The Economy

I never imagined that we would ever see a time when it takes $177,798 for a family of four to live comfortably in the United States.  Unfortunately, that day has arrived.  Our leaders have been pursuing highly inflationary policies for many years, and now we have reached a point where inflation is wildly out of control.  In fact, the latest wholesale inflation figure that was released on Tuesday came in much higher than expected.  Sadly, this is just the beginning and we are in far more trouble than most people realize.

According to an incredibly shocking new study, most Americans do not make enough money to “live comfortably” in the highly inflationary environment that we find ourselves in today…

A recent study has revealed the incomes needed for families to live comfortably across the United States – and the stark contrast in the cost of living between states is startling.

The study revealed that in the most expensive states, families need nearly $300,000 to simply live ‘comfortably.’

The least expensive state requires about half that salary – still over $100,000.

Meanwhile, the average annual salary in the US is $59,428, or $28.34 per hour, as of May 2024.

The study determined that Massachusetts is the most expensive state.

It takes a whopping $301,184 a year for a family of four to “live comfortably” there.

The least expensive state is Mississippi.

In the Magnolia State, it only takes $177,798 a year for a family of four “to cover their expenses and maintain a satisfactory quality of life”.

This is our country now.

I feel like I have been banging my head into a wall.  For more than a decade I have warned that this would happen, and now it is here.

And even more inflation is on the way…

Americans already contending with persistent and stubbornly high inflation just got more unwelcome news on Tuesday: There are more price hikes likely coming down the pike.

Wholesale inflation picked up in April to its highest rate in a year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.

In April, inflation at the wholesale level jumped 0.5 percent in just one month…

Inflation at the wholesale level rose much more than expected in April, the latest sign that price pressures within the economy remain elevated and difficult to tame.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that its producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level before it reaches consumers, rose 0.5% in April from the previous month.

If you multiply that figure by 12 months, you get 6 percent.

And of course you need to approximately double any number that the Biden administration gives us in order to come up with a figure that is anywhere close to accurate.

By now, just about everyone realizes that the rate of inflation in this country is massively understated.

For example, Joe Biden insists that the rate of inflation has been “low” for quite some time, but home prices have risen by more than 47 percent since the start of this decade…

Home prices have surged 47.1% since the start of 2020, easily outstripping the gains seen in recent decades.

That’s according to a recent analysis by ResiClub of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which showed that house prices in the 1990s and 2010s grew a respective 30.1% and 44.7%.

Let’s all be honest with one another.

The truth is that we are in the midst of a raging cost of living crisis that has no end in sight.

And this should not surprise any of us.  Our politicians continue to borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars, and all of this borrowing and spending is extremely inflationary…

An economic specter haunts America. It’s also one that many American politicians – Republican and Democrat – say a great deal about but are reluctant to address.

The name of that shadow is the United States National Debt: what the US Treasury Department defines as “the amount of money the Federal Government has borrowed to cover the outstanding balance of expenses incurred over time.”

If you go to the Treasury’s website, you can see just how big that debt is. In mid-May, it was 34.5 trillion dollars. The pace of the growth in that debt is equally stunning. Approximately 1 trillion dollars is being added to America’s National Debt every 100 days.

Borrowing and spending another trillion dollars every 100 days is a completely and utterly insane thing to do.

We really are in the endgame.

Today, Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned that interest rates may have to stay high for an extended period of time in order to fight inflation…

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that “it may take longer than expected” for high interest rates to lower inflation and gave no hint that a recently slowing labor market could mean earlier rate cuts.

“We’ll need to be patient and let restrictive policy do its work,” Powell said during a session at a Foreign Bankers Association meeting in Amsterdam. “It may be that (high interest rates) take longer than expected to do its work and bring inflation down.”

So far, higher rates have not solved our cost of living crisis, and that is because our politicians continue to spend money like drunken sailors.

But higher rates are crushing the overall economy.

Yesterday, I wrote about the “restaurant apocalypse” that is starting to sweep across America.

Today, it got even worse.

We just learned that at least 99 Red Lobster locations have been shut down and will be auctioned off…

At least 99 locations of Red Lobster are being auctioned off amid questions about the stalwart seafood chain’s long-term future.

In a post Monday on LinkedIn, Neal Sherman, founder and CEO of TAGeX Brands, a liquidation firm, announced he was leading the closure of more than 50 Red Lobster locations, with the restaurants’ equipment to be auctioned off.

A web page dedicated to the liquidations showed closure locations across the U.S. including in Denver; Indianapolis; Rochester, New York; Sacramento, California; San Antonio; and San Diego.

On Tuesday, Restaurant Business Magazine reported 99 locations were closing.

For the Red Lobster workers that just lost their jobs, the end came very suddenly…

A third Red Lobster employee took the news in stride, posting: ‘red lobster just laid all of us off without notice and closed for good LMAOO.’

The employee added in replied that Red Lobster didn’t tell managers until 8am yesterday.

Of course it isn’t just restaurant chains that are closing locations.

In fact, even Walmart is closing stores and auctioning off inventory…

After announcing that it would be shutting its doors for good, one Ohio Walmart auctioned off its remaining inventory, including flat-screen televisions, laptops and furniture, for a bargain.

The Walmart at 3579 S. High St. in Columbus opted not to renew its lease in a once-bustling strip plaza. Representatives announced the closure in February, claiming the store had failed to ‘meet financial expectations’.

Last week, the store offloaded its merchandise through a liquidation auction. Bidding closed the morning of May 10, with some items like laptops going for under $20.

If interest rates stay high, we are going to see a lot more of this sort of thing.

But the Federal Reserve is very hesitant to cut rates at this point because of the cost of living crisis.

Officials at the Fed really are caught in a “deer in the headlights” moment right now.

But no matter which way they ultimately choose to go, in the short-term more “stagflation” is ahead.

And in the long-term, the exceedingly foolish policies that our leaders have been pursuing are going to result in a systemic collapse of absolutely epic proportions.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

You can get a really good idea how the U.S. economy is doing by watching restaurants in your area.  When the economy is booming, restaurant parking lots are full and chains are feverishly establishing new locations.  But when the economy is struggling, restaurants get a lot less traffic and poor performing locations get shut down.  Sadly, in 2024 it appears that a “restaurant apocalypse” has started to sweep across America.  Most people have very little discretionary income to spend as a result of our cost of living crisis, and that is particularly true for our young adults.  Americans under the age of 40 love to eat out, but these days most of them are experiencing financial stress, and this is having an enormous impact on the restaurant industry.

In 2023, visits to sit-down restaurants dropped by about five percent compared to 2022…

Americans are eating out less as inflation weakens the dollars in their pocket, which is leading to some harsh consequences for restaurants across the country.

Visits to sit-down restaurants were down nearly five percent in 2023 from the year prior, according to location analytics firm Placer.ai.

So this is a trend that has stretched on for over a year.

People just aren’t eating out as much as they once did.

As a result, we are seeing a wave of closures all over the country.  Even in the Big Apple, large numbers of restaurants are being shut down…

Even big metropolitan areas in the US known for their great dining spots are struggling to maintain an environment where it’s profitable to run a restaurant.

Eater NY reported that over 40 bars and restaurants closed in New York City from December 2023 to January 2024, with some of the owners saying business simply never picked up after the COVID lockdowns in 2020.

When times get tough, difficult decisions need to be made.

After closing 46 restaurants last year, Applebee’s has decided to close another 35 locations this year…

Applebee’s is to close another 35 further locations this year, after shutting 46 in 2023.

The restaurant chain has shut at least three locations so far this year and has plans to close even more, president Tony Moralejo said in an earnings call on Wednesday.

Closing restaurants was ‘an incredibly difficult decision’ and a ‘last resort’ for the company, Moralejo said.

And I am very saddened by what has happened to Boston Market.

At one time they had almost 1,000 locations all over the United States, but now the entire chain is about to go belly up…

In the case of Boston Market, a chain that once had nearly 1,000 locations nationwide, the company’s death has been slow, but the pace of its demise has picked up over the past few months.

Now, with its store count continuing to dip, the chain seems to have reached the end even if it won’t confirm that given that there no longer appears to be anyone around to make that decision.

Boston Market owner Jignesh “Jay” Pandya was recently denied Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time and has been barred from filing again for six months. That leaves his company, which faces massive financial obligations, unable to gain court protection from its creditors.

Our ongoing inflation crisis is the primary reason why this is happening.

Consumers simply have a lot less discretionary income now.

Meanwhile, restaurants are facing much higher costs…

Jessica Dunker, the president and CEO of the Iowa Restaurant Association, said the reason restaurants are shuttering is because the cost of goods is up 30 percent and they are having to shell out higher wages to keep staff on.

Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get any better any time soon.

For example, the cost of orange juice is expected to go up dramatically because of a very bad harvest in Brazil…

Breakfast lovers are in for another jolt as orange juice prices surge to near-record levels. A new report released on Friday indicates that Brazil, the leading global exporter of OJ, is facing its worst harvest in over three decades. This alarming development compounds existing issues in Florida’s citrus groves, which have been plagued by disease and are experiencing collapsing production levels to the lowest in decades.

Fundecitrus wrote in a note that Brazil will produce 232.4 million boxes—each weighing about 90 pounds—for the growing season this year. That’s a 24% collapse from a year earlier and the lowest production levels in 36 years.

We have reached a point where the vast majority of Americans just can’t afford to eat out on a regular basis.

Needless to say, that is really bad news for fast food chains like McDonald’s.

At one time, serving middle class families was their core business.

But now most middle class families just can’t afford to eat at McDonald’s very often.

In a desperate attempt to lure them back, McDonald’s will soon introduce a five dollar meal deal…

McDonald’s is looking to launch a $5 meal in the US in a move to bring back price-sensitive customers.

The meal includes four items, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg and Restaurant Business. Customers would choose between two of the chain’s signature burgers — a McChicken or a McDouble — and get four-piece McNuggets, fries, and a drink. The $5 promotion would last for a month, Bloomberg reported.

So they are going to bring back affordable food for one month.

That’s just great.

Unless they make the five dollar meal deal permanent, I don’t expect that it will make much of a difference.

Consumers are really hurting right now.  In fact, consumer sentiment just fell to the lowest level in six months…

Consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level in six months as price increases reaccelerated, according to the latest University of Michigan survey of consumers, released Friday.

Additionally, consumers are bracing for even higher price increases in the year ahead compared to readings from prior months, the survey found.

The gauge, which is closely tracked by the Biden administration, plunged 13% from April’s 77.2% reading, to 67.4%. That’s the biggest one-month drop since mid-2021. Economists polled by FactSet were expecting consumer expectations to fall to just 76.9%.

As I have discussed previously, the American people are deeply pessimistic about the economy at this stage.

And they have good reason to be pessimistic, because even though our politicians in Washington are engaging in an unprecedented spending spree in a desperate attempt to keep the economy propped up, the truth is that the wheels are starting to come off and tremendous chaos is ahead.

Ed Dowd agrees that big trouble is coming during the months ahead.  He just told Greg Hunter that he expects the U.S. economy “to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months”…

What happens to the Biden economy? Dowd says, “The economy is going to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months. The real economy is not doing well. . . . The only thing that has been holding up the GDP growth is government spending. We are spending $1 trillion every 100 days. That’s adding $1 trillion to the deficit. The only job creation is government jobs, and they don’t actually add to the economy. . . . Reports are coming out now that the low-income consumer is getting absolutely hammered. McDonald’s talked about it in their most recent earnings call. . . . So, low-income and the middle-class are getting squeezed while the rich continue to plug along.”

I agree.

Of course we don’t have to wait for the economy to come apart at the seams, because that is already happening.

At one time, the entire world marveled at the greatness of the mighty U.S. economy, but our leaders have completely wrecked it.

There is no way that we are going to be able to avoid disaster, and so I would encourage you to prepare for very hard times while you still can.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

No matter how hard they work, millions of Gen Z Americans are just barely scraping by month after month, and many of them are seriously pissed off about it.  In fact, videos of Gen Z Americans ranting about the economy on TikTok have been racking up millions of views.  Many of those that are ranting about the economy absolutely hate the fact that no matter how much they try they can never seem to get ahead.  Others just keep getting deeper and deeper in debt because they can never seem to make enough money to pay all the bills.  And do you know who they are blaming for the pain that they are experiencing?  They are blaming those that belong to previous generations for wrecking the economy, and they are right.  We were handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in the history of the world, and for decades our leaders have been systematically destroying it.  The bright future that future generations of Americans were supposed to have has been wiped out, and Gen Z Americans are starting to realize that even more pain and suffering are ahead.

If I was a member of Gen Z, I would feel the exact same way.

The economy has been ruined, and it is people my age and older that did it.

We should be absolutely ashamed of ourselves, but we’re not.

For many years I have been warning that someday young people would be absolutely furious because of what we have done to their future, and now that is precisely what is happening.

One Gen Z TikTok user named Nicholas Summers recently made headlines all over the nation when he ranted about the fact that he is struggling to survive each month even though he makes three times the federal minimum wage…

But when Nicholas Sumners took to TikTok to rant about the difficulty of surviving in America, millions of people tuned in to agree. He claims that he makes three times the minimum wage , which would mean he’s making at least $21.75 per hour and is still struggling to survive.

This isn’t surprising, considering the rising inflation and wealth gap between America’s richest and poorest. Some see America as the greatest country in the world, but many citizens live like it’s a third-world country. And now, the masses are angry and ready for a revolution, as evidenced in Nic’s rant, which he concludes by saying, “The American dream is dead.”

A lot of my readers can identify with what he is going through.

It can be absolutely soul crushing when there simply is not enough money month after month even though you are working as hard as you can.

In his video, he asked if someone can explain to him “in crayon-eating terms” why even the basics have become so difficult to afford…

With hot inflation numbers to prove it, one hacked-off Gen Z American took to TikTok, where he detailed a “struggle to survive” and pay for everyday items.

“Can somebody explain to me in crayon-eating terms why I make over three times the federal minimum wage and I cannot afford to live?” the user allegedly named Nic started to say.

“And I do not want to hear the ‘Pull yourself up from your bootstraps, work 90 hours a week.’ That’s not the goal, guys,” he continued ranting. “A one-bedroom apartment, $1,800. Two-bedroom apartment, $2,200. Who the f*** can afford that? It is embarrassing to come out and say that it is a struggle to survive right now. But I know so many people are struggling.”

I can certainly understand his frustration.

I have been writing about these things for years, but our leaders never listen.

Conditions have been deteriorating for a very long time, and in a subsequent video Nicholas observed that this has been happening no matter who has been in control in Washington…

“I just now realized that regardless of which side I vote, it won’t be fixed,” Nic said. “They continue to pull this bulls—. The spending budgets that they keep approving, the foreign aid they keep sending out when we need that in America.”

“How many homeless veterans are out on the street right now?” he added in the recent post. “Government overreaching, government overspending has continued to happen and it is getting worse and worse.”

Our leaders are just going to keep doing what they are doing until the entire system completely and utterly collapses.

Another rant about the economy that has already been viewed more than 6 million times was posted on TikTok by a Gen Z woman named Chailyn…

In her candid video, Chailyn, a Walmart employee, stated, “I cannot stand how the news has been dogging Gen Z and calling them lazy for not wanting to work 9-5 for the rest of their lives… I work five days out of the week, 40 hours a week. I [still] do not make enough to live on my own.”

She then highlighted the stark financial disparities that exist between her generation and previous ones.

“Twenty years ago, when you were getting started [with your career], you could live on your own. Twenty years ago when you first started, you were able to do everything that I am now struggling to do,” she said.

Woman defends Gen-Z not wanting to work a 9-5 for the rest of their lives

“I don’t want to work my tail end off, wasting all of my life working, just to barely be able to pay my bills” pic.twitter.com/BxaTXjaxcd

— Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) January 8, 2024

And she is very clear about who she thinks is responsible for creating the giant economic mess that we are now facing…

“You can sit here and call Gen Z lazy all you want, but I have been working my tail-end off just to barely make it by, and respectfully, I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life,” she said. “I don’t want to work my tail-end off, wasting all of my life working, just to barely be able to pay my bills.”

Chailyn concluded her message with a pointed argument, shifting the blame to previous generations for the current state of the economy and the burden it places on Gen Z.

“You tell me how it got ruined. We can sit here and we can call Gen Z lazy all you want. But you let the economy turn into what it did.”

She added, “You let it all run to hell, and now it’s Gen Z’s ‘fault’ because we don’t want to work to fix your mistakes.”

Bingo.

She doesn’t want to work for the rest of her life to pay off the 34 trillion dollars that has been ruthlessly stolen from her generation and future generations of Americans.

And I don’t blame her one bit.

If we lived in a just society, those responsible for getting us 34 trillion dollars in debt would be in prison.

But instead we treat them like heroes.

Shame on us.

Because the cost of living is so ridiculously high, most young adults cannot make it on their own in this economy.

As a result, vast numbers of them are living in poverty, and debt levels among our young adults have risen to very alarming levels…

Then there’s Gen Z, which has higher debt levels and delinquency rates for a number of credit products—from credit cards to mortgages and student loans—than Millennials did at the same age a decade ago. The Gen Z frustration is real, writes Jonathan Levin for Bloomberg Opinion. “If you have a job, a house and some stocks, you’re probably doing just fine. But America’s two-track economy is leaving many behind, particularly young adults.”

In recent years, the Federal Reserve flooded the system with trillions of dollars, and the “experts” assured us that there wouldn’t be any serious consequences.

They were dead wrong.

And our politicians have been adding about a trillion dollars to the national debt every 100 days, and the “experts” assured us that everything would work out just fine somehow.

They were dead wrong about that too.

Our leaders are destroying our currency, they are destroying our economy, and they are destroying our future.

And if you think that things are bad now, just wait until you see what the next few years bring.

We are on a highway to economic oblivion, and when Gen Z blames the generations that came before them they are right on target.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Americans are extremely pessimistic about the state of the U.S. economy, and that is really bad news for Joe Biden.  Despite the glowing economic numbers that the Biden administration has been relentlessly feeding us, there is an overwhelming consensus among the American people that the economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction.  Prices continue to rise, mass layoffs are happening all over the country, loans are going bad at a staggering rate, homelessness and poverty are spiking, and economic activity is slowing down all around us.  According to a poll about the economy that was recently conducted for Newsweek, the percentage of Americans that believe that the economy is going in the wrong direction is twice as high as the percentage of Americans that believe that the economy is going in the right direction…

Their widespread pessimism is reflected in the results of a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll conducted on behalf of Newsweek on April 11. According to the survey, some 50 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction, while only 25 percent said it is going in the right direction.

Americans are also negative about their own financial situation. Some 42 percent of respondents said their financial situation has worsened in the last year. Only 26 percent said it has improved, while 32 percent said it has stayed the same.

Some 47 percent of Americans said they were now financially worse off than they were three years before, against 26 percent who said they were better off and 27 percent who said they were about the same. Some 45 percent said they were now worse off than before the pandemic, while 28 percent said they were better off and 27 percent were about the same.

The Biden campaign should be deeply troubled by those numbers.

When U.S. voters don’t feel good about the economy, they tend to want change in Washington.

And the main thing that Americans don’t like about the economy right now is the high cost of living…

Forty-one percent of Americans responding to an April Gallup poll said inflation or the high cost of living is their main economic concern. The number has risen for three years running, from 32 percent in 2022 to 35 percent in 2023.

Prior to 2022, the highest rating inflation received in the survey was 18 percent in 2008 during the Great Recession. Otherwise, the figure has been below 10 percent since Gallup began asking the question in 2005.

Joe Biden and his minions keep telling us that inflation is “low”.

But hardly anyone believes them, because that is obviously not true.

Anyone that goes shopping for groceries on a regular basis understands what has been happening to food prices, and another recent survey discovered that young adults are really feeling the pain…

Younger Americans are feeling the pinch from inflation, with 54% saying that rising food costs have hit them the hardest.

The findings are part of a recent CNBC/Generation Lab survey that polled 1,033 people between the ages of 18 and 34.

When I was a young adult, I could get everything that I needed for one week, including an entire cake, for just 25 dollars.

But today a full cart of food will cost you hundreds of dollars.

At this point, beef is actually considered to be a “luxury meat”, and Americans have cut back as prices have soared.

In fact, Tyson is going to lose a ton of money this year because people are buying a lot less beef now…

“Tyson Shares Fall as Beef Business Struggles” is a headline story in today’s Wall Street Journal. They go on to note that Tyson, America’s largest U.S. meat supplier, said its beef business was softening and that “The company, a bellwether for the U.S. meat industry, forecast a bigger operating loss for its beef business this fiscal year—between $100 million and $400 million.”

Why? Mostly because people can’t afford beef and are eating chicken. And droughts and shrinking herds have made the situation worse.

At one time, you could economize by eating some of your meals at fast food chains, but those days are long gone…

Prices at America’s biggest fast-food chains have soared above the rate of inflation in the last five years as firms come under fire for ‘greedflation.’

Customers are now voting with their wallets causing traffic to chains to drop 3.5 percent in the first three months of the year compared to 2023, according to data from Revenue Management Solutions.

It means big chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Popeyes, Pizza Hut and Chipotle have likely sold millions fewer burgers, pizzas and burritos.

Only the wealthy can afford to regularly eat at fast food chains at this stage.

I never imagined that I would write such a thing, but this is how bad things are in 2024.

Of course housing has gotten a lot more expensive as well.

As David Stockman has aptly point out, during the Biden administration home prices have become more unaffordable than ever before…

The data leaves no room for doubt. Home prices today stand at 18.2X their Q1 1970 value while average hourly wages are at only 8.7X their value of 54 years ago.

Expressed in more practical terms, the median home sales price of $23,900 in Q1 1970 represented 7,113 hours of work at the average hourly wage. Assuming a standard 2,000-hour work year, wage workers had to toil for 3.6 years to pay for a median-priced home.

With the passage of time, of course, the Fed’s pro-inflation policies have done far more to goose asset prices than wages. Thus, at the time of Greenspan’s arrival at the Fed after Q2 1987, it required 11,350 hours to purchase a median home, which had risen to 12,138 hours by Q1 2012 when the Fed made its 2.00% inflation target official. And after still another decade of inflationary monetary policy, it now stands at just under 15,000 hours.

Meanwhile, the overall economy continues to slow down.

I shared a very shocking statistic with my readers the other day, and I am going to share it again because it demonstrates just how dire conditions have become.

During the month of April, 43 percent of all small business renters in the United States were not able to pay their rent in full…

A significant number of small businesses across the nation are struggling to pay rent due to skyrocketing costs, a recent study by business networking platform Alignable found.

The company’s latest Small Business Rent report, published on Friday, found that 43 percent of small business renters in the U.S. were unable to pay their rent in full and on time in the month of April. Such a high delinquency rate hasn’t been reported in the U.S. since March 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it reached 49 percent.

If you can’t even pay your rent, your business is literally on the brink of failing.

I believe that vast numbers of small businesses will fail in the months ahead as the historic economic meltdown that I have been relentlessly warning about continues to pick up speed.

Needless to say, a deteriorating economy is not going to help Joe Biden one bit.

According to an average of recent national polls, in a two way race Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by 1.2 points.

In a five way race, Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by 2.7 points.

As economic conditions become harsher during the second half of this year, I would expect Trump’s numbers to improve and Biden’s numbers to get worse.

Economics and politics always have a tremendous amount of influence over one another, and that will particularly be true here in 2024.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

As the U.S. economy slows down, those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest.  Homelessness is surging, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, and more Americans are considered to be among “the working poor” than ever before.  Unfortunately, we are witnessing a historic economic shift right now, and economic conditions are only going to get even more harsh during the months ahead.  Needless to say, that is really bad news for all of us.

According to a report from Harvard University, approximately 650,000 Americans were homeless at some point last year.  That represented an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2015…

A January 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimated that over 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness in 2023—up almost 50% from 2015. Costs of renting and home ownership have skyrocketed while wages largely stagnate. The Harvard report found that half of U.S. households are “cost-burdened” (meaning that 30-50% of monthly income goes to housing), and 12 million people are “severely cost-burdened.” These Americans stand one accident, health setback, or employment disruption away from eviction.

During the past several years, scores of tent cities have sprouted like mushrooms in and around U.S. cities from coast to coast.

One 32-year-old woman named Brandy that is living in a tent city near Winterhaven, Florida says that she has been living there for five years and literally has nowhere else to go…

Deep in the woods outside of Winterhaven, Florida, are a cluster of tents and tarps. There are 46 people that live in this homeless encampment, including Brandy C., who has been there for five years.

“I just made a mistake and I’ve been stuck here since. I’m trying to fix it and I can’t,” Brandy told Scripps News Tampa.

The 32-year-old said the homeless camp is not the safest environment, but it is somewhere she can lay her head at night. However, it could soon be taken away.

“They tell us, ‘y’all know y’all fixing to have to leave,'” Brandy said. “We’re like, ‘so where do we go?’”

These are the forgotten people that our politicians don’t like to talk about.

And their ranks are growing with each passing day.

In Denver, officials have spent 274 million dollars to fight their homelessness crisis, but the area has still “added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018″…

Metro Denver’s homeless crisis has worsened and become among the most acute in the nation despite the city of Denver contracting for at least $274 million from 2021 through 2024 to keep people off the streets.

The Denver metro region has added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018, according to key metrics collected by the federal government.

Like we are seeing in so many other cities, mass migration has been playing a major role in Denver’s homelessness crisis.

We can’t even come close to taking care of the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are already homeless, and more deeply impoverished people are constantly being allowed to pour over our borders.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans that are living in poverty and the number of Americans that are considered to be among “the working poor” both continue to increase.

As I discussed last week, more than 11 percent of Americans are officially impoverished, and another 29 percent are “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed”…

Over time, higher costs and sluggish wage growth have left more Americans financially vulnerable, with many known as “ALICEs.”

Nearly 40 million families, or 29% of the population, fall in the category of ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — according to United Way’s United for ALICE program, which first coined the term to refer to households earning above the poverty line but less than what’s needed to get by.

That figure doesn’t include the 37.9 million Americans who live in poverty, comprising 11.5% of the total population, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Do you understand what this means?

More than 40 percent of the U.S. population is either homeless, living in poverty or among the ranks of the “working poor”.

That is staggering.

The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and a lot more pain is on the way.

Former Merrill Lynch chief economist David Rosenberg accurately predicted the recession that hit us in 2008, and he is now warning that things are about to get really bad in this country.

In fact, even though the Biden administration is telling us that the economy added “175,000 jobs” last month, he is convinced that the economy is actually bleeding jobs…

The US economy added 175,000 jobs last month, shy of economists’ forecasts for 238,000. In notes to clients Friday, the former Merrill Lynch chief economist explained why he views the numbers as a cause for concern.

He said the data is inconsistent with numbers coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and Business Employment Dynamics datasets, both of which stated the economy actually lost jobs in the third quarter.

Given the disparity, Rosenberg said the data is likely ‘overstated – by historical proportions.’

I agree with Rosenberg.

Large companies all over America have been conducting mass layoffs, and the numbers that we are getting from sources that are not controlled by the Biden administration clearly indicate that the economy is losing jobs.

But I am also convinced that our economic problems will accelerate significantly as we head toward the end of this year.

A “perfect storm” of factors is hurting economic performance all over the world, and I anticipate that global turmoil is only going to become more intense as the months roll along.

So what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is that more Americans will soon be homeless, more Americans will soon be living in poverty, and more Americans will soon be among the ranks of the “working poor”.

Our standard of living is steadily declining, and if you want someone to blame you can blame those that are currently running the show in Washington.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

I used to really enjoy going to the grocery store.  I would relentlessly hunt for deals, and I would show off what I was able to find when I got home.  But now all of the bargains are gone.  Instead, there are ridiculous prices and there are even more ridiculous prices.  The prices for some of the things that I normally buy have doubled.  In other cases, the prices have almost doubled.  Of course the soaring cost of living is the direct result of decisions that our leaders have made.  They just kept borrowing, spending and flooding the system with money, and now the cost of living is wildly out of control.

According to CBS News, on average U.S. households must now spend an extra $11,434 per year just to maintain the same standard of living that they were enjoying when Joe Biden first entered the White House…

The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs, according to a recent analysis of government data.

This is insane.

But the government continues to insist that inflation is low.  On Tuesday, the Bureau of Lying Statistics told us that prices have only risen 3.2 percent over the past 12 months…

Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday showed prices rose 3.2 percent over last year, slightly outpacing forecasts of 3.1 percent. Prices also rose 0.4 percent in February over the previous month — in line with expectations, but still hotter than economists would like to see.

If you believe that, there is a bridge in California that I would like to sell you.

Virtually everything that Americans spend money on regularly has skyrocketed during the Biden administration.

Just look at the price of gasoline.  It is now 60 percent higher than it was during the last presidential election in November 2020…

The average gasoline price at the pump in the US is now 60% higher than at the start of November 2020 — a potentially significant factor for American voters when comparing how well-off they feel now versus when President Joe Biden was first elected. And while pump prices are rising relatively slowly for this time of year, US fuel stockpiles well below seasonal norms will keep refining margins elevated, according to the the US Energy Information Administration.

As a result, the agency on Tuesday raised its second-quarter retail gasoline price forecast by 20 cents a gallon.

Of course housing costs have been going up even faster.

Recently, I was stunned to learn that a 54 square foot “apartment” in New York City that doesn’t even have a bathroom is renting for $1,200 a month…

A tiny studio apartment in New York City that consists of just one room and has no bathroom, kitchen or running water has been furiously slated online – after it was revealed the asking price for the cell-like property is a staggering $1,200 a month.

A now-viral video of the ‘tiny’ rental, which is just 54 square feet and is located in Midtown West, has sparked outrage after it was shared on TikTok by listing agent Alexander Bruni.

The nine-by-six apartment has just enough space for a bed and doesn’t have any running water, meaning that if residents needed to use the restroom they would have to exit their studio and go down the hallway to the communal bathroom.

Is this what they mean when they tell us that we will own nothing and be happy?

Of course most Americans are not happy about the current state of affairs at all.

They are quite aware that the cost of living has been rising much faster than their paychecks have, and that is definitely not good news for Joe Biden.

As Kevin O’Leary has very astutely observed, inflation “is always the enemy of the incumbent”…

He said: ‘Inflation is always the enemy of the incumbent. It doesn’t matter who you are in the White House when there’s inflation. People go to the voting booth remembering what it cost them for their cornflakes and milk in the morning, and what it cost to fill up the car to drive there.

‘And they vote against that.’

But if you think that inflation is bad now, just wait until the coming war with China erupts.

Once trade across the Pacific comes to a standstill, there will be a whole lot of money chasing a rapidly dwindling level of goods in our stores.

The employment market will be another major issue in November.

The massive tsunami of layoffs that we have been witnessing just continues to roll along.  For example, on Monday we learned that John Deere will be laying off 150 workers at a facility in Iowa…

Around 150 John Deere workers in Ankeny will be losing their jobs over the next couple of months.

John Deere Des Moines Works confirmed to Iowa’s News Now that employees were told about the layoffs by factory leadership in meetings at the factory on Friday.

The company said about 150 production employees will be placed on “indefinite layoff effective over the months of April and May.”

Sticking with Iowa, Tyson just announced that it will be giving the axe to over a thousand workers at one of their plants in the state…

More than 1,000 workers at another Tyson Food plant are out of work after the company announced it is permanently closing one of its Iowa facilities.

The move comes after the Arkansas-based company closed two chicken plants and announced job cuts last year and said four other plants were expected to cease operations within the first half of fiscal 2024, with related charges − at the time, expected to cost the company $300 million to $400 million.

On Monday Tyson announced it would shutter the doors to its Perry, Iowa pork-packing plant.

But at least they are doing better than Rite Aid is.

We just learned that another 77 Rite Aid stores will be permanently shutting down…

Another 77 Rite Aid stores will close as part of the retailer’s voluntary bankruptcy.

The closures, announced in seven court filings so far this year, will affect stores across 21 states, including California, Pennsylvania, New York and Texas.

The total number of closures announced since filing for bankruptcy in October is now 431.

Overall, nearly 107 million Americans do not have a job right now.

That number will inevitably go even higher during the months ahead.

Needless to say, the cost of living is going to continue to steadily increase as well.

Prices are already absurdly high, but they are only going to escalate from here, and that is really bad news for all of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

We were warned that more banks would soon be getting into deep trouble.  In fact, just yesterday I told my readers to circle March 11th because that is when a very important Federal Reserve program that has been propping up our banks will be allowed to expire.  Unfortunately, we didn’t even have to wait for March 11th for the action to begin.  On Wednesday morning, shares of New York Community Bank were absolutely crashing.  Zero Hedge reported on the drama as it was unfolding…

Once the darling of the small banking crisis comeback, New York Community Bancorp has crashed 45% to fresh 30 year lows after The Wall Street Journal reports the bank is seeking to raise equity capital in a bid to shore up confidence in the troubled regional lender.

According to people familiar with the matter, NYCB has dispatched bankers to gauge investors’ interest in buying stock in the company.

There’s no guarantee there will be a deal, or that one would succeed in addressing the bank’s challenges, which as of Wednesday morning had led to a roughly 80% decline in its stock price since January.

As January began, shares of New York Community Bank were selling for more than 10 dollars.

At one point on Wednesday, they were trading for less than 2 dollars.

So why is New York Community Bank in so much trouble?

Well, we are being told it is because “the quality of its commercial real estate loans soured”…

The bank has faced a crisis in recent months after the quality of its commercial real estate loans soured and ratings agencies downgraded its credit status to junk.

Companies are giving up on offices and downtown retail spaces – after Covid normalized working from home and catalyzed the decline of downtown shopping.

That left the owners of commercial buildings unable to pay lenders like NYCB. Some 16 percent of its loans are for commercial real estate acquisition, development and construction.

In other words, New York Community Bank is sitting on a mountain of bad commercial real estate loans.

For a long time, I have been telling my readers that we are going to experience the greatest commercial real estate crisis in U.S. history.

Now, we have reached a stage where nobody can deny what is happening.  In fact, billionaire real estate investor Barry Sternlicht says that there will be a trillion dollars in losses on U.S. office properties…

There are growing signs that commercial real estate is in serious trouble.

Barry Sternlicht, a billionaire real estate investor and Starwood Capital’s CEO, recently predicted $1 trillion of losses on office properties alone.

More than $900 billion, or 20%-plus of the total debt owed on US commercial and multi-family real estate, will mature this year, Bloomberg reported this week. Borrowers may have no choice but to refinance at much higher interest rates, or sell their properties at a big discount.

We have never seen anything like this before.

And it is going to have enormous implications for the financial markets.

According to Bloomberg, in recent weeks bond investors “have punished banks with heavy exposure to commercial real estate”…

Bond investors have punished banks with heavy exposure to commercial real estate, potentially adding even more pressure to the lenders’ profits as Wall Street scrambles to assess how widely pain in property debt will spread through the financial system.

Sadly, what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

Hundreds of banks all over the nation are drowning in bad commercial real estate loans, and the carnage is going to be immense.

But for the moment, there is some good news.

Somehow, New York Community Bank has been able to locate rubes that are willing to inject a billion dollars into the troubled financial institution…

Shares in New York Community Bank soared this afternoon after the struggling lender announced a $1 billion capital raise and new leadership.

NYCB agreed to a deal with several investment firms in exchange for equity in the regional bank, it announced on Wednesday afternoon.

Those firms include Hudson Bay Capital, Reverence Capital Partners and Liberty Strategic Capital, headed by former US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Will this be enough to save New York Community Bank?

From a short-term perspective, I think that it will help.

But in the long run I do not think that New York Community Bank will survive.

Of course the same thing could be said about hundreds of other U.S. banks.

In fact, as I discussed yesterday, Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame is convinced that thousands of U.S. banks will fail during the years ahead.

Meanwhile, trouble signs continue to erupt for the economy as a whole.

According to a survey that was recently conducted by ResumeBuilder, 38 percent of U.S. business leaders expect their companies to conduct layoffs in 2024…

2024 is already looking grim. And it’s only February.

Thirty-eight percent of business leaders surveyed by ResumeBuilder think layoffs are likely at their companies this year, and around half say their companies will implement a hiring freeze. ResumeBuilder talked to around 900 leaders at organizations with more than 10 employees. Half of those surveyed cited concerns about a recession as a reason.

Another major factor: artificial intelligence. Around four in 10 respondents said they’ll conduct layoffs as they replace workers with AI, with Dropbox, Google, and IBM have already announced job cuts for that very reason.

By pumping trillions upon trillions of dollars into the system, those running things were able to keep the economy propped up for a while.

But in the process they created a tremendous amount of inflation, and now the inevitable implosion is coming anyway.

The U.S. economy is in far more trouble than most people realize.

We are going to be entering a period of great economic turmoil just as the most chaotic election season in U.S. history rattles the very foundations of our society.

So I hope that you have been enjoying the “lull” that we have been experiencing during the early portion of this year, because things will certainly get very “interesting” in the months ahead.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

If we keep going down this path, soon we won’t have much of a “middle class” at all.  When I first started writing about the economy many years ago, I often wrote about the tens of millions of “working poor” Americans that were enduring so many hardships.  But at this point most of the nation now falls into the “working poor” category.  That isn’t because wages haven’t been going up.  Little by little, wages have been incrementally rising year after year, but meanwhile the cost of living has been absolutely soaring.  Paychecks have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and this has been eviscerating the middle class.  Today, the majority of the country is in constant “survival mode” financially, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

When I was growing up, retailers that catered to the middle class did exceptionally well.  My mother was constantly taking me and my siblings to JCPenney and Sears, and it seemed like that was where virtually everyone shopped.

But now such retailers are rapidly going extinct.  Today, the retailers that are doing well are those that cater to the very bottom of the economic food chain (Walmart, dollar stores, etc.) or those that cater to the very top of the economic food chain.

And that is because there isn’t much in between those two extremes anymore.

The Social Security Administration has just released final wage statistics for 2020, and they are extremely alarming.  According to the figures that they have given to us, the median wage for 2020 was just $34,612.04…

By definition, 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage, which is estimated to be $34,612.04 for 2020.

It is really depressing to think that half of all U.S. workers made $34,612.04 or less last year.

That is less than $3,000 a month, and that is before taxes.

Needless to say, trying to survive in a major U.S. city on that kind of income is not easy in today’s economic environment.

Of course $34,612.04 would have been a very nice yearly income back in 1960, because back then the cost of living was much lower.  The following comes from an article authored by MN Gordon…

In 1960, for example, a gallon of gas cost $0.31 per gallon. Similarly, in 1960 a gallon of milk cost $1.00 per gallon. Currently, the average price of gas and the average price of milk are $3.28 per gallon and $3.68 per gallon, respectively. That’s upwards of a 958 percent increase for gas and 268 percent increase for milk over the last 60 years.

Back in 1960, you could buy an entire house in a nice middle class neighborhood for $34,612.04.

Today, that would barely be a down payment on a dilapidated shack in many parts of the country.

In recent weeks, I have frequently pointed out that there are millions of jobs available in the U.S. right now.

But the vast majority of them are highly undesirable because they pay “working poor” wages.

So many people out there are working as hard as they can and they still can’t make ends meet.  In fact, one recent poll discovered that 59 percent of Americans that make less than $50,000 a year have experienced “serious financial problems in the past few months”…

The poll showed a sharp income divide, with 59% of those with annual incomes below $50,000 reporting serious financial problems in the past few months, compared with 18% of households with annual incomes of $50,000 or more.

As I have discussed so many times over the years, we have gotten to a point where most of the population is living paycheck to paycheck.

And when you are living paycheck to paycheck, all it takes is one bad break to push you into financial distress.

Sadly, things are going to get even worse for ordinary Americans in the coming months because inflation continues to rise very aggressively…

Inflation accelerated in September, with consumer price pressures across America showing no sign of easing ahead of the all-important holiday shopping season.

Consumer prices increased 5.4% from the year-ago period, slightly faster than their 5.3% increase the previous month and on par with the increases in June and July.

Needless to say, those numbers actually greatly understate what we are facing, because the way inflation is calculated by the government has changed dozens of times over the years.

As I am constantly reminding my readers, if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would already be well into double digit territory.

In other words, the sort of inflation that we faced during the Jimmy Carter era is already here.

And CNN just admitted that prices “aren’t coming back to earth anytime soon”.

If prices continue to rise much faster than paychecks do, the middle class will just keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

Sadly, politicians seem determined to hasten the demise of the middle class by pushing millions more Americans out of decent paying jobs in the months ahead.  But in the process, they will also be creating critical staff shortages.  For example, just consider what just happened at a hospital in Lewiston, Maine…

The administrators of Central Maine Healthcare in Lewiston, Maine, enacted a vax policy demanding all employees to take the vaccine. But more than 250 employees refused to comply before the deadline. These employees were subsequently fired.

Unfortunately for patients, about 170 of those employees were needed to staff the intensive care unit. Consequently, the hospital had to shut down its ICU because of the firings.

Because it lost so many employees, the hospital plans on cutting intensive care beds by 50% and reducing the number of medical surgical beds by 40%, the Bangor Daily News reported.

Isn’t that nuts?

Of course the same type of scenario is playing out at hospital after hospital all over the country right now.

And you can’t just hire random people off the streets to be doctors and nurses, because it takes many years of training to become a doctor or a nurse.

So let us hope that we don’t have to deal with any sort of a major health crisis this winter, because our medical system would become overwhelmed very rapidly.

These are such ominous times for our economy, and these are such ominous times for our nation as a whole.

In the months ahead, there will be more inflation, more shortages, and more questionable decisions by our leaders.

Events are truly beginning to spiral out of control, and America will never be quite the same ever again.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including  “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.