Feeling Good

When They Shall Say “Peace And Safety”: Polls Show Americans Are The Most Optimistic They Have Been In A Very Long Time

By a very wide margin, this is the most optimistic that Americans have been about the future since I started The Economic Collapse Blog in late 2009.  Even though the middle class is shrinking, 102 million working age Americans do not have a job, and we are now 21 trillion dollars in debt, most people are feeling really good about things right now.  Especially among Republicans, there is an overwhelming consensus that the United States is starting to head in the right direction and that better times are ahead.  As a result, so many of the exact same people that were “prepping” while Barack Obama was in the White House are now partying now that Donald Trump is president.  But none of the long-term trends that are systematically destroying our nation have been significantly altered, and none of our long-term problems have been solved.  We are still steamrolling down a path toward national suicide, but most Americans simply do not care.

What Americans do care about is that it seems to be easier to find a job at the moment than it has in a very long time.  In fact, the percentage of Americans that believe that it is “a good time to find a quality job” is at the highest level that Gallup has ever recorded…

Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that now is a good time to find a quality job in the U.S., the highest percentage in 17 years of Gallup polling. Optimism about the availability of good jobs has grown by 25 percentage points since Donald Trump was elected president.

Gallup has asked Americans to say whether it is a good time or bad time to find a quality job monthly since August 2001. Prior to 2017, the percentage saying “good time” never reached 50%, but since Trump took office in January that year, the percentage has stayed at or above 50% and has been higher than 60% in eight of the past nine months.

A Rasmussen survey that asked a similar question came up with very similar results.

Of course the reality of the matter is that 66 percent of all jobs in the United States pay less than 20 dollars an hour, and 78 million Americans are participating in the “gig economy” because they need to supplement their normal incomes in order to make ends meet.

But perception is sometimes more powerful than reality, and right now the perception is that the U.S. economy is doing well…

“Nothing is better for the issues about trade wars or issues about G-7 than a good economy,” Omar Aguilar, chief investment officer for equities at Charles Schwab Investment Management, said by phone. “The jobs report on Friday gave a lot of people confidence that the U.S. economy is still pretty solid.”

Small businesses in the United States are also feeling extremely optimistic right now.

In fact, one survey found that small business optimism has surged to record highs…

The Q2 MetLife & U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index (Index) released today recorded an overall score of 68.7, up 2.4 points from the Q1 score of 66.3, driven in part by the strongest local economic outlook on record, a firmer hiring environment, and a stronger backdrop for investing. Two out of every three small business owners are optimistic about their company and the small business environment in the United States.

That is definitely a good sign, because we desperately need small businesses to do well, but is all of this optimism really warranted?

The financial markets continue to be filled with optimism as well.  Despite the outbreak of an international trade war and tremendous turmoil over in Europe, the Nasdaq closed at a brand new record high on Tuesday.

In recent years stock prices have just continued to go up and up and up no matter what news breaks, and now we are facing the greatest stock market bubble in our history.

How long do we have until it finally bursts?

There is a lot of optimism in the housing market as well.  At this point, a staggering 64 percent of all adults in this country believe that housing prices will continue to go up over the next year.  The following comes from Marketwatch…

A majority of U.S. adults (64%) continue to believe home prices in their local area will increase over the next year, a recent survey released by polling firm Gallup concluded. That’s up nine percentage points over the past two years and is the highest percentage since before the housing market crash and Great Recession in the mid-2000s.

The level of optimism is edging closer to the 70% of adults in 2005 who said prices would continue rising. That, of course, was less than one year before the peak of the housing market bubble in early 2006, which was largely fueled by a wave of subprime lending.

Moving beyond short-term concerns, Americans are also becoming increasingly optimistic about the long-term future too.  A recent Gallup survey discovered that approximately 60 percent of all Americans believe that our young people “will have a better life than their parents did”…

About six in 10 Americans say it is very or somewhat likely that today’s young people will have a better life than their parents did. The latest reading marks continued improvement since the low of 44% in 2011 but is still not back to the level of 66% measured in February 2008.

Hopefully the optimists will be correct, but I do not believe they will be.  If we keep doing the same things that we have been doing as a nation, it is simply not possible that there will be any sort of a bright future for America.

And I will tell you one area where Americans are quite pessimistic.  One recent survey found that 77 percent of all Americans believe that morality is in decline in this country.  Our national character continues to deteriorate at a frightening pace, and most Americans appear to be quite aware that this is happening.

But instead of changing our ways, we proudly believe that our “greatness” will allow us to continue to enjoy a massively inflated debt-fueled standard of living for a very long time to come.

Unfortunately for us, it simply does not work that way, and as a nation we are way overdue for a very serious wake up call.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

 

‘It Is Like A Nuclear Bomb Went Off In The Prepping Community’

nuclear-war-family-public-domainIs the prepper movement in the United States dying?  At one time it was estimated that there were 3 million preppers in the United States, but in late 2016 interest in prepping has hit a multi-year low.  The big reason for this, of course, is that the election of Donald Trump has fueled a tremendous wave of optimism among those that consider themselves to be conservatives, patriots and evangelical Christians.  Not since the election of Ronald Reagan has the mood on the right shifted in such a positive direction so suddenly.  But now that everyone is feeling so good about things, very few people still seem interested in prepping for hard times ahead.  In fact, it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.

As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, I am in contact with a lot of people that serve the prepping community.  And I can tell you that sales of emergency food and supplies have been crashing since Donald Trump’s surprise election victory.  Firms that help people relocate outside of the United States have seen business really dry up, and I know of one high profile individual that has actually decided to move back to the country after Trump’s victory.  It is almost as if the apocalypse has been canceled and the future history of the U.S. has been rewritten with a much happier ending.

Personally, I am quite alarmed that so many people are suddenly letting their guard down, but it is difficult to convince people to be vigilant when things seem to be going so well.  Just consider some of the things that have been happening in recent weeks…

-Donald Trump was just named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

-The Dow just keeps setting brand new record high after brand new record high.  In fact, the Dow has now risen by more than 1,200 points since Donald Trump won the election.

-The Russell 2000 has shot up an astounding 13 percent just since Trump’s victory.

-Donald Trump has convinced heating, ventilation and air conditioning giant Carrier to keep about 1,000 jobs in the United States instead of shipping them to Mexico.

-Donald Trump has convinced SoftBank to invest 50 billion dollars and create 50,000 new jobs in the United States.

-The U.S. dollar index recently hit the highest level that we have witnessed since March 2003.

-We just learned that U.S. Steel wants to bring back somewhere around 10,000 jobs to communities that lost them.

At this point there is an overwhelming belief among those on the right that Donald Trump is going to be able to do what he has promised to do.

And the numbers back this up.  In a previous article, I discussed the fact that a recent Gallup survey discovered that the percentage of Republicans that believe that the U.S. economy is “getting better” increased from just 16 percent immediately prior to the election to 49 percent immediately after the election.

I don’t recall ever seeing such a shift in public sentiment in just a few days.  Tens of millions of Americans have put their faith in Donald Trump, and time will tell if he will be able to deliver.  As billionaire Mark Cuban recently pointed out, Donald Trump is like a number one draft pick that has not proven himself yet…

“I’ll analogize it to the NBA draft: He’s the No. 1 pick,” Cuban said. “He’s who we put our hopes and dreams with, and we’re going to believe in him. Right now it’s a little bit easier because we haven’t played a game yet.”

“There’s no reason to rush to judgment or come to any conclusions now,” he continued. “Let’s see what happens starting January 21 and go from there. I hope he’s a superstar, and I hope everything turns out the way we all hope it will. But until January 21, there’s no real point at going into detail.”

Let us hope that President Trump will be everything that people are hoping that he will be.

I would love it if 2017 is a year filled with peace and prosperity.  That way I could write less about our economic troubles and instead do more of the positive stories that I have been sharing lately.  And my wife and I could take some time off and just spend some time enjoying our quiet life up here in the mountains.

I don’t think that is the way it is going to go, but I do hope that the optimists are right.

At this point I could start listing out all of the reasons why our economy is doomed no matter who is president, but unless you are already convinced all of that reasoning would probably fall on deaf ears.

Tens of millions of Americans are completely convinced that we are heading into a new golden era for America just because Donald Trump won the election, and for the sake of the nation let us hope that they are correct.

But what if they are wrong?

What if the rioting, violence and civil unrest that the radical left is planning for the Inauguration on January 20th sparks a movement that plunges many of our major cities into chaos throughout Trump’s presidency?

What if all of the incredibly bad decisions that were made during the Obama years result in the biggest economic downturn we have ever seen early in the Trump years?

What if Trump’s inability to get along with China results in a major trade war between the two largest economies on the entire planet?

What if the growing financial instability in Europe results in a new global financial crisis that Trump will not be able to do anything to stop?

I could go on and on, but I think that you get the point.

All of the things that myself and other watchmen have been warning about all this time are coming.

My hope is that the optimists are right and that the horrible events that are coming will be put off for as long as possible.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

A day of reckoning for America is fast approaching, and those that are wise understand the signs of the times.