#1 According to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, 52 percent of Americans “do not think the economy is fair to those willing to work hard”.

#2 70 percent of all Americans do not “feel engaged or inspired at their jobs”.

#3 According to another recent Rasmussen Reports survey, 59 percent of Americans believe that “less government involvement in the economy” would help reduce the size of the income gap in this country.  (And those 59 percent are actually correct.)

#4 20 percent of all government workers and 26 percent of all Obama supporters consider the Tea Party to be “the biggest terror threat” that America is facing.

#5 Approximately 30 percent of all American workers have $1,000 or less saved up for retirement.

#6 A worldwide survey conducted by the Worldwide Independent Network and Gallup found that 24 percent of people around the world consider the United States to be the biggest threat to peace.  Pakistan was in second place with just 8 percent.

#7 60 percent of Americans report feeling “angry or irritable”.  Two years ago that number was at 50 percent.

#8 36 percent of Americans admit that they have yelled at a customer service agent during the past year.

#9 29 percent of Americans believe that “cloud computing” involves an actual cloud.

#10 A survey of employers that currently pay minimum wage to at least some of their employees found that 38 percent of them would start laying off employees if the minimum wage was raised.

#11 One survey found that 56 percent of Americans believe that it is okay for the government to track “the telephone records of millions of Americans” in order to keep us safe.

#12 When George W. Bush was president, 61 percent of Democrats considered NSA surveillance to be “unacceptable”, but now that Obama is in the White House, only 34 percent of them consider it to be “unacceptable”.

#13 67 percent of Americans support the use of unmanned drones in “homeland security missions” inside the United States.

#14 One survey found that 51 percent of all Americans agree with this statement: “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”

#15 Close to one-third of all Americans would be willing to submit to a “TSA body cavity search” in order to fly.

#16 65 percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the U.S. system of government and its effectiveness”.  That is the highest level of dissatisfaction that Gallup has ever recorded.

#17 Only 8 percent of Americans believe that Congress is doing a “good” or “excellent” job.

#18 70 percent of Americans do not have confidence that the federal government will “make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014″.

#19 According to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of all Americans in the 18 to 24-year-old age range can find the nation of Iraq on a map.

#20 Close to 25 percent of all Americans do not know that the United States declared independence from Great Britain.

#21 Right now, 29 percent of all Americans under the age of 35 are living with their parents.

#22 According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have a sexually-transmitted disease say that they still have unprotected sex.

#23 Approximately one out of every five teenage girls in the United States actually wants to be a teenage mother.

#24 The percentage of Americans that “believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth” is actually higher than the percentage of Americans that believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

#25 According to one recent survey, only 35 percent of all Americans say that they are better off financially than they were a year ago.

#26 It is hard to believe, but 56 percent of all Americans are considered to have “subprime credit” at this point.

#27 89.7 percent of all Americans believe that they are eating a healthy diet.  Meanwhile, approximately 36 percent of all Americans are obese.

#28 44 percent of all Americans do not have a first-aid kit in their homes.

#29 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies stored up at all.

#30 53 percent of all Americans do not even have a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water in their homes.  What will they do when a major crisis or emergency strikes?  Do they actually believe that the government will swoop in to save them if something happens?

So what do you think about these survey results?  Is there anything that you would add to the list?  Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

The post 30 Survey Results That Sound False But That Are Actually True appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Needless to say, a time is coming when Americans will not waste food so recklessly.  But for the moment, we still have a tremendous amount of disrespect for the value of food.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we waste a staggering 133 billion pounds of food each year…

Nearly a third of the 430 billion pounds of food produced for Americans to eat is wasted, a potential catastrophe for landfills and a wake-up call to officials scrambling to feed the hungry, according to a stunning new report from the Department of Agriculture.

The just-issued report revealed that in 2010, 31 percent, or 133 billion pounds, of food produced for Americans to eat was wasted, either molded or improperly cooked, suffered “natural shrinkage” due to moisture loss, or because people became disinterested in what they purchased.

Not that we need to stuff any more food into our mouths.  As I mentioned above, we have an epidemic of obesity in this nation.  In fact, the CDC says that 35 percent of the entire population is “obese”…

Meanwhile, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of US adults (35.7 percent) are obese, which is perhaps the best argument that Americans can offset a large part of the food waste problem by simply eating less. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the US was $147 billion in 2008; the costs of providing medical assistance for individuals who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight, thereby placing an enormous strain on healthcare costs.

Since we are such gluttons and we are so incredibly wasteful, we should have plenty of food to share with those in need, right?

Unfortunately, we are also extremely greedy and greatly lacking in compassion.

As I have written about previously, feeding the homeless has been banned in cities all over the nation, and other cities have passed regulations that greatly discourage the feeding of the homeless…

Feeding the homeless is about to get harder as a new policy is set to begin this Saturday, Feb. 15, in Columbia, SC. Charities and non-profits will be required to pay a fee and obtain a permit 15 days in advance in order to feed the homeless in parks.

One impacted charity that was interviewed by the Free Times, Food Not Bombs, has been serving food to the homeless in Finlay Park every Sunday for 12 years. The group’s organizer, Judith Turnipseed, noted that the group has an impeccable track record and always tidies up after the meal. But with the new crackdown, Food Not Bombs will have to pay at least $120 per week for the right to feed the homeless.

Since the Columbia City Council approved its exile plan in August, the city has been trying to herd its homeless people to a shelter on the outskirts of town and keep them away from downtown. If charities continue to provide food in downtown parks, the thinking goes, it will allow homeless people to continue to live downtown, rather than being forced to leave.

What is wrong with us?

While we stuff our faces with more french fries and chicken wings, we have an appalling lack of compassion for those that are not able to take care of themselves.

Perhaps we deserve what is coming.

The horrible drought that never seems to end is rapidly turning much of the western half of the country into a barren wasteland.

You can see some incredible before and after photos of the drought in California right here.

If a miracle does not happen, the upcoming growing season is going to be absolutely disastrous.  As I have written about previously, California farmers have already decided to allow half a million acres of farmland to sit idle this year because of the extremely dry conditions.

And it certainly does not help that the government has decided to cut off water supplies to many of the farmers.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Holly Deyo…

Government has lost its mind. It is no more evident than their decision last week to cut off water to America’s food basket. Squeezed by the worst-ever drought in the state’s history, California is dying of thirst. Crushing news was delivered to farmer’s that no water would be coming from the Federal government. This dreaded decision was compounded by the Sierra Mountains getting just 25% of normal snowpack. There is no water to replenish already dangerously low reservoirs, so no water for farmers.

Needless to say, there are a lot of farmers that are going to be absolutely crippled by this.  The following is from Fox News…

A federal agency’s recent announcement that the California’s Central Valley will get zero percent water allocation this year was devastating for farmers already dealing with the worst drought seen in decades.

One of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, the enormous valley is reeling after the driest year in more than a century. But last week, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, which supplies water to a third of the irrigated farmland in California through a 500-mile network of canals and tunnel, said it won’t be able to deliver any of the water sought by farmers.

“It goes beyond devastation, you’re going to see farms that have been in business 30 and 40 years, they do not have any water, they are out of business,” said Dennis Falaschi, general manager of the Panoche Water District.

If California produces much less food than it normally does, that means that food prices are going to start skyrocketing.  Here is more from Holly Deyo…

As one Millennium-Ark reader pointed out in an email last week, after the jump in beef prices, people will look to chicken, pork, fish and turkey. Chicken is already up though not as much as beef.  This will, in turn, drive up their costs and affect availability of these other meats. Keep in mind that California also produces all of these proteins plus lamb. Then consider this: Ag Specialists Warn of Higher Wheat Prices Due to Drought. It’s not just beef, weather is clobbering food from all angles.

And please keep in mind that the total size of the U.S. cattle herd has already been shrinking for seven years in a row, and that it is now the smallest that it has been since 1951.

But back in 1951, the size of the U.S. population was less than half of what it is today.

For much more on the emerging food crisis, please see this video.

Let us certainly hope and pray that the drought in California ends soon and that things get back to normal.

But I wouldn’t count on that.

According to National Geographic, the scientific experts that have studied these things tell us that it has been quite common throughout history for that region of North America to suffer through extended droughts that last for a decade or more.

One drought even lasted for about 200 years.

So the current drought in California might end next year.

Or it might last for the rest of our lifetimes.

We simply do not know.

But what does seem clear is that the days of taking our food for granted will soon be coming to an end.

The post 31 Percent Of All Food In America Is Wasted – And Why That Is About To End appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

It seems like there is a health food store or a vitamin store on almost every corner, and yet as a whole we are in much worse condition than our parents were.  The following is from a recent news story by the CBS News affiliate in Washington D.C.….

Obesity among baby boomers is more than double the rate of their parents at the same age, and boomers with three or more chronic conditions was 700 percent greater than the previous generation.

But it isn’t just the Baby Boomers that are obese.  Sadly, obesity has become a raging epidemic in America and all of the numbers show this.

For example, a study by the RAND corporation discovered that the percentage of Americans that are severely obese rose from 3.9 percent in the year 2000 to 6.6 percent in 2010.

That is a huge increase in just a decade.

And the numbers are even more sobering when you look at the percentage of Americans that are just obese (rather than being severely obese).

As I wrote about the other day, 36 percent of all Americans are considered to be obese, and it is being projected that by 2030 that number will rise to 42 percent.

To put that in perspective, it is important to note that only 13 percent of all Americans were obese back in 1962.

Sadly, not only are we getting fatter, many of us are also living shorter lives.

In a previous article, I quoted a CBS News story that discussed recent research which shows that the lifespans of poor Americans have been dropping rapidly in recent years….

Overall life expectancy has dropped for white Americans who have less than a high school diploma to rates similar to those of the 1950s and 1960s, new research finds.

The study found non-Hispanic white men without a diploma lived on average until 67.5 in 2008, three years less than they did in 1990. The drop in lifespan was even bigger for non-Hispanic white women with low education: They live five years shorter than 1990 rates, from 78 years old to just 73.5.

Why are people not living as long?

Well, our lifestyles certainly are not helping things.  The average American watches 28 hours of television every single week.  That is not conducive to a long and happy life.

But of course a lot of other factors are at play as well.

When you don’t have a lot of money, you can’t afford to eat healthy and you can’t afford to go see the doctor much.

Unfortunately, average Americans have steadily seen their incomes drop even as the cost of living has continued to go up.  The following is from a recent article posted on Investors.com….

Since 2009, the middle 20% of American households saw their average incomes drop 4%. In 2011 alone, they fell 1.7%. The poorest 20% have fared even worse under Obama, Census data show. Their incomes have dropped more than 7% since 2009, and are now lower than they’ve been at any time since 1985, after adjusting for inflation.

Median household income (adjusted for inflation) fell in 41 U.S. states between 2000 and 2011.

So which state saw the worst decline in median household income during that time period?

Would you be surprised to hear that it was Michigan?

Between 2000 and 2011, median household income in Michigan dropped by a whopping 18.9 percent.

I have written extensively about how Detroit is a perfect example of where most of the rest of the country is headed.  The manufacturing facilities are being torn down and Detroit has become a rotting shell of what it once was.

You can see 30 pictures of the ruins of Detroit right here, and you can view a great video of a homeless man giving a very creepy tour of Detroit’s abandoned Michigan Central Station right here.

So what part of the country do you think has done the best over the past decade?

If you guessed Washington D.C. you would be correct.

Median household income in Washington D.C. increased by 18.1 percent between 2000 and 2011.

Of course this “prosperity” for the D.C. area can be directly attributed to the explosion in the growth of the federal government.

Members of Congress and government workers are living the high life at your expense, and much of it is being done with borrowed money that we expect our children and our grandchildren to repay.

You would be absolutely shocked to learn what goes on at some of these federal agencies.  For example, the following was revealed by a former Social Security Administration employee recently in the Baltimore Sun….

It is not uncommon to see employees taking lunches lasting up to two hours. Often, a day at the office is nothing more than seeing people sleep at their desks or watch movies on their computers. With a few exceptions, employees with goals and expectations of some sort are nowhere to be found inside the walls of SSA.

I once saw an older employee take 10 smoke breaks in one afternoon and do absolutely no work when he was at his desk. He told me he was just waiting it out until he could get more retirement money. Several elderly individuals literally died right at their desks because they refused to retire. A lack of professionalism was obvious in the way the employees dressed and most apparently in their juvenile, non-professional language.

Would you like to have a job where you can sleep at your desk, take two hour lunches and watch movies on your computer all day?

If so, then working for the federal government might be for you.

Of course this does not happen at all federal agencies.  At some agencies the employees actually are very professional.  However, there are other agencies that are even worse than the Social Security Administration.

The sad truth is that what is wrong with our society is not limited to the White House and Congress.  They are simply a reflection of who we have become.  Our problems are very wide and very deep.

So why do you think Americans are getting poorer, fatter and sicker?

Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

The post Americans May Be Getting Poorer, But At Least We Are Getting Fatter And Sicker appeared first on The Economic Collapse.