Wealth

30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen.  Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing.  The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012.  The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden.  Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades.  Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families.  Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty.  In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before.  The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace.  As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale.  This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.

Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices.  I honestly don’t know how most families make it these days.  I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food.  That was after I “saved” 67 dollars on sale items.

When the cost of the basic things that we need – housing, food, gas, electricity – go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.

Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge….

-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.

-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.

-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.

-The number of Americans that are considered to be “poor” continues to grow.

-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.

After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.

The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012….

#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.

#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people.  Only about 140 million of them are working.

#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.

#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.

#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or “near poverty”, and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or “near poverty”.

#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.  Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.

#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today.  Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.

#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns.  Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent.  In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.

#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.

#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by 18,000% since 1913.  The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.

#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.

#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#15 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years.  During 2010 it got even worse.  Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.

#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days.  Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace.  The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.

#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.

#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.

#22 If the number of Americans considered to be “looking for work” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012.  Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.

#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.

#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.

#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.  By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.

#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.

#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#30 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

Sadly, this article could have been much, much longer.  There are so many other statistics about the middle class that could have been included.

For even more insane economic numbers that show just how dramatically the U.S. economy is declining, just check out this article: “50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe“.

What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.

We have already had “the economic recovery”, such as it was.

Now we are heading for another major financial crisis.  Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.

But we never recovered from the last financial crisis.  We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.

And who is going to get hurt the most?  It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course.  Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.

If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it.  If you don’t have a job, do your best to get one while you still can.  Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.

But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system.  Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side.  Yes, it will likely cut into your television time.  If someday you were to lose your job you don’t want to be left with zero income.

Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.

Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.

I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.

Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.

But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.

Debt-Free United States Notes Were Once Issued Under JFK And The U.S. Government Still Has The Power To Issue Debt-Free Money

Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. government once issued debt-free money directly into circulation.  America once thrived under a debt-free monetary system, and we can do it again.  The truth is that the United States is a sovereign nation and it does not need to borrow money from anyone.  Back in the days of JFK, Federal Reserve Notes were not the only currency in circulation.  Under JFK (at at various other times), a limited number of debt-free United States Notes were issued by the U.S. Treasury and spent by the U.S. government without any new debt being created.  In fact, each bill said “United States Note” right at the top.  Unfortunately, United States Notes are not being issued today.  If you stop right now and pull a dollar out of your wallet, what does it say right at the top?  It says “Federal Reserve Note”.  Normally, the way our current system works is that whenever more Federal Reserve Notes are created more debt is also created.  This debt-based monetary system is systematically destroying the wealth of this nation.  But it does not have to be this way.  The truth is that the U.S. government still has the power under the U.S. Constitution to issue debt-free money, and we need to educate the American people about this.

Posted below are pictures of the front and the back of a United States Note printed in 1963 while JFK was president….

Notice that there is a red seal instead of a green seal on the front, and it says “United States Note” rather than “Federal Reserve Note”.

According to Wikipedia, United States Notes were issued directly into circulation by the U.S. Treasury and they were first used during the Civil War….

They were originally issued directly into circulation by the U.S. Treasury to pay expenses incurred by the Union during the American Civil War. Over the next century, the legislation governing these notes was modified many times and numerous versions have been issued by the Treasury.

So why are we using debt-based Federal Reserve Notes today instead of debt-free United States Notes?

It seems rather stupid, doesn’t it?

Well, that is what Thomas Edison thought too.

Thomas Edison was once quoted in the New York Times as saying the following….

That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.

Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.

But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.

Our current debt-based monetary system was devised by greedy bankers that wanted to make huge profits by creating money out of thin air and lending it to the U.S. government at interest.

Sadly, the vast majority of the American people have no idea how money is actually created in this nation.

In a previous article about money and debt, I explained how more government debt is created whenever the U.S. government puts more money into circulation….

When the government wants more money, the U.S. government swaps U.S. Treasury bonds for “Federal Reserve notes”, thus creating more government debt.  Usually the money isn’t even printed up – most of the time it is just electronically credited to the government.  The Federal Reserve creates these “Federal Reserve notes” out of thin air.  These Federal Reserve notes are backed by nothing and have no intrinsic value of their own.

When each new Federal Reserve Note is created, the interest owed by the federal government on that new Federal Reserve Note is not also created at the same time.

So the amount of government debt that is created actually exceeds the amount of money that is created.

Isn’t that a stupid system?

The U.S. Constitution says that the federal government is the one that should actually be issuing our money.

In particular, according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, it is the U.S. Congress that has been given the responsibility to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

So why is a private central banking cartel issuing our money?

As is the case with so many other issues, we desperately need to get back to the way the U.S. Constitution says that we should be doing things.

The debt-based Federal Reserve system is literally stealing the future from our children and our grandchildren.

Back in 1910, a couple years prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.6 billion.

A little over 100 years later, our national debt is now more than 5000 times larger.

So why don’t we just admit that this system simply does not work?

Our current debt-based monetary system also requires very high personal income taxes to pay for it.

In fact, it is no accident that the personal income tax was introduced at about the same time that the Federal Reserve system originally came into existence.

Our children, our grandchildren and many generations after that are facing a lifetime of debt slavery because of us.

As I have written about previously, if the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

Neither the Republicans or the Democrats are proposing any solutions to this problem.  Rather, both parties are only trying to slow down the rate at which we are going into even more debt.

But the truth is that the federal government does not have to go into a single penny of additional debt.

How could this be?

It is not too complicated.

If Congress took back the power over our currency and started issuing debt-free money a lot of our problems could be fixed.

A basic plan would look something like this….

#1) The U.S. Congress votes to take back all of the functions that it has delegated to the Federal Reserve and begins to issue debt-free United States Notes.  These United States Notes would have the exact same value as existing Federal Reserve Notes, and over time all existing Federal Reserve Notes would be taken out of circulation.

#2) The U.S. Congress nationalizes all debt held by the Federal Reserve.  That would instantly reduce the national debt by 1.6 trillion dollars.  In fact, there are a few members of Congress that have already proposed this.

#3) A Constitutional amendment is passed limiting future U.S. government deficits to a reasonable percentage of GDP.  Any future deficits would not be funded by borrowing.  Rather, future deficits would be funded by newly created United States Notes.  Therefore, the federal government would never again accumulate another penny of debt.

And it would be important to inject new money into the economy from time to time.  When existing money is destroyed or when the population grows it is important to inject a certain amount of new money into the system in order to avoid deflation.

#4) The existing national debt would be very slowly paid off with newly created United States Notes.  The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal year 2011, and over time this expense would go to zero.

If the national debt is paid off slowly enough, it would not create too much inflation.  I believe that it could be paid off gradually over 50 years without shocking the economy too much.

There are some that would object to any measure that would ever cause a small amount of inflation, but my contention is that we have created a $15 trillion dollar debt mess for future generations, and it would be absolutely criminal to pass that legacy on to them.

We created this mess, and it is our responsibility to clean it up.

While there is certainly a danger that we would have a limited amount of inflation under a debt-free monetary system such as the one described above, the reality is that we are absolutely guaranteed inflation under the Federal Reserve system.

Most Americans believe that inflation is a fact of life, but the sad truth is that the United States has only had a major, ongoing problem with inflation since the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

If you do not believe this, just check out this chart.

Sadly, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created.

So, yes, there would be a need for strict monetary discipline under a debt-free monetary system, but it would be hard to do worse than the Federal Reserve has already been doing.

And Congress could always slow down inflation using other methods.  For example, raising the reserve requirements for banks (which should be done anyway) would help keep inflation in check.

If the above proposals were adopted, the end result would be something that we could all live with.  The Federal Reserve system would be abolished, the national debt burden on future generations would be wiped out, the economy would not have to go through a devastating economic collapse that could last a decade or longer, and we could eventually make a fairly smooth transition to “hard money” if we wanted to after the national debt is gone.

Is there any other proposal out there that does all of those things?

There are many out there that would dispute some of the points above, and debate is good.  By engaging in debate, we can hopefully help educate the American people about the nature of money.

The key is to get rid of our current debt-based Federal Reserve Notes and replace them with debt-free United States Notes.

The American people need to understand that it is a lie that the U.S. government “must” borrow money from somebody else.

When the U.S. government borrows money, it slowly transfers wealth from the American people to those that lent it.

At this point, we have created a financial nightmare for future generations that is unlike anything the world has ever seen before.  We owe it to future generations to eliminate the debt problem without destroying the United States economy.  Adopting debt-free money would allow us to do that.

But sadly, neither political party is even talking about debt-free money.  In fact, most of the politicians in both political parties probably do not even know what debt-free money is.

So we need to get the American people educated about these things.  Because if we stay on the course that we are currently on, an economic collapse is inevitable.

50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don’t make dramatic changes immediately.  If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them.  Just “tweaking” things here and there is not going to fix this economy.  We truly do need a fundamental change in direction.  America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding.  If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends.  If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that “business as usual” will result in a national economic apocalypse.

The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe….

#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

#3 If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

#4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

#5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

#6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

#8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

#9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

#10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#11 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#12 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job.  In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

#13 One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

#14 The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

#15 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#16 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#17 The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

#18 In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

#19 Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

#20 If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant.  That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

#22 New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

#23 As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

#24 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#25 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

#26 One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#27 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#28 The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#29 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

#30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse.  According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#31 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#32 According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.

#33 Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

#34 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

#35 According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.

#36 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

#37 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.

#38 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

#39 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

#40 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America.  According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#41 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#42 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income.  Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

#43 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#44 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP.  Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

#45 For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars.  That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

#46 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#47 Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars.  When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#48 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#49 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

#50 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Of course the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence.  If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape.  The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based.  That would be a very significant step toward restoring prosperity to America.

During 2011 we made a lot of progress in educating the American people about our economic problems, but we still have a long way to go.

Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country.

The Worst In The World – The U.S. Balance Of Trade Is Mind-Blowingly Bad

Did you know that we buy about a half a trillion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they buy from us?  The U.S. balance of trade is not only mind-blowingly bad – it is the worst in the world.  It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.  That would be an increase of more than 11 percent from last year.  As I have written about previously, the United States is the worst in the world at a lot of things, but as far as the economic well-being of our nation is concerned, our balance of trade is particularly important.  Every single month, far more money goes out of this country than comes into it.  Tax revenues are significantly reduced as all of this money gets sucked out of our communities.  The federal government, state governments and local governments borrow gigantic piles of money to try to make up the difference, but all of this borrowing just makes our debt problems a whole lot worse.  In the end, no amount of government debt is going to be able to cover over the fact that our national economic pie is shrinking.  We are continually consuming far more wealth than we produce, and that is a recipe for economic disaster.

The “current account balance” is one key indicator of how a country is doing economically.  The following is how the CIA World Factbook defines “current account balance”….

This entry records a country’s net trade in goods and services, plus net earnings from rents, interest, profits, and dividends, and net transfer payments (such as pension funds and worker remittances) to and from the rest of the world during the period specified.

If someone were to ask you what countries in the world have strong, thriving economies right now, what countries would you think of?

Would countries like China, Germany, Russia and Saudi Arabia come to mind?

Well, all of those nations have huge positive current account balances.  In fact, China has the best current account balance in the world at +$305 billion.

So who is on the other end of the scale?

The following information comes directly from a CIA World Factbook chart….

190 Turkey $ -48,420,000,000

191 Canada $ -48,500,000,000

192 India $ -51,780,000,000

193 France $ -54,400,000,000

194 United Kingdom $ -56,190,000,000

195 Spain $ -63,650,000,000

196 Italy $ -67,940,000,000

197 United States $ -470,200,000,000

The United States is rated dead last at number 197.

Just take a close look at those numbers for a minute.

The U.S. had a current account balance of negative 470 billion dollars in 2010.  That figure was almost 7 times worse than the next worst country (Italy).

Not only does the United States have the worst current account balance in the entire world, the truth is that no other country is even in the same ballpark as us.

We are bleeding wealth so fast that it is hard to even describe it.

But perhaps a real life example can help put this all into perspective.

One 22-year-old Saudi Arabian student has a collection of sports cars that is worth more than 12 million dollars.  Reportedly, his collection includes at least three Lamborghinis, five Ferraris and five Porsches.

And guess who paid for it?

You did.

Every month, billions of dollars go out of the United States to help pay for the insane lifestyles of the ultra-wealthy oil barons of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, dozens of major U.S. cities are degenerating into hellholes.

Once upon a time, Detroit was one of the greatest industrial cities that the world has ever seen.  It was the envy of the entire globe.

But now Detroit is an utter nightmare….

*An analysis of census figures found that 48.5% of all men living in Detroit from age 20 to age 64 did not have a job in 2008.

*If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

*Only 25 percent of students in Detroit graduate from high school.

So what happened to Detroit?

Well, just as has been happening in so many other U.S. cities, industry has been leaving at an astounding pace.

As I have written about previously, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States during 2010.

Overall, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

This country is bleeding middle class jobs profusely, and neither major political party seems to care.

American family budgets are being stretched tighter and tighter these days.  There are not nearly enough good jobs to go around and yet the cost of everything just seems to keep going up.

Many families are going into massive amounts of debt in an attempt to make ends meet.  According to a recent CNN article, credit card use in the United States is experiencing a major upswing once again….

Purchases made with credit cards rose 8.2% in the first quarter of 2011, 9% in the second quarter and 10.6% in the third quarter, according to First Data.

Of course American consumers were out in force on Black Friday once again this year.  They gleefully filled up their carts with cheap plastic crap made overseas, and many racked up huge credit card balances in the process.

But most of us never stop to think about those that make all of these cheap plastic products for us.

Thanks to the globalization of the economy, big corporations and corrupt governments can make stuff in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages and then ship their products into the United States for free.

It is important for all of us to learn what actually happens to these people that are working so hard for slave labor wages.  The following comes from a recent article in the Guardian….

At the Hung Hing factory the researcher found that the 8,000 workers put in up to 100 hours of overtime a month, far in excess of the legal maximum. Workers say they have to sign a document agreeing to work additional overtime on top of the legal maximum. The basic wage was £132 a month (up to £250 with maximum overtime payments) but wages were paid up to three weeks late.

Workers complained of inadequate training with the factory machines and last year one worker died when he fell into a machine. They said there were frequent injuries and concerns over the chemicals used. There were also complaints about the standard of the dormitories, where water for washing and flushing toilets is turned off at 10pm.

How in the world are American workers supposed to “compete” for jobs at those wage levels?

As I have written about previously, Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University is warning that 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if nothing is done to stop this.

But instead, our “representatives” in Congress just keep pushing more “free trade” agreements as the answer to our problems.  Congress has passed new free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, and the Obama administration has made “the NAFTA of the Pacific” a very high priority.

Well, if “free trade” is supposed to create so many jobs, then why was last decade the worst decade for the creation of jobs since the Great Depression?

If you can believe it, zero jobs were created between 1999 and 2009.  The following comes from an article in Washington Monthly….

“If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.”

But our leaders don’t care about us.  In fact, even the members of Obama’s “jobs panel” have been shipping jobs out of the United States at a very rapid pace.

The U.S. has run a negative balance of trade with the rest of the globe every single year since 1976.  During that time, the U.S. has run up a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the planet.

That 7.5 trillion dollars could have gone to support U.S. workers and U.S. businesses.

But it didn’t.  Instead, it went out of the country and it made foreigners wealthier as our own cities slowly rotted.

Now we are actually passing laws that encourage wealthy foreigners to come in and buy up pieces of the United States.

For example, there is actually a bill in Congress that would automatically give residence visas to any foreigners that are willing to spend at least half a million dollars to buy houses inside the United States.

The idea behind the bill is that this will get the housing market moving again.

There aren’t enough Americans with good jobs to buy houses, so we have now decided to beg foreigners to buy them.

How bizarre is that?

Until our horrendous balance of trade is fixed, the employment situation in this country is going to continue to get worse.

Any politician that tries to sell you on a “jobs plan” that does not address our balance of trade is either totally incompetent or is straight out lying to you.

The economic infrastructure of America is crumbling a little bit more every single day.  If something dramatic is not done, we will continue to bleed businesses, bleed jobs and bleed wealth.

Please share this information with as many people as you can.  The American people need to understand what is happening to the economy.  We need to work to wake up as many people as we can before it is too late.

The One Percent: Gigantic Government + Gigantic Corporations = Massive Wealth Inequality In America

Today, there are protests all over America that are targeting “the one percent” and all of the wealth and power that they have accumulated.  Unfortunately, many of the solutions that these protesters are advocating simply will not work and will not lead to less wealth inequality.  To understand this, you have to understand how we got to this point.  Over the past several decades, our federal government has exploded in size and our large corporations have exploded in size.  In fact, we have seen this pattern happen pretty much all over the world.  Governments and corporations all over the globe are getting much bigger.  Whenever you have very, very large concentrations of money and power like that, it is going to lead to massive wealth inequality.  The Occupy Wall Street protesters would like to frame this debate as “socialism vs. capitalism”, but the truth is that wherever you find big government you will almost always find big corporations, and wherever you find big corporations you will almost always find big government.  Sure, they spar once in a while, but the reality is that big government and big corporations work in tandem most of the time.  Sometimes big government has the upper hand and sometimes big corporations have the upper hand, but they are both collectivist institutions.  Wherever you find collectivism in the world, you will find an elite that receives most of the benefits while the rest of the population suffers.  In the United States today, our gigantic government is thriving and our gigantic corporations are thriving and the middle class is rapidly shrinking.  The solution to this is not to replace one form of collectivism with another form of collectivism.  Rather, what we need is to go back to what our founding fathers intended.  They were extremely suspicious of large concentrations of wealth and power, and they intended for us to live in a capitalist system where individuals and small businesses had the freedom to compete and thrive.

Today, Democrats tell us that we need an even bigger government and that we need to redistribute even more wealth to the poor.  But the bigger the government gets, the more poor people we seem to have.  As you will see below, the only people that seem to be thriving from big government are the bureaucrats.

Republicans tell us that we need to make life better for the big corporations.  But the reality is that the bigger our giant corporations get, the faster the middle class shrinks.  The big corporations are shipping millions of our jobs out of the country, and they are magnets for wealth and power.  If you are not aware of how overwhelmingly dominant corporations have become in our society, just read this article.

Democrats should not be defending big government, and Republicans should not be defending the abuses of the big corporations.

Whenever big government and big corporations work together there is going to be massive income inequality, and massive income inequality is not a good thing.

Yes, there are always going to be some people that do much better than others (and there is nothing wrong with that), but we should not have a system which is designed to funnel almost all of the wealth and almost all of the power to a very small minority.

In essence, this article is arguing the following….

Gigantic government = bad.

Gigantic corporations = bad.

This was the view of our founding fathers, and this is what we need to get back to.

Let’s take a look at some of the results of our current system.  Let’s start with income inequality caused by big government.

Today, the Washington D.C. region has the highest median household income in the entire nation.  According to the most recent numbers, median household income in the D.C. area is $84,523.

So what is the cause of this?

Well, it is not because Washington D.C. is a great center of industry or finance.  Rather, it is because the federal government is spending over 3 trillion dollars a year and is showering huge piles of cash on hordes of bureaucrats.

In a recent article, I noted some of the mind blowing statistics that show how bureaucrats in Washington D.C. are living the high life at our expense….

*When you total up all compensation (including health care and benefits), the average income for a federal worker in the Washington D.C. area last year was $126,369.

*In 2005, 7420 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year.  In 2010, a whopping 82,034 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year.  That is more than a tenfold increase in just five years.

*In 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense had just nine civilians earning $170,000 or more.  When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. Department of Defense had 214 civilians earning $170,000 or more.  In June 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense had 994 civilians earning $170,000 or more.

*Last year, federal employees “earned” approximately 447 billion dollars in total compensation.

As I have written about previously, our gigantic federal government also empowers the big corporations to continue to accumulate staggering amounts of wealth and power.  This is one reason why the big corporations contribute so much money to political campaigns.  The big corporations (and the elite that own and run them) have much more influence over the political process than we do.  They have spent decades buying politicians and getting laws passed that tilt the rules of the game radically in their favor.

This is something that our founding fathers did not want to happen.  In a 2010 article, Rick Ungar noted that there were very significant restrictions on corporations in the early days of America….

After the nation’s founding, corporations were, as they are today, the result of charters granted by the state. However, unlike today, they were limited in how long they were permitted to exist (typically 20 or 30 years), only permitted to deal in one commodity, they could not own shares in other corporations, and their property holdings were expressly limited to what they needed to accomplish their corporate business goals.

There was a lot of wisdom to that approach.  Our founding fathers knew that corporations would become giant magnets for wealth and power if they were allowed to grow unchecked.

Today, multinational corporations completely and totally dominate the global economy.  The following comes from a recent article I posted on The American Dream….

Corporations not only completely dominate the U.S. economy, they also completely dominate the global economy as well.  A newly released University of Zurich study examined more than 43,000 major multinational corporations.  The study discovered a vast web of interlocking ownerships that is controlled by a “core” of 1,318 giant corporations. But that “core” itself is controlled by a “super-entity” of 147 monolithic corporations that are very, very tightly knit.  As a recent article in NewScientist noted, these 147 corporations control approximately 40 percent of all the wealth in the entire network

These giant corporations are so dominant that it is nearly impossible to compete with them.  The number of small businesses in America is shrinking fast.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

This is exactly what we would expect to see under “corporatism“, but under true capitalism we would expect to see the exact opposite.

As the federal government and the big corporations continue to grow, the middle class is being wiped out.  If you doubt that the middle class is shrinking, just read this article.

Yes, there is a limited role for the federal government to play and there is a limited role for corporations to play.  But right now things are radically, radically out of balance.

This is creating a tremendous amount of income inequality in the United States.  The middle class is being systematically destroyed, and the growth of the gap between the one percent and the rest of us just continues to accelerate.

This was certainly illustrated by numbers that were recently released by the Congressional Budget Office.  The very wealthy have done extremely well over the last 30 years.  For the rest of us, things have not been so great.  The following figures come from a recent blog post by the director of the Congressional Budget Office….

CBO finds that between 1979 and 2007:

  • For the 1 percent of the population with the highest income, average real after-tax household income grew by 275 percent (see figure below).
  • For others in the 20 percent of the population with the highest income, average real after-tax household income grew by 65 percent.
  • For the 60 percent of the population in the middle of the income scale, the growth in average real after-tax household income was just under 40 percent.
  • For the 20 percent of the population with the lowest income, the growth in average real after-tax household income was about 18 percent.

Meanwhile, as a recent USA Today article noted, the middle class continues to falter in the majority of the communities around the United States….

A USA TODAY analysis of Census data found the Reno area was among 150 nationwide where the share of income going to the middle class — generally made up of households that make $20,700 to $99,900 a year — shrank from 2006 to 2010. Metro areas where the middle class’ share of income dropped outnumbered those where it grew by more than 2-to-1.

So just how well is the top one percent doing compared to the rest of us?

The following statistics should be a wake up call for all of us….

*According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top one percent is the only group that saw its share of our national income increase between 1979 and 2007.

*According to a joint House and Senate report entitled “Income Inequality and the Great Recession“, the top one percent of all income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.

*Between 1979 and and 2007, the average household income of the top one percent of all Americans soared from $346,600 to $1.3 million.

*In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

*As the “one percent” thrives, the share of the pie being enjoyed by the middle class is shrinking.  According to Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, about 53 percent of all income went to the middle class back in the 1970s, but today only about 46 percent of all income does.

*According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top one percent of all Americans.

*The wealthiest one percent of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States while the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

*The wealthiest one percent of all Americans own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.

*The top 0.01% of Americans make an average of $27,342,212.  The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244.

*This is all happening at a time when the United States as a whole is slipping.  Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult.  In 2010, the United States fell to seventh.

*Income inequality is not just growing in the United States.  Today, the wealthiest one percent of the earth’s population controls 39% of the wealth.

There is certainly nothing wrong with being wealthy.  If you and your family work really hard and provide great value to the community around you then you should greatly benefit.

But a system that is designed to systematically drain wealth from the general population and transfer it into the hands of an ultra-wealthy elite is not what our founding fathers ever hand in mind.  At the time of our founding, England was dominated by big government (the monarchy) and by big business (the East India Company, for example).  Our founders warned us over and over about the potential abuses that can happen when very large concentrations of wealth and power are allowed to dominate a society.

Unfortunately, the Occupy Wall Street movement has it all wrong.  They recognize the overwhelming wealth and power accumulated by the one percent, but most of them are advocating even more collectivism as the answer.

Some of them even say that they want to “end capitalism” altogether.  Michael Moore says that he is not part of the one percent and that he wants to “end capitalism”, even though he has made millions upon millions of dollars from his various projects.

But socialism and communism never bring equality.  Like other forms of collectivism, socialism and communism almost always bring more tyranny and they almost always funnel most of the financial rewards to a very small elite.

Others simply wish to see the U.S. government transfer more wealth from the hands of the rich to the hands of the poor.

Helping the poor is certainly a noble goal, and handouts can certainly ease suffering at least temporarily.  But handouts are never a permanent solution and they can cause large numbers of people to end up becoming completely and totally dependent on the government.

Back in 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income.  Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.

So has the plight of the poor gotten better?

No, we now have more than 45 million Americans on food stamps, last year we had the largest increase in the number of Americans living in poverty in U.S. history and the middle class continues to shrink rapidly.

The truth is that what poor and middle class Americans really need are opportunities.  Handouts will keep people alive, but they will not give people hope and a future.

What Americans really need is an environment where they can find jobs or start small businesses.  Unfortunately, the environment for small businesses in this country is incredibly toxic and millions of our good jobs have been shipped overseas.  The big corporations have discovered that they can make even bigger profits by sending jobs to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.  To say that we need big corporations because they are the ones that “create jobs” is simply not true anymore.

So now we have tens of millions of Americans that we have to take care of every single month.  There is nothing wrong with helping them survive, but giving them even more handouts is not going to permanently solve anything.

We need to have a population that is empowered to work hard, produce wealth and create a bright future for their families.

Instead, what we have is a system that greatly rewards the top one percent and that is pushing all of the rest of us toward poverty.

Gigantic government plus gigantic corporations is always going to equal massive wealth inequality.

The bigger we allow government to grow and the bigger we allow corporations to grow, the worse it is going to get.

So is any of this going to change any time soon?

Well, considering the fact that the vast majority of our politicians are in the pockets of the big corporations, I would not be getting your hopes up.

 

Rampant Unemployment = The Death Of The Middle Class – 40 Facts That Prove The Working Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out

Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die.  Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America.  Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class.  There simply are not nearly enough “good jobs” to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a “long-term structural problem” with the economy.  The only thing that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace is their labor.  If nobody will hire them they do not have any other ways to provide for their families.  Well, there is a problem.  Today wealth has become incredibly centralized.  The big corporations and the big banks dominate everything.  Thanks to incredible advances in technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system, the people with all the money don’t have to hire as many ordinary Americans anymore.  They can hire all the labor they want on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost.  So the rich don’t really have that much use for the working class in America anymore.  The only thing of value that the working class had to offer has now been tremendously devalued.  The wealthy don’t have to pay a lot for physical labor anymore.  Thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back.  The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering.  Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food chain.  The rich are getting richer and the working class is being systematically wiped out.

So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone.  Today, the “official” unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent even though a whopping 272,000 Americans “dropped out of the labor force” in June.  The government unemployment figure that includes “discouraged workers” went up from 15.8% to 16.2%.  The mainstream media is proclaiming that this was “a horrific report” because most economists were expecting much better news.

Well, guess what?

Things are going to get a whole lot worse.

More job cuts are coming.  One recently released report found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.

It is also being projected that state and local governments across the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of next year.

Needless to say, things don’t look good.

Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on to them.

Employers know that most workers are easily replaceable these days, so wages are not moving up even though the cost of living is.

We are right in the middle of the worst employment downturn since World War 2.  Jay-Z recently summed up the situation this way….

“Numbers don’t lie. Unemployment is pretty high.”

Jay-Z certainly has a way with words, eh?

If something is not done about the rampant unemployment in this nation, the death of the middle class will accelerate.

Most Americans just assume that the United States will always have a large middle class, but there is no guarantee that is going to happen.  In fact, there is a whole lot of evidence that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking.

Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below.  Taken together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class is being systematically wiped out….

#1 Right now, the U.S. government says that 14.1 million Americans are unemployed.

#2 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.

#3 The number of Americans that are “not in the labor force” is at an all-time high.

#4 The United States has never had an employment downturn this deep and this prolonged since World War 2 ended.

#5 There are officially 6.3 million Americans that have been unemployed for more than 6 months.  That number has risen by more than 3.5 million in just the past two years.

#6 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job.  Just check out this chart….

#7 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when the recession began back in 2007.

#8 Back in 2000, the employment to population ratio was over 64 percent.  Today, it is sitting at just 58.2%.

#9 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year.  That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

#10 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.

#11 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.

#12 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#13 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth.  Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.

#14 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#15 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.

#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe?  Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.

#19 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#20 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.

#21 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#22 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#23 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world.  In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#24 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#25 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.

#26 There were more manufacturing jobs in the United States in 1950 than there are today.

#27 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.  Meanwhile, our population has gotten significantly larger.

#28 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#29 One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with soaring food prices and soaring gas prices over the next 12 months.

#30 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

#31 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.

#32 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.

#33 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#34 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, which is an all-time record.

#35 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#36 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.

#37 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#38 In the United States today, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#39 According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of all households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.

#40 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the United States is experiencing a long-term economic decline.

Every single day, more American families fall out of the middle class and into poverty.  There are millions of American families out there tonight that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails.

More Americans than ever are constantly borrowing more money just to stay afloat.  Even as rampant unemployment plagues this nation and even as wages remain stagnant, middle class Americans are increasing their use of credit.

A CNBC article noted the increase in consumer borrowing that we have seen recently….

The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing rose $5.1 billion following a revised gain of $5.7 billion in April. Borrowing in the category that covers credit cards increased, as did borrowing in the category for auto and student loans.

It is very hard to live “the American Dream” without going into huge amounts of debt these days.

But for an increasing number of Americans, “the American Dream” is just a distant memory.

Tonight, there are large numbers of people living in the tunnels under the city of Las Vegas.  As the wealthy live the high life in the casinos and hotels above them, an increasing number of desperate “tunnel people” are attempting to carve out an existence in the 200 mile long labyrinth of tunnels that stretches beneath Vegas.  It is a nightmarish environment, but it is all those people have left.

Don’t look down on them, because you never know who might be next.

If you lost your current job, how long would you be able to survive?

Unfortunately, as bad as things are now, the reality is that this is just the beginning.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Do what you can to make sure that you and your family are not totally wiped out by the next wave of the economic collapse.

The State Of The Economy

The U.S. economy is like a rubber band that is being pulled in several different directions at the same time.  Everyone knows that at some point it is going to snap, but nobody is quite sure exactly when it is going to happen.  Right now, the state of the economy is not good, and it is going to get a whole lot worse.  Sadly, most Americans don’t even understand the economic fundamentals well enough to be able to ask the right questions to our politicians.  Today, the United States consumes far more wealth than it produces every single month.  That means we are continually getting poorer.  U.S. debt is also rising at a far greater rate than U.S. GDP is.  On an individual level, if your assets were going down every single month and if you were going into more debt every single single month it would be easy to understand what was happening.  However, most Americans can’t really seem to grasp what is taking place on a national level.  Our politicians and the mainstream media just keep telling them that everything is going to be okay and they just keep believing it.

These days our leaders are resorting to increasingly desperate measures in order to help revive the economy.  On Thursday, Barack Obama decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic oil reserve.

Yes, that will drive down oil prices for a few days, but what is going to happen someday if we actually need to use that strategic oil reserve?

But in many ways you can’t blame Obama for trying.  He desperately wants to get reelected and he knows that his campaign will be highly dependent on the state of the economy.  Look for Obama to pull out all the stops as we get closer to the fall of 2012.

Sadly, the truth is that it almost does not matter what the Democrats or the Republicans do at this point.  The long-term trends are so powerful now that it would take a miracle to reverse them. We are facing an “economic tsunami” that is just going to keep on destroying middle class America.

If you went to a store today, and there were two somewhat similar products sitting on the shelf and one cost ten times more than the other one, which one would you buy?

Well, that is the situation facing American workers today.  They have been pushed into one giant globalized labor pool, but big corporations are allowed to pay workers on the other side of the globe slave labor wages.  It costs ten times more (at least) to hire a blue collar American worker than it does to hire a blue collar worker in most areas of Asia.

As a result of the globalization of labor, we have seen a mass exodus of jobs out of the United States, and wages for many of the jobs that remain have been significantly depressed.

There simply are not nearly enough jobs for all Americans at this point.

Recent college grads are finding this out.  A new study that was conducted by Rutgers University discovered that over 30 percent of all those that graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 were not able to get a job within six months of graduation.

But unemployment is only part of the story.  There are millions upon millions of Americans that are “underemployed” today.

There are hordes of highly educated, hard working Americans that are working temporary or part-time jobs at close to minimum wage because that is all they can get.

With good jobs being so scarce, American families are finding it more difficult than ever to make ends meet.

One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with the rising cost of basics such as food and gasoline over the next year.

I talked about the rising cost of food in my recent article entitled “Why Are Food Prices Rising So Fast?”  Today, one out of every seven Americans is already on food stamps, and if the cost of living keeps rising this quickly we are going to see millions more of our fellow citizens clamoring for government assistance.

The decline of the American consumer is having other effects as well.

For example, pre-orders for Christmas toys from China are way down.

It looks like this holiday season is not going to be as “merry” as usual.

It would be nice if we could say that the economy is improving, but that simply is not the case.

American households are in a far different place than they were prior to the recent recession.

For example, did you know that home values in the United States have plummeted $6.6 trillion since the peak back in 2007?

U.S. homeowners have taken the brunt of that decline.  According to the Federal Reserve, average home equity has fallen from 61 percent in 2001 to 38 percent in the first quarter of 2011.

That is a colossal shift.

If U.S. homeowners only own 38 percent of their homes, then who owns the rest?

The banks do.

Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Health care is another area where American families are getting squeezed.

Today, the United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world.

Sadly, we are also one of the sickest populations on the planet.

What is up with that?

Once upon a time the United States had a middle class that was the envy of the entire globe.

Now it is being ripped to shreds at every turn.

Today, approximately half of all Americans say that they could not come up with $2,000 within 30 days without selling away some possessions.

The vast majority of us are basically flat broke and surviving from month to month.

Meanwhile, our vaunted financial system just may be on the verge of another meltdown.

There has been all sorts of volatility in the marketplace recently and there are all kinds of signs that Wall Street is about to go into panic mode.

For example, Moody’s recently warned that it may downgrade the debt ratings of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are all either already laying workers off or are rumored to be considering it.

Frank Davis, director of sales and trading with LEK Securities, says that there is a lot of pessimism on Wall Street right now….

“There’s a lot of emotion in this market at the moment, and the conversations among traders are nearly all leaning toward the bear side”

As the financial system spins out of control, the Federal Reserve is increasing the number of workers that it is “embedding” at the big Wall Street banks.

I guess the Fed wants to keep a closer eye on things as they come crashing down.

Sadly, so much of this would be much easier to fix if our nation was not drowning in debt.

Since Barack Obama was elected, the national debt has increased by nearly 4 trillion dollars. If you and I went out today and started repaying that 4 trillion dollars at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 120,000 years to do it.

Most Americans have a hard time comprehending these kinds of numbers. Janet Tavakoli tried to put our debt situation into perspective in her latest column….

David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general, says it’s even worse than that. When he takes into account future obligations for Medicare, Social Security, Federal debt, Military retirement, Civil servant retirement, and more, we owe $546,663 per household. That doesn’t even include your local debt — it may not be as bad as if you lived in Illinois, but it’s substantial nonetheless — and personal debt including mortgages and consumer debt that average more than $120,000 per household.

But you don’t have to toss wild numbers around to get an idea of how much trouble we are in.

As I have written about recently, there is increasing evidence all around us that the collapse of society is accelerating.  We are seeing disturbing reports of civil unrest pop up all over the U.S. at an alarming rate.

According to a CBS affiliate in Chicago, earlier this week approximately 50 young people conducted a shocking mob robbery of a drug store located on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago….

Some 50 young people barged into a Walgreens at Michigan and Chicago on the Magnificent Mile on Tuesday afternoon. They took bottled drinks and sandwiches off the shelves, then ran off, CBS 2′s Suzanne Le Mignot reports.

When large groups of young people get together and agree to commit crimes that should be a huge red flag for all of us.

We are a nation that is deeply, deeply divided.  Hatred is growing and the love of most Americans is growing cold.

As I have written about previously on “The American Dream“, the American people are actually encouraged to hate one another these days….

The truth is that the “establishment” is constantly trying to divide us and get us fighting with one another.  They pit the Republicans against the Democrats (even as though control both sides).  They pit one race against another.  They pit one gender against another.  We are told that the rich are against the poor, the north is against the south, urban is against rural and that there are even “generational battles” going on.  Frustration and hate are rapidly growing in the United States today, and a lot of that frustration and hate is unfortunately aimed at the targets that the mainstream media has programmed all of us to hate.  Meanwhile, those at the top of the pyramid who are controlling the whole game love it when we are divided because we can never become united and challenge their control.

We need to come together as a nation.  If we don’t, we are going to face an unprecedented nightmare when the economy collapses.

So what do you think about the state of the economy?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….

18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating

As the U.S. economy collapses, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is going to begin to disappear.  In fact, there are already an increasing number of signs that the collapse of society is accelerating.  In cities such as Chicago, roving packs of young people are “mob robbing” local businesses, randomly assaulting tourists and shoppers and are even pulling people out of vehicles.  This isn’t just happening in the “bad areas” anymore. Over the past couple of months this type of crime has been common in some of the wealthiest areas of Chicago.  In fact, many Chicago residents are now referring to “the Magnificent Mile” as “the Mug Mile”.  But it isn’t just in Chicago that this is happening.  During this past Memorial Day weekend, cities all over the United States experienced a stunning wave of mass violence.  We are supposed to be an “example” for the rest of the world, but as our economic wealth crumbles we are witnessing the collapse of society all around us.  So what is going to happen when the economy gets even worse?

The United States used to be a fairly civilized society.  But now very few people seem to care how they treat others.  That is even the case with our own government.  As you will see below, the government is now sending SWAT teams in and dragging people out of their homes over unpaid student loans.

So if the government is going to be so brutal, what kind of message does that send to our young people?

Today our young people are facing a future that looks incredibly bleak.  It is hard to have faith in the “system” when the “system” simply does not work any longer.

What are you supposed to say to a young person when you know very well that there are no jobs and that there is very little hope?

Most Americans don’t understand what is causing the collapse of the economy, but most of them do have a sinking feeling that something has seriously gone wrong.

For the last few years the American people have waited patiently for our politicians to “fix things”, but they have not gotten the job done.

Instead, our economic situation is still declining.

So now frustration is starting to boil over, and it is only going to get worse.

The following are 18 signs that the collapse of society is accelerating….

#1 In a brand new article, Janet Tavakoli has vividly described the wave of shocking violence that is currently sweeping the city of Chicago.  What she says is happening to Chicago right now is beyond alarming….

This year, all hell has broken loose in downtown Chicago. Years of under-hiring have resulted in a police force that is unprepared for wildings and gang violence. Moreover, concealed carry in Chicago is illegal, unless one follows the Constitution.

Tourists and residents have been attacked by mobs of youths on buses, on beaches, on bicycle paths, near the shops of the Magnificent Mile, and outside their homes. Mobs of shoplifters plagued “Mug Mile” stores.

Terror has descended on many of the wealthiest areas of Chicago.  Some are even calling on Chicago residents to completely avoid areas like the Magnificent Mile during the weekends until more police are brought in.

Mobs of young people are “swarming” retail stores, assaulting shoppers and pedestrians and even pulling people out of their cars.

The following is one eyewitness account of the “wildings” in Chicago that Tavakoli included in her recent article….

At about 11pm last Friday night, June 3rd, I heard shouting, screaming, horns blaring and tires screeching from my apartment…When I looked out my window to the street below I saw a crowd of about 20 young people…directly across the street from the entrance to my building. They were leaning on parked cars and clogging the street. They were screaming at people walking and driving by. I watched them stop vehicles, including taxi cabs, and pull people from the vehicles…It was a frightening scene and I was sure someone was going to be hurt.

#2 If you don’t pay your student loans you may find yourself getting dragged out of your home by a SWAT team.

You doubt this?

The following is how an article in The Daily Mail recently described one recent SWAT team raid in California that was apparently ordered by the Department of Education….

A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife – to collect her unpaid student loans.

A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.

He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife – who no longer lives at the house.

#3 One town in Connecticut was forced to shut down a beautiful new fountain because too many people were using it as a toilet.

#4 This most recent Memorial Day weekend, cities all over America literally turned into war zones.  There were reports of mass violence in Miami, New York, Chicago, Charlotte, Myrtle Beach, Nashville and Boston among other places.

If you want to see video of some of the violence in Miami as it was happening, you can view it here.  The video is quite disturbing so please don’t let any small children view it.

#5 One of the hottest books in America right now is a “children’s book” entitled “Go The F*k To Sleep“.

#6 A teenage girl in Washington state recently shot her Dad with a hunting bow because he took away her cell phone.

#7 In New York City, one 32-year-old man was recently charged with sexually assaulting an 85-year-old woman.

#8 Democratic strategist James Carville recently made national headlines when he told talk show host Don Imus the following….

“You know, look — this is a humanitarian — you know, you’re smart enough to see this . . . People, you know, if it continues, we’re going to start to see civil unrest in this country. I hate to say that, but I think it’s imminently possible.”

#9 According to one new study, the percentage of U.S. households that contain a married couple with children has fallen from 44.3% in 1960 to 20.2% today.

#10 In Atlanta, two dozen teens recently violently assaulted two Delta flight attendants on a train for no apparent reason.  The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attacks….

Their “Clockwork Orange” style blitz was over soon after it began. The teens boarded the train, headed to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, at the Garnett station a little after midnight seemingly intent on instilling fear. They succeeded.

“There was blood everywhere, people were hollering and screaming,” a witness told Channel 2 Action News. “We were intimidated. People were terrified. People were trying to run. But there was nowhere to run.”

#11 Federal prosecutors in Indianapolis have announced that they have broken up one of the largest child pornography rings ever discovered.  It was based in Bloomington, Indiana.

Are any small towns still safe?

#12 Barack Obama’s food safety chief is defending armed raids of raw milk producers (including a raid on an Amish farmer) and he says that the FDA will “keep doing our public health job“.

#13 In Florida, a 45-year-old Polk County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with strapping children to a desk and spanking them with sex toys.

#14 In Sioux City, Iowa a 41 year old man recently walked into the office where his boss worked and beat the living daylights out of him.  The boss suffered four chipped teeth and needed surgery to repair his nose.  Apparently the boss was planning to fire the man.

#15 A 20-year-old woman in Oklahoma has been charged with killing the family cat and using the blood as part of a costume she planned to wear to a Lady Gaga concert.

#16 McDonald’s recently held a “National Hiring Day” and about a million Americans showed up to apply for jobs at McDonald’s restaurants all around the nation.  Well, in Cleveland a horrible fight broke out between some girls and it ended up with three people being run over by a car.  You can view video of this incident right here.  Please do not watch the video if you are sensitive to graphic violence.

#17 All over the United States, vicious restaurant brawls have been erupting with alarming frequency and many of them are being posted up on YouTube for the world to see.  You can see one example of this phenomenon right here.

#18 From coast to coast, “mob robbing” has become a very disturbing trend.

So what is a “mob robbing”?

Well, basically dozens of young people storm into a store together, grab whatever they want, and storm back out again.

Recent examples of this have been caught on video in Washington D.C. and in Las Vegas.

So does anyone still doubt that we are starting to see the collapse of society?

Sadly, things are going to get a whole lot worse.

In response to a recent article entitled “The Coming Economic Hell For American Families“, a frequent commenter on my site known as “El Pollo De Oro” left the following comment about the collapse of society that is beginning to unfold….

Yes, it’s going to be VERY violent in The Banana Republic of America. Carjacking, kidnapping, drug trafficking, armed robbery and murder for hire will be major growth industries in the BRA when millions of formerly middle class Americans, now the neo-poor/neo-peasants, become increasingly desperate. The horrifying violence in Mexico will become a fact of life on this side of the border, the brutal kidnappings of the Philippines and Papua New Guinea will plague the BRA as well. Formerly middle class Americans who find themselves living in shantytown slums won’t like their new accommodations, and many of them will turn to violent crime in the hope of improving their miserable circumstances.

The truth is that about the only thing keeping our society together has been the unprecedented affluence that we have been enjoying over the past few decades.

Once that affluence is gone, the true character of the American people will come out, and we may not like what we see.

That is one reason why I pound on the economic crisis this nation is facing day after day.  Once our wealth is gone, there is going to be chaos in the streets of America.

So what are you seeing in your area of the country?  Do you see signs that the collapse of society is accelerating where you live?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….

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