The United States is negotiating one of the biggest free trade agreements in history and there is barely a peep about it on the news. Years ago, Ross Perot warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as millions of jobs left this country. It turns out that he was right. Starting on Tuesday, the next round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (also known as the “NAFTA of the Pacific”) will begin in Chicago. We have already seen the Obama administration push hard for free trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia and the administration is making the Trans-Pacific Partnership a very high priority. Membership in the “NAFTA of the Pacific” already includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. The United States, Australia, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled to join. Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly considering membership. So once this “free trade” agreement is ratified, will we hear another “giant sucking sound” as millions more of our jobs are shipped overseas?
Look, it is not really that complicated. If you are a giant U.S. corporation, you can either make stuff here, or you can make stuff overseas where it is far, far less expensive to do so.
To greedy corporate executives, there are a lot of advantages to moving operations out of the country….
*It is legal to pay slave labor wages in many of these other countries. After all, why pay an American worker 10 or 20 times as much as a worker on the other side of the globe?
*In many of these other countries you do not have to provide any health care for workers.
*In many of these other countries there are virtually no environmental controls to worry about.
*In many of these other countries there are virtually no labor standards to worry about.
*In many of these other countries you only have to deal with a fraction of the “red tape” that you have to deal with in the United States.
By merging our economies with the economies of societies that are far different from our own, we have created a “race to the bottom” that is incredibly destructive to the U.S. economy.
In Vietnam, one dollar an hour is considered to be a very good wage.
So how do you plan to compete against that?
These “free trade agreements” are direct assaults on the big, juicy paychecks of American workers.
If you do not know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, you need to get educated.
The following is a basic introduction to the TPP from Wikipedia….
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, is a multilateral free trade agreement that aims to further liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region; specifically, Article 1.1.3 notes: “The Parties seek to support the wider liberalisation process in APEC consistent with its goals of free and open trade and investment.”[1] The original agreement between the countries of Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore was signed on June 3, 2005, and entered into force on May 28, 2006. Five additional countries – Australia, Malaysia, Peru, United States, and Vietnam – are negotiating to join the group.
Apparently, one of the goals of the TPP is to reduce all trade tariffs among member nations to zero by the year 2015. The proponents of “free trade” are absolutely thrilled.
We have all enjoyed the flood of cheap products from overseas. It is nice to pay a little bit less for things.
But these cheap prices have come at a very high cost. We are literally destroying the American economy. If you walk into just about any store today and you start turning over products, you will find that almost all of them are made out of the country.
If our middle class jobs keep getting shipped overseas, our prosperity is going to vanish. If the American people allow this to continue, the standard of living of American workers is going to continue to fall toward the level of workers in third world countries.
Arthur Stamoulis, the executive director of Citizen Trade Campaign recently had the following to say about why he is opposed to this new free trade agreement….
“They’ve shipped our jobs overseas. They’ve reduced the tax base, they’ve driven down the wages and benefits for the jobs that are left. We’ve had enough”
As you can see from the chart below, we have seen a massive decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States over the last few decades….
It is absolutely amazing that the Obama administration continues to tout more “free trade” agreements as a way to increase employment in the United States.
Sadly, nearly half the country is still going to run out and vote for the guy in the next election.
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.
So the answer is to ship even more of our jobs overseas?
Apparently the Obama administration actually believes that we don’t want those jobs. The following is what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post recently….
Let’s increase our competitiveness… the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don’t want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don’t want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.
Can you believe that nonsense? He believes that there are things that “we don’t want to make in America”?
Why is nobody calling for him to resign immediately?
Manufacturing jobs have traditionally been high paying jobs that can support middle class families.
But now we are losing millions of those jobs and the Obama administration simply does not care.
Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
America is being deindustrialized at warp speed and most Americans don’t even understand what is happening.
Look, even if U.S. firms wanted to stay in the United States and try to compete, they face almost insurmountable obstacles….
*Many foreign nations deeply and directly subsidize national industries and the U.S. government lets them get away with it. That puts our industries at a vast disadvantage.
*The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That puts our corporations at a vast disadvantage.
*Many foreign nations do not require businesses to provide health care for their employees. That puts our businesses at a vast disadvantage.
*Many foreign nations impose very little regulation on businesses. That puts businesses in the United States at a vast disadvantage. In the U.S., we have some of the most restrictive regulations in the world.
The truth is that even the “next generation jobs” and the “green jobs” that Obama keeps talking about are rapidly leaving the country.
For example, the third-largest producer of solar panels in the United States, Evergreen Solar, is leaving America.
Evergreen is shutting down its factory in Massachusetts, laying off 800 American workers and moving production over to China.
Evergreen, in announcing its move to China, was unusually candid about its motives. Michael El-Hillow, the chief executive, said in a statement that his company had decided to close the Massachusetts factory in response to plunging prices for solar panels. World prices have fallen as much as two-thirds in the last three years — including a drop of 10 percent during last year’s fourth quarter alone.
Chinese manufacturers, Mr. El-Hillow said in the statement, have been able to push prices down sharply because they receive considerable help from the Chinese government and state-owned banks, and because manufacturing costs are generally lower in China.
We are losing the “jobs of the future” and Obama is doing nothing about it.
Last year, more than half of all the solar panels in the world were made in China.
China is absolutely killing us on the global economic stage and Obama does not even seem to think that it is a problem.
The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
Not only that, the United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
So don’t listen to any of the nonsense that Obama is spouting about creating jobs.
Not that most of the Republicans are putting forward any good ideas either.
The reality is that our politicians have lied to us. Globalism is absolutely destroying our economy.
Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.
We are losing ground in almost every industry that you could name. Even the “jobs of tomorrow” are mostly being created overseas.
Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, says that our advanced technology companies are creating far more jobs overseas than they are in the United States….
Some 250,000 Foxconn employees in southern China produce Apple’s products. Apple, meanwhile, has about 25,000 employees in the U.S. That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX), and other U.S. tech companies.
When is someone going to wake up America? If we are even losing “advanced technology” jobs, then what kind of jobs are going to be left?
In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
Needless to say, that is not a good trend.
Our politicians promised us that the “global economy” would mean more jobs and more prosperity for us.
If we allow all of this “free trade” nonsense to continue, our unemployment nightmare is going to continue to get worse and even more of our formerly great cities will end up looking like total hellholes just like Detroit does.
Sadly, virtually all of our politicians in both political parties are in favor of these “free trade” agreements. In fact, most of them are pushing these kinds of agreements as one of the “solutions” to our problems.
The U.S. economy is being dismantled and deindustrialized right in front of your eyes.
If you plan on speaking out, you better do it now because it is almost too late to stop what is being done.
Do you have friends, neighbors and relatives that can’t find work? Well, unfortunately the current U.S. jobs famine is about to get a whole lot worse. Right now there are approximately 13.9 million unemployed Americans. That does not count those that “are not looking for work”. That does not count those that are working part-time jobs but that are desperate for full-time work. The truth is that we need tens of millions more full-time jobs in order to give one to everyone that wants one. Sadly, the long-term trends that have caused this mess continue to get worse. Unless truly dramatic changes are made, the U.S. economy is going to continue to bleed jobs and that is going to suck the hope right out of this country. It is time to wake up America! It is not a big mystery why we don’t have enough jobs. But sadly, very few of our leaders are talking about the real issues.
Something has got to be done. Unemployment is already at epidemic levels, and this country can’t afford for things to get much worse. Just check out how a recent article in The Wall Street Journal summarized our current predicament….
There are more unemployed than the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Idaho and the District of Columbia.
If they were a country, the 13.9 million unemployed Americans would be the 68th largest country in the world, bigger than the population of Greece or Portugal (each of which has 10.8 million people) and more than twice the population of Norway (4.7 million.)
Isn’t that incredible?
The number of unemployed Americans is larger than the entire population of Greece.
There are millions of Americans that will be sitting at home in front of their televisions tonight wondering why they can’t find jobs. Last month, only 58.1% of Americans over the age of 16 were employed. Our economy should be able to do far better than that.
All over the Internet there are stories of people that have sent out hundreds (or even thousands) of resumes and nobody even wants to interview them. One recent survey found that approximately 80 percent of all Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job right now.
Unfortunately, things are going to get much, much worse before all this is over.
The following are 10 very obvious reasons why the devastating U.S. jobs famine is going to suck the hope right out of America….
#1 Our politicians simply do not care that America is bleeding jobs. Amazingly, even with rampant unemployment plaguing this nation, Obama administration officials continue to declare that it is okay that we are losing manufacturing jobs because a lot of cheaper products are things that “we don’t want to make in America” anyway. The following is what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post the other day….
Let’s increase our competitiveness… the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don’t want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don’t want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.
The economic negligence that recent administrations have demonstrated has been absolutely mind boggling. Blue collar male workers in particular are being absolutely devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs. Back in 1967, 97 percent of men with a high school degree between the ages of 30 and 50 had jobs. Today, that figure is down to 76 percent.
#2 The Obama administration has now instituted a policy of “backdoor amnesty” for illegal immigrants by executive fiat. Janet Napolitano has announced that from now on there will be a case-by-case review of all deportation cases. Cases involving criminals will be prioritized and most others will be thrown out. A list of 19 factors that will allow government officials to use “prosecutorial discretion” in immigration cases has been distributed. Recently, I listed a few of those “factors” on The American Dream website….
-arrival in the U.S. as a young child
-actively “pursuing an education”
-serving or served in the U.S. military
-spouse of someone in the U.S. military
-18 years old or younger
-“elderly”
-pregnant or nursing
-victim of a “serious crime”
-serious disability or health problem
-caring for a family member with a serious disability or health problem
Obviously, it is not going to be too difficult for most illegal immigrants to fit into at least one of those categories.
On top of everything else the Obama administration has announced that it will now allow illegal immigrants to apply for work permits….
Illegal aliens living in the United States typically don’t apply for work permits for fear of deportation, but under the new policy, they could apply for work permits if granted deferred action or parole and compete with 22 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job.
So now blue collar Americans workers will have even more competition for the dwindling number of jobs.
#3 State and local governments all over the country are dead broke, and an atmosphere of austerity is sweeping the nation. Right now state and local governments are slashing jobs at an unprecedented rate.
In the past, government jobs were considered to be very secure and they definitely paid a lot higher than average. But now that era is coming to an end, at least on the state and local government levels.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, state and local governments have eliminated more than half a million jobs since August 2008. UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will cut 450,000 more jobs by the end of 2012.
#4 U.S. businesses are being absolutely crushed by mountains of nightmarish regulations, and yet the federal government, the state governments and local governments just continue to pile them on. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer. Due to these kinds of ridiculous regulations, many business owners have simply given up and many other potential business owners figure that owning a business is just not worth the hassle.
#5 As I have written about so many times before, the “global economy” is really bad for American workers. When we merged our economy with the economies of nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, we made it inevitable that we would start losing massive amounts of jobs.
Why would a giant corporation pay a U.S. worker 10 to 20 times as much as a worker on the other side of the globe? Investors actually expect big companies to have an “outsourcing” strategy today. When more jobs get shipped out of the country, profits go up, stock prices go up and executive bonuses go up.
Big corporations don’t exist to provide you with jobs. They exist to maximize shareholder wealth. If taking your job away and giving it to someone in Asia will make more money for them, then that it exactly what they are going to do.
#6 Unfair trade is absolutely killing our economy. It would be one thing if the U.S. was running a massive trade deficit solely because we were incompetent. But the truth is that a big factor is that a number of our “trade partners” are economic predators that are purposely trying to prey on us.
China massively subsidizes their biggest corporations, they brazenly steal technology from anyone that they can, they openly manipulate exchange rates and they allow their workers to be paid slave labor wages.
Today, we spend about 4 dollars on imports from China for every 1 dollar that China spends on imports from us. China now even makes more beer than we do. Even the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall was made in China.
Until our politicians start insisting on a level playing field, all of this is going to continue.
#7 Small businesses are traditionally one of the primary engines of job growth in this country. But right now, small businesses all over America are having a really hard time getting anyone to loan them money. A big reason for this is that the Federal Reserve is actually paying banks not to make loans. Unfortunately, if small businesses can’t get the money that they need, then they can’t hire people.
#8 A lot of people may not want to hear this, but businesses in the United States are being absolutely taxed into oblivion. The U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, but that is only a very small part of the story.
Michael Fleischer, the President of Bogen Communications, wrote an op-ed last year for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I’m Not Hiring”. The following is how Paul Hollrah of Family Security Matters summarized the nightmarish taxes that are imposed when Fleischer hires a new worker….
According to Fleischer, Sally grosses $59,000 a year, which shrinks to less than $44,000 after taxes and other payroll deductions. The $15,311 deducted from Sally’s gross pay is comprised of New Jersey state income tax: $1,893; Social Security taxes: $3,661; state unemployment insurance: $126; disability insurance: $149; Medicare insurance: $856; federal withholding tax: $6,250; and her share of medical and dental insurance: $2,376. Roughly 25.9 percent of Sally’s income is siphoned off by Washington and Trenton before she receives her paychecks.
But then there are the additional costs of employing Sally. In addition to her gross salary, her employer must pay the lion’s share of her healthcare insurance premiums: $9,561; life and other insurance premiums: $153; federal unemployment insurance: $56; disability insurance: $149; worker’s comp insurance: $300; New Jersey state unemployment insurance: $505; Medicare insurance: $856; and the employer’s share of Social Security taxes: $3,661.
Over and above her gross salary, Bogen Communications must pay an additional $15,241 in benefits and state and federal taxes, bringing the total cost of employing Sally to approximately $74,241 per year. Sally gets to keep $43,689, or just 58.8% of that total.
After reading all that, can you really blame business owners for not wanting to hire additional workers?
#9 The national debt is like a giant albatross around the neck of the economy. The U.S. national debt has increased by more than 4 trillion dollars since Barack Obama took office. The rampant government spending that has been going on has not done much to create new jobs, but it will be a massive burden that will weigh down economic growth for many years to come.
When a nation is drowning in debt, a tremendous amount of economic resources must go to servicing that debt. Right now, hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could be used to build up our economy are instead being used to pay interest on the national debt. If interest rates go up significantly, we could soon be paying over a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.
#10 Right now America is very deeply divided and a tremendous sense of pessimism has set in. One recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months. With such a negative feeling in the air, it is going to make it even less likely that business owners will be in the mood to hire people.
I know that I pick on Detroit a lot, but it really is a microcosm of what is happening to America. The following video contains some absolutely amazing footage of the ruins of Detroit….
Sadly, what is happening to Detroit is happening in hundreds of other communities across the United States.
All over America, neighborhoods that were once teeming with hope and prosperity are now falling apart. Hopelessness is rampant and it is spreading. The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007. If not for our increasingly overwhelmed “safety net”, we would already have mass rioting in the streets.
Sadly, we are already seeing all sorts of signs that society is collapsing. As the economy continues to fall apart, the violence in our neighborhoods is going to get even worse.
Moments before she was slain last week on Chicago’s Southwest Side, 17-year-old Charinez Jefferson begged the gunman not to shoot because she was pregnant, prosecutors said today.
Despite her plea, Timothy Jones, 18, opened fire on Jefferson anyway, yelling an expletive at her as he shot her in the head, prosecutors said. He then stood over her as she lay on the ground and fired several more times, striking her in the chest and back.
America is changing. The country that so many of us have loved all of our lives is becoming unrecognizable. Large numbers of communities have had all of the hope sucked right out of them. Tens of millions of Americans that want to do things the “right way” are rapidly losing faith in the system.
When you can’t get a decent job after months and months of trying it can be absolutely soul-crushing.
What do you tell someone that has spent a year sending out resumes and has used up all of their savings?
The era of endless prosperity for America is at an end. The cold, hard consequences of decades of bad decisions are starting to set in.
Unless a dramatic change of course happens, the long-term trends noted above are going to get progressively worse. It won’t matter who is running Congress and it won’t matter who is in the White House.
Right now our economy is rapidly hurtling downhill on a bus without brakes and we are headed directly for a cliff.
The competition for jobs in the United States is absolutely brutal right now, and it is about to get worse. A new wave of layoffs is sweeping across America. During tough economic times, Wall Street favors companies that are able to cut costs, and the fastest way to “cut costs” is to eliminate employees. After a period of relative stability, the employment picture in the U.S. is starting to get bleaker again. New applications for unemployment benefits have now been above 400,000 for 15 straight weeks. Finding a good job is kind of like winning the lottery in this economy. Our federal government and the state governments have made it incredibly complicated and extremely expensive to have employees on the payroll. It is getting harder and harder to get a large enough return to justify the time and expense that hiring employees requires. So many firms now find themselves trying to do more with the employees that they already have. Other companies are turning to temp agencies as a way to reduce costs and increase workplace flexibility. A lot of the big corporations are sending as much work as they can overseas where the wages are far lower and where the regulatory environment is much simpler. All of this is really bad news for American workers that just want good jobs that will enable them to provide for their families.
When we first started seeing huge numbers of layoffs a few years ago, I encouraged people to look into government jobs because I thought that they would be a lot more stable in this economic environment.
But today that is no longer true. In fact, state and local governments all over the United States are responding to massive budget problems by slashing payrolls in an unprecedented fashion.
Sadly, the reality is that the number of “secure jobs” is rapidly declining in America. If you have a “job” (“just over broke”) right now, you might not have it for long. That is one reason why everyone should be trying to become more independent of the system.
Once upon a time the U.S. economy produced a seemingly endless supply of good jobs. This helped us develop the largest and most vibrant middle class in modern world history.
But now employees are regarded as “costly liabilities”, and businesses and governments alike are trying to reduce those “liabilities” as much as they can.
This summer the pace of layoffs seems to be accelerating all over the nation. Just check out what has been happening over the past few weeks….
-Lockheed Martin has made “voluntary layoff offers” to 6,500 employees.
-Detroit is losing even more jobs. American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings has told the remaining 300 workers at its manufacturing facility in Detroit that their jobs will be ending in early 2012.
-Layoff notices have been sent to 519 employees of Milwaukee Public Schools, and more than 400 open positions are going to go unfilled.
-The Gap has announced that up to 200 stores will be closed over the next two years.
-Cisco has announced plans to lay off 9 percent of their total workforce.
-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says that 625 city employees will be losing their jobs as a result of cutbacks.
-Pharmaceutical giant Merck recently dumped 51 workers from an office in Raleigh, North Carolina.
-Perkins has revealed that they will be closing 58 restaurants.
-This week, Goldman Sachs announced that they will be eliminating 1,000 jobs.
Sadly, there are hundreds of more examples of recent layoffs and job losses. One website that tracks these layoffs daily is Daily Job Cuts. It is pretty sad when there are entire websites that are devoted to chronicling how fast our economy is bleeding jobs.
What is worse is that it looks like the pace of layoffs is going to keep increasing.
One report that was recently released found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.
That is not good news.
Things don’t look good for employees of state and local governments either.
State and local governments have eliminated approximately 142,000 jobs so far this year.
That is bad, but this is just the beginning.
UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will combine to slash a whopping 450,000 jobs by the end of next year.
Ouch.
Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke keep trying to tell us that the economy is improving, but that simply is not the case. Yes, some of the largest corporations have announced big earnings, but that is not translating into lots of jobs for American workers.
Today, most large corporations only want to have as many U.S. workers as absolutely necessary. In a world where labor has been globalized, it just doesn’t make sense for corporations to shell out massive amounts of money to American workers when they can legally get away with paying slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe.
So if it seems like it is far harder to get a good job in America today than it used to be, the truth is that you are not imagining things.
Our entire system discourages job creation inside the United States. Every single year, even more ridiculous job-killing regulations are being passed on the federal and state levels. It has become extremely expensive and ridiculously complicated to hire people.
So how are American families surviving? Those that still do have jobs are finding that wages are not going up but the cost of living rapidly is. Many American families are making up the difference by using their credit cards more.
In June, credit card purchases in the U.S. increased by 10.7 percent compared to the same month a year ago.
It looks like a whole lot of people have not learned their lessons about how bad credit card debt is.
Millions of other American families have fallen out of the middle class completely. Today, one out of every six Americans is enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program. The level of economic suffering in this country continues to soar.
In fact, the number of Americans that are now sleeping in their cars or living in tent cities remains at staggering levels.
What we are witnessing in this country is not just a “recession” or an “economic downturn”. What we are witnessing are fundamental economic changes.
Until there are fundamental policy changes in the United States, there will continue to be huge waves of layoffs and millions of jobs will continue to be shipped out of the country.
In the old days, one could go to college, get a good job with one company for 30 years and retire with a big, fat pension.
Now, that way of doing things is completely and totally dead.
Today, there is virtually no loyalty out there. It doesn’t matter how long you have been working at a particular job. When it becomes financially expedient to get rid of you, that is exactly what is going to happen.
It is a cold, cruel world out there right now. Don’t assume that you will always have a good job. The world is rapidly changing.
Don’t get caught in the trap of believing that the way that things were is the way that things are always going to be in the future.
Have you noticed that almost everyone seems really angry these days? Frustration with the government and with most of the other major institutions in our society seems to grow by the day. According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 80 percent of Americans say that they are either dissatisfied or angry with the government. Americans are deeply divided about what the solutions to our problems are, but what almost everyone can agree on is that our problems are getting worse. Watching all of the madness that is going on in Washington D.C. and in our state capitals is almost enough to drive anyone absolutely crazy. Our nation is drowning in an ocean of debt, jobs are being shipped overseas at an alarming rate, thousands of stores are closing, poverty is exploding, greed has become a national pastime and corruption is seemingly everywhere. The American people are incredibly frustrated because the vast majority of our “leaders” appear to be too incompetent or too corrupt to deal with our problems.
If you visit just about any website on the Internet that deals with politics or the economy and spend some time reading the comments that people leave you will quickly see how angry people are becoming. A lot of times people have no other outlets for the intense frustration that they are feeling and so they just let it all come out online. Yes, Americans have always complained about the government, but the madness that we are seeing today is really unprecedented in modern U.S. history. Something has fundamentally changed.
The U.S. government and most of our other major societal institutions are rapidly losing the faith of the American people. But society cannot function without trust.
So what is going to happen once all of the trust is gone?
The following are 39 things that are driving ordinary Americans absolutely crazy right now….
#1According to Newsweek, close to one out of every five American men between the ages of 25 and 54 does not have a job at the moment. So why is the “greatest economy on earth” unable to provide jobs for nearly 20 percent of the men that are in their prime working years?
#2 Last year, over a million homes were repossessed by financial institutions. This year a similar number of repossessions is expected. Sometimes these evictions are absolutely heartbreaking. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Newsweek article….
To understand American anger, that roiling storm sometimes dubbed our national “mood,” spend a day with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. Since 2006 the unlikely lawman—a tea drinker who listens to Bobby Kennedy speeches on his way to work—has overseen all foreclosures and evictions in the Chicago area, one of the hardest hit nationwide. The process does not always go well. One evictee shot himself in the head, remained conscious, and calmly tried to raise the pistol again as deputies battered the front door.
#3 Companies like Netflix and Chipotle are significantly raising prices. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke claims that there is hardly any inflation. He must not go grocery shopping much.
#4 The government keeps telling us that the economy is improving, and yet more stores keep closing. The Gap has announced that up to 200 stores will be closed over the next two years. Perkins has announced that they will be closing 58 restaurants. Borders has announced that they will be shutting down their remaining 399 stores and that 10,700 employees will lose their jobs. Yes, the economy is really buzzing right now.
#5 Government services all over the nation are being cut back. An atmosphere of austerity has descended on the entire country. For example, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says that we may soon have to say goodbye to Saturday mail delivery.
#6 Many broke public school systems are now charging parents lots of money for things that used to be free. The Wall Street Journal says that one family in Ohio has to shell out over $4,000 a year for basic school activities….
Budget shortfalls have prompted Medina Senior High to impose fees on students who enroll in many academic classes and extracurricular activities. The Dombis had to pay to register their children for basic courses such as Spanish I and Earth Sciences, to get them into graded electives such as band, and to allow them to run cross-country and track. The family’s total tab for a year of public education: $4,446.50.
#7 The Federal Reserve gets to give out tens of billions of dollars of nearly interest-free loans to their bankster friends while tens of millions of American families desperately try to survive an economic downturn that was caused by those same banksters.
#8 We have gotten ourselves into a position where we are in so much debt to China that we have to constantly be concerned about how they feel about our financial status. Earlier this week, one top Chinese official urged the U.S. government to do something to boost confidence in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt….
“We hope the U.S. government will take responsible policies and measures to boost global financial market confidence and respect and protect the interests of investors.”
#9 The national debt continues to spiral out of control and our politicians seem unwilling to do anything serious about it. If you combine all sources of income, it is estimated that LeBron James makes about 42 million dollars a year. If he continued to make money at that rate, it would take him 23,809 years to make a trillion dollars. Yet our politicians see no problem with running trillion dollar deficits year after year.
#10 Unless our politicians do something dramatic, the federal government is headed straight toward financial hell. It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.
#11 It is not just the federal government that is broke. Right now, there are a lot of state and local governments that are teetering on the brink of financial disaster. Moody’s has announced that it will be reviewing, and possibly downgrading, the credit ratings of Maryland, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is such a financial mess that nobody really has any idea how to fix their problems.
#12 All over the United States, highways, water treatment plants, libraries, parking meters, airports and power plants are being sold off (much of the time to foreigners) in order to plug short-term holes in state and local budgets.
#13 The combination of federal government spending, state government spending and local government spending now accounts for a larger share of U.S. GDP than at any other time in our history.
#14 Police all over America have been shutting down lemonade stands run by little children. At least one police chief in Wisconsin was good enough to apologize when it happened in his area. It is too bad that there aren’t more police out there that have a little common sense.
#15 The U.S. housing crash shows no signs of abating. Real estate construction is absolutely dead. In fact, right now we are on track for the lowest number of total housing completions that the U.S. government has ever recorded in a single year.
#16 In June, sales of previously-owned homes in the United States declined to a seven month low. Without good jobs, the American people cannot afford to buy homes. Many of those that do have good incomes are being turned down by mortgage lenders.
#17 The supply of existing homes for sale continues to go up. That means that it is going to get even harder for average Americans to sell their homes.
#18 The value of U.S. homes has fallen by a total of approximately 6.6 trillion dollars since the peak of the housing market.
#19 It isn’t just banks that are kicking people out of their homes. All over the country, homeowners’ associations are aggressively using their powers to boot American families out on to the streets.
#20 Instead of being used by families, all over the country thousands of foreclosed homes are rapidly filling up with mold.
#21 Really bizarre thefts are being reported all over the United States right now. For example, it was just reported that some crooks in Pennsylvania ripped up and hauled away about 100,000 pounds of train track.
#22 Authorities continue to insist that violent crime is going down, and yet the number of police officers killed by gunfire is on pace to easily set another all-time record for the second year in a row.
#24 The health insurance companies keep jacking up rates on all of us, and yet they also continue to report record breaking profits.
#25 The Obama administration is now using “mystery shoppers” to spy on doctors. The following is from a report in the New York Times….
Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.
#26 Corruption appears to be rampant on every level of American society today. For example, one NYU professor recently discovered that 20 percent of his students were blatantly cheating on assignments.
#27 Thanks to insane tax loopholes, a substantial percentage of the billions of dollars of income that hedge fund managers make is only taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent. Meanwhile, middle class American families are being absolutely hammered with taxes.
#28 The “too big to fail” banks now control 77 percent of all of the banking assets in the country.
#29 In 2010, the United States had the worst current account balance in the world. The U.S. had a current account balance of negative 561 billion dollars for 2010. No other nation had a negative current account balance that even exceeded 70 billion dollars. The amount of wealth leaving our country and being transferred to the rest of the world is absolutely mind blowing.
#30 One recent poll found that 72 percent of Americans believe that we are involved in too many wars. But the Obama administration seems to think that we should be “the police of the world” and they just keep getting the U.S. military involved in more conflicts.
#31 Startling revelations are starting to come out about a scandal so big that it could shake up Washington D.C. for years to come. Apparently, ATF agents were ordered to get thousands of guns into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels and they were also apparently ordered not to follow those guns to see where they ended up.
#32 The top 5 percent of all income earners in America account for almost as much consumer spending as the bottom 80 percent of all income earners.
#33 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006. But instead of being treated with kindness, many communities are treating the growing ranks of the poor as “outcasts” or criminals.
#34 Despite the promises of our politicians, globalism is absolutely shredding the American economy. According to Forbes, the United States has been losing an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#35 There are no signs that our rampant unemployment problem is going to end any time soon. In fact, right now it takes the average unemployed worker about 40 weeks to find a new job.
#36 The vast majority of U.S. consumers are tapped out at this point. Just consider the following quote from the New York Times….
The auto industry is on pace to sell 28 percent fewer new vehicles this year than it did 10 years ago — and 10 years ago was 2001, when the country was in recession. Sales of ovens and stoves are on pace to be at their lowest level since 1992. Home sales over the past year have fallen back to their lowest point since the crisis began.
#37 Right now in Congress there is a proposal to change the way that inflation is calculated. According to The Senior Citizens League, this change would cause the average retiree to lose out on $18,000 in Social Security benefits over a 25 year period.
#38 Our tax system is fundamentally unjust. Just look at the example of General Electric. G.E. is a favorite of the Obama administration and somehow they get away with not paying taxes year after year. Just check out what the New York Times claims G.E. got away with in 2010….
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
#39 The TSA continues to abuse U.S. travelers in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable. For example, one 95-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair that is dying from cancer was asked to remove her adult diaper so that TSA “officials” could feel her up properly. In what kind of a society does this type of thing go on?
No wonder the American people are losing faith. It is hard to keep believing when you see rampant corruption and decay everywhere you look.
But mostly, the American people want to be able to take care of their families.
The American people are not going to start feeling better about things until there are plenty of good jobs to go around. If people cannot pay their mortgages and provide for their families then they are not going to be content no matter what our politicians tell them.
Unfortunately, the “new normal” is going to be a lot different from what the “old normal” was. The United States is a declining power. Every month our nation is bleeding more jobs, more factories and more wealth. Every month our debt problems on the federal, state and local levels get even worse. We have been living far beyond our means for decades, and we are rapidly getting to the point where that simply will not be possible anymore.
The long-term trends that have gotten us to this point have taken decades to develop. There is no “quick fix” that some politician is going to bring in that is going to create some kind of miracle.
We are now starting to pay the price for decades of bad decisions. As the consequences of our decisions become more apparent, the American people are going to get angrier and angrier.
Unless something very dramatic happens, we are heading for a very ugly chapter in American history.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
If you listen to Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama and the mainstream media long enough, and if you didn’t know any better, you might be tempted to think that the economic crisis is long gone and that we are in the midst of a burgeoning economic recovery. Unfortunately, the truth is that the economic crisis is far from over. In 2010, more homes were repossessed than ever before, more Americans were on food stamps than ever before and a smaller percentage of American men had jobs than ever before. The reality is that the United States is an economic basket case and all of these natural disasters certainly are not helping things. The Federal Reserve has been printing gigantic piles of money and the U.S. government has been borrowing and spending cash at a dizzying pace in an all-out effort to stabilize things. They have succeeded for the moment, but our long-term economic problems are worse then ever. We are still in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis and things are about to get even worse.
If you know someone that is foolish enough to believe that the economic crisis is over and that our economic problems are behind us, just ask that person the following questions….
#1 During the 23 months of the “Obama recovery”, an average of about 23,000 jobs a month have been created. It takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So shouldn’t we hold off a bit before we declare the economic crisis to be over?
#2 During the “recession”, somewhere between 6.3 million and 7.5 million jobs were lost. During the “Obama recovery”, approximately 535,000 jobs have been added. When will the rest of the jobs finally come back?
#3 Of the 535,000 jobs that have been created during the “Obama recovery”, only about 35,000 of them are permanent full-time jobs. Today, “low income jobs” account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States. If our economy is recovering, then why can’t it produce large numbers of good jobs that will enable people to provide for their families?
#4 Agricultural commodities have been absolutely soaring this decade. The combined price of cotton, wheat, gasoline and hogs is now more than 3 times higher than it was back in 2002. So how in the world can the Federal Reserve claim that inflation has been at minimal levels all this time?
#5 Back in 2008, banks had a total of 27 billion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed. Today, banks have a total of approximately 1.5 trillion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed. So what is going to happen when all of this money eventually hits the economy?….
#6 If the U.S. economy is recovering, then why are shipments by U.S. factories still substantially below 2008 levels?
#7 Why are imports of goods from overseas growing much more rapidly than shipments of goods from U.S. factories?
#8 According to Zillow, the average price of a home in the U.S. is about 8 percent lower than it was a year ago and that it continues to fall about 1 percent a month. During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008. So can we really talk about a “recovery” when the real estate crisis continues to get worse?
#9 According to a shocking new survey, 54 percent of Americans believe that a housing recovery is “unlikely” until at least 2014. So how is the housing industry supposed to improve if so many people are convinced that it will not?
#10 The latest GDP numbers out of Japan are a complete and total disaster. During the first quarter GDP declined by a stunning 3.7 percent. Of course I have been saying for months that the Japanese economy is collapsing, but most mainstream economists were absolutely stunned by the latest figures. So will the rest of the world be able to avoid slipping into a recession as well?
#11 Next week, Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to allow a vote on raising the debt ceiling. Everyone knows that this is an opportunity for Republican lawmakers to “look tough” to their constituents (the vast majority of which do not want the debt ceiling raised). Everyone also knows that eventually the Republicans are almost certainly going to cave on the debt ceiling after minimal concessions by the Democrats. The truth is that neither “establishment Republicans” nor “establishment Democrats” are actually serious about significantly cutting government debt. So why do we need all of this political theater?
#12 Why are so many of our once great manufacturing cities being transformed into hellholes? In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.
#13 According to one new survey, about half of all Baby Boomers fear that when they retire they are going to end up living in poverty. So who is going to take care of them all when the money runs out?
#14 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006. Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month. So why are our politicians talking about “economic recovery” instead of “the collapse of the economy” when hiring remains about 50 percent below normal?
#15 Since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force. But the entire period from August to today was supposed to have been a time of economic growth and recovery. So why are so many Americans giving up on looking for a job?
#16According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year. Today, that number is at just 27 percent. Are Americans losing faith in the U.S. economy?
#17 According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years, and one out of every four American children is currently on food stamps. During this same time period, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke have told us over and over that the U.S. economy has been getting better. So what is the truth?
#18 America has become absolutely addicted to government money. 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another. U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes. Americans hate having their taxes raised and they hate having their government benefits cut. So is there any hope that this will ever be turned around before disaster strikes?
#19 The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. How in the world is the U.S. government going to be able to afford to guarantee all of that debt on top of everything else?
#20 If the U.S. national debt (more than 14 trillion dollars) was reduced to a stack of 5 dollar bills, it would reach three quarters of the way to the moon. The U.S. government borrows about 168 million dollars every single hour. If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days. So how in the world can our politicians tell us that everything is going to be okay?
It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unfortunately, millions of Americans find themselves slowly going insane as they apply for hundreds upon hundreds of jobs and yet never get hired. It is incredibly difficult to get a good job in most areas of the United States today. So if you are unemployed, and there are no jobs in your area, should you move somewhere else in an attempt to find work? That is a very hard question. Of course if what you are currently doing right now is not working it is only natural to want to change course, but sadly unemployment is absolutely rampant all over the United States. Today, the “official” unemployment rate is hovering around 9 percent, but the true employment picture is much bleaker than that. There are millions and millions of unemployed Americans that are so discouraged and have given up looking for a job for so long that the U.S. government does not even consider them “part of the labor force” any longer. If they were included in the “official” figure, the true unemployment rate would be well into double figures. In addition, there are millions upon millions of Americans that are working part-time jobs or very low paying jobs because that is all they can get. Those millions of “underemployed” Americans would jump at the chance to get a “good job” if that opportunity was available. Low income jobs now make up 41% of all the jobs in the United States. So there are a lot of people that have a job that really wish that they were making a lot more money. Because of the lack of good jobs, millions of American families have been pushed to the edge of economic desperation and millions of American families are drowning in debt. So what do you do if there are no good jobs in your area? Do you sit tight or do move to a new location hoping for something better?
On the negative side, it can be extremely expensive to move. Not only will you have moving expenses, but you will also have to find a new place to live, set up new utilities, change your insurance policies, register your vehicles in a new area, etc. etc.
Moving somewhere new almost always costs more money than you think that it will.
Then, once you get to a new location, often you don’t have the same “connections” that you did in the place where you used to live.
And in today’s economy, having “connections” is one of the only ways that you can get a good job.
On the flip side, there are actually a few areas of the United States where the unemployment rate is low right now and where there do seem to be some good jobs available.
When people ask me where to look for a job, I tell them to check out North and South Dakota. It is cold as the dickens up there, but if you can handle the cold you just might be able to find work.
However, it is extremely risky to move somewhere new without having a job first. Most people that have been through that “adventure” know what I am talking about.
But sometimes in life you have to take a risk. Today there are over 47 million Americans that are living in poverty, and that number is increasing every single month. Sitting on your couch and doing nothing is not going to get you where you need to be.
Rather than just sit there and sink even deeper into desperation, an increasing number of Americans are deciding to make a move. There are some areas of the United States that have become absolute hellholes. After years of experiencing intense economic frustration in those hellholes, many Americans are picking up stakes and are heading for greener pastures.
For example, the following video report from RT describes how large numbers of people are now abandoning Riverside, California….
Sadly, very few jobs are truly safe anymore.
Years ago, I would tell people to look into government jobs because they were relatively more secure. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
Today, state and local government debt has reached at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP. State and local governments from coast to coast are implementing austerity programs and are laying off employees at a staggering pace.
The following is a chart from the Federal Reserve of local government hiring over the past five years. Obviously, the trend is not heading in a positive direction….
Most Americans don’t realize just how nightmarish the financial problems of many of our state and local governments are right now.
For example, the state of California is basically a financial basket case at this point. In a recent article I discussed the cold, hard reality that California is broke and I explained some of the reasons why millions of people have already left the state….
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a seemingly endless parade of pop songs about how great life was in California, and millions of young Americans dreamed of moving to the land of sandy beaches and golden sunshine. But now all of that has changed. Today, millions of Californians are dreaming about leaving the state for good. The truth is that California is broke. The economy of the state is in shambles. The official unemployment rate has been sitting above 12 percent for an extended period of time, and poverty is everywhere. For many Californians today, there are very few reasons to stay in the state but a whole lot of reasons to leave: falling housing prices, rising crime, budget cuts, rampant illegal immigration, horrific traffic, some of the most brutal tax rates in the nation, increasing gang violence and the ever present threat of wildfires, mudslides and natural disasters. The truth is that it is easy to understand why there are now more Americans moving out of California each year than there are Americans moving into the state. California has become a complete and total disaster zone in more ways than one, and an increasing number of Californians are deciding that enough is enough and they are getting out for good.
On the “Survive And Thrive TV” channel on YouTube, one Californian that was in the process of moving to a different state was recently interviewed as he was preparing to leave. The following interview shows the mindset of many that are leaving California. It also contains just a bit of strong language, so if you are sensitive to that you may want to not watch this video….
Other desperate Americans are taking a different approach. Instead of moving to a new area, these Americans are coming up with “creative” ways of raising cash.
For example, a criminal gang of white middle-aged women in Detroit nicknamed the “Mad Hatters” has become so successful that they have made international news. It is alleged that they have pulled off a stunning series of robberies.
According to the Telegraph, the “Mad Hatters” have stolen somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million dollars so far….
The total value of merchandise and cash stolen could be as high as $500,000, police said. The women stole almost $200,000 from one bank.
In a previous article I detailed many of the ways that Americans have “gone wild” lately, but it was even shocking to me to hear of a gang of middle-aged women terrorizing the city of Detroit.
Perhaps you had heard that the unemployment rate in the United States has been going down and you were planning to start sending out resumes again. Well, unfortunately it is not “morning in America” again. Some really depressing jobs numbers were just released. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits skyrocketed last week to the highest level that we have seen in 8 months. Also, according to a new poll more American workers say that their companies are getting rid of workers than say that their companies are hiring more workers. So feel free to start mailing out thousands of resumes once again – just don’t expect better results. Tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans have been waiting for the “economic recovery”, but the sad truth is that this is the economic recovery. This is about the best that things are going to get before the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes.
Most economists were extremely surprised by how bad the new numbers were. The following is an excerpt from the press release from the Department of Labor….
In the week ending April 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 474,000, an increase of 43,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 431,000. The 4-week moving average was 431,250, an increase of 22,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 409,000.
As noted above, that was the highest number of initial unemployment claims that we have seen in eight months.
In addition, ADP has announced that only 179,000 private sector jobs were added to the economy during the month of April.
That number also was an unpleasant surprise to most economists.
But shouldn’t the economy be recovering by now?
Yes, it should be.
Unfortunately, there is even more bad news.
According to the latest Rasmussen Employment Index, 19 percent of U.S. workers say that their companies are hiring more workers right now and 25 percent of U.S. workers say that their companies are laying off workers right now.
That is not a good sign.
But even when jobs are available most of the time they are crappy jobs.
A growing percentage of jobs in America do not even pay a living wage. Low income jobs now make up 41% of all the jobs in the United States.
In a recent article on outsourcing, I noted that the U.S. economy is bleeding lots of good jobs and that they are being replaced by bad jobs….
Right now America is rapidly losing high paying jobs and they are being replaced by low paying jobs. According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
So do you want to mop floors at the local Burger King or stock shelves over at Best Buy?
A million Americans recently showed up to apply for a job at McDonald’s. If that is not a sign that the American people are losing faith in the economy then I don’t know what is.
So are you ready to go down and apply for a job at McDonald’s?
Well, if not you may find yourself waiting for a very, very long time for a “good job”.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average duration of unemployment in the United States is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
Today, we have millions upon millions of Americans that are sitting home because they can’t find work.
Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
That is not good for the economy. Instead of being productive and producing wealth for the economy, all of those unemployed men are a drain on the system.
Today, 18 million more Americans are receiving food stamps than when the economic downturn first began back in 2007.
Considering the gigantic amounts of spending that the U.S. government has been doing since the beginning of the economic downturn and considering the massive amounts of new money that the Federal Reserve has been injecting into the financial system, the unemployment rate should be much, much lower than it is now.
Our leaders have gone “all in” on stimulating the economy in the short-term and yet it is still responding like a dead horse.
Now there are even some in the financial media that are saying that we are going to need “QE3″ in order to get the economy going.
Perhaps we will even need “QE4″, “QE5″ and “QE6″.
This is getting ridiculous.
Essentially the U.S. economy is like a patient that the doctors are hovering around and desperately trying to revive.
So are they going to be successful?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is the economic recovery.
When the next wave of the economic collapse hits, things are going to get even worse.
The United States is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline and it is getting really hard to deny it. Over the past year I have included literally thousands of depressing statistics in my articles about the U.S. economy. I have done this in order to make an overwhelming case that the U.S. economy is in deep decline and is dying a little bit more every single day. Until we understand exactly how bad our problems are we will never be willing to accept the solutions. The truth is that our leaders have absolutely wrecked the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Most Americans just assume that we will always experience overwhelming prosperity, but that is not anywhere close to the truth. We are not guaranteed anything. Our manufacturing base has been gutted, the number of jobs is declining, more Americans are dependent on government handouts than ever before, our dollar is dying and as a nation we are absolutely drowning in debt. The economists that are trumpeting an “economic recovery” and that are declaring that the U.S. economy will soon be “better than ever” are delusional. We really are steamrolling toward a complete and total economic collapse and our leaders are doing nothing to stop it.
The following are 24 more signs of economic decline in America. Hopefully you will not get too depressed as you read them….
#1 On Monday, Standard & Poor’s altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned the U.S. that it could soon lose its AAA rating. This is yet another sign that the rest of the world is losing faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries.
#2 China has announced that they are going to be reducing their holdings of U.S. dollars. In fact, there are persistent rumors that this has already been happening.
#3 Hedge fund manager Dennis Gartman says that “panic dollar selling is setting in” and that the U.S. dollar could be in for a huge decline.
#5 This cruel economy is causing “ghost towns” to appear all across the United States. There are quite a few counties across the nation that now have home vacancy rates of over 50%.
#6 There are now about 7.25 million less jobs in America than when the recession began back in 2007.
#7 The average American family is having a really tough time right now. Only 45.4% of Americans had a job during 2010. The last time the employment level was that low was back in 1983.
#8 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#9 According to a new report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.
#10 Gas prices reached five dollars per gallon at a gas station in Washington, DC on April 19th, 2011. Could we see $6 gas soon?
#11 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.
#15 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
#16 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
#17 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China, average household debt is only 17% of average household income.
#18 The average American now spends approximately 23 percent of his or her income on food and gas.
#19 In a recent survey conducted by Deloitte Consulting, 74 percent of Americans said that they planned to slow down their spending in coming months due to rising prices.
#2059 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
#21 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
#22 As the economy continues to collapse, frustration among young people will continue to grow and we will see more seemingly “random acts of violence”. One shocking example of this happened in the Atlanta area recently. The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attack….
Roughly two dozen teens, chanting the name of a well-known Atlanta gang, brought mob rule to MARTA early Sunday morning, overwhelming nervous passengers and assaulting two Delta flight attendants.
#24 As the economy has declined, the American people have been gobbling up larger and larger amounts of antidepressants and other prescription drugs. In fact, the American people spent 60 billion dollars more on prescription drugs in 2010 than they did in 2005.
From now on, whenever you hear the term “the global economy” you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that now dominate our economy are able to pay workers in other countries slave labor wages and import the products that they make into the United States to compete with products made by “expensive” American workers. This has resulted in a mass exodus of manufacturing facilities and jobs from the United States.
But without good, high paying jobs the U.S. middle class cannot continue to be the U.S middle class. The only thing that the vast majority of Americans have to offer in the economic marketplace is their labor. Sadly, that labor has now been dramatically devalued. American workers now must directly compete for jobs with millions upon millions of workers on the other side of the world that toil away for 15 hours a day at slave labor wages. This is causing jobs to leave the United States at an almost unbelievable rate, and it is putting tremendous downward pressure on the wages of millions of jobs that are still in the United States.
So when you hear terms such as “globalization” and “the global economy”, it is important to keep in mind that those are code words for the emerging one world economic system that is systematically wiping out the U.S. middle class.
A one world labor pool means that the standard of living for the U.S. middle class will continue falling toward the standard of living in the third world.
We keep hearing about how the U.S. economy is being transformed from a “manufacturing economy” into a “service economy”. But “service jobs” are generally much lower paying than “manufacturing jobs”. The number of good paying “middle class jobs” in the United States is rapidly decreasing. So how can the U.S. middle class survive in such an environment?
What makes things even worse for manufacturers in the United States is that other nations often impose a “value-added tax” of 20 percent or more on U.S. goods entering their shores and yet most of the time we do not reciprocate with similar taxes.
But whenever someone mentions how incredibly unfair and unbalanced our trade agreements with other nations are, they are immediately labeled as a “protectionist”.
Well, someone should be looking out for U.S. interests when it comes to trade, because the current state of the global economy is ripping the U.S. middle class to shreds.
Right now, the United States consumes far more wealth than it produces. This nation buys much, much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. This is called a “trade deficit”, and it is one of the most important economic statistics. The U.S. runs a massive trade deficit every single year, and it is wiping out our national wealth, it is destroying our surviving industries and it is absolutely shredding middle class America.
We cannot allow tens of thousands of factories to continue to leave the United States. We cannot allow millions of jobs to continue to be “outsourced” and “offshored”. We cannot allow tens of billions of dollars of our national wealth to continue to be transferred into foreign hands every single month.
The truth is that the global economy is bad for America. The following are 23 facts which prove that globalism is pushing the standard of living of the middle class down to third world levels….
#1 From December 2000 to December 2010, the U.S. ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars.
#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#4 The U.S. economy is rapidly trading high wage jobs for low wage jobs. According to a new report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
#5Between 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.
#6 In Germany, exports account for approximately 40 percent of GDP. In China, exports account for approximately 30 percent of GDP. In the United States, exports account for approximately 13 percent of GDP.
#7 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.
#8 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.
#9 The U.S. economy now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.
#10 The United States currently has 7.7 millionfewer payroll jobs than it did back in December 2007.
#11 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#12 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
#13 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#14 In China, working conditions are so bad that large numbers of “employees” regularly try to commit suicide. One major employer, Foxconn, has even gone so far as to install “anti-suicide nets” in an attempt to keep their employees from jumping off of their buildings.
#15 Wages for workers in China are incredibly low. For example, one facility in the city of Longhua that makes iPods employs approximately 200,000 workers. These workers put in endless 15-hour days but they only make about $50 per month.
#16 In Bangladesh, manufacturing workers toil in absolutely horrific conditions and make an average of about $38 per month.
#17 In Vietnam, teenage workers often work seven days a week for as little as 6 cents an hour making promotional Disney toys for McDonald’s.
#18 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.
#19 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#20 In the United States today, 6.2 million Americans have been out of work for 6 months of longer.
#218.4 million Americans are currently working part-time jobs for “economic reasons”. These jobs are mostly very low paying service jobs.
#22 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.
#23 According to Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup, China will be the largest economy in the world by the year 2020, and India will surpass China by the year 2050.
Those that promote “free trade” can never explain how the U.S. middle class is going to continue to have plenty of jobs in the new global economy.
By merging our labor pool with the rest of the world, we have also merged our standard of living with the rest of the world. High unemployment is rapidly becoming “the new normal” in America, and wages are going to continue to decline in many, many industries.
Already, there are quite a few formerly great U.S. cities (such as Detroit) that are beginning to resemble third world hellholes. If something is not done about our massive trade imbalance, even more cities are going to follow Detroit into oblivion.
Unfortunately, most of our politicians continue to insist that globalism is good for our society. They continue to insist that we should not be worried that jobs formerly done by middle class American workers are now being done by slave laborers on the other side of the globe. They continue to insist that having 43 million Americans on food stamps is a temporary thing and that soon our economy will be better than ever.
Well, it is time to stop listening to the politicians that are promoting “the global economy”. They are lying to us.
Globalism is great for nations such as China and it is helping multinational corporations make huge profits, but for the U.S. middle class it is an economic death sentence.
If you want an America where there are less jobs, where more Americans are on food stamps and other anti-poverty programs and where our cities continue to be transformed into deindustrialized hellholes, then you should strongly support the emerging global economy.
But if you care about the standard of living of the U.S. middle class and you want for there to be some kind of viable economic future for your children and your grandchildren then you had better start caring about these issues and doing something about them.
The United States is negotiating one of the biggest free trade agreements in history and there is barely a peep about it on the news. Years ago, Ross Perot warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as millions of jobs left this country. It turns out that he was right. Starting on Tuesday, the next round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (also known as the “NAFTA of the Pacific”) will begin in Chicago. We have already seen the Obama administration push hard for free trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia and the administration is making the Trans-Pacific Partnership a very high priority. Membership in the “NAFTA of the Pacific” already includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. The United States, Australia, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled to join. Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly considering membership. So once this “free trade” agreement is ratified, will we hear another “giant sucking sound” as millions more of our jobs are shipped overseas?
Madness: 39 Things That Are Driving Ordinary Americans Absolutely Crazy
If you visit just about any website on the Internet that deals with politics or the economy and spend some time reading the comments that people leave you will quickly see how angry people are becoming. A lot of times people have no other outlets for the intense frustration that they are feeling and so they just let it all come out online. Yes, Americans have always complained about the government, but the madness that we are seeing today is really unprecedented in modern U.S. history. Something has fundamentally changed.
The U.S. government and most of our other major societal institutions are rapidly losing the faith of the American people. But society cannot function without trust.
So what is going to happen once all of the trust is gone?
The following are 39 things that are driving ordinary Americans absolutely crazy right now….
#1 According to Newsweek, close to one out of every five American men between the ages of 25 and 54 does not have a job at the moment. So why is the “greatest economy on earth” unable to provide jobs for nearly 20 percent of the men that are in their prime working years?
#2 Last year, over a million homes were repossessed by financial institutions. This year a similar number of repossessions is expected. Sometimes these evictions are absolutely heartbreaking. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Newsweek article….
#3 Companies like Netflix and Chipotle are significantly raising prices. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke claims that there is hardly any inflation. He must not go grocery shopping much.
#4 The government keeps telling us that the economy is improving, and yet more stores keep closing. The Gap has announced that up to 200 stores will be closed over the next two years. Perkins has announced that they will be closing 58 restaurants. Borders has announced that they will be shutting down their remaining 399 stores and that 10,700 employees will lose their jobs. Yes, the economy is really buzzing right now.
#5 Government services all over the nation are being cut back. An atmosphere of austerity has descended on the entire country. For example, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says that we may soon have to say goodbye to Saturday mail delivery.
#6 Many broke public school systems are now charging parents lots of money for things that used to be free. The Wall Street Journal says that one family in Ohio has to shell out over $4,000 a year for basic school activities….
#7 The Federal Reserve gets to give out tens of billions of dollars of nearly interest-free loans to their bankster friends while tens of millions of American families desperately try to survive an economic downturn that was caused by those same banksters.
#8 We have gotten ourselves into a position where we are in so much debt to China that we have to constantly be concerned about how they feel about our financial status. Earlier this week, one top Chinese official urged the U.S. government to do something to boost confidence in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt….
#9 The national debt continues to spiral out of control and our politicians seem unwilling to do anything serious about it. If you combine all sources of income, it is estimated that LeBron James makes about 42 million dollars a year. If he continued to make money at that rate, it would take him 23,809 years to make a trillion dollars. Yet our politicians see no problem with running trillion dollar deficits year after year.
#10 Unless our politicians do something dramatic, the federal government is headed straight toward financial hell. It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.
#11 It is not just the federal government that is broke. Right now, there are a lot of state and local governments that are teetering on the brink of financial disaster. Moody’s has announced that it will be reviewing, and possibly downgrading, the credit ratings of Maryland, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is such a financial mess that nobody really has any idea how to fix their problems.
#12 All over the United States, highways, water treatment plants, libraries, parking meters, airports and power plants are being sold off (much of the time to foreigners) in order to plug short-term holes in state and local budgets.
#13 The combination of federal government spending, state government spending and local government spending now accounts for a larger share of U.S. GDP than at any other time in our history.
#14 Police all over America have been shutting down lemonade stands run by little children. At least one police chief in Wisconsin was good enough to apologize when it happened in his area. It is too bad that there aren’t more police out there that have a little common sense.
#15 The U.S. housing crash shows no signs of abating. Real estate construction is absolutely dead. In fact, right now we are on track for the lowest number of total housing completions that the U.S. government has ever recorded in a single year.
#16 In June, sales of previously-owned homes in the United States declined to a seven month low. Without good jobs, the American people cannot afford to buy homes. Many of those that do have good incomes are being turned down by mortgage lenders.
#17 The supply of existing homes for sale continues to go up. That means that it is going to get even harder for average Americans to sell their homes.
#18 The value of U.S. homes has fallen by a total of approximately 6.6 trillion dollars since the peak of the housing market.
#19 It isn’t just banks that are kicking people out of their homes. All over the country, homeowners’ associations are aggressively using their powers to boot American families out on to the streets.
#20 Instead of being used by families, all over the country thousands of foreclosed homes are rapidly filling up with mold.
#21 Really bizarre thefts are being reported all over the United States right now. For example, it was just reported that some crooks in Pennsylvania ripped up and hauled away about 100,000 pounds of train track.
#22 Authorities continue to insist that violent crime is going down, and yet the number of police officers killed by gunfire is on pace to easily set another all-time record for the second year in a row.
#23 One recent study found that approximately 47 percent of all meat and poultry in the United States “is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Staph“.
#24 The health insurance companies keep jacking up rates on all of us, and yet they also continue to report record breaking profits.
#25 The Obama administration is now using “mystery shoppers” to spy on doctors. The following is from a report in the New York Times….
#26 Corruption appears to be rampant on every level of American society today. For example, one NYU professor recently discovered that 20 percent of his students were blatantly cheating on assignments.
#27 Thanks to insane tax loopholes, a substantial percentage of the billions of dollars of income that hedge fund managers make is only taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent. Meanwhile, middle class American families are being absolutely hammered with taxes.
#28 The “too big to fail” banks now control 77 percent of all of the banking assets in the country.
#29 In 2010, the United States had the worst current account balance in the world. The U.S. had a current account balance of negative 561 billion dollars for 2010. No other nation had a negative current account balance that even exceeded 70 billion dollars. The amount of wealth leaving our country and being transferred to the rest of the world is absolutely mind blowing.
#30 One recent poll found that 72 percent of Americans believe that we are involved in too many wars. But the Obama administration seems to think that we should be “the police of the world” and they just keep getting the U.S. military involved in more conflicts.
#31 Startling revelations are starting to come out about a scandal so big that it could shake up Washington D.C. for years to come. Apparently, ATF agents were ordered to get thousands of guns into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels and they were also apparently ordered not to follow those guns to see where they ended up.
#32 The top 5 percent of all income earners in America account for almost as much consumer spending as the bottom 80 percent of all income earners.
#33 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006. But instead of being treated with kindness, many communities are treating the growing ranks of the poor as “outcasts” or criminals.
#34 Despite the promises of our politicians, globalism is absolutely shredding the American economy. According to Forbes, the United States has been losing an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#35 There are no signs that our rampant unemployment problem is going to end any time soon. In fact, right now it takes the average unemployed worker about 40 weeks to find a new job.
#36 The vast majority of U.S. consumers are tapped out at this point. Just consider the following quote from the New York Times….
#37 Right now in Congress there is a proposal to change the way that inflation is calculated. According to The Senior Citizens League, this change would cause the average retiree to lose out on $18,000 in Social Security benefits over a 25 year period.
#38 Our tax system is fundamentally unjust. Just look at the example of General Electric. G.E. is a favorite of the Obama administration and somehow they get away with not paying taxes year after year. Just check out what the New York Times claims G.E. got away with in 2010….
#39 The TSA continues to abuse U.S. travelers in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable. For example, one 95-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair that is dying from cancer was asked to remove her adult diaper so that TSA “officials” could feel her up properly. In what kind of a society does this type of thing go on?
No wonder the American people are losing faith. It is hard to keep believing when you see rampant corruption and decay everywhere you look.
But mostly, the American people want to be able to take care of their families.
The American people are not going to start feeling better about things until there are plenty of good jobs to go around. If people cannot pay their mortgages and provide for their families then they are not going to be content no matter what our politicians tell them.
Unfortunately, the “new normal” is going to be a lot different from what the “old normal” was. The United States is a declining power. Every month our nation is bleeding more jobs, more factories and more wealth. Every month our debt problems on the federal, state and local levels get even worse. We have been living far beyond our means for decades, and we are rapidly getting to the point where that simply will not be possible anymore.
The long-term trends that have gotten us to this point have taken decades to develop. There is no “quick fix” that some politician is going to bring in that is going to create some kind of miracle.
We are now starting to pay the price for decades of bad decisions. As the consequences of our decisions become more apparent, the American people are going to get angrier and angrier.
Unless something very dramatic happens, we are heading for a very ugly chapter in American history.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.