You should let the video footage of the wild violence that just took place in London burn into your memory because the same things are going to be happening all over the United States as the economy continues to crumble. We have raised an entire generation of young people with an “entitlement mentality”, but now the economy is producing very few good jobs that will actually enable our young people to work for what they feel they are entitled to. If you are under 30 in America today, things look really bleak. The vast majority of the good jobs are held by people that are older, and they aren’t about to give them up if they can help it. It is easy for the rest of us to tell young Americans to “take whatever they can”, but the reality is that there is intense competition for even the most basic jobs. For instance, McDonald’s recently held a “National Hiring Day” during which a million Americans applied for jobs. Only 6.2% of the applicants were hired. In the old days you could walk down to McDonald’s and get a job whenever you wanted to, but now any job is precious. The frustration among our young people is palpable. Most of them feel entitled to “the American Dream” and they feel like the system has failed them. Unfortunately, many of them are already turning to violence. But the economic riots and the civil unrest that we have already seen are nothing compared to what is coming. Americans are angry, and as the economy continues to collapse that anger is going to reach unprecedented heights.
In recent days, even many in the mainstream media have been openly wondering if the riots that happened in London could happen here too. There is a growing acknowledgement that this country is headed down a very dark path.
The sad thing is that these riots accomplish absolutely nothing. The recent London riots did not create any jobs and they certainly did not solve any economic problems. Instead, they actually hurt the economy even more because a huge am0unt of property was destroyed and people are even more afraid to continue with business as usual.
But when people get to the end of their ropes, most of the time they are not thinking rationally. When frustration erupts, the results can be very, very messy.
All over the United States we are already seeing some very troubling signs of the violence that is coming. The following are 10 signs that economic riots and civil unrest inside United States are now more likely then ever….
#1 Going to the state fair used to be such a fun thing for American families to do. But now no place is safe. The following is how one local ABC News affiliate described the “flash mob” attacks that took place at the Wisconsin state fair recently….
Milwaukee police said that around 11:10 p.m., squads were sent to the area for reports of battery, fighting and property damage being caused by an unruly crowd of “hundreds” of people. One officer described it as a “mob beating.”
Police said the group of young people attacked fair goers who were leaving the fair grounds. Police said that some victims were attacked while walking. They said others were pulled out of cars and off of motorcycles before being beaten.
One eyewitness said that the flash mob attacks at the Wisconsin state fair absolutely overwhelmed the limited police presence that was there….
When I saw the amount of kids coming down the road, all I kept thinking was, ‘There’s not enough cops to handle this.’ There’s no way. It would have taken the National Guard to control the number of kids that were coming off the road. They were knocking people off their motorcycles.
#2 According to a new Rasmussen survey, 48% of Americans believe that reductions in government spending are “at least somewhat likely” to result in civil unrest inside the United States. Unfortunately, perception often greatly influences reality.
#3 U.S. consumer confidence is now at its lowest level in 30 years.
#4 Joblessness among young Americans is at an epidemic level, and when rioting does break out it is usually young people that are leading the way. That is why the following statistics from an article in The Atlantic are so troubling….
One in five Americans are between 15 and 29-years old. And one in five of those Americans are unemployed. For minorities and the under-educated, the picture is much worse. Black teenagers have an unemployment rate of 44 percent, twice the rate for white teens.
#5 We are starting to see mindless violence in a lot of areas that used to be considered safe. In Kansas City on Saturday night, three young people were hit with bullets as they walked the streets of the Country Club Plaza. Mayor Sly James was about 50 yards away when the gunfire erupted. Authorities in Kansas City are considering a stricter curfew for that area.
#6 “Flash mobs” have become such a problem in Philadelphia that the mayor has imposed a strict curfew on young people. Now all teens between the ages of 13 and 18 must be indoors by 9 o’clock at night. The mayor also says that teens need to start pulling up their pants….
“Pull your pants up and buy a belt ’cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”
#7 All over the United States we are seeing that many struggling Americans will do just about anything for money. For example, in Detroit recently three masked men crashed a vehicle through the entrance of a gas station and took off with an entire ATM machine.
#8 Desperate people do desperate things. Many of America’s “forgotten poor” are trying to survive any way that they can. For instance, a group of vagrants recently set up “a makeshift camp” near Prospect Park lake in Brooklyn. According to the New York Post, many nearby residents have been disturbed by what these “drifters” are doing to survive….
The drifters have been illegally trapping and cooking up the critters that call the park home, including squirrels, ducks and swan-like cygnets.
They used crude tactics to hunt their prey, including barbed fishing hooks that ripped off the top half of one poor gosling’s beak. They then cooked the meat over illegal fires. Some of the animals were eaten raw.
#9According to CNN, sales of safes and vaults are absolutely soaring right now. One store owner told CNN that she believes that she is selling a lot more safes now because people are scared that civil unrest could be coming….
“Folks are worried about the decreasing value of the dollar, burglaries on the rise in their neighborhoods … and even the possibility that the unrest we are seeing in other parts of the world slipping over to our country.”
#10 Over the past 100 years, the American population has moved steadily into our big cities and the surrounding suburbs. This has created virtual “ghost towns” in our rural areas from coast to coast. Back in 1910, 72 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, only 16 percent of Americans live in rural areas. But when you crowd huge masses of people close together that makes riots and civil unrest much more likely.
Most Americans are already fed up, and the economy is not even that bad yet. One recent survey found that 73 percent of Americans believe that the nation is “on the wrong track”. Another recent poll found that only 17 percent of Americans now believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.
Millions of very frustrated young people believe that the economic system has failed them and that the political system no longer holds any answers.
America is rapidly approaching a breaking point. I have written previously about the collapse of society that we are already witnessing all over the United States. When the economy totally breaks down, most Americans are not going to be able to handle it.
Sadly, instead of coming together and trying to do something productive, many Americans will resort to rioting, looting and civil unrest. We have already seen this during local emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina.
But mindless violence accomplishes absolutely nothing positive. It just always makes things worse.
Unfortunately, logic and reason are not going to be enough to stop the gigantic wave of frustration that is coming. For most of the rest of us, it will be hard enough to get out of the way and protect our own families from the economic riots and the civil unrest that are coming.
The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. Hatred and anger are growing by the day. The United States is becoming a very frightening place.
So get ready. Our politicians certainly don’t have any answers for us. The debt ceiling deal was a complete and total joke, and corruption is absolutely rampant in Washington right now. Barack Obama is getting ready to leave for yet another vacation, and most of our politicians are only focused on the next election.
So don’t expect a “miracle” from those that are supposed to be leading us.
They don’t care about you.
You need to take care of yourself and your family and your friends.
A massive economic collapse is coming, and most Americans are going to be totally blindsided by it.
How far does the stock market have to go down before we officially call it a crash? The Dow is now down more than 2,000 points in just the last 14 trading days. So can we now call this “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″? Today the Dow was down 519 points. Yesterday, an announcement by the Federal Reserve indicating that the Fed would keep interest rates near zero until mid-2013 helped the Dow surge more than 400 points, but all of those gains were wiped out today. It turns out that the Federal Reserve was only able to stabilize the financial markets for a single day. Fears about the European sovereign debt crisis and the crumbling U.S. economy continue to dominate the marketplace. With each passing day, things are looking more and more like 2008 all over again. So what is going to happen if “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″ pushes the U.S. economy into “The Recession of 2012″?
Just like in 2008, bank stocks are being hit the hardest. That was true once again today. Bank of America was down more than 10 percent, Citigroup was down more than 10 percent, Morgan Stanley was down more than 9 percent and JPMorgan Chase was down more than 5 percent.
How soon will it be before we start hearing of the need for more bailouts? After all, the “too big to fail” banks are even bigger now than they were in 2008.
All of this panic is causing the price of gold to reach unprecedented heights. Today, gold was over $1800 at one point. If the current panic continues for an extended period of time, there is no telling how high the price of gold may go.
In the United States, much of the focus has been on the fact that the U.S. government has lost its AAA credit rating, but the truth is that the European sovereign debt crisis is probably the biggest cause of the instability in world financial markets right now.
The European Central Bank has decided to start purchasing Italian and Spanish debt, and there have been rumors that French debt could be hit with a downgrade. Europe is a total financial basket case right now and unless dramatic action is taken things are going to get progressively worse.
Of course the U.S. is also certainly contributing greatly to this crisis. The federal government is on track to have a budget deficit that is over a trillion dollars for the third year in a row. The U.S national debt is a horrific nightmare, but our politicians keep putting off budget cuts.
The debt ceiling deal that was just reached basically does next to nothing to cut the budget before the next election. Unless the “Super Congress” does something dramatic, the only “budget cuts” we will see before the 2012 election will be 25 billion dollars in “savings” from spending increases that will be cancelled.
The modest spending cuts scheduled to go into effect beginning in 2013 will probably never materialize. Whenever the time comes to actually significantly cut the budget, our politicians always want to put it off for another time.
But in the end, debt is always going to have its day. Our politicians can try to kick the can down the road all they want, but eventually a day of reckoning is going to come.
In fact, if the U.S. and Europe had not piled up so much debt, we would not be facing all of the problems we are dealing with now.
Things could have been so much different.
But here we are.
The truth is that this debt crisis is just beginning. There is no magic potion that is going to make all of this debt suddenly disappear.
Most Americans have no idea how much financial pain is coming. We have been living way beyond our means for decades, and now we are going to start paying for it.
Now that long-term U.S. government debt has been downgraded, huge numbers of other securities are also going to be affected. In fact, according to a recent Bloomberg article, S&P has already been very busy slashing the ratings on hordes of municipal bonds….
Standard & Poor’s lowered the AAA ratings of thousands of municipal bonds tied to the federal government, including housing securities and debt backed by leases, following its Aug. 5 downgrade of the U.S.
That is the thing about financial markets – once the dominoes start to fall, the ripple effects can be felt for a long, long time.
So if this stock market crash gets even worse, will the Federal Reserve respond with even stronger measures?
They have already basically promised to keep interest rates near zero for the next two years. So what else can the Fed do?
Well, many now believe that there is a very good chance that we could see another round of quantitative easing.
Not that more quantitative easing is going to help much of anything. Rather than helping the economy, the last round of quantitative easing just pushed commodity prices through the roof. But the Fed is unlikely to just sit there and do nothing while financial markets struggle.
But it is not just the financial markets that are having a difficult time right now. Bad news is coming in from all over the economy. The possibility that we could soon slip into another major recession is growing by the day.
Unfortunately, our economy is so weak already that a new recession would probably hurt even more than the last recession did.
But the American people are in no mood for more economic pain. Every recent poll shows that Americans are already fed up.
For example, a brand new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 73 percent of the American people believe that the country is “on the wrong track”.
So let’s certainly hope that the current stock market crash does not set off another major global recession. We certainly do not need things to get significantly worse than they are right now.
But whether it hits now or later, the truth is that a whole lot of economic pain is on the way. The U.S. and Europe have been making really, really bad decisions for decades, and we are not going to be able to escape the consequences of those decisions.
The global financial system is one huge mountain of leverage, risk and debt. A collapse is inevitable.
When you build a house of cards on a foundation of sand, you should not be surprised when it comes crashing down.
The next wave of the economic collapse is coming, and those that are wise will get prepared.
The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families. For many Americans, “flat broke” has become a permanent condition. Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are. The financial condition of average American families continues to decline and this is showing up in all of the recent surveys. For example, according to a new Gallup poll, “lack of money/low wages” is the number one financial concern for American families. To make ends meet, many American families are going into even more debt and more American families than ever are turning to government assistance. Right now, more Americans than at any other point since World War II are flat broke and have lost hope. Until this changes, the frustration level in this country is going to continue to grow.
The following are 10 facts about the financial condition of American families that will blow your mind…..
#1 Only 58 percent of Americans have a job right now.
#2 Only 56 percent of Americans are currently covered by employer-provided health insurance.
#3 The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261.
#4 The average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.
#5Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#6 At this point, American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007.
#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#10According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment.
So what is causing all of this?
Where in the world did all of the good jobs go?
Well, the truth is that millions of them have been shipped overseas.
Our politicians promised us that merging our economy with the economies of other nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to workers would not create more unemployment inside America.
They were dead wrong.
Now we are being told that we just need to accept a lower standard of living.
For example, billionaire Howard Marks says that it is time for all of us to just accept that the standard of living of American workers is inevitably going to decline to the level of the rest of the world….
“In addition to balancing the budget and growing the economy, I think we have to accept that the coming decades are likely to see U.S. standards of living decline relative to the rest of the world. Unless our goods offer a better cost/benefit bargain, there’s no reason why American workers should continue to enjoy the same lifestyle advantage over workers in other countries. I just don’t expect to hear many politicians own up to this reality on the stump.”
Are you willing to accept that?
Well, most Americans appear to be willing to accept this “new reality” because they keep sending most of the exact same bozos back to Washington D.C.
Meanwhile, the job losses continue to get worse. As I wrote about the other day, as the U.S. economy has started to slow down again we are starting to see another huge wave of layoffs all over America.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where all of our jobs are going. But unfortunately, most Americans don’t understand what is happening because neither the mainstream media nor our politicians are telling them the truth.
But it is not just the globalization of the economy that is destroying our jobs.
The federal government bureaucracy has become so oppressive that it is amazing that anyone is still willing to hire workers in this day and age.
Hiring workers has become so complicated and so expensive that many small business owners want to avoid it at all cost.
For example, a small business owner identified as “007” recently left the following comment on one of my recent articles….
Speaking as a small employer, I would rather have a root canal than another employee. Let’s see. You first have to hire someone you trust without some labor lawyer suing you for some type of discrimination. Then you have OSHA to make sure your work place is safe. Then you have workmans compensation insurance, unemployment taxes, health insurance, liability insurance, now Obamacare. Oh be careful not to be deemed to have a “hostile work environment”. Then you have to negotiate the labor laws. The Department of Labor is constantly cranking out regulation.
Then you get the pleasure of paying payroll taxes both state and federal along with the required filing of a multitude of payroll forms. Miss filing or paying these taxes and you will be crushed with interest and penalties.
Of course, you are competing with businesses that can hire at a fraction of the cost of American Labor and with very little regulations. In this economy, no one in their right mind is hiring into this unstable and declining economy.
If business turns down all you have to worry about is laying off workers. Of course your unemployment insurance tax will go up 200% for years. Then you only have to then worry about a wrongful termination law suit.
The entire system is stacked against American workers.
If you are a blue collar worker, you should give up hope that things are going to get better. The system has failed you.
You can stop waiting for the “good jobs” to come back.
They aren’t coming back.
That is one reason why I try to encourage everyone to become more independent of the system.
As our economic system continues to degenerate, Americans are going to become increasingly desperate.
Sadly, desperate people do desperate things. Already we are starting to see signs that the fabric of American society is starting to be ripped to shreds.
So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?
There is a limit to how many people we can actually put in prison. The reality is that the number of Americans in prison has nearly tripled since 1987.
Our prisons are already dangerously overcrowded. As society falls apart, many communities will simply not be able to shove more people behind bars.
Even with our prisons stuffed to the gills, many of our largest cities continue to be transformed into absolute hellholes.
Well, they appear to be too busy fighting with each other and cheating on their wives to do much about our problems.
According to Politico, U.S. Representative David Wu is the latest member of Congress to be accused of a sex scandal….
Rep. David Wu has been accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend, the latest scandal to engulf the troubled Oregon Democrat.
This country is a complete and total mess. Tens of millions of American families are flat broke and are about to slip into poverty. Meanwhile, our politicians continue to prove that they are some of the most corrupt on the planet.
There are many out there that still believe that America has a bright future ahead.
It is getting really hard to see why anyone could possibly believe that.
The competition for jobs in the United States is absolutely brutal right now, and it is about to get worse. A new wave of layoffs is sweeping across America. During tough economic times, Wall Street favors companies that are able to cut costs, and the fastest way to “cut costs” is to eliminate employees. After a period of relative stability, the employment picture in the U.S. is starting to get bleaker again. New applications for unemployment benefits have now been above 400,000 for 15 straight weeks. Finding a good job is kind of like winning the lottery in this economy. Our federal government and the state governments have made it incredibly complicated and extremely expensive to have employees on the payroll. It is getting harder and harder to get a large enough return to justify the time and expense that hiring employees requires. So many firms now find themselves trying to do more with the employees that they already have. Other companies are turning to temp agencies as a way to reduce costs and increase workplace flexibility. A lot of the big corporations are sending as much work as they can overseas where the wages are far lower and where the regulatory environment is much simpler. All of this is really bad news for American workers that just want good jobs that will enable them to provide for their families.
When we first started seeing huge numbers of layoffs a few years ago, I encouraged people to look into government jobs because I thought that they would be a lot more stable in this economic environment.
But today that is no longer true. In fact, state and local governments all over the United States are responding to massive budget problems by slashing payrolls in an unprecedented fashion.
Sadly, the reality is that the number of “secure jobs” is rapidly declining in America. If you have a “job” (“just over broke”) right now, you might not have it for long. That is one reason why everyone should be trying to become more independent of the system.
Once upon a time the U.S. economy produced a seemingly endless supply of good jobs. This helped us develop the largest and most vibrant middle class in modern world history.
But now employees are regarded as “costly liabilities”, and businesses and governments alike are trying to reduce those “liabilities” as much as they can.
This summer the pace of layoffs seems to be accelerating all over the nation. Just check out what has been happening over the past few weeks….
-Lockheed Martin has made “voluntary layoff offers” to 6,500 employees.
-Detroit is losing even more jobs. American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings has told the remaining 300 workers at its manufacturing facility in Detroit that their jobs will be ending in early 2012.
-Layoff notices have been sent to 519 employees of Milwaukee Public Schools, and more than 400 open positions are going to go unfilled.
-The Gap has announced that up to 200 stores will be closed over the next two years.
-Cisco has announced plans to lay off 9 percent of their total workforce.
-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says that 625 city employees will be losing their jobs as a result of cutbacks.
-Pharmaceutical giant Merck recently dumped 51 workers from an office in Raleigh, North Carolina.
-Perkins has revealed that they will be closing 58 restaurants.
-This week, Goldman Sachs announced that they will be eliminating 1,000 jobs.
Sadly, there are hundreds of more examples of recent layoffs and job losses. One website that tracks these layoffs daily is Daily Job Cuts. It is pretty sad when there are entire websites that are devoted to chronicling how fast our economy is bleeding jobs.
What is worse is that it looks like the pace of layoffs is going to keep increasing.
One report that was recently released found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.
That is not good news.
Things don’t look good for employees of state and local governments either.
State and local governments have eliminated approximately 142,000 jobs so far this year.
That is bad, but this is just the beginning.
UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will combine to slash a whopping 450,000 jobs by the end of next year.
Ouch.
Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke keep trying to tell us that the economy is improving, but that simply is not the case. Yes, some of the largest corporations have announced big earnings, but that is not translating into lots of jobs for American workers.
Today, most large corporations only want to have as many U.S. workers as absolutely necessary. In a world where labor has been globalized, it just doesn’t make sense for corporations to shell out massive amounts of money to American workers when they can legally get away with paying slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe.
So if it seems like it is far harder to get a good job in America today than it used to be, the truth is that you are not imagining things.
Our entire system discourages job creation inside the United States. Every single year, even more ridiculous job-killing regulations are being passed on the federal and state levels. It has become extremely expensive and ridiculously complicated to hire people.
So how are American families surviving? Those that still do have jobs are finding that wages are not going up but the cost of living rapidly is. Many American families are making up the difference by using their credit cards more.
In June, credit card purchases in the U.S. increased by 10.7 percent compared to the same month a year ago.
It looks like a whole lot of people have not learned their lessons about how bad credit card debt is.
Millions of other American families have fallen out of the middle class completely. Today, one out of every six Americans is enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program. The level of economic suffering in this country continues to soar.
In fact, the number of Americans that are now sleeping in their cars or living in tent cities remains at staggering levels.
What we are witnessing in this country is not just a “recession” or an “economic downturn”. What we are witnessing are fundamental economic changes.
Until there are fundamental policy changes in the United States, there will continue to be huge waves of layoffs and millions of jobs will continue to be shipped out of the country.
In the old days, one could go to college, get a good job with one company for 30 years and retire with a big, fat pension.
Now, that way of doing things is completely and totally dead.
Today, there is virtually no loyalty out there. It doesn’t matter how long you have been working at a particular job. When it becomes financially expedient to get rid of you, that is exactly what is going to happen.
It is a cold, cruel world out there right now. Don’t assume that you will always have a good job. The world is rapidly changing.
Don’t get caught in the trap of believing that the way that things were is the way that things are always going to be in the future.
All over America, restlessness and frustration are growing. It has now been almost three years since the great financial crash of 2008, and yet the U.S. economy is still a complete and total mess. In fact, there are all sorts of signs that things are about to get even worse, and the American people are just about fed up. Virtually every major poll, survey and measure of consumer confidence shows that the American people are becoming more pessimistic about the economy. Millions of hard working Americans that worked their fingers to the bone for their employers and that did everything “right” are sitting at home on their couches tonight staring blankly at the television. Many of them still have a hard time believing that they were laid off and that there is nobody out there that wants to give them a good job. There are millions of other Americans that won’t get much sleep tonight because they will spend much of the night rolling around in bed wondering how they are possibly going to be able to pay the mortgage. We have never faced such an extended economic downturn in modern U.S. history, and a lot of people are starting to freak out about the condition of the economy. As Gerald Celente likes to say: “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose – they lose it.”
Every single month, the number of good jobs continues to go down. Wall Street actually rewards companies that have a good “outsourcing strategy”. As I have written about previously, a growing percentage of the jobs that are being “created” these days are very low paying jobs. But you can’t support a family, pay a mortgage or even afford decent health insurance on what you would make stocking shelves at Target or passing out buckets of chicken for KFC.
The American people keep waiting for “hope” and “change” to show up, but all they get instead are more helpings of “despair” and “frustration”.
Sadly, most Americans still cling to the hope that if the “next election” will just turn out the right way that things will be okay. But the truth is that things seem to stay on pretty much the same course no matter who we put into office.
For many years the status quo seemed to be okay for most people, but now we are starting to reap the results of the economic seeds that we have sown.
Now our economic decline is starting to accelerate and people are starting to panic. Most Americans may not know why all of this is happening, but what many of them do know is that something in their gut is telling them that things have gone terribly, terribly wrong somehow.
The following are 10 signs that the American people are starting to freak out about the condition of the economy….
#1 Things have already gotten so bad that Americans will literally trample one another just to get on a waiting list for rental assistance vouchers. Just check out the following excerpt from a local news report about a recent incident in Texas….
At least eight people were hurt Thursday morning while scrambling to line up for a limited number of Dallas County rental vouchers — after waiting for hours in their cars.
People lined up Thursday morning to apply for Dallas County Section 8 housing vouchers. Dallas County sheriff’s spokesman Kim Leach estimated the crowd at about 5,000.
Video of this incident is posted below. One of the people that was trampled was a pregnant woman….
#2 Almost every measurement of consumer confidence is going down. For example, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell from 61.7 in May to 58.5 in June.
#3 The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index has fallen to 63.8 after being at 71.5 in June. It is now the lowest that it has been since the last recession “ended”.
#4 The Rasmussen Consumer Index is down 9 points from a month ago.
#5 A recent poll taken by Rasmussen found that 68 percent of Americans believe that we are actually in a recession right now.
#6 According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%.
#7 In many areas of the United States this summer, just about anything that is not bolted down is being stolen by people that are desperate for money.
#8 According to one recent poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.
#9 Another recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.
#10 According to a brand new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 63 percent of Americans believe that the nation is on the wrong track. That figure is three percent higher than it was last month.
One of the only things preventing chaos from breaking out in the streets of our cities from coast to coast is government handouts.
Today, almost 20 percent of all personal income in the United States comes from benefits provided by the federal government.
You don’t believe this? Just check out what the New York Times recently had to say….
Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics.
There are tens of millions of Americans that are living “on the edge”, but at least the massive government handout programs are enabling most of them to survive.
So what happens when the checks from the government stop coming?
Look, I am not advocating that the “welfare society” that we have become is a good thing. Today, Americans receive more in direct government benefits than they pay in taxes. That is not even close to sustainable.
What I am pointing out is that tens of millions of Americans that are deeply suffering are currently being pacified by these government handouts. Once the handouts are cut significantly or taken away completely it is going to unleash a lot of anger and frustration.
Of course what the American people really need are good jobs that will give them dignity and allow them to provide for their families, but millions of those keep getting shipped out of the country.
So the only thing that millions of Americans still have to hang on to are their government benefits. Once that changes a whole lot of people are going to throw a fit.
In fact, we are already seeing some really bizarre behavior across the United States. In many areas of the country we are literally watching society crumble right in front of our very eyes.
If you doubt this, just check out these two articles….
But not all Americans will resort to lawless behavior. In fact, there are a lot of really good, hard working people out there that this economy has left behind.
There are some people that have put in decades of hard work only to see their dreams shrivel up over the past few years.
Some of the stories people send me are absolutely heartbreaking. I have looked at each and every comment that has been left on The Economic Collapse over the past couple of years. Needless to say, it has taken a huge investment of my time to go through more than 20,000 comments. But in the process I have gotten a very good idea of what people are going through across the nation.
So how badly are people hurting? Well, a reader identified as “Anna44″ recently shared with us what some of her family members have been going through in this economy….
My B-I-L was a dealership owner/manager who worked long hours over 38 years and had to close his doors when Saturn was dissolved. When his dealership went under, 72 others lost their job. That’s 72 families who took a hit. He lost his home, everything. A few of his former employees lost their homes as well eventually. They were not lazy or WORTHLESS. It took him a year and a half to finally find something, but now he lives in a hotel unable to qualify for a house or apartment. This is an educated man who competed nationwide for top dog and got it more then once. His biggest fault? He’s almost 60, young enough to need the work, but too old to be hired.
As for my husband- 26 years AF officer, handling millions & billions on International & National levels has just entered his 7th month of unemployment. Two tours abroad- lazy he is NOT. He doesn’t qualify for unemployment, nor is he counted because he gets a retirement check. He wants and needs to work- yet there is little out there. If he doesn’t find something soon, we too will lose the home we sunk every cent into after 20 years of saving for it!
All across America tonight there are similar stories. People have done everything “right” all of their lives and they are frustrated that now they have been pushed to the edge of poverty by this economy.
More Americans than ever are desperate for money and many of them will do just about anything to get it. The crumbling U.S. economy has pushed millions of ordinary Americans to the brink of utter desperation. When it comes time to choose between being able to survive or breaking the law, many people are choosing to break the law. These days it seems like Americans will do just about anything for money. All over the country, there are areas where just about anything that is not bolted down is being stolen. A lot of people have resorted to making money however they can – selling drugs, selling their bodies, shoplifting, invading homes, taking bribes, running credit card scams and even stealing from their own family members. You will have a hard time believing some of the things that you are about to read below. When people have their backs pushed up against the wall, often they find that they are willing to do things that they never imagined that they would do. Things are getting crazy out there on the streets of America, and as the economy continues to decline things are going to get a lot crazier.
The following are 15 examples that show many Americans have become so desperate that they will do just about anything for money….
#1 In Utah, one unemployed 28 year old man is offering to be “human prey” for hunters for the bargain price of $10,000. For an additional $2,000, he will let people hunt him down while he is running around naked.
Across the country, in states like Illinois, Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Florida, there have been reports of thieves stealing unsecured air conditioning units weighing as much as 125 pounds.
#4 Even police officers are committing desperate acts these days. Just check out what one police officer in Chicago is charged with doing….
A Chicago Police officer stole $50,000 from his ailing elderly father to pay off his bills and gambling debts and unsuccessfully attempted to swipe his dad’s retirement savings by impersonating him
#6 In another area of Atlanta, thieves have been breaking down walls and busting bathroom fixtures with sledgehammers in order to get their hands on copper, brass and steel….
Kids in two Atlanta communities won’t have their neighborhood pools to help beat the summer heat, at least for now. Thieves used what is believed to be sledge hammers to bust walls and break fixtures in bathrooms at Adams and South Bend parks to steal copper, brass and steel.
#7 One grandmother in Florida has been accused of trying to sell her newborn grandson for $75,000.
#8 In Antioch, California a total of approximately 300 power poles were recently knocked down by thieves and stripped of their copper wiring.
#9 In Minnesota recently, a mob of teen girls brutally pummeled a mother and her two daughters until they were black and blue. Apparently the mob of teen girls was enraged over a pair of missing sunglasses.
#10 In Asheville, North Carolina thieves recently took off with 4 metal tables and 16 metal chairs that were sitting outside a pizzeria.
#12 In Oregon, thieves recently broke into a Salvation Army community center and stole 3 large air conditioning units. Now all the people that come to that facility for help and for community programs this summer will be absolutely sweltering.
#13 In the Cleveland area, two young boys that had set up a lemonade stand were robbed in broad daylight. The crooks got away with approximately 12 dollars.
#15 A 59 year old man from North Carolina named Richard James Verone was so desperate for money that he actually robbed a bank and got caught on purpose so that he could be put in prison and be given free health care.
One day Verone walked into an RBC Bank in North Carolina, handed a clerk a note demanding exactly one dollar and sat down and waited for the police to arrive and arrest him.
Verone has a growth on his chest and two ruptured disks but he does not have any health insurance. He is hoping that in prison he will get the medical treatment that he needs.
As society continues to unravel, prison is going to look like an appealing option for more and more people.
At least in prison you get fed, you have a roof over your head and they will take care of your medical needs.
For a whole lot of Americans, that would be a major step up.
Have you noticed that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear?
America is becoming a cold, cruel place and lawlessness is everywhere.
For many more signs that our society is starting to crumble, please see these two articles….
For ages, Americans have looked down on the crime and the depravity that goes on in other areas of the world.
Well, now America has all of the crime and depravity it can handle and it is going to get a lot worse as millions of formerly middle class Americans descend into poverty.
A regular commenter on my website who identifies himself as “El Pollo de Oro” recently described the kind of chaos that he believes is coming to the streets of America….
I live in Philadelphia, a city that used to have a ton of blue-collar manufacturing jobs as well as a great deal of white-collar employment, but the blue-collar manufacturing jobs have disappeared–and on the white-collar side, a college degree isn’t necessarily the ticket to prosperity it once was. Philly has its share of nasty, dangerous ghetto areas as well as ritzy, upscale areas like Rittenhouse Square. But then, there are parts of Mexico City that look like Beverly Hills except that the signs are en español. A minority of Chilangos are filthy rich, which is what you expect in a Third World country: an uber-rich minority and a poor majority. And when The Banana Republic of America (formerly the USA) signed on for globalism and ignored Ross Perot’s warning, it opted to become a Third World country—which means that you can kiss the American middle class goodbye.
But there will be some growth industries in The Banana Republic of America: kidnapping, drug smuggling, murder for hire, carjacking, armed robbery. And if you want a taste of what life will be like in American cities in the future, just spend a few weeks in Guatemala City, Johannesburg or Caracas—all of which have the type of horrible crime rates that BRA cities can look forward to in the future. Desperate people do desperate things, and hardcore desperation will be in the norm in the BRA. It won’t be fun (unless, of course, being robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight is one’s idea of a good time).
Welcome to life in a rotting, decaying Third World hellhole. Welcome to the collapse of the Roman Empire. Welcome to life in The Banana Republic of America, formerly the USA.
America is changing. The safe, secure environment that we all used to take for granted is dying. The number of truly desperate people rises by the day, and many of those desperate people are willing to do just about anything for money.
The United States used to have a thriving middle class, but our economic system has been so manipulated over the decades that now almost all of the economic rewards go to the very top of the food chain.
25 years ago, the wealthiest 12 percent of all Americans controlled 33 percent of all the wealth. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans control 40 percent of all the wealth.
In the United States today, we are actually witnessing the death of the middle class. Our jobs have been shipped overseas, the banks have enslaved us to debt, the government keeps finding more ways to tax us and the Federal Reserve keeps debasing our currency.
Everywhere you go, despair is in the air. According to a brand new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 63 percent of Americans believe that the nation is on the wrong track.
Fortunately, many Americans are responding to these signs of trouble by preparing.
One local Oklahoma newspaper recently did an article that profiled a few of the growing number of Americans that are preparing for hard times….
Rod and Lauretta Smith estimate they could survive a year without going to the grocery store.
A large garden on their 5-acre property in south Tulsa produces hundreds of quarts of canned and frozen beans, tomatoes and other vegetables. Chickens provide eggs.
The Smiths are among a small but growing number of people stocking up on food to become more self-reliant in a time marked by natural disasters and economic uncertainty.
The truth is that all of us should try to become less dependent on the system. The Democrats, the Republicans, the Federal Reserve and the big corporations are not there to help you. They are not going to come riding to the rescue if you lose your job and your home.
We all need to do what we can to become more independent and to prepare ourselves and our families for the incredibly difficult economic times that are inevitably coming. Those that have faith that their jobs will always be there or that the government will always take care of them will be deeply disappointed.
The system is dying and society is coming apart.
The only rational thing to do is to prepare for what is coming.
Economic despair is beginning to spread rapidly in America. As you read this, there are millions of American families that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails. For a growing number of Americans, it has become an all-out battle just to be able to afford to sleep under a roof and put a little bit of food on the table. Sadly, there are more people than ever that are losing that battle. Tonight, tens of thousands of formerly middle class Americans will be sleeping in their cars, even though that is illegal in many U.S. cities. Tens of thousands of others will be sleeping in tent cities or on the streets. Meanwhile, communities all over America are passing measures that are meant to push tent cities and homeless people out of their areas. It turns out that once you lose your job and your home in this country you become something of an outcast. Sadly, the number of “outcasts” is going to continue to grow as the U.S. economy continues to collapse.
Most Americans that end up living in their cars on in tent cities never thought that it would happen to them.
An article in Der Spiegel profiled one American couple that is absolutely shocked at what has happened to them….
Chanelle Sabedra is already on that road. She and her husband have been sleeping in their car for almost three weeks now. “We never saw this coming, never ever,” says Sabedra. She starts to cry. “I’m an adult, I can take care of myself one way or another, and same with my husband, but (my kids are) too little to go through these things.” She has three children; they are nine, five and three years old.
“We had a house further south, in San Bernardino,” says Sabedra. Her husband lost his job building prefab houses in July 2009. The utility company turned off the gas. “We were boiling water on the barbeque to bathe our kids,” she says. No longer able to pay the rent, the Sabedras were evicted from their house in August.
How would you feel if you had a 3 year old kid and a 5 year old kid and you were sleeping in a car?
Sadly, if child protective services finds out about that family those kids will probably be stolen away and never returned.
America is becoming a very cruel place.
Unfortunately, what has happened to that family is not an isolated incident. As rampant unemployment has spread across America, the number of people that have lost their homes has soared.
Today, it is estimated that approximately a third of the homeless population in Seattle live in their cars.
It is even happening to my readers. A reader named JD left the following comment on one of my articles a while back….
I was laid off from my construction job almost 2 yrs ago was on unenjoyment for over a yr they cut me off last september so i lost my apartment. Since then ive been couch surfing and hotel hopping. Now i occaisonally sleep in my car. I was lucky enough to have a friend with a lawn care business so i can at least put ever increasing gas in my car\house. I hate to say it but i think we will see hoovervilles in the major cities soon. When the welfare & food stamps & all the other govt. programs end the anarchy begins.
Desperation is rising all over America. Most people had hoped to see an economic recovery by now but it just hasn’t happened.
The phenomenon of Americans living in their cars has become so prominent that even Time Magazine has done a story about it….
For people who cannot afford rent, a car is the last rung of dignity and sanity above the despair of the streets. A home on wheels is a classic American affair, from the wagon train to the RV. Now, for some formerly upwardly mobile Americans, the economic storm has turned the backseat or the rear of the van into the bedroom. “We found six people sleeping in their cars on an overnight police ride-along in December,” says John Edmund, chief of staff to Long Beach councilman Dee Andrews. “One was a widow living in a four-door sedan. She and her husband had been Air Force veterans. She did not know about the agencies that could help her. I had tears in my eyes afterwards.”
Unfortunately, it turns out that sleeping in cars has been made illegal in many areas of the United States.
In many cities, police are putting boots on the cars and when the homeless owners can’t pay the fines the vehicles are being taken away from them.
Venice, California is one place where people have been arrested for living in vehicles. Venice had been a popular spot for people living in their RVs to go, but police started arresting people that were living in RVs and they began towing away their vehicles. The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared on the Daily Kos website….
They took Eric while he was changing his battery in his car. Claimed he lived in his car. A few days later they went to 3th Street and took his RV because he was in jail and no one moved it for 72 hours. Saturday they did a sweep of 7th and took Bear and his RV. They also took Elizabeth’s RV but do not know if they took Elizabeth but can not find her. The police went to 6th and took the white RV that always parks by Broadway on 6th. Everyday they take 1 to 4 RVs. Very soon there will be no one left.
Once you are down on your luck in America you will quickly find that authorities will try to take everything else you still have away from you.
The United States can be a very brutal place to be if you are poor.
All over America, communities are making tent cities illegal or they are simply just chasing them away.
It turns out that many Americans really don’t like large numbers of homeless people camping out in their neighborhoods.
But many of those now living in tent cities used to be just like you and me.
What is being done to tent cities in some areas of the country is absolutely disgusting.
For example, who could ever forget this video of police in St. Petersburg, Florida using box cutters to slash up the tents of the homeless….
What goes through your mind when you watch something like that?
If you don’t feel at least a little bit of compassion for those people then something is wrong.
You never know – you might be the next one forced to take refuge in a tent city.
In many U.S. cities, it is even illegal to sleep on the street. If you are homeless I am not sure what you are supposed to do. In some areas of the U.S. you can’t sleep in your car, you can’t sleep in a tent city and you can’t sleep on the street.
So what should we do with all of the Americans that are being forced out of their homes by this economy?
Should we just round them all up and put them into fenced camps?
Don’t laugh – we are getting closer to that kind of thing every day.
We live in very frightening times.
Poverty is absolutely exploding in America. The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006. There are 44 million Americans on food stamps. If it was not for measures like these, the streets of America would be filled with destitute people.
Things are tough out there and they are about to get tougher.
At the beginning of next year, the extended unemployment benefits that have been helping the unemployed during this economic downturn will expire. Up to now, many unemployed Americans have been able to enjoy up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. Now that is coming to an end.
According to the New York Times, this is going to drain 37 billion dollars out of the wallets of unemployed Americans that are just barely hanging on.
What in the world is that going to do to the economy?
This all comes at a time when it looks like unemployment is going to start rising once again.
Cisco has just announced that they are going to be laying off 10,000 workers. Other large firms are expected to announce more layoffs shortly. The number of good jobs continues to shrink.
There are other signs that the economy is slowing once again. Pre-orders for Christmas toys are way down. Vacancies at U.S. shopping malls are rising again. Nearly every major poll shows that Americans are extremely pessimistic about the economy right now.
So why in the world is all of this happening?
Where in the world did all of our jobs go?
Well, it turns out that millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas where the labor is far, far cheaper and it is really starting to catch up with us.
Occasionally a half-ruined or half-burned house still stands to remind you that this used to be a cityscape. Pathetic, besieged knots of surviving homes remind you of what was once here. Sometimes amazing efforts have been made to keep them smart. More often, they haven’t.
Many bear menacing notices warning visitors to stay away. On the door of one, easy to imagine as a neat home with an iron-pillared porch where the head of the family must once have sat on summer evenings, are the words ‘Enter at ya own risk’ accompanied by a crude drawing of an angry face.
I ventured into a nearby ruin, smashed, charred and half-filled with garbage. You have no idea who or what might be lurking in these houses.
But don’t laugh at Detroit. What is happening in Detroit is coming to your area soon enough.
America is in an advanced state of decay. The number of “outcasts” is going to multiply as more Americans lose their jobs and their homes. Millions more Americans will be sleeping in their cars, in tent cities or on the streets before this is all over.
The U.S. economy is never going to get back to “normal”. What we are living through now is the “new normal” and it is rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming.
Please show compassion to the people around you that are hurting right now.
You never know, as the economy continues to unravel it may be you that needs some compassion soon.
Have you noticed that a really bad mood seems to have descended on world financial markets? Fear and pessimism are everywhere. The global economy never truly recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, and right now everyone is keeping their eyes open for the next “Lehman Brothers moment” that will send world financial markets into another tailspin. Investors have been very nervous for quite some time now, but this week things seem to be going to a whole new level. Fears about the spread of the debt crisis in Europe and about the failure of debt ceiling talks in the United States have really hammered global financial markets. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 151 points. Italian stocks fared even worse. The stock market in Italy fell more than 3 percent on Monday. The stock markets in Germany and France fell more than 2 percent each. On top of everything else, the fact that protesters have stormed the U.S. embassy in Syria is causing tensions to rise significantly in the Middle East. Everywhere you turn there seems to be more bad news and large numbers of investors are getting closer to hitting the panic button. Hopefully things will cool down soon, because if not we could soon have another full-blown financial crisis on our hands.
Even many of those that have always tried to reassure us suddenly seem to be in a really bad mood.
For example, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted to “Meet the Press” that the U.S. economy is really struggling and that for many Americans “it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come.”
Does Geithner know something that we don’t?
To say that what Americans are facing will be “harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come” is very, very strong language.
It certainly is not helping things that the Democrats and the Republicans still have not agreed on a deal to raise the debt ceiling. It is mid-July and Barack Obama and John Boehner continue to point fingers at each other.
Of course if they do reach a “deal” it will likely be a complete and total joke just like their last “deal” was.
But for now they are playing politics and trying to position themselves well for the 2012 election season.
Meanwhile, world financial markets are starting to get a little nervous about this situation. The newly elected head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has stated that she “can’t imagine for a second” that we are going to see the U.S. default on any debt. Most investors seem to agree with Lagarde for now, but if we get to August 2nd without a deal being reached things could change very quickly.
But it isn’t just the debt ceiling crisis that is causing apprehension in the United States. The truth is that there are a host of indications that the U.S. economy is continuing to struggle.
Even big Wall Street banks are laying people off. A recent Reuters article described the bad mood that has descended on Wall Street right now….
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and some other large U.S. investment banks are not just laying off weak performers and back-office employees. They are also cutting the pay of those they are keeping, scrutinizing expense reports and expecting even the most profitable workers to bring in more business for the same amount of compensation.
That is not a good sign for the U.S. economy.
If the corrupt Wall Street banks are even struggling, what does that mean for the rest of us?
But the big trouble recently has been in Europe. The sovereign debt crisis continues to get worse and worse.
As I wrote about yesterday, the emerging financial crisis in Italy has EU officials in a bit of a tizzy. If Italy requires a bailout it is going to be an unmitigated disaster.
One of the most respected financial journalists in Europe, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, says that financial tensions in the EU are rising to dangerous levels….
If the ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet is right in claiming that Europe was on the brink of a 1930s financial cataclysm a year ago – and I think he is – it is hard see how the threat is any less serious right now.
Fall-out from Greece flattened Portugal and Ireland last week. It is engulfing Spain and Italy, countries with €6.3 trillion of public and private debt between them.
Last year it was just small countries like Greece and Ireland that were causing all the trouble.
Now Italy (the fourth largest economy in the EU) and Spain (the fifth largest economy in the EU) are making headlines.
Up to this point, the EU has had all kinds of nightmares just trying to bail countries like Greece out.
What is going to happen if Italy or Spain goes under?
At this point things with Greece have gone so badly that some EU officials are actually suggesting that Greece should just default on some of the debt.
Yes, you read the correctly.
There are news reports coming out of Europe that say that EU leaders are actually considering allowing the Greek government to default on some of their bonds. According to The Telegraph, “the move would be part of a new bail-out plan for Greece that would put the country’s overall debt levels on a sustainable footing.”
All of this chaos is causing bond yields in Europe to go soaring.
Earlier today, The Calculated Risk blog detailed some of the stunning bond yields that we are now seeing in Europe….
The Greek 2 year yield is up to a record 31.1%.
The Portuguese 2 year yield is up to a record 18.3%.
The Irish 2 year yield is up to a record 18.1%.
And the big jump … the Italian 2 year yield is up to a record 4.1%. Still much lower than Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but rising.
Could you imagine paying 31.1% interest on your credit cards?
Well, imagine what officials in the Greek government must be feeling right about now.
If these bond yields do not go down, we are going to have a full-blown financial crisis on our hands in Europe. If these bond yields keep rising, we are going to have a complete and total financial nightmare in Europe.
The only way that any of these nations that are drowning in debt can keep going is if they can borrow more money at low interest rates. There are very few nations on earth that would be able to survive very high interest rates on government debt for an extended period of time.
Pay attention to what is happening in Europe, because it will eventually happen in the United States. Right now we are only paying a little more than $400 billion in interest on the national debt each year because of the super low interest rates we are able to get.
When that changes, our interest costs are going to absolutely skyrocket.
Not that the United States needs any more economic problems.
Right now Americans are more pessimistic about the economy than they have been in ages.
*According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%.
*According to one recent poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.
*Another recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.
The American people are in a really bad mood and investors around the world are in a really bad mood. More bad financial news seems to come out every single day now. Everyone seems to be waiting for that one “moment” that is going to set off another financial panic.
Hopefully we can get through the rest of this summer without world financial markets falling apart. But the truth is that the global economy is even more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008. None of the things that caused the financial crash of 2008 have been fixed.
We will eventually have a repeat of 2008. In fact, next time things could be even worse.
The entire world financial system is a house of cards sitting on a foundation of sand. Eventually another storm is going to come and the crash is going to be great.
Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America. Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class. There simply are not nearly enough “good jobs” to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a “long-term structural problem” with the economy. The only thing that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. If nobody will hire them they do not have any other ways to provide for their families. Well, there is a problem. Today wealth has become incredibly centralized. The big corporations and the big banks dominate everything. Thanks to incredible advances in technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system, the people with all the money don’t have to hire as many ordinary Americans anymore. They can hire all the labor they want on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost. So the rich don’t really have that much use for the working class in America anymore. The only thing of value that the working class had to offer has now been tremendously devalued. The wealthy don’t have to pay a lot for physical labor anymore. Thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back. The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food chain. The rich are getting richer and the working class is being systematically wiped out.
So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone. Today, the “official” unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent even though a whopping 272,000 Americans “dropped out of the labor force” in June. The government unemployment figure that includes “discouraged workers” went up from 15.8% to 16.2%. The mainstream media is proclaiming that this was “a horrific report” because most economists were expecting much better news.
Well, guess what?
Things are going to get a whole lot worse.
More job cuts are coming. One recently released report found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.
It is also being projected that state and local governments across the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of next year.
Needless to say, things don’t look good.
Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on to them.
Employers know that most workers are easily replaceable these days, so wages are not moving up even though the cost of living is.
We are right in the middle of the worst employment downturn since World War 2. Jay-Z recently summed up the situation this way….
“Numbers don’t lie. Unemployment is pretty high.”
Jay-Z certainly has a way with words, eh?
If something is not done about the rampant unemployment in this nation, the death of the middle class will accelerate.
Most Americans just assume that the United States will always have a large middle class, but there is no guarantee that is going to happen. In fact, there is a whole lot of evidence that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking.
Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below. Taken together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class is being systematically wiped out….
#2 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#4 The United States has never had an employment downturn this deep and this prolonged since World War 2 ended.
#5 There are officially 6.3 million Americans that have been unemployed for more than 6 months. That number has risen by more than 3.5 million in just the past two years.
#6 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job. Just check out this chart….
#7 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when the recession began back in 2007.
#8 Back in 2000, the employment to population ratio was over 64 percent. Today, it is sitting at just 58.2%.
#9 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#10 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.
#11 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#12 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#13 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.
#14 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#15Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.
#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.
#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.
#19 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#21 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#22 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobsper month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#23 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
#24 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#25 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.
#26 There were more manufacturing jobs in the United States in 1950 than there are today.
#27 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population has gotten significantly larger.
#28 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.
#29 One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with soaring food prices and soaring gas prices over the next 12 months.
#30Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#31One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#33 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#34 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, which is an all-time record.
#39 According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of all households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.
#40 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the United States is experiencing a long-term economic decline.
Every single day, more American families fall out of the middle class and into poverty. There are millions of American families out there tonight that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails.
More Americans than ever are constantly borrowing more money just to stay afloat. Even as rampant unemployment plagues this nation and even as wages remain stagnant, middle class Americans are increasing their use of credit.
A CNBC article noted the increase in consumer borrowing that we have seen recently….
The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing rose $5.1 billion following a revised gain of $5.7 billion in April. Borrowing in the category that covers credit cards increased, as did borrowing in the category for auto and student loans.
It is very hard to live “the American Dream” without going into huge amounts of debt these days.
But for an increasing number of Americans, “the American Dream” is just a distant memory.
Tonight, there are large numbers of people living in the tunnels under the city of Las Vegas. As the wealthy live the high life in the casinos and hotels above them, an increasing number of desperate “tunnel people” are attempting to carve out an existence in the 200 mile long labyrinth of tunnels that stretches beneath Vegas. It is a nightmarish environment, but it is all those people have left.
Don’t look down on them, because you never know who might be next.
If you lost your current job, how long would you be able to survive?
Unfortunately, as bad as things are now, the reality is that this is just the beginning.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Do what you can to make sure that you and your family are not totally wiped out by the next wave of the economic collapse.
How far does the stock market have to go down before we officially call it a crash? The Dow is now down more than 2,000 points in just the last 14 trading days. So can we now call this “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″? Today the Dow was down 519 points. Yesterday, an announcement by the Federal Reserve indicating that the Fed would keep interest rates near zero until mid-2013 helped the Dow surge more than 400 points, but all of those gains were wiped out today. It turns out that the Federal Reserve was only able to stabilize the financial markets for a single day. Fears about the European sovereign debt crisis and the crumbling U.S. economy continue to dominate the marketplace. With each passing day, things are looking more and more like 2008 all over again. So what is going to happen if “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″ pushes the U.S. economy into “The Recession of 2012″?
10 Signs That Economic Riots And Civil Unrest Inside The United States Are Now More Likely Than Ever
In recent days, even many in the mainstream media have been openly wondering if the riots that happened in London could happen here too. There is a growing acknowledgement that this country is headed down a very dark path.
The sad thing is that these riots accomplish absolutely nothing. The recent London riots did not create any jobs and they certainly did not solve any economic problems. Instead, they actually hurt the economy even more because a huge am0unt of property was destroyed and people are even more afraid to continue with business as usual.
But when people get to the end of their ropes, most of the time they are not thinking rationally. When frustration erupts, the results can be very, very messy.
All over the United States we are already seeing some very troubling signs of the violence that is coming. The following are 10 signs that economic riots and civil unrest inside United States are now more likely then ever….
#1 Going to the state fair used to be such a fun thing for American families to do. But now no place is safe. The following is how one local ABC News affiliate described the “flash mob” attacks that took place at the Wisconsin state fair recently….
One eyewitness said that the flash mob attacks at the Wisconsin state fair absolutely overwhelmed the limited police presence that was there….
#2 According to a new Rasmussen survey, 48% of Americans believe that reductions in government spending are “at least somewhat likely” to result in civil unrest inside the United States. Unfortunately, perception often greatly influences reality.
#3 U.S. consumer confidence is now at its lowest level in 30 years.
#4 Joblessness among young Americans is at an epidemic level, and when rioting does break out it is usually young people that are leading the way. That is why the following statistics from an article in The Atlantic are so troubling….
#5 We are starting to see mindless violence in a lot of areas that used to be considered safe. In Kansas City on Saturday night, three young people were hit with bullets as they walked the streets of the Country Club Plaza. Mayor Sly James was about 50 yards away when the gunfire erupted. Authorities in Kansas City are considering a stricter curfew for that area.
#6 “Flash mobs” have become such a problem in Philadelphia that the mayor has imposed a strict curfew on young people. Now all teens between the ages of 13 and 18 must be indoors by 9 o’clock at night. The mayor also says that teens need to start pulling up their pants….
#7 All over the United States we are seeing that many struggling Americans will do just about anything for money. For example, in Detroit recently three masked men crashed a vehicle through the entrance of a gas station and took off with an entire ATM machine.
#8 Desperate people do desperate things. Many of America’s “forgotten poor” are trying to survive any way that they can. For instance, a group of vagrants recently set up “a makeshift camp” near Prospect Park lake in Brooklyn. According to the New York Post, many nearby residents have been disturbed by what these “drifters” are doing to survive….
#9 According to CNN, sales of safes and vaults are absolutely soaring right now. One store owner told CNN that she believes that she is selling a lot more safes now because people are scared that civil unrest could be coming….
#10 Over the past 100 years, the American population has moved steadily into our big cities and the surrounding suburbs. This has created virtual “ghost towns” in our rural areas from coast to coast. Back in 1910, 72 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, only 16 percent of Americans live in rural areas. But when you crowd huge masses of people close together that makes riots and civil unrest much more likely.
Most Americans are already fed up, and the economy is not even that bad yet. One recent survey found that 73 percent of Americans believe that the nation is “on the wrong track”. Another recent poll found that only 17 percent of Americans now believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.
Millions of very frustrated young people believe that the economic system has failed them and that the political system no longer holds any answers.
America is rapidly approaching a breaking point. I have written previously about the collapse of society that we are already witnessing all over the United States. When the economy totally breaks down, most Americans are not going to be able to handle it.
Sadly, instead of coming together and trying to do something productive, many Americans will resort to rioting, looting and civil unrest. We have already seen this during local emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina.
But mindless violence accomplishes absolutely nothing positive. It just always makes things worse.
Unfortunately, logic and reason are not going to be enough to stop the gigantic wave of frustration that is coming. For most of the rest of us, it will be hard enough to get out of the way and protect our own families from the economic riots and the civil unrest that are coming.
The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. Hatred and anger are growing by the day. The United States is becoming a very frightening place.
So get ready. Our politicians certainly don’t have any answers for us. The debt ceiling deal was a complete and total joke, and corruption is absolutely rampant in Washington right now. Barack Obama is getting ready to leave for yet another vacation, and most of our politicians are only focused on the next election.
So don’t expect a “miracle” from those that are supposed to be leading us.
They don’t care about you.
You need to take care of yourself and your family and your friends.
A massive economic collapse is coming, and most Americans are going to be totally blindsided by it.
Don’t let that happen to you.