New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 Have you ever heard of the dodo bird? Once upon a time, dodo birds lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. But if you go there today you won’t find any because they are extinct. Well, if you are a blue collar worker in America today it looks like you are headed for a similar fate. Blue collar workers are truly becoming an “endangered species” in the United States. In the old days, the balance of power between business owners and labor was more even because they both needed each other. But today that has all changed. Thanks to robotics, automation and computers there is simply not as much of a need for physical laborers anymore and nothing is going to reverse that trend. Big employers will continue to look for ways to replace men with machines, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is another major trend that is also destroying blue collar jobs in America that we should do something about. Right now, it is perfectly legal for big corporations to shut down manufacturing facilities in the United States and send the jobs over to nations on the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay slave labor wages and where there are barely any regulations. As you will see later on this article, this has been the biggest reason for the shocking blue collar job losses in America over the past decade. The big corporations don’t care that you need to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for your families. All they care about it the bottom line, and if dramatic changes are not made soon, the number of blue collar jobs leaving the United States will continue to increase.
Once upon a time, almost everyone who wanted a job in America could get one. If you go back a few decades, you will find that about 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. Today that figure is struggling to stay above 80 percent.
If you are a blue collar worker in America, you are simply not valued. Your bosses are constantly trying to think of ways to replace you or send your job overseas.
According to Reuters, 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now. The more “blue collar” you are, the more likely you are to be unemployed. The following chart that shows the unemployment rate during 2010 broken down by level of education comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics….
If you are an unskilled worker in America today, you simply are not needed. Yes, once upon a time nearly anyone could go out and get a factory job, but those days are over. Neither major political party seems the least bit interested in trying to keep manufacturing jobs in America.
Back in the year 2000, more than 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs.
To have that huge of a shift in a little over a decade is absolutely mind blowing.
Many Americans had been hoping that Barack Obama would stand up for the working man like he promised to do. But just like so many of Obama’s other promises, that one was totally worthless as well.
The Obama administration has been pushing hard for even more “free trade” deals that will allow big corporations to ship even more of our jobs out of the country. The Obama administration simply does not value blue collar jobs at all. In fact, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is running around telling the press that there are lots of things that “we don’t want to make in America” anymore.
If you are a blue collar worker, Barack Obama does not care about you.
He never cared about you.
In fact, the vast majority of the politicians in both major political parties do not care about you.
What they do care about is winning elections and taking care of the big donors that keep helping them win elections.
Many of those donors are systematically shipping huge numbers of our jobs overseas.
In addition, now that labor has become a “global commodity”, wages for the jobs that remain in America are being steadily driven lower.
A recent White House reported entitled “Investing in America: Building an Economy That Lasts” actually bragged that our trade policies have driven wages in America down. The following chart is from that report….
We were told that the “one world economy” would be great for America, but the truth is that it has only been great for the giant corporations. For the average working man, it has been a disaster.
But we should have all seen this coming. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going to happen once you put American workers into the same labor pool as slave laborers on the other side of the world. After all, what greedy corporate executive really wants to pay U.S. workers ten to twenty times as much compensation just because it is the “right” thing to do?
Today, formerly great cities all over America are being transformed into hellholes while shiny, new industrial cities are popping up all over China.
For example, a couple of decades ago the Chinese city of Shenzhen was a sleepy little fishing town.
In 2012, it is a teeming metropolis of over 13 million people.
Foxconn (the builder of iPhones, iPads and many other products that we buy) runs a factory in Shenzhen that employs over 400,000 people. Most of those people work for about a dollar an hour.
A recent article posted on Business Insider described the incredibly long hours and the nightmarish working conditions that those workers must endure. The following is a brief excerpt from that article….
A Chinese working “hour” is 60 minutes–unlike an American “hour,” which generally includes breaks for Facebook, the bathroom, a phone call, and some conversation. The official work day in China is 8 hours long, but the standard shift is 12 hours. Generally, these shifts extend to 14-16 hours, especially when there’s a hot new gadget to build.
At Foxconn, they don’t really care about the health and safety of the workers. Workers are expected to do the same repetitive tasks as rapidly as they can for as long as they can. When their bodies break down, they are fired….
Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers’ hands no longer work, obviously, they’re canned.
But the Obama administration insists that allowing big corporations to ship our jobs over to countries with working conditions like that is “good for the economy”.
Well, it might be good for the profits of the largest corporations, but it is a total nightmare for the rest of us. Just consider the following stats….
*The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
*Between 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.
*According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years. During 2010 it got even worse. Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.
*In all, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have shut down since 2001.
*According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
*According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.
Are you starting to get the picture?
If you are a blue collar worker that cannot find a job, it is not because you have failed as a human being.
Rather, the truth is that you cannot find a job because of the failed trade policies of the federal government.
We are experiencing the bitter fruit of a “one world economy”. Globalization was never intended to make the lives of American workers better, and now many are finally waking up and realizing this.
Hopefully, as Americans wake up on these issues they will fight to turn this nation in a more positive direction.
Unfortunately, way too many Americans are giving up hope completely. The following comes from a recent article in the Guardian….
The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far higher, but also that many of the smaller boats had been dashed to pieces in their wake.
As I have written about so many times, we are watching the middle class in America be systematically destroyed.
The economy is not getting better. There may be moments when the economy seems like it is improving, but the reality is that we are mired in a nightmarish long-term decline. If you are not yet convinced of this, please see this article and this article.
Even those running our economy are saying that things are not going to be getting much better any time soon.
For example, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Charles Evans, recently admitted that the employment picture is not going to be much brighter than it is now by the end of 2012. He recently said that “at the end of the year, we’re not going to be very different from 8.5 percent unemployment.”
And remember – history has shown us that most pronouncements by Federal Reserve officials are usually far too optimistic.
If you are a blue collar worker in America, there is simply not too much to be optimistic about right now.
You might want to think about how you and your family are going to survive without any work.
The millions of jobs that have been sent overseas are not coming back. Even if you still have a decent job, now is the time to be developing a side business or developing other alternative streams of income.
What you don’t want to do is to just sit there and hope that somehow things will “magically” turn around if we just vote in the “right” politician.
If you want to get a really good idea of what is really going on with the U.S. economy right now, just go tour some of the formerly great industrial cities in the “Rust Belt”.
In Cuyahoga County, Ohio one out of every five houses is sitting vacant. It is not that those homes are not needed – it is just that there are not nearly enough people with good jobs available to buy up all of the foreclosures.
So thousands of perfectly good houses are being torn down. The following comes from a recent CBS News report by Scott Pelley….
Across America, recession-fueled foreclosures and plummeting home values have left countless properties abandoned and vulnerable to looting. As Scott Pelley reports, the problem has gotten so bad in Cleveland, Ohio, that county officials have demolished more than 1,000 homes this year – and plan to demolish 20,000 more – rather than let the blight spread and render nearby homes worthless.
Can you imagine that?
20,000 homes being demolished in one county alone?
Of course Detroit is in even worse shape than Cleveland. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
For much more on all of this, please read my recent article entitled “Formerly Great Cities All Over America Are Turning Into Open, Festering Sores“.
It would be great if I could tell you that hope is just around the corner, but it is not. The plight of the blue collar worker in America is going to get worse and worse.
But just because blue collar workers in America are an endangered species does not mean that you have to be a victim.
We should all seek to become less dependent on the system.
If you are completely and totally dependent on having a “job” (just over broke), then you have put yourself in a very vulnerable position.
That job could disappear at any moment.
Over the next few years, the number of good jobs is going to continue to decrease. Things are going to be really tough. But those that have prepared and that have tried to become more independent are going to be in much better shape than those that have not.
 Beware of bubbles of false hope. Right now there is a lot of talk about how the U.S. economy is improving, but it is all a lie. The mainstream media can be very seductive. When you sit down to watch television your brain tends to go into a very relaxed mode. In such a state, it becomes easy to slip thoughts and ideas past your defenses. Sometimes when I am watching television I realize what the media is trying to do and yet I can still feel it happening to me. In this day and age, it is absolutely critical that we all think for ourselves. When you look at the long-term trends and the long-term numbers, a much different picture of the U.S economy emerges than the one that is painted for us on television. Over the long-term, the number of good jobs in America has been steadily going down. Over the long-term, the number of Americans living in poverty and living on food stamps has been steadily going up. Over the past couple of decades, tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth have gone out of the country. Our debt is nearly 15 times larger than it was 30 years ago, and U.S. consumer debt has soared by 1700% over the past 40 years. Year after year the rate of inflation goes up faster than our incomes do, and this is absolutely devastating the middle class. Anyone who believes that we can keep doing the same things that we have been doing and yet America will still have a bright economic future is delusional. Until the long-term trends which are taking the U.S. economy straight into the toilet are reversed, any talk of a bright economic future is absolute nonsense.
In America today, we have such a short-term focus. We are all so caught up with what is happening right now. Our attention spans seem to get shorter every single year. At this point it would not be hard to argue that kittens have longer attention spans than most of us do. (If you have ever owned a kitten you know how short their attention spans can be.) Things have gotten so bad that most of our high school students cannot even answer the most basic questions about our history. If people are not talking about it on Facebook or Twitter it is almost as if it does not even matter.
But any serious student of history knows that is is absolutely crucial to examine long-term trends. And when you look at the long-term trends, it rapidly becomes apparent that the U.S. economy is in the midst of a nightmarish long-term decline.
The following are 24 statistics to show to anyone who believes that America has a bright economic future….
#1 Inflation is a silent tax that steals wealth from all of us. We continue to shell out increasing amounts of money for the basic things that we need, and yet our incomes are not keeping pace. Just check out the following example. Gasoline prices have been trending higher for several years in a row as one blogger recently noted….
January 2009 $1.65
January 2010 $2.57
January 2011 $3.04
January 2012 $3.29
#2 If you can believe it, the average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
#3 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#4 Health care costs continue to rise at a very alarming pace. 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%.
#5 Getting a college education has also become insanely expensive in America. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.
#6 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.
#7 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1913 you would have to have more than $457 today.
#8 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added more than 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#9 The U.S. economy is bleeding millions of good jobs. Greedy CEOs are systematically shipping them overseas and our politicians are standing around and doing nothing about it. This has gone on year after year after year. The following is from a recent article by Paul Craig Roberts….
In the first decade of the 21st century, Americans lost 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs. US employment in the manufacture of computer and electronic products fell by 40%; in the production of machinery by 30%, in motor vehicles and and parts by 44%, and in the manufacture of clothing by 66%.
#10 Our economic infrastructure is being torn apart right in front of our eyes. In 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States. Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have shut down since 2001.
We have made it legal for big corporations to send millions of jobs to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, where the tax burden is much lighter and where there are barely any regulations. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article posted on Economy in Crisis….
Back in the ‘80s, I called my friend Walter in California and asked: “On your next expansion we need a plant in South Carolina.” Walter replied: “We don’t produce anything in the United States. It’s all in China. China furnishes you the plant on a year-to-year basis. If your investment works out, you don’t have to pay any corporate tax; just reinvest it for another plant and more profit. If it doesn’t work out, you can walk away with no legacy costs. I send a quality controller to watch production. I check on it every day. I don’t have any labor, health, safety, or environmental concerns, and have time to play a round of golf.” The bleeding of jobs off-shore started in the ‘80s — now hemorrhages under Bush and Obama. Waiting for the economy to bounce back; calling this “the worst recession” is a bum rap. The reason the economy hasn’t bounced back since 2008 is because the economy is being off-shored.
#11 As a result of our insane economic policies, our trade balances are absolutely exploding. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#12 As you read this, there are millions of Americans out there wondering why they can’t find any jobs. According to Reuters, 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.
#13 The number of good jobs has been steadily shrinking in America. Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#14 Over the last three decades, the percentage of low income jobs has consistently risen. 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.
#15 The number of middle class neighborhoods also continues to decline. 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”.
#16 A decade ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. By 2010, the United States had fallen to seventh.
#17 Our incomes continue to go down. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#18 Unfortunately, middle class Americans have been seeing their incomes decline for a very long time. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#19 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%. Unfortunately, U.S. consumers have still not learned how to stay out of debt. According to a recent article posted on Financial Armageddon, the rate of personal savings in the United States is rapidly falling right now at the same time that the total amount of consumer credit is absolutely skyrocketing.
#20 The number of children living in poverty in America keeps rising year after year. The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010.
#21 The number of Americans on food stamps continues to set new all-time records. Just check out the following progression….
October 2008: 30.8 million Americans on food stamps
October 2009: 37.6 million Americans on food stamps
October 2010: 43.2 million Americans on food stamps
October 2011: 46.2 million Americans on food stamps
#22 The U.S. debt problem has gotten completely and totally out of control. Recently, the debt of the federal government surpassed 100% of GDP for the first time ever.
#23 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.
#24 Barack Obama’s proposed 2012 budget projects that the national debt will rise to 26 trillion dollars a decade from now. And his budget numbers are ridiculously optimistic.
Are you starting to get the picture?
All of the long-term economic numbers are progressively getting worse.
As the economy continues to crumble, large numbers of Americans are becoming really desperate. For example, a recent Mother Jones article detailed how large numbers of formerly middle class Americans are now actually growing marijuana in an effort to make ends meet.
As things continue to get worse, people will become even more desperate. There are millions of people out there that find themselves unable to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for their families. When people hit rock bottom, they often find themselves doing things that they never dreamed that they would do.
Meanwhile, the big Wall Street banks just keep getting larger and more powerful. We have allowed the “too big to fail” banks to become much bigger than they have ever been before. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
Wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top even as the overall economic pie in America continues to get smaller.
As our economic problems become worse, more Americans than ever are trying to find ways to “escape”.
For example, according to one new government report one out of every six adults in America is a binge drinker.
Other Americans “tune out” by watching endless hours of television, by playing endless hours of video games or by indulging in endless hours of other forms of entertainment.
There are even some Americans that are giving up completely. For example, one elderly man actually robbed a bank just so that he could get arrested and be taken to prison where he would get free health care.
But as I have written about previously, now is not the time to give up. Instead, now is the time to prepare for the great challenges that are ahead.
Almost every generation in history has been faced with great challenges and great hardships at some point.
Yes, there will be some incredibly hard times ahead, but that also means that there will be a need for some great heroes.
Just because the U.S. economy is falling apart does not mean that life is over.
We are living during one of the most exciting times in all of human history. Instead of cowering in fear, let us embrace these times and focus on becoming the people that we were created to be.
 How should people prepare for the difficult years that are coming? I get asked about that a lot. Once people really examine the facts, it is not too hard to convince them that an economic collapse is coming. But once they accept that reality, most of them want to know what they can do to prepare themselves and their families for the hard times that are ahead. Well, the truth is that it does not have to be complicated. Many of the things discussed throughout this article are things that most of us should be doing anyway. Now is not the time to be splurging on luxuries or expensive vacations. Now is not the time to be going into large amounts of debt. Instead, we all need to get back to the basics and we all need to do what we can to become more independent of the system. Just remember what happened back in 2008. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and millions of Americans lost their homes. Now experts all over the globe are warning that another great financial crisis that could be just as bad as 2008 (or even worse) is coming. Those that don’t take the time to prepare this time are not going to have any excuse.
But there is also a lot of sensationalism out there. There are some people out there that claim that the economy is going to collapse all at once and that we are going to go from where we are now to some type of a post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” society almost overnight.
Well, that is just not going to happen. We are not going to wake up next week in a world where we are all fighting each other with sharp pointed sticks.
Just like anything else, an economic collapse takes time. I like to describe what is happening using an analogy from the beach. When you build a mighty sand castle, it is not totally destroyed by the first wave that comes along, right?
Well, it is the same thing with the U.S. economy. It was the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen, and it is most definitely in decline. But there are stages to that decline.
The “wave” that came along in 2008 did a huge amount of damage. Our economy has not recovered from that.
Now another wave is coming. But that will not be the end. There will be other waves after that.
Eventually, this thing is coming all the way down. Someday America will be such a horror show that it will be hard to believe that it is the same place that many of us grew up in.
But in the short-term, we are going to be facing a major league recession and millions of Americans will lose their jobs. It won’t be the end of the world, but for some people it may feel like it.
So when you are talking about “how to prepare”, the truth is that it depends on what kind of time frame you are talking about.
In the long-term, a lot of the things that even the hardcore survivalists are doing will not be nearly enough.
In the short-term, there are things that all of us can do to weather the coming storm….
Get Out Of Debt
The global financial system is headed for a massive crisis. Just like in 2008, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs and a lot of people are going to lose their homes.
In such an environment, it makes sense to travel as “lightly” as possible.
That means getting rid of debt.
Some forms of debt are worse than others. Mortgage debt is not that bad. We all need somewhere to live, and not all of us can run out and immediately pay off our mortgages.
But there are other forms of debt that are absolutely toxic. A good example of this is credit card debt. There are very few things that are as good at bleeding your finances as credit card debt is. For example, according to the credit card repayment calculator, if you have a $6000 balance on a credit card with a 20 percent interest rate and only pay the minimum payment each time, it will take you 54 years to pay off that credit card.
During those 54 years you will pay $26,168 in interest rate charges on that credit card balance in addition to the $6000 in principal that you are required to pay back. That is before any fees or penalties are even calculated.
But a lot of Americans still have not learned to stay away from credit card debt. In fact, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
Ouch.
The truth is that in future years there is a good chance that you may be facing a situation where you are not making as much income, so you want to try to start reducing your expenses right now. Getting out of debt will help you to do this.
Save Money
A shockingly high number of American families are operating without any kind of financial cushion whatsoever….
-According to a Harris Interactive survey taken in 2010, 77 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
-According to one recent survey, one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
This is one reason why so many Americans have lost their homes and why so many Americans have fallen below the poverty level in recent years. They simply had no cushion.
Last year, 2.6 million more Americans dropped into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
Don’t let this happen to you. At a minimum, everyone out there should have a cushion that will cover at least 6 months worth of expenses. Preferably, you should have a cushion that will last you at least a year.
Yes, I know that is a tall order. But you would be amazed at how much money the average American family wastes in a typical month. Almost all of us have areas where we can cut back.
Trust me, in the middle of a major recession you will be really glad that you are sitting on a pile of savings.
Get Independent Of The System
What would you do if you lost your job tomorrow?
Would you have any other income?
How long would it be before you lost your home?
Those are very important questions.
The truth is that the system is failing and so we all need to work hard to become more independent of the system.
So what does that mean?
Well, instead of relying on someone else to employ you indefinitely, you can start up a business in your spare time. Yes, it will cut into your television time, but if someday you lose your job you will be extremely happy that you still have some income coming in.
Another way of becoming more independent is to start a garden.
Yes, you can run down the street and buy giant piles of cheap food right now, but that will not be the case forever.
Store Food And Focus On The Essentials
I might get into a little trouble for saying this, but the truth is that there is not going to be a major famine in America in 2012.
However, that does not mean that you should not be storing food and other essentials.
In the old days, our grandparents always saved up food. It was just a natural thing for them to do. This was especially the case if they lived through the Great Depression.
When hard times come, you will be glad that you have food stored up. Plus, food is never going to be cheaper than it is today. Having food stored up is a great hedge against the rising food prices that we will see in the future.
No, we are not going to see hyperinflation by the end of the year like many of the sensationalists are warning. But someday you will be really glad that you stored up food for yourself and your family.
We live in a world that is becoming more unstable with each passing month. You never know when the next natural disaster, pandemic, war or national emergency will strike.
It only makes sense to store food and other basic essentials that you will need in the future.
In a previous article entitled “20 Things You Will Need To Survive When The Economy Collapses And The Next Great Depression Begins”, I listed 20 of the things that you would need in the event of a major disaster, a national emergency or a total economic collapse. These are things that you are going to want to make sure that you have ready right now, because after the crisis begins it may be too late to prepare….
#1) Storable Food
#2) Clean Water
#3) Shelter
#4) Warm Clothing
#5) An Axe
#6) Lighters Or Matches
#7) Hiking Boots Or Comfortable Shoes
#8) A Flashlight And/Or Lantern
#9) A Radio
#10) Communication Equipment
#11) A Swiss Army Knife
#12) Personal Hygiene Items
#13) A First Aid Kit And Other Medical Supplies
#14) Extra Gasoline (But Be Very Careful How You Store It)
#15) A Sewing Kit
#16) Self-Defense Equipment
#17) A Compass
#18) A Hiking Backpack
#19) A Community
#20) A Backup Plan
In the comments to that article, the readers suggested the following additional items….
A K-Bar Fighting Knife
Salt
Extra Batteries
Medicine
A Camp Stove
Propane
Pet Food
Heirloom Seeds
Tools
An LED Headlamp
Candles
Clorox
Calcium Hypochlorite
Ziplock Bags
Maps Of Your Area
Binoculars
Sleeping Bags
Rifle For Hunting
Extra Socks
Gloves
Gold And Silver Coins For Bartering
Once again, a lot of these things are not going to be needed right away. The economy is going to go through a lot more ups and downs before it totally dies.
In the short-term, keep an eye on the European debt crisis, the Japanese debt crisis and the U.S. debt crisis. There are a lot of similarities between what happened back in 2008 and what is happening now.
And what happened following the crisis of 2008?
Unemployment shot through the roof.
So be prepared for that.
Make a plan for how you and your family will survive if you end up unemployed.
Also, when it comes to “how to prepare”, there is one aspect that is often overlooked.
During the difficult years ahead, we are all going to have to be mentally and spiritually tough.
It won’t matter how good your physical and financial preparations are if you are cowardly and paralyzed by fear.
The times that are coming are going to test all of our hearts.
Some people are going to make it and some people aren’t.
Some people will become so consumed with fear that they will give up completely.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Prepare your heart, soul, mind and body right now for what is coming. For those that are cowardly the years ahead will be a total nightmare, but for those that overcome the fear the years ahead have the potential to be a great adventure.
 Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing. The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012. The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades. Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace. As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.
Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices. I honestly don’t know how most families make it these days. I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food. That was after I “saved” 67 dollars on sale items.
When the cost of the basic things that we need – housing, food, gas, electricity – go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.
Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge….
-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.
-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.
-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.
-The number of Americans that are considered to be “poor” continues to grow.
-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.
After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.
The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012….
#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.
#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are working.
#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.
#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.
#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or “near poverty”, and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or “near poverty”.
#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger. Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.
#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today. Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.
#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns. Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent. In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.
#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.
#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by 18,000% since 1913. The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.
#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.
#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#15 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years. During 2010 it got even worse. Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.
#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace. The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.
#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.
#22 If the number of Americans considered to be “looking for work” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012. Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.
#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.
#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.
#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”. By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.
#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.
#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#30 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
Sadly, this article could have been much, much longer. There are so many other statistics about the middle class that could have been included.
For even more insane economic numbers that show just how dramatically the U.S. economy is declining, just check out this article: “50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe“.
What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.
We have already had “the economic recovery”, such as it was.
Now we are heading for another major financial crisis. Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.
But we never recovered from the last financial crisis. We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.
And who is going to get hurt the most? It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course. Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.
If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it. If you don’t have a job, do your best to get one while you still can. Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.
But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system. Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side. Yes, it will likely cut into your television time. If someday you were to lose your job you don’t want to be left with zero income.
Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.
Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.
I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.
Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.
But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.
 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is taking his show on the road in at attempt to help Americans feel better about the Federal Reserve. During a visit to the Fort Bliss headquarters of the Army’s 1st Armored Division this week, Bernanke held a town hall meeting during which he took questions from some of the soldiers. Bernanke tried to sound as compassionate as possible as he assured the soldiers that the Federal Reserve is looking out for the American people and is doing everything that it can to help create jobs. At one point, Bernanke even made the following statement: “For a lot of people, I know, it doesn’t feel like the recession ever ended.” That probably helped a lot of people feel better. A few probably even had a good cry. But what Bernanke did not explain to the troops is that the Federal Reserve is very much responsible for the fact that unemployment is rampant, for the fact that the U.S. dollar is rapidly being devalued and for the fact that we have accumulated the largest national debt in the history of the world.
Ben Bernanke keeps insisting that the Federal Reserve has two main jobs (fighting inflation and keeping unemployment low) and that it is working incredibly hard to accomplish that dual mandate. During his visit with the soldiers he told them that the Fed is very determined to create more jobs for the American people….
“We at the Federal Reserve have been focusing intently on supporting job creation.”
Well, if we are to judge the Federal Reserve by how well it has accomplished its “dual mandate”, then the Federal Reserve has been an abysmal failure.
Since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value to inflation.
Is that something Bernanke should be proud of?
Of course not.
Okay, so the Fed has failed when it comes to keeping inflation under control.
What about jobs?
Well, the first decade of this century was the worst decade for job creation that the United States has seen since the Great Depression.
The sad truth is that a total of zero jobs were created last decade. The following is a quote from a recent article in Washington Monthly….
“If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.”
So what kind of a grade should we give the Federal Reserve for the job that it has done?
How about a big fat F?
The Federal Reserve has been a failure of epic proportions. It greatly contributed to the Great Depression (even Bernanke admits this), it created the conditions for the financial bubbles that greatly contributed to the financial crisis of 2008, and it has brought us to the verge of yet another gigantic financial crisis.
But Ben Bernanke believes that all of us that are criticizing the Fed are just ignorant. He thinks that we just don’t understand the Fed properly. During a recent question and answer session, Bernanke stated the following….
“I think that the concerns about the Fed are based on misconceptions”
Oh, if only the rest of us understood how the Fed works and how they really care about the American people. Then everything would be okay.
Not.
During that same session, Bernanke insisted that the Federal Reserve only has the purest motives….
“Our motives are strictly to do what is in the best interest of the broad public and I believe that our efforts to stabilize the financial system, which were ultimately proved successful, were very much in the interest of the broad public”
According to Bernanke, those that work at the Fed are unselfish guardians of our monetary system who are fighting for truth, justice and the American way of life.
Okay, perhaps I am exaggerating just a bit, but you get the point.
Bernanke is trying very hard to convince all of us that the Federal Reserve is just misunderstood and that we should just trust what the “experts” are doing.
So what will the plan be if the financial crisis in Europe blows up?
Well, during his visit to Fort Bliss one of the soldiers actually asked him about that. The following is his answer….
“Although the Fed would obviously do all that we could to maintain stability and to keep monetary policy as easy as necessary to try to minimize the damage, I don’t think we would be able to escape the consequences of a blow-up in Europe”
Oh, he would keep monetary policy “as easy as necessary”.
Isn’t that lovely – I bet that will be great for the value of the U.S. dollar.
Bernanke also told the soldiers that he believes that happy days are ahead for the U.S. economy….
“I do believe we will return to a healthier growth rate. I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t”
So we should just trust Bernanke, right?
He has never been wrong before, right?
Well, let’s check the record….
In 2005, Bernanke said that we shouldn’t worry because housing prices had never declined on a nationwide basis before and he said that he believed that the U.S. would continue to experience close to “full employment”….
“We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.”
In 2005, Bernanke also said that he believed that derivatives were perfectly safe and posed no danger to financial markets….
“With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.”
In 2006, Bernanke said that housing prices would probably keep rising….
“Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”
In 2007, Bernanke insisted that there was not a problem with subprime mortgages….
“At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.”
In 2008, Bernanke said that a recession was not coming….
“The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.”
A few months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed, Bernanke insisted that they were totally secure….
“The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.”
For many more examples that demonstrate the absolutely nightmarish track record of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, please see the following articles….
*”Say What? 30 Ben Bernanke Quotes That Are So Stupid That You Won’t Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry”
*”Is Ben Bernanke A Liar, A Lunatic Or Is He Just Completely And Totally Incompetent?”
But after being wrong over and over and over, Barack Obama still nominated Ben Bernanke for another term as Chairman of the Fed.
It is hard to put how stupid that was into words.
Look, if someone wrecked your car again and again would you keep handing that person your keys?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Bernanke made another statement during his visit with the troops this week that was really bizarre….
“The Federal Reserve is not perfect … but at this point, if you look around the world, you see no alternative”
He has got to be kidding, right?
Of course there are no other alternatives for us to look at! Only a handful of nations on earth do not have a central bank at this point. Iran, North Korea and a handful of others don’t have a central bank dominated by the international banking community but basically everyone else does.
Just because nearly every nation on earth has a central bank does not mean that there are not alternatives to the Federal Reserve system. I detailed a plan the other day that would transition us away from the Federal Reserve system.
It most certainly can be done.
But right now, most of our politicians are standing up for a system that allows private central bankers to spend trillions of dollars bailing out their friends while the rest of us suffer.
The other day, an article by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders appeared in the Huffington Post that detailed what was learned during a very limited audit of transactions conducted by the Federal Reserve during the recent financial crisis.
According to Senator Sanders, the Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to big corporations, Wall Street banks, foreign nations and wealthy individuals during the financial crisis….
“…we learned that the Federal Reserve provided a jaw-dropping $16 trillion in total financial assistance to every major financial institution in the country as well as a number of corporations, wealthy individuals and central banks throughout the world.”
Senator Sanders also says that the audit revealed that many of those running the Fed are from the same institutions that the Fed has been bailing out….
“The GAO also revealed that many of the people who serve as directors of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks come from the exact same financial institutions that the Fed is in charge of regulating. Further, the GAO found that at least 18 current and former Fed board members were affiliated with banks and companies that received emergency loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.”
Wait – isn’t there a huge conflict of interest problem there?
Of course there is.
But neither major political party is making a stink about it.
Sadly, Senator Sanders says that the audit found that there was “instance after instance” where individuals used their positions at the Fed to benefit their own firms….
“The GAO has detailed instance after instance of top executives of corporations and financial institutions using their influence as Federal Reserve directors to financially benefit their firms, and, in at least one instance, themselves.”
Wow – you would think that this scandal would have been reported on the front page of every major newspaper from coast to coast.
But that didn’t happen.
In fact, both major political parties continue to insist that there is nothing wrong with the Federal Reserve and that the Fed is doing a wonderful job.
It really is sickening.
Look, we need to educate the American people about the Federal Reserve and we need to make control over our currency a major issue in the 2012 campaign.
The American people should demand that the issuing of all United States currency be immediately returned to Congress as the U.S. Constitution requires.
The American people should demand that no more debt-based Federal Reserve Notes be issued and that from now on only debt-free United States money be issued.
The Federal Reserve has a track record of nearly 100 years of failure.
It is time for it to be shut down.
The choice, America, is up to you.
 How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt? 30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt. How in the world do supposedly rational people living in “the greatest nation on earth” allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that? It almost seems like there should be some sort of official ceremony in Washington D.C. to commemorate this achievement. It really takes something special to be able to roll up 15 trillion dollars of debt. To get to this level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending. For example, did you know that the U.S. national debt grows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute? All of this debt has fueled an unprecedented boom of prosperity for the last 30 years, but now that prosperity is drying up. Today, there are over 45 million Americans that are on food stamps. America is being deindustrialized at a blinding pace and there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. Poverty is exploding all over the nation, and millions of families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Unfortunately, there are zero solutions on the horizon. The leaders of both major political parties seem even more clueless right now than in past years. We really could use some hope, but hope is in very short supply.
When evaluating the health of America’s economy, it is important not to look at the short-term numbers. Rather, the key is to look at the long-term trends and the balance sheet numbers.
For example, if a mother and a father gave their teenage kids a bunch of credit cards and told them to go out and buy whatever they wanted, that would create a lot of “economic activity”, but it would also send that family to the poorhouse really quickly.
Well, we have basically done the same thing as a nation. We are drowning in debt, and all of this debt is going to destroy us financially.
Unfortunately, the federal government continues to spend money as if there was no tomorrow. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
When you are running up a credit card, it can be a lot of fun and it can seem like there aren’t any consequences.
But when it comes to debt, there are always consequences. The following is what former Republican Senator Alan Simpson (of the Simpson-Bowles Commission) recently had to say about the horrific debt crisis we are currently facing….
“It’s very simple. If you spend more than you earn, you lose your butt”
In the United States, we love to have the government spend money on all sorts of things, but we never want to pay for it.
So the debt just keeps piling up higher and higher.
A lot of Republicans say that spending on social programs has gotten out of control. A lot of Democrats say that spending on the military has gotten out of control.
They are both right. As I have written about previously, the U.S. military accounts for close to half of all the military spending in the world. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of the next 15 countries combined.
Yes, we will always need a very powerful military, but we can have one without going broke in the process.
But an even larger problem is our rampant spending on social programs.
The following comes from a recent article by Janet Tavakoli….
In 1950 spending for social programs was only one percent of the total Federal Budget. As the economy grew, social programs expanded to include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Supplemental Security for the Disabled, and educational programs. In 1983 as the United States pulled out of an ugly recession and brought inflation under control, social programs consumed 26% of the budget. In fiscal year 2012, they’ll eat up an estimated 57% of the budget.
Tens of millions of Americans have become absolutely addicted to government money. Nobody ever wants “their government benefits” to be cut, but nobody ever seems to want to have their taxes raised to pay for them.
To get a really good idea of how government transfer payments have absolutely skyrocketed over the years, just check out this chart.
Obviously, the course that we are on is not anywhere close to sustainable.
To say that the “war on poverty” was a failure would be a huge understatement.
The more money we seem to spend on social programs, the more that poverty seems to grow.
Right now, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps. The economy is supposed to be “recovering”, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by over 8 percent in just the past year.
Food stamps are the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned bread lines. The federal government is now feeding an almost unbelievable number of Americans.
According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps. That means that approximately one out of every seven Americans is dependent on the federal government for food.
That is not just a crisis – that is a total nightmare.
So what can be done?
Well, we certainly shouldn’t let our people starve in the streets.
But handouts should only be a temporary solution.
What these people really need are good jobs. Unfortunately, our “leaders” have created a business environment in this country that is incredibly toxic, and they have stood by as millions upon millions of good jobs have been shipped out of the country. That is one of the reasons why I write about the insane trade policies of the globalists over and over and over. The American people need to understand that globalization is going to mean a continuing loss of jobs for this country and it is going to result in the destruction of the middle class.
If we are not going to provide good jobs for American workers, then we are going to have to pay higher taxes in order to feed them and take care of them.
But what happens when the “safety net” breaks?
Even now, a lot of state and local governments all over the country are flat broke and they are cutting back on assistance for the poor.
The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article about this issue that was posted on the Fiscal Times….
For years, hundreds of thousands of people in dire straits – mentally or physically disabled, homeless and unemployed, ineligible for federal welfare, disability, or food subsidies – could generally count on state or local government largesse for modest handouts of cash to help scrape by. Under the rubric of “General Assistance,” these down-and-out Americans received modest payments – often no more than a few hundred dollars a month – to help defray the cost of necessities including rent, food, clothing, toilet paper, aspirin, phone cards, and bus tickets.
But in the midst of the worst recession of modern times and changing attitudes about the poor, many states have been gradually chipping away at general assistance programs or eliminating them altogether. Only 30 of 50 states currently offer any form of general assistance – down from 38 in 1989. And just this week, Washington State formally ended its “Disability Lifeline” program for an estimated 18,000 to 22,000 economically desperate residents.
Sadly, even more of us may be joining the ranks of the poor soon. The layoffs just keep on coming.
Normally, most major store closings do not happen until after the holiday season. You see, the reality is that most troubled retailers tend to want to bring in one more year of holiday sales before they finally shut the doors. If you announce store closings before the holidays, that is going to make holiday shoppers less likely to shop at those stores.
So that is why some of the recent store closing announcements have been so troubling.
For example, it just came out that all 46 Syms and Filene’s Basement stores are closing.
Also, Gap recently announced plans to close 189 stores in the United States.
So if this is what we are already seeing now, what is going to happen after the holidays?
That is a very good question.
So many jobs are being lost all around the nation. These days, there is massive competition for just about any job that is available.
People are getting desperate. They just want to be able to pay the bills and take care of their families.
The other day, thousands upon thousands of people lined up to apply for casino jobs in south Florida. Scenes like this are going to become even more frequent in the years ahead.
So do our politicians have any solutions?
Of course not.
The worst of the Republican candidates are actually at the top of the polls. The cold, hard truth is that Romney, Cain and Perry are all clueless when it comes to the economy.
Of course you might as well call Barack Obama “Captain Clueless” when it comes to the economy. Obama keeps giving great speeches about jobs while at the same time signing more “free trade” agreements that will send thousands more businesses and millions more jobs out of the country. Even the CEOs on Obama’s jobs creation panel are shipping huge numbers of jobs out of the United States.
Obama gave a speech in Washington D.C. today that exemplified his clueless approach to the economy. During the speech, Obama made the following statement….
“If Congress tells you they don’t have time, they got time to do it. We’ve been in the House of Representatives, what have you guys been debating? John, you’ve been debating a commemorative coin for baseball? You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That’s not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work”
First of all, Obama is not putting people back to work. He has been helping big corporations ship jobs out of the country at a record pace.
Secondly, how does he know what God wants?
A lot of people actually think that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible.
But it isn’t.
A while after the Obama speech, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made matters worse when he told reporters the following….
“I believe the phrase from the Bible is ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves”
But once again, there is no such verse in the Bible.
Okay, so quoting a “mystery verse” from the Bible is not that big of a thing at the end of the day, but this is yet another example of how the Obama administration just can’t seem to get anything right.
Look, everyone makes mistakes once in a while. I know that I certainly do.
But when you are wrong about almost everything almost all of the time, that is a major problem.
Especially when you are the president of the United States.
But both political parties are to blame for the mess that we are in. Budget deficits exploded during Republican administrations just like they have under the Democrats.
Both political parties are responsible for us being 15 trillion dollars in debt.
Both political parties are responsible for 45 million Americans being on food stamps.
Both political parties are responsible for the fact that there are not nearly enough good jobs.
If Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Rick Perry is elected in 2012, we are just going to have more of the same.
America is running out of time. If we are going to change course, we need to do it immediately.
The borrower is the servant of the lender. We are enslaving ourselves and we are enslaving future American generations by going into so much debt.
Shame on the politicians that have rolled up so much debt in our name and shame on us for continuing to send those same politicians back to Washington D.C. time after time after time.
It is so sad to watch what is happening to America.
 There is absolutely nothing wrong with working hard and making a lot of money, but there is something wrong with being completely arrogant and smug about it. Today, many among the elite are savagely mocking the poor, and that is a huge mistake. You shouldn’t kick people when they are down. There are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply frustrated about losing their homes, losing their jobs or barely being able to survive in this economy. These frustrations have been one of the primary reasons for the rise of the Tea Party movement and the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement. What these movements have in common is that people in both movements are sick and tired of the status quo and they want something to be done about our broken system. There are huge numbers of families out there right now that have just about reached the end of their ropes. Instead of showing compassion, many of the ultra-wealthy have decided that it is funny to mock the poor and those that are suffering. So how are all of these protesters going to respond to the “let them eat cake” attitude of the Wall Street elite? The protesters are being told that nothing that they can do will change anything and that they should be grateful for what Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy have done for them. They are essentially being told that they should just shut up and go home. So will we see these protest movements become discouraged and die down, or will the patronizing attitudes of so many among the elite just inflame them even further?
Right now, there really are two different “Americas”. In one America, the stock market is surging, corporate profits are soaring and BMW is operating factories at 110% of capacity just to keep up with demand.
In the other America, unemployment is rampant, millions of families are being kicked out of their homes and more than 45 million Americans are on food stamps.
There is more economic frustration in this country today than there has been at any other time since the Great Depression. We are watching pressure build to very dangerous levels.
It is important to note that I certainly do not agree at all with the solutions being put forward by the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street protests. As I have written about previously, collectivism is one of our biggest problems, and more collectivism is not going to solve anything.
But it is definitely understandable that people are incredibly upset about this economy and that they want to protest. Most Americans realize that something is fundamentally wrong with our economic system.
Unfortunately, most of them do not understand how we have gotten to this point or what it is going to take to fix things. That is one of the reasons why I write about economic issues so much. We desperately need to educate America.
But what is undeniable is that there is a growing rage in this country that protest movements such as the Occupy Wall Street are giving a voice to.
Our system is badly broken. The people out there protesting in the streets may not understand much, but they do understand that something needs to change.
The Wall Street elite should be taking these protests as a signal that they need to get their house in order. The status quo just is not going to cut it. But instead of taking leadership and calling for significant change, many among the elite are openly mocking the protesters.
The incredible arrogance displayed by so many on Wall Street and by so many in Washington D.C. is absolutely appalling.
The following are 10 examples of how the elite are openly mocking the poor in America today….
#1 According to an article in The New York Times, poor families that lost their homes to foreclosure were openly mocked during a Halloween party thrown by the law firm of Steven J. Baum. This particular law firm represents many of the largest mortgage lenders in the United States….
The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Photos from this Halloween party are posted on The New York Times website. To say that they are appalling would be a huge understatement. The following is how The New York Times described one of the photos….
In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.
#2 To many on Wall Street, the OWS protests are one big joke. In fact, Wall Street executives have been spotted sipping champagne while watching the Occupy Wall Street protests from their balconies.
#3 In response to the Occupy Chicago protests, signs were put up in the windows of the building where the Chicago Board of Trade is located that spelled out this sentence: “We Are The 1%“.
#4 Many columnists for major financial publications have had no fear of mocking the Occupy Wall Street protesters. For example, Doug Hirschhorn recently wrote the following for Forbes….
As your Occupation of Wall Street continues, you may want to grasp a few things. First, it is not going to change anything in the short term and probably not much in the long-term either.
I hate to be the bearer of that news, but money makes the world go round and “Wall Street” is all about money. Second, the top traders, banks and hedge funds are still going to out earn and generate substantial profits from speculating on the disconnects in the prices of things generated from all the moving parts in the global economy and it has nothing to do with why you lost your house or job or can’t find a job. If anything the successful ones are helping you, your pensions funds, retirement savings and the economy in general. If Wall Street stops. The world stops. Period.
#5 Instead of attempting a balanced report on the Occupy Wall Street protests, Erin Burnett of CNN openly made fun of them during a recent broadcast. After being a stalwart on CNBC for so many years, Burnett has very close ties to Wall Street and apparently she does not like anyone criticizing her friends. You can see video of Burnett mocking the Occupy Wall Street movement right here.
#6 Barack Obama continues to mock the poor by telling them to cut back on vacations and little luxuries like going out to eat while at the same time sending his own family out on incredibly expensive vacations. The following is one example I noted in an article earlier this year….
Barack Obama recently made the following statement to American families that are struggling to survive in this economy: “If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation.” A few days after making that statement Obama sent his wife and children off on yet another vacation, this time to a luxury ski hotel in Vail, Colorado.
Later on in that same article I mentioned another outrageously expensive vacation taken by the Obamas that was paid for by our taxes….
Back in August, Michelle Obama took her daughter Sasha and 40 of her friends for a vacation in Spain.
So what was the bill to the taxpayers for that little jaunt across the pond?
It is estimated that vacation alone cost U.S. taxpayers $375,000.
During a time when so many millions of American families are deeply, deeply suffering it is truly appalling that the residents of the White House would be so insensitive.
#7 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain recently declared that anyone that is unemployed or poor in America should only blame themselves….
“Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”
#8 Sometimes our politicians are so insensitive that it is almost hard to believe. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News while she was still the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi stated that we need poor people to have less children because it costs the government so much money to take care of them….
PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?
PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.
#9 Warren Buffett has some interesting observations on class warfare. He is one of the few wealthy Americans that is willing to say what everyone else is thinking. Back in 2006, Buffett was quoted as saying the following in an article in The New York Times….
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Buffett was not taking pride in the fact that the elite have won, but there are many others among the elite that are very proud of what they have done and they are not afraid to look down on the poor.
The level of income inequality that we have in the United States today is absolutely amazing. According to data from a few years ago, the average household income for the top 0.01% of all Americans was $27,342,212. According to that same data, for the bottom 90% of all Americans the average household income was just $31,244.
#10 Every single day, our “representatives” in Washington D.C. are living the high life at our expense. It is amazing that out of the entire population of the United States, we continue to overwhelming elect rich people to Congress. As I noted in a recent article, more than half of all the members of Congress are millionaires, and the median wealth of a U.S. Senator in 2009 was 2.38 million dollars.
Without a doubt, the wealthy rule over us all and they intend to maintain control and perpetuate the system which has rewarded them so handsomely.
When necessary, they are not afraid to call in the police to bust some skulls. Sadly, we are already seeing some brutally violent confrontations between law enforcement authorities and Occupy Wall Street protesters in many areas of the country. The other day, I wrote about the horrific violence that took place in Oakland recently….
Unfortunately, the authorities are not just going to sit by and watch these protests happen. In fact, they are already clamping down hard in many areas of the nation. For example, police in Oakland recently used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the Occupy protest in that city. When police opened fire, the streets of Oakland literally became a war zone for a few minutes. You can see shocking videos of the violence here, here and here.
Power and wealth have become incredibly concentrated in the United States today. As one scientific study demonstrated recently, the elite control almost the entire global economy. In fact, the University of Zurich study discovered that there are just 147 gigantic corporations at the core of it all.
It is not a good thing that such a very small group of people completely dominates all the rest of us.
Once again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with working hard, making great contributions to society and becoming very wealthy.
However, what we have today is a fundamentally broken system that funnels most of the wealth and most of the power into the hands of the ultra-wealthy and the gigantic corporations that they own.
It would be great if the American people could come together and work to make some positive changes to our system.
But right now, it appears that strife, discord and hatred are going to continue to rapidly grow in this country. We have become a very divided nation and we are watching anger and frustration grow to very dangerous levels.
All of this is a recipe for mass chaos. Our country is marching toward a date with disaster and right now we show no signs of changing course.
Please pray for America.
We definitely need it.
 Today, millions of smart, hard working Americans are flipping burgers, waiting tables or working dead end retail jobs not because they want to, but because they have no other options. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 14 million Americans are currently unemployed and another 9.3 million Americans are currently “underemployed”. During this economic downturn, a lot of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs because they have been unable to find full-time jobs. For many, this can be a soul-crushing experience. It can be easy to become very bitter when you have worked very hard all your life and yet you find yourself having to take a job that only pays you a fraction of what you used to make. A lot of young college graduates end up hating life because the only jobs that they can seem to find do not even require a college degree and don’t even come close to enabling them to keep up with their crippling student loan debt payments. Sadly, the underemployment problem continues to grow even worse. In September alone, the number of underemployed Americans rose by close to half a million.
There are other measurements that indicate that unemployment in America is even worse that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is indicating.
For example, a recent Gallup poll found that approximately one out of every five Americans that currently have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.
In addition, according to author Paul Osterman about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.
When you try as hard as you can and you still can’t pay the bills, it is easy to end up hating life.
What some Americans are going through is absolutely heart breaking. Just consider the following story from a recent article on Fox News….
Damian Birkel, of Winston-Salem N.C., found himself in similar circumstances. He was a marketing manager at Sarah Lee in the early 1990s when he was downsized. Since then, he has been laid off from three other jobs, including one at a recruiting firm.
“I felt like I had ‘loser’ tattooed to my forehead, and ‘will work for food’ tattooed to my chest,” he says.
The hardest part was telling his young daughter that there might not be enough money to pay the bills — among them, sending her to summer camp. “She brings her piggy bank and says, ‘Daddy, why don’t you break into the piggy bank so that you can pay some of the bills.’”
How would you feel if your little daughter said that to you?
Unfortunately, the number of good jobs just continues to decrease.
There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
And the mix of jobs that our economy is producing continues to change.
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.
What that means is that the middle class is shrinking.
A lot of young people are coming out of college right now and are having their dreams absolutely crushed. Large numbers of them are entering the “real world” with nightmarish student loan debt burdens and only a limited number of them can find decent jobs.
A recent USA Today article told the story of one of these very frustrated young Americans….
Kate Wolfe chased a dream when she moved to New York after college, looking to break into acting while working as a maître d’.
Her $50,000 worth of student loans were a distraction she could handle. Then the uninsured 25-year-old was mugged last year, and the final indignity was the $30,000 emergency room bill.
We are pumping out tons of college graduates, but we are not pumping out nearly enough jobs for all of them.
If you can believe it, in the United States today there are 317,000 waiters and waitresses that actually have college degrees.
That is an absolutely horrifying statistic.
But the truth is that the lack of good jobs is hitting every age level really hard.
For example, the average American family is under a tremendous amount of financial stress in this economy. Once you adjust it for inflation, median household income in the United States has declined approximately 10 percent since December 2007.
Meanwhile, the cost of food, gas, health insurance and just about everything else a family needs has gone up significantly.
Our politicians keep talking about “jobs, jobs, jobs” but the number of decent jobs continues on a very clear downward trend.
Back in 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs. Today, only 42 percent of all jobs in the United States are middle income jobs.
Sadly, it now looks like even the low income jobs are starting to dry up.
Mall vacancies recently hit a brand new all-time record. Major retail chains all over the country are announcing layoffs. Things do not look very promising for the upcoming holiday season.
So what are our leaders doing about all of this?
Well, unfortunately they continue to fumble the football very badly.
According to a recent ABC News report, the U.S. government actually gave a $529 million loan guarantee to an electric car company that decided to make its cars in Finland….
Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.
If we don’t figure out how to stop millions of jobs from leaving this country we are going to be in a world of hurt.
The trade policies of the federal government are neither “free” nor “fair” and they are causing the standard of living of American workers to rapidly sink toward the level of the rest of the world.
We are told that it is “inevitable” that we are going to be deindustrialized and that we are going to become a service economy.
But guess what?
Service jobs generally pay a lot less than manufacturing jobs do.
A “one world economy” where our labor force is merged with the labor forces of the rest of the globe is not a good thing for the average American worker and it is not a good thing for America.
But of course trade is not the only reason why we are losing good jobs. There are a whole bunch of reasons why this is happening. For many more reasons, just check out this article.
A lot of you that are reading this article are unemployed or underemployed right now.
Unfortunately, there is not much hope that the U.S. economy is going to experience a significant turnaround any time soon.
In fact, it is likely that things are going to be getting even worse.
Our economic system is dying. Now is the time to try to get as independent of it as you can.
Don’t count on a job (“just over broke”) as your only source of income. In this economy, no job is safe.
There are millions upon millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans that never dreamed that their lives would go so horribly wrong.
But they did.
Our nation is experiencing the consequences of decades of very bad decisions.
There is no help on the horizon and the cavalry is not on the way to rescue us.
You better prepare accordingly.
 An increasing number of politicians and celebrities are openly declaring that if the economy continues to decline, it could lead to civil unrest, more crime and outbreaks of violence all over America. But instead of loudly denouncing the coming violence, many of them are making it sound like the natural response for those that have lost hope in the economy is to resort to violence. This is extremely unfortunate. The truth is that violence is not the solution to any of our problems. Violence is only going to make things worse. But right now a lot of big names are warning that if significant changes are not made soon, the only alternative is going to be civil unrest and violence. In fact, one of the latest to make a bold declaration like this is Vice President Joe Biden. According to Biden, there are going to be a lot more rapes and a lot more murders if Congress does not pass Obama’s jobs plan.
The following are comments that Biden made about Flint, Michigan during a recent speech he gave to promote the jobs bill….
“In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes–just to pick two categories–climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it.”
So is there some truth to what Biden is saying?
Of course there is. Many of our cities are rapidly being transformed into hellholes where crime is rising dramatically.
But instead of fixing the underlying problems, Biden is saying that if we don’t spend more federal money in these local communities we are going to have chaos in the streets.
Sadly, this sounds so much like what a lot of other prominent people have been saying lately.
For example, Democratic strategist James Carville recently made national headlines when he told talk show host Don Imus that civil unrest is “imminently possible”….
“You know, look — this is a humanitarian — you know, you’re smart enough to see this . . . People, you know, if it continues, we’re going to start to see civil unrest in this country. I hate to say that, but I think it’s imminently possible.”
Much more frightening is what Michael Moore recently told Keith Olbermann. The following is a comment that Michael Moore recently made during an interview on Current TV….
“The smart rich know they can only build the gate so high. And, and, sooner or later history proves that people when they’ve had enough aren’t going to take it anymore. And much better to deal with it nonviolently now, through the political system, than what could possibly happen in the future, which nobody wants to see”
Even more bizarre is what Roseanne Barr had to say during a recent appearance on RT….
“I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded”
Are “reeducation camps” and acts of violent revenge going to solve any of our problems?
Of course not.
But this is a mindset that is growing.
There are millions upon millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now. The mainstream media is not telling them the truth about the economy and neither are our politicians. So the American people simply do not understand what is going on.
That means that they are prime candidates to be drawn into radical protest movements.
So far, the Occupy Wall Street protests have been non-violent, but that doesn’t mean that some of the protesters do not have violence on their minds.
For example, the following is what one speaker at the Occupy Los Angeles protests recently had to say about violence….
“One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution.
Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us. French Revolution made fundamental transformation. But it was bloody.
India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty.
So, ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class.
Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”
You can see video of these shocking comments right here.
In past decades, the American population endured tough times with dignity and grace for the most part.
But times are different now. The American people have become addicted to endless prosperity, and now that things are going downhill they want someone to blame. As the economy continues to crumble, we are going to see some national “temper tantrums” that are going to be absolutely mind blowing.
For even more on how anger and frustration are rising in America, please see an article I did the other day entitled: “Buckle Up: America Is Getting Very Angry And The Protests Are Going To Become Much More Frightening“.
But let us not diminish in any way the very real pain and suffering that tens of millions of Americans are going through right now. About a million families a year are losing their homes, the number of good jobs continues to decline and many of our communities are rapidly turning into hellholes.
Unfortunately, there are signs that things will soon get even worse for our local communities. For example, the largest county in Alabama is preparing for what would be the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States.
And this is just the beginning.
Hundreds of other state and local governments from coast to coast are on the verge of bankruptcy. The cry for bailouts from the federal government is going to get louder and louder, but the federal government has already piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and there is only so much more debt that it can take on before our entire financial system collapses.
All of the long-term trends are pointing to a total collapse of the economy. If you think that people are angry now, just wait until that happens. We are going to see outbreaks of rioting and looting and crime and violence that will be absolutely unprecedented.
The American people are not morally equipped to handle a severe depression. We simply do not have the same character that previous generations possessed. We have gotten very soft and very spoiled and very selfish.
But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a remnant that will hold on to the truth and that will stand for what is right.
When things are the darkest, that is when the greatest heroes are called for.
Let us work together to wake up America, and let us continue shining a light in the darkness.
We must work while it is still day, because night is coming soon.
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24 Statistics To Show To Anyone Who Believes That America Has A Bright Economic Future
In America today, we have such a short-term focus. We are all so caught up with what is happening right now. Our attention spans seem to get shorter every single year. At this point it would not be hard to argue that kittens have longer attention spans than most of us do. (If you have ever owned a kitten you know how short their attention spans can be.) Things have gotten so bad that most of our high school students cannot even answer the most basic questions about our history. If people are not talking about it on Facebook or Twitter it is almost as if it does not even matter.
But any serious student of history knows that is is absolutely crucial to examine long-term trends. And when you look at the long-term trends, it rapidly becomes apparent that the U.S. economy is in the midst of a nightmarish long-term decline.
The following are 24 statistics to show to anyone who believes that America has a bright economic future….
#1 Inflation is a silent tax that steals wealth from all of us. We continue to shell out increasing amounts of money for the basic things that we need, and yet our incomes are not keeping pace. Just check out the following example. Gasoline prices have been trending higher for several years in a row as one blogger recently noted….
January 2009 $1.65
January 2010 $2.57
January 2011 $3.04
January 2012 $3.29
#2 If you can believe it, the average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
#3 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#4 Health care costs continue to rise at a very alarming pace. 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%.
#5 Getting a college education has also become insanely expensive in America. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.
#6 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.
#7 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1913 you would have to have more than $457 today.
#8 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added more than 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#9 The U.S. economy is bleeding millions of good jobs. Greedy CEOs are systematically shipping them overseas and our politicians are standing around and doing nothing about it. This has gone on year after year after year. The following is from a recent article by Paul Craig Roberts….
#10 Our economic infrastructure is being torn apart right in front of our eyes. In 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States. Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have shut down since 2001.
We have made it legal for big corporations to send millions of jobs to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, where the tax burden is much lighter and where there are barely any regulations. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article posted on Economy in Crisis….
#11 As a result of our insane economic policies, our trade balances are absolutely exploding. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#12 As you read this, there are millions of Americans out there wondering why they can’t find any jobs. According to Reuters, 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.
#13 The number of good jobs has been steadily shrinking in America. Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#14 Over the last three decades, the percentage of low income jobs has consistently risen. 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.
#15 The number of middle class neighborhoods also continues to decline. 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”.
#16 A decade ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. By 2010, the United States had fallen to seventh.
#17 Our incomes continue to go down. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#18 Unfortunately, middle class Americans have been seeing their incomes decline for a very long time. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#19 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%. Unfortunately, U.S. consumers have still not learned how to stay out of debt. According to a recent article posted on Financial Armageddon, the rate of personal savings in the United States is rapidly falling right now at the same time that the total amount of consumer credit is absolutely skyrocketing.
#20 The number of children living in poverty in America keeps rising year after year. The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010.
#21 The number of Americans on food stamps continues to set new all-time records. Just check out the following progression….
October 2008: 30.8 million Americans on food stamps
October 2009: 37.6 million Americans on food stamps
October 2010: 43.2 million Americans on food stamps
October 2011: 46.2 million Americans on food stamps
#22 The U.S. debt problem has gotten completely and totally out of control. Recently, the debt of the federal government surpassed 100% of GDP for the first time ever.
#23 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.
#24 Barack Obama’s proposed 2012 budget projects that the national debt will rise to 26 trillion dollars a decade from now. And his budget numbers are ridiculously optimistic.
Are you starting to get the picture?
All of the long-term economic numbers are progressively getting worse.
As the economy continues to crumble, large numbers of Americans are becoming really desperate. For example, a recent Mother Jones article detailed how large numbers of formerly middle class Americans are now actually growing marijuana in an effort to make ends meet.
As things continue to get worse, people will become even more desperate. There are millions of people out there that find themselves unable to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for their families. When people hit rock bottom, they often find themselves doing things that they never dreamed that they would do.
Meanwhile, the big Wall Street banks just keep getting larger and more powerful. We have allowed the “too big to fail” banks to become much bigger than they have ever been before. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
Wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top even as the overall economic pie in America continues to get smaller.
As our economic problems become worse, more Americans than ever are trying to find ways to “escape”.
For example, according to one new government report one out of every six adults in America is a binge drinker.
Other Americans “tune out” by watching endless hours of television, by playing endless hours of video games or by indulging in endless hours of other forms of entertainment.
There are even some Americans that are giving up completely. For example, one elderly man actually robbed a bank just so that he could get arrested and be taken to prison where he would get free health care.
But as I have written about previously, now is not the time to give up. Instead, now is the time to prepare for the great challenges that are ahead.
Almost every generation in history has been faced with great challenges and great hardships at some point.
Yes, there will be some incredibly hard times ahead, but that also means that there will be a need for some great heroes.
Just because the U.S. economy is falling apart does not mean that life is over.
We are living during one of the most exciting times in all of human history. Instead of cowering in fear, let us embrace these times and focus on becoming the people that we were created to be.