, Jerry Brown, earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, gang violence, crime, traffic, rampant poverty, insane politicians, ridiculous regulations, bad schools, political correctness, illegal immigration, not enough jobs, air pollution, multiple nuclear power plants, possible tsunami threat along the coast, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento, huge drug problem, high population density, the state government is broke, many more reasons to leave California right here
Overall Rating: F
Colorado
Pros: Rocky Mountains, Colorado Springs
Cons: wildfires, illegal immigration, short growing season, not enough rain, too much snow, huge drug problem
Overall Rating: B
Connecticut
Pros: beautiful homes
Cons: high taxes, insane politicians, ridiculous regulations, political correctness, short growing season, multiple nuclear power plants, high population density
Overall Rating: C-
Delaware
Pros: good fishing
Cons: Joe Biden, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, crime, high population density
Overall Rating: D
Florida
Pros: University of Florida Gators, oranges, low taxes, southern hospitality, Disneyworld, Gainesville, warm weather, beautiful beaches, Daytona
Cons: hurricanes, most of the state is barely above sea level, high population density, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence, illegal immigration
Overall Rating: C
Georgia
Pros: peaches, southern hospitality, warm weather
Cons: not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence, flesh eating disease, Atlanta
Overall Rating: B-
Hawaii
Pros: awesome beaches, warm weather, great vacation destination
Cons: vulnerable to tsunamis, very high cost of living, volcanoes, traffic, high population density, high taxes
Overall Rating: C-
Idaho
Pros: awesome people live there, great potatoes, low population density, high concentration of liberty-minded individuals, low crime, Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene, north Idaho has plenty of water compared to the rest of the interior West, beautiful scenery
Cons: cold in the winter, wildfires, short growing season, not enough jobs
Overall Rating: A
Illinois
Pros: once you get away from Chicago things are not quite so bad
Cons: Barack Obama, drought, New Madrid fault zone, high population density, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, crime, gang violence, Chicago, East St. Louis, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, mob robberies, the state government is drowning in debt
Overall Rating: D-
Indiana
Pros: it is in better shape than Illinois, good farming, high Amish population
Cons: drought, tornadoes, the city of Gary, relatively high population density, near the New Madrid fault zone, a “rust belt” state
Overall Rating: C-
Iowa
Pros: low population density, low crime, good farming
Cons: drought, tornadoes, cold in the winter, multiple nuclear power plants, too much snow, very flat
Overall Rating: B-
Kansas
Pros: low population density, low crime, good farming
Cons: drought, tornadoes, return of dust bowl conditions, very flat
Overall Rating: B
Kentucky
Pros: southern hospitality, great horses, Lexington
Cons: New Madrid fault zone, not enough jobs, rampant poverty, Louisville
Overall Rating: C
Louisiana
Pros: southern hospitality, warm weather
Cons: hurricanes, New Orleans, not enough jobs, tornadoes, multiple nuclear power plants, oil spills, crime, gang violence, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: D
Maine
Pros: low population density, low crime, polite people
Cons: extremely cold, short growing season, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, too much snow
Overall Rating: B-
Maryland
Pros: the Washington Redskins play there
Cons: Baltimore, borders Washington D.C., high population density, really bad traffic, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence
Overall Rating: C-
Massachusetts
Pros: beautiful homes
Cons: high taxes, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, high population density, short growing season, almost everything is illegal in Massachusetts
Overall Rating: D+
Michigan
Pros: once you get away from Detroit and Flint things get better
Cons: Detroit, Flint, Dearborn, extremely cold, short growing season, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, too much snow, a “rust belt” state
Overall Rating: D-
Minnesota
Pros: land of 10,000 lakes
Cons: extremely cold, short growing season, multiple nuclear power plants, too much snow, high taxes
Overall Rating: C
Mississippi
Pros: southern hospitality, relatively low population density, warm weather
Cons: hurricanes, tornadoes, not enough jobs, rampant poverty, crime
Overall Rating: C+
Missouri
Pros: good farming, Branson
Cons: drought, tornadoes, New Madrid fault zone, not enough jobs, crime
Overall Rating: C
Montana
Pros: low population density, low taxes, high concentration of liberty-minded individuals, Missoula, Kalispell
Cons: extremely cold in the winter, wildfires, short growing season, not enough rain, near Yellowstone super volcano, rampant poverty, too much snow
Overall Rating: B+
Nebraska
Pros: low population density, good farming
Cons: tornadoes, drought, multiple nuclear power plants, cold in the winter, very flat
Overall Rating: B
Nevada
Pros: low population density, lots of empty space, low taxes, warm weather
Cons: Harry Reid, Las Vegas, Reno, not enough water, not enough rain, wildfires, hard to grow food, not enough jobs, crime, gang violence, huge drug problem, Yucca Mountain
Overall Rating: D+
New Hampshire
Pros: low crime, beautiful homes
Cons: extremely cold, short growing season, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, too much snow
Overall Rating: C
New Jersey
Pros: anyone got something?
Cons: high population density, Camden, Newark, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, Atlantic City, crime, gang violence
Overall Rating: D-
New Mexico
Pros: low population density, warm weather
Cons: illegal immigration, wildfires, return of dust bowl conditions, not enough jobs, not enough rain, crime, gang violence, huge drug problem
Overall Rating: C-
New York
Pros: the entire state is not like New York City
Cons: New York City, Mayor Bloomberg, high taxes, cold in the winter, high population density, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, the “too big to fail” banks
Overall Rating: D
North Carolina
Pros: southern hospitality, warm weather, Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Cons: hurricanes, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants
Overall Rating: B
North Dakota
Pros: low crime, lots of oil-related jobs, low population density
Cons: extremely cold, short growing season, too much snow
Overall Rating: B
Ohio
Pros: the Cincinnati Reds, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, high Amish population
Cons: not enough jobs, cold in the winter, multiple nuclear power plants, high population density, Toledo, Cleveland, a “rust belt” state
Overall Rating: C
Oklahoma
Pros: warm weather, good farming
Cons: drought, tornadoes, wildfires, return of dust bowl conditions, not enough rain, crime, Oklahoma City, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: C
Oregon
Pros: tremendous natural beauty
Cons: high taxes, Portland, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, not enough jobs, huge drug problem, possible tsunami threat along the coast
Overall Rating: C-
Pennsylvania
Pros: high Amish population
Cons: high population density, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, a “rust belt” state
Overall Rating: C
Rhode Island
Pros: so small that most people don’t notice their problems
Cons: the state is flat broke, short growing season, political correctness, ridiculous regulations, insane politicians, not enough jobs, high population density
Overall Rating: D+
South Carolina
Pros: southern hospitality, warm weather, Myrtle Beach
Cons: hurricanes, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: B
South Dakota
Pros: low population density, fun tourist traps, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore
Cons: extremely cold, short growing season, very flat, too much snow
Overall Rating: B
Tennessee
Pros: Nashville, Michael W. Smith, southern hospitality, warm weather, Gatlinburg
Cons: Memphis, New Madrid fault zone, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: B-
Texas
Pros: low taxes, warm weather, Austin
Cons: drought, illegal immigration, tornadoes, wildfires, West Nile Virus, the Dallas Cowboys, return of dust bowl conditions, speed traps, not enough rain, multiple nuclear power plants, George W. Bush, crime
Overall Rating: B-
Utah
Pros: beautiful mountains, low crime, low population density
Cons: cold in the winter, wildfires, Salt Lake City, short growing season, not enough rain, illegal to collect rain
Overall Rating: B-
Vermont
Pros: low crime, beautiful homes
Cons: cold in the winter, insane politicians, ridiculous regulations, short growing season, political correctness, not enough jobs, too much snow
Overall Rating: C
Virginia
Pros: the University of Virginia, southern hospitality, Charlottesville
Cons: borders Washington D.C., high population density, multiple nuclear power plants, Richmond, really bad traffic in northern Virginia
Overall Rating: B-
Washington
Pros: the eastern half of the state is quite nice and much different from the coast
Cons: way too much rain along the coast, volcanoes, wildfires, insane politicians, ridiculous regulations, political correctness, not enough jobs, possible tsunami threat along the coast, Seattle
Overall Rating: C
West Virginia
Pros: beautiful mountains
Cons: not enough jobs, rampant poverty
Overall Rating: B
Wisconsin
Pros: cheese, the Green Bay Packers
Cons: extremely cold, short growing season, multiple nuclear power plants, too much snow,
Overall Rating: B-
Wyoming
Pros: low population density, lots of empty space, low taxes
Cons: extremely cold, too windy, too flat, wildfires, short growing season, not enough rain, Yellowstone super volcano
Overall Rating: B-
What do you think of these rankings?
What do you think is the best place to live in America?
Do you have any additional pros and cons that should be added to this list?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
 In the crazy times in which we live, it helps to expect the unexpected. Sometimes you can think that you have it all figured out and then this world can throw a real curveball at you. Very few people anticipated that we would see a massive outbreak of the West Nile Virus in Texas this year or that the Mississippi River would be in danger of drying up after experiencing historic flooding last year. Who would have thought that we would see the worst drought in more than 50 years or that horrific wildfires would burn nearly 7 million acres of land? This is why economic conditions are always so hard to predict. A single “black swan event” can come along and change everything almost overnight. Our world has become incredibly unstable, and so who really knows what the rest of 2012 will bring? Will we see a stock market crash? Will the hurricane season be unusually bad? Will war erupt in the Middle East? Will we see a major earthquake on the west coast or even a volcanic eruption? Will the upcoming election cause an eruption of anger and frustration in America? We don’t know the answers to those questions yet, and the truth is that we will probably see some things happen that very few of us are anticipating at this point.
This is an exciting time to be a “news junkie”, but unfortunately the vast majority of the news these days is bad.
It is almost as if a “perfect storm” is developing. Our weather is going crazy, our financial system is on the verge of collapse, our politicians seem more insane than ever, there is evidence of social decay all around us and the drumbeats of war in the Middle East grow louder with each passing day.
As strange as 2012 has been so far, I fear that things are about to get a whole lot stranger.
Not that we haven’t had some very unanticipated events happen this year up to this point.
The following are 8 economic threats that we were not even talking about at the beginning of the summer….
#1 West Nile Virus
What is up with all of the strange disease outbreaks that we have seen so far this year?
Flesh eating disease and the bird flu have both been making global headlines this summer, but in the U.S. right now it is the West Nile Virus that is getting the most attention.
So far more than 1,100 cases of the West Nile Virus have been diagnosed in the United States and more than 41 people have died from it.
More than half of the cases so far have been in Texas, but we have also seen people come down with West Nile Virus in Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.
If you live in any of those areas, you might want to do your best to avoid mosquitos for the rest of the summer.
#2 Historic Drought
This summer, the United States has experienced the worst drought that it has seen in more than 50 years.
This weather has been absolutely crippling for farmers and ranchers all over the nation. As I wrote about the other day, about half of all corn being grown in the U.S. is currently either in “poor” or “very poor” condition.
As the drought has dragged on, many farmers and ranchers have become increasingly desperate. In fact, one farmer has even been feeding his cows candy in an attempt to deal with rising feed prices.
Needless to say, this drought has been causing commodity prices to soar.
On Tuesday, the price of corn closed at a record $8.38 a bushel, and the price of soybeans closed at $17.30 a bushel.
#3 The Mississippi River Is Drying Up
Thanks to this drought, rivers and lakes all over the United States are drying up. In fact, there have been reports that millions of fish have been dying because water levels have gotten so low in many areas.
Even the mighty Mississippi River has dropped to dangerously low levels.
At this point, the Mississippi is lower than most people living along the river can ever remember. If it drops much lower, it could potentially have an absolutely devastating impact on the U.S. economy.
A recent NBC News report described what is at stake….
About $180 billion worth of goods move up and down the river on barges, 500 million tons of the basic ingredients for much of the U.S. economy, according to the American Waterways Operators, a trade group. It carries 60 percent of the nation’s grain, 22 percent of the oil and gas and 20 percent of the coal, according to American Waterways Operators. It would take 60 trailer trucks to carry the cargo in just one barge, 144 18-wheeler tankers to carry the oil and gas in one petroleum barge.
If all traffic along the Mississippi was forced to stop, it is estimated that it would cost the U.S. economy about 300 million dollars a day.
And already there have been stoppages along one 11 mile stretch of the river….
Nearly 100 boats and barges were waiting for passage Monday along an 11-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that has been closed because of low water levels, the U.S. Coast Guard said. New Orleans-based Coast Guard spokesman Ryan Tippets said the stretch of river near Greenville, Miss., has been closed intermittently since Aug. 11, when a vessel ran aground.
So what happens if the Mississippi gets even lower?
#4 Wildfires
The extreme heat has also been responsible for the horrific outbreak of wildfires that we have seen in the western United States this year.
So far in 2012, nearly 7 million acres have been burned up.
That is an area about as big as the states of Maryland and Delaware combined.
#5 The Global Elite Hoarding Gold
In the past, the global elite and the mainstream media would mock those who are hoarding gold in anticipation of a major financial collapse.
But now it is the global elite who are hoarding gold.
In a previous article, I discussed how men such as George Soros and John Paulson are investing mind-boggling amounts of money in gold right now. The amount of money that these two individuals are investing in gold is difficult to comprehend….
There was also news last week in an SEC filing that both George Soros and John Paulson had increased their investment in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest publicly traded physical gold exchange traded fund (ETF).
Mr Soros upped his stake in the ETF to 884,400 shares from 319,550 and Mr Paulson bought 4.53m shares, bringing his stake to 21.3m.
At the current price of about $156 a share, these are new investments of about $88m of Mr Soros’ cash and more than $700m from Mr Paulson’s funds. These are significant positions.
Combined, Soros and Paulson dumped more than three quarters of a billion dollars into gold during the second quarter of 2012 alone.
So what are they anticipating?
The central banks of the world have been very busy hoarding gold as well. According to the World Gold Council, global central banks were net buyers of 157.5 metric tons of gold during the second quarter of 2012.
Over the past 20 years there has never been a time when global central banks have accumulated that much gold during a single quarter.
So just what in the world is going on?
#6 Recession In The UK
Everyone knew that Greece was in deep trouble.
And everyone knew that Italy and Spain were in deep trouble.
But it was a surprise to see the UK economy plunge deep into recession. During the second quarter of 2012 alone, the UK economy shrunk by 0.7 percent.
At this point the British economy has contracted for three quarters in a row.
Hopefully things will not get even worse over there.
#7 Major Economic Slowdown In The United States
Considering the fact that the U.S. economy never even came close to recovering from the last recession, it is a bit disheartening to see that it looks like we are headed for another major downturn.
According to Michael Panzer of Financial Armageddon, measurements of economic activity compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the U.S. economy is rapidly heading into another recession. If you doubt this, just check out this chart.
And for a lot more reasons why the U.S. economy is entering another recession, check out this article.
#8 Hauled Off To A Mental Institution For What You Believe
Do you ever worry that what you post on Facebook could get you involuntarily committed to a mental institution?
Well, that is exactly what happened to one military vet recently.
A former Marine named Brandon Raub was hauled off to a mental institution because of what he posted on his Facebook page.
This is how the Economic Policy Journal summarized what happened to Raub….
The muscle used to grab Brandon Raub was local Chesterfield County, VA police. Also present during the grab were agents of the FBI and of the Secret Service.
Both the FBI and the Secret Service claim that they were only observing and not participating in the grab. The Chesterfield County police initially stated that they were only carrying out a request from the federal agencies.
The police also claim Raub is not under arrest, even though he was led away in handcuffs and is not permitted to leave the psychiatric ward of a hospital—even though it appears that Raub is not in any way in need of psychological care.
I note this happened in the United States of America, with local police, FBI agents and Secret Service taking part.
The claim that Raub is “not under arrest” is completely and totally ridiculous. The authorities came to his door, slapped handcuffs on him and are holding him in a mental institution against his will.
And now he has been transferred to a facility that is 3 hours away from his family, his supporters and his legal team.
What in the world is America turning into?
The Rutherford Institute is defending Raub, and the following is an excerpt from a statement about this case on their website….
“This is not how justice in America is supposed to work—with Americans being arrested for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights, forced to undergo psychological evaluations, detained against their will and isolated from their family, friends and attorneys. This is a scary new chapter in our history,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Brandon Raub is no different from the majority of Americans who use their private Facebook pages to post a variety of content, ranging from song lyrics and political hyperbole to trash talking their neighbors, friends and government leaders.”
This is the kind of thing that we have seen under brutal totalitarian regimes in the past. Dissidents are grabbed by authorities and taken to mental institutions where they are conveniently “disappeared”.
This kind of thing is not supposed to happen in America.
But it is happening.
And you know what? Before the authorities start attacking people for exercising free speech on Facebook perhaps they should clean up their own house.
It turns out that thousands of DHS employees have been convicted of crimes in recent years. The following is from a recent CNS News article….
There have been 2,527 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees and co-conspirators convicted of corruption and other criminal misconduct since 2004, according to a federal auditor.
Our world is becoming a very crazy place.
One thing that most people did see coming this summer was the continuing economic decline in Greece.
At this point Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression and it gets worse by the day.
If you can believe it, 1,250 companies have shut down in the second largest city in Greece in 2012 alone.
Ouch.
And many in the financial world believe the the situation in Greece is going to go beyond the breaking point fairly soon.
In fact, analysts at Citibank believe that there is a 90 percent chance that Greece will leave the euro over the next 12 to 18 months.
90 percent?
They sound pretty sure of themselves.
Not that the rest of Europe is in such great shape either.
According to Bloomberg, it looks like Europe will soon be losing about half a million auto industry jobs….
Efforts by PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG) and Fiat SpA (F) to end losses in Europe could cost more than 500,000 people their jobs as automakers and parts suppliers grapple with the effects of the European sovereign debt crisis.
We live in very unusual times.
Things are falling apart all around us and we seem to be rapidly approaching another major economic crisis.
Central banks, governments and Wall Street insiders all seem to be preparing for the worst.
Are you?
 Do you want to know when the “economic collapse” is going to happen? Just open up your eyes and take a look. The “economic collapse” is already happening all around us. So many people talk about the coming economic collapse as if it is some massively hyped event that they will be able to point to on the calendar, and a lot of writers spend a lot of time speculating about exactly when it will happen. But as I have written about before, the economic collapse is not a single event. The economic collapse has been happening, it is happening right now, and it will be getting a lot worse. Yes, there will be moments of great crisis. We saw one of those “waves” back in 2008 and another “wave” is rapidly approaching. But all of the waves are part of a process that is continually unfolding. Over the past 40 years, the United States and Europe have piled up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and now a tremendous amount of pain is heading our way. Economic conditions in the United States and Europe have already deteriorated badly and they are going to continue to deteriorate. Nothing is going to stop what is coming.
But many people are still in denial about our economic decline. Some people still believe that everything is going to be just fine. Way too often I get comments on my site that go something like this….
“I just don’t know what you are talking about. Where I live everything is just fine. The malls are packed, the restaurants are full and everybody I know is going on vacation this summer. Personally, I am doing great. I just bought a 60 inch television and a new boat. Every year all the ‘doom and gloom’ types such as yourself proclaim that an economic collapse is right around the corner but it never happens. And you know what? It is not going to happen. Those in charge know what they are doing and America has the greatest economy on earth. We have overcome challenges before and we will be able to handle whatever comes this time. Your lack of faith in America and in the American people astounds me. Everything is going to be just fine, so why don’t you just *************************************.”
You get the idea.
I definitely understand that most Americans are terribly self-involved these days, but when I read comments like this I am once again amazed at just how delusional some people can be.
Why can’t people just open their eyes and look at the evidence of economic collapse that is all around us?
Yes, there are wealthy enclaves all over the country where things may seem better than ever, but that is not the reality for most Americans.
All over the country, our infrastructure is in shambles.
All over the country, our once proud cities are being transformed into hellholes.
All over the country, formerly middle class families are living in their cars.
There are dozens and dozens of economic statistics that clearly show that we are in the midst of a long-term economic decline. I have listed 65 of them below, but I could have easily doubled or tripled the size of the list.
I simply do not understand how anyone can believe that things are “great” or that the U.S. economy is going to be “just fine”.
We are living through a complete and total economic nightmare, and hopefully we can get more Americans to wake up from their entertainment-induced comas so that they can begin to understand exactly what is happening to this country.
The following are 65 signs that the economic collapse is already happening all around us….
1. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of long-term unemployed Americans has doubled from 2.7 million to 5.4 million.
2. The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
3. The unemployment rate in the U.S. has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row, and 42 percent of all unemployed Americans have been out of work for at least half a year.
4. Unemployment in the eurozone has hit another brand new record high. It is now sitting at 11.2 percent. It has risen for 14 months in a row.
5. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
6. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed fell by more than 20 percent between 1991 and 2010.
7. Overall, the number of “new entrepreneurs and business owners” dropped by a staggering 53 percent between 1977 and 2010.
8. The unemployment rate in Spain is now up to 24.6 percent.
9. Morgan Stanley is projecting that the unemployment rate in Greece will exceed 25 percent in 2013.
10. Since Barack Obama became president, the price of a gallon of gasoline has risen from $1.85 to $3.49.
11. The average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011, and electricity bills in the U.S. have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
12. About three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as will be sold in 2012.
13. While Barack Obama has been in the White House, home values in the United States have declined by 12 percent.
14. According to AARP, 600,000 American homeowners that are 50 years of age or older are currently in foreclosure.
15. Right now there are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
16. According to Gallup, the current level of homeownership in the United States is the lowest that they have ever measured.
17. Federal housing assistance increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.
18. In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
19. All around us our cities are crumbling. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 2.2 trillion dollars is needed just to repair critical infrastructure in the United States.
20. The unemployment rate in New York City is now back up to 10 percent. That equals the peak unemployment rate in New York City during the last recession.
21. Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
22. The U.S. Postal Service is about to default on a 5.5 billion dollar payment for future retiree health benefits.
23. According to Graham Summers, “when we account for all the backdoor schemes Germany has engaged in to prop up the EU, Germany’s REAL Debt to GDP is closer to 300%.”
24. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families in the United States declined “from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010“.
25. The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 28 times larger than it was back in 1990.
26. The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
27. During 2010 alone, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day.
28. The U.S. government says that the number of Americans “not in the labor force” rose by 17.9 million between 2000 and 2011. During the entire decade of the 1980s, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” rose by only 1.7 million.
29. Eight million Americans have “left the labor force” since the recession supposedly ended. If those Americans were added back into the unemployment figures, the unemployment rate would be somewhere up around 12 percent.
30. Approximately 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.
31. At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less. If that sounds like a high figure, that is because it is. Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
32. 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.
33. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
34. In 2007, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 29 age bracket was about 6.5 percent. Today, the unemployment rate for that same age group is about 13 percent.
35. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
36. Medicare spending increased by 138 percent between 1999 and 2010.
37. Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. Since 2008, the U.S. economy has lost 1.3 million jobs while at the same time 3.6 million more Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program.
41. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6.4 million.
42. The number of Americans on food stamps has risen from 32 million to 46 million since Barack Obama became president.
43. Right now the poverty rate for children living in the United States is 22 percent, and approximately one-fourth of all American children are enrolled in the food stamp program at this point.
44. The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent since 2007.
45. Child homelessness in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 2007.
46. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
47. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
48. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” is now sitting at an all-time high.
49. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
50. It is now being projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.
51. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
52. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.
53. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
54. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
55. In 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for ever dollar that they earned. Today, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States have $1.48 of debt for every dollar that they earn.
56. The United States was once ranked #1 in the world in GDP per capita. Today we have slipped to #12.
57. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
58. Incredibly, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.
59. Today there are approximately 25 million American adults that are living with their parents.
60. The U.S. dollar has lost more than 96 percent of its value since 1900. You can thank the Federal Reserve system for that.
61. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
62. Overall, the U.S. national debt has grown by nearly 10 trillion dollars over the past decade.
63. The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
64. 40 years ago the total amount of debt in America (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is nearly 55 trillion dollars.
65. As Financial Armageddon recently point out, so many homeless people are pooping on the escalators at San Francisco’s Civic Center Station at night that the escalators are breaking down and repair teams have been called in to clean up the mess. As the economy gets even worse, will scenes like this start playing out in all of our cities?
 Every single day more Americans fall into poverty. This should deeply alarm you no matter what political party you belong to and no matter what your personal economic philosophy is. Right now, approximately 100 million Americans are either “poor” or “near poor”. For a lot of people “poverty” can be a nebulous concept, so let’s define it. The poverty level as defined by the federal government in 2010 was $11,139 for an individual and $22,314 for a family of four. Could you take care of a family of four on less than $2000 a month? Millions upon millions of families are experiencing a tremendous amount of pain in this economy, and no matter what “solutions” we think are correct, the reality is that we all should have compassion on them. Sadly, things are about to get even worse. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and when it hits the statistics posted below are going to look even more horrendous.
When it comes to poverty, most Americans immediately want to get into debates about tax rates and wealth redistribution and things like that.
But the truth is that they are missing the main point.
The way we slice up the pie is not going to solve our problems, because the pie is constantly getting smaller.
Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted, the U.S. dollar is slowly losing its status as the reserve currency of the world and we are steadily getting poorer as a nation.
Don’t be fooled by the government statistics that show a very small amount of “economic growth”. Those figures do not account for inflation.
After accounting for inflation, our economic growth has actually been negative all the way back into the middle of the last decade.
According to numbers compiled by John Williams of shadowstats.com, our “real GDP” has continually been negative since 2005.
So that means we are getting poorer as a nation.
Meanwhile, we have been piling up astounding amounts of debt.
40 years ago the total amount of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars.
Today it is nearly 55 trillion dollars.
So we have a massive problem.
Our economic pie is shrinking and millions of Americans have been falling out of the middle class. Meanwhile, we have been piling up staggering amounts of debt in order to maintain our vastly inflated standard of living. As our economic problems get even worse, those trends are going to accelerate even more.
So don’t look down on the poor. You might be joining them a lot sooner than you might think.
The following are 40 facts about poverty in America that will blow your mind….
#1 In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
#2 It is being projected that when the final numbers come out later this year that the U.S. poverty rate will be the highest that it has been in almost 50 years.
#3 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
#4 Today, one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.
#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial benefits from the government. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#6 It is projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.
#7 Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#8 During 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
#9 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
#10 Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6 million and the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 14 million.
#11 Right now, 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 projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.
#13 The poverty rate for children living in the United States is 22 percent, although when the new numbers are released in the fall that number is expected to go even higher.
#14 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars a year.
#15 Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6% poverty rate.
#16 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#17 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#18 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.
#19 Child homelessness in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 2007.
#20 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.
#21 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.
#22 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7 percent) than has ever been measured before.
#23 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.
#24 A lot of younger Americans have found that they cannot make it on their own in this economy. Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
#25 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
#26 Amazingly, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
#27 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
#28 At this point, the poorest 50% of all Americans now control just 2.5% of all of the wealth in this country.
#29 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.
#30 Right now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
#31 Half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week.
#32 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”.
#33 Federal housing assistance outlays increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.
#34 Approximately 50 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all right now.
#35 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#36 It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#37 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.
#38 Overall, the amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has risen by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
#39 It was recently reported that 1.5 million American families live on less than two dollars a day (before counting government benefits).
#40 The unemployment rate in the U.S. has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row, and 42 percent of all unemployed Americans have been out of work for at least half a year.
Recently, I wrote a long article about why there will never be enough jobs in the United States ever again.
That means that a whole lot of Americans are not going to be able to take care of themselves.
As our economy gets even worse, there is going to be a tremendous need for more love, compassion and generosity all over the country.
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand, because someday you may need one yourself.
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Show This To Anyone That Believes That “Things Are Getting Better” In America
Have you ever been there? Have you ever desperately hoped that you could just get one more credit card or one more loan so that you could keep things going?
At first, living on credit can be a lot of fun. You can live a much higher standard of living than you otherwise would be able to.
But inevitably a day of reckoning comes.
If the federal government and the American people were forced at this moment to live within their means, the U.S. economy would immediately plunge into a depression.
That is a 100% rock solid guarantee.
But our politicians and the mainstream media continue to perpetuate the fiction that we can live in this credit card economic fantasy land indefinitely.
And most Americans could not care less about the future. As long as “things are good” today, they don’t really think much about what the future will hold.
As a result of our very foolish short-term thinking, we have now run up a national debt of 16.4 trillion dollars. It is the largest debt in the history of the world, and it has gotten more than 23 times larger since Jimmy Carter first entered the White House.
The chart that you see below is a recipe for national financial suicide…
Of course things have accelerated over the past four years. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government has run a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars every single year, and we have stolen more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.
It is the biggest theft of all time. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal.
And now our debt is at a level that most economists would consider terminal. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 103 percent.
We are officially in “the danger zone”.
If things really were “getting better” in America, we would not need to borrow so much money.
Our politicians are stealing from the future in order to make the present look better. During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
That is utter insanity!
If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.
So what is the solution?
Get ready to laugh.
The most prominent economic journalist in the entire country, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, recently suggested the following in an article that he wrote entitled “Kick That Can“…
You mean that we might actually do damage to the debt-fueled economic fantasy world that we are living in if we stopped stealing so much money from future generations?
Oh the humanity!
It is horrifying to think that all that one of the “top economic minds” in America can come up with is to “kick the can” down the road some more.
Unfortunately, neither Paul Krugman nor most of the American people understand that our financial system is actually designed to create government debt.
The bankers that helped create the Federal Reserve intended to permanently enslave the U.S. government to a perpetually expanding spiral of debt, and their plans worked.
At this point, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
So why don’t the American people understand what the Federal Reserve system is doing to us?
It is because most of them are still plugged into the matrix. A Zero Hedge article that I came across today put it beautifully…
If nothing is done about our exploding debt, it is only a matter of time before we reach financial oblivion.
According to Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, the U.S. government is facing a “present value difference between projected future spending and revenue” of 222 trillion dollars in the years ahead.
So how in the world are we going to come up with an extra 222 trillion dollars?
But it is not just the U.S. government that is drowning in debt.
Just check out this chart which shows the astounding growth of state and local government debt in recent years…
All over the United States there are state and local governments that are on the verge of bankruptcy. Just check out what is going on in Detroit. The only way that most of our state and local governments can keep going at this point is to also “kick the can” down the road some more.
And of course most of the rest of us are drowning in debt as well.
40 years ago, the total amount of debt in the U.S. economic system (government + business + consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars.
Today, the total amount of debt in the U.S. economic system has grown to more than 55 trillion dollars.
Can anyone say bubble?
The good news is that U.S. GDP is now more than 12 times larger than it was 40 years ago.
The bad news is that the total amount of debt in our financial system is now more than 30 times larger than it was 40 years ago…
At the same time that we are going into so much debt, our ability to produce wealth continues to decline.
According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001. That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011. That is not just a decline – that is a nightmarish freefall. Just check out the chart in this article.
We are becoming less competitive as a nation with each passing year. In fact, the U.S. has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
Most Americans don’t understand this, but the United States buys far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us each year. In 2012, we had a trade deficit of more than 500 billion dollars with the rest of the world.
That means that more than 500 billion dollars that could have gone to U.S. workers and U.S. businesses went out of the country instead.
So how does our country survive if hundreds of billions of dollars more is flowing out of the country than is flowing into it?
Well, to make up the shortfall we go to the countries that we sent our money to and we beg them to lend it back to us. If that doesn’t work, we just print and borrow even more money.
Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.
That is 8 trillion dollars that could have saved U.S. businesses, paid the salaries of U.S. workers and that would have helped fund government.
But instead, our foolish policies have greatly enriched China and the oil barons of the Middle East.
Sadly, politicians from both political parties continue to boldly support the one world economic agenda of the global elite.
Just consider how destructive many of these “free trade” deals have been to our economy…
When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars.
By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year.
In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
In particular, our trade with China is extremely unbalanced. Today, U.S. consumers spend approximately 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that Chinese consumers spend on goods and services from the United States.
But isn’t getting cheap stuff from China good?
No, because it costs us good paying jobs.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001. During 2010, manufacturing facilities in the United States were shutting down at a rate of 23 per day. How can anyone say that “things are getting better” when our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted?
The truth is that there are never going to be enough jobs in America ever again, because millions of our jobs are being sent overseas and millions of our jobs are being lost to technology.
You won’t hear this on the news, but the percentage of the civilian labor force in the United States that is employed has been steadily declining every single year since 2006.
Younger workers have been hit particularly hard. In 2007, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 29 age bracket was about 6.5 percent. Today, the unemployment rate for that same age group is about 13 percent.
If you are under the age of 30 and you aren’t living with your parents, there is a really good chance that you are living in poverty. If you can believe it, U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
Our economy has been steadily bleeding huge numbers of middle class jobs, and many of those jobs have been replaced by low paying jobs in recent years.
According to one study, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
And at this point, an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
Oh, but “things are getting better”, right?
Maybe if you live on Wall Street or if you are an employee of the federal government.
But for most families this economic decline has been a total nightmare. Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
Sometimes people forget how good things were about a decade ago. About three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as were sold in 2012.
But we like to live in denial.
In fact, a lot of families are trying to keep up their standards of living by going into tremendous amounts of debt.
Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned. By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
Fake it until you make it, right?
But how much debt can our system possibly handle?
Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
We are a nation that is completely addicted to debt, but as the financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated, all of that debt can have horrific consequences.
As the economy has slowed in recent years, the Federal Reserve has decided that “the solution” is to recklessly print money in an attempt to get the debt spiral cranked up again.
Have they gone overboard? You be the judge…
And of course this won’t have any affect on the value of the money that you have been saving up all these years right?
Wrong.
Every single dollar that you own is continually losing value…
Overall, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.
As the cost of living continues to go up and wages continue to go down, millions of American families have fallen out of the middle class and into poverty.
If you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from about 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.
But “things are getting better”, right?
Incredibly, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
But “things are getting better”, right?
There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
But “things are getting better”, right?
In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
But “things are getting better”, right?
Today, more Americans than ever have found themselves forced to turn to the federal government for help.
Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and at this point more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one of them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives 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.
So is it a good sign or a bad sign that the percentage of Americans that are financially dependent on the federal government is at an all-time high?
And in future years the number of Americans that are receiving benefits from the federal government is projected to absolutely skyrocket.
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.
If you take a look at Medicare, things are very more sobering.
As I wrote recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.
At this point, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately $328,404 for every single household in the United States.
Are you ready to contribute your share?
Social Security is a complete and total nightmare as well.
Right now, there are approximately 56 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits.
By 2035, that number is projected to soar to an astounding 91 million.
Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years.
Oh, but don’t worry because “things are getting better”, right?
I honestly do not know how anyone can look at the numbers above and come to the conclusion that the economy is in good shape.
We have accumulated the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, we are bleeding good jobs, government dependence is at an all-time high and we are getting poorer as a nation with each passing day.
But other than that, everything is rainbows and lollipops, right?
If you want to see the economic collapse, just open up your eyes.
And if dramatic changes are not made quickly, things are going to get much, much worse from here.
Please share this article with as many people as possible. Time is quickly running out and there are a whole lot of people out there that we need to wake up while we still can.