It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening. If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode. Just “tweaking” things slightly is not going to fix our economy. We need a fundamental change in direction. Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic “adjustment” that America has ever gone through. We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.
The end of the year
is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do
during the rest of the year. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a
tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with
your loved ones. Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading
into economic oblivion. So if you have someone among your family and friends
that believes that everything is going to be “just fine”, just show them these
numbers. They are a good summary of the problems that the U.S. economy is
currently facing.
#1 In December 2008,
31.6 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, a new all-time record of
47.7 million Americans are on food stamps. That number has increased by more
than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still
has the gall to insist that “things are getting better”.
#2 Back in the 1970s,
about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of
every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#3 According to one
calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined
populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia,
Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South
Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”
#4 According to one
recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a safety
net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.
#5 For the first time
ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are
homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
#6 Median household
income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has
declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#7 Families that have
a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#8 The percentage of
working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.
#9 In September 2009,
during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age
Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age
Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact
same place.
#10 When you total up
all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to
more than 100 million.
#11 According to one
recent survey, 55 percent of all small business owners in America “say they
would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current
environment.”
#12 The number of
jobs at new small businesses continues to decline. According to economist Tim
Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per 1000
Americans breaks down by presidential administration…
Bush Sr.: 11.3
Clinton: 11.2
Bush Jr.: 10.8
Obama: 7.8
#13 The U.S. share of
global GDP has fallen from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011.
#14 The United States
has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the
World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#15 There are four
major U.S. banks that each have more than 40 trillion dollars of exposure to
derivatives.
#16 In 2000, there
were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now there are
less than 12 million.
#17 According to the
Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in
1971. Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.
#18 The Pew Research
Center has also found that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it
is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10
years ago.
#19 62 percent of all
middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over
the past year.
#20 Right now,
approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low
income” or are living in poverty.
#21 Approximately 57
percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are
either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
#22 According to one
survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at
least part of the time.
#23 Back in 1950,
more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than
65 percentof all men in the United States have jobs.
#24 The average
amount of time that an unemployed worker stays out of work in the United States
is 40 weeks.
#25 If you can
believe it, approximately one out of every four American workers makes 10
dollars an hour or less.
#26 According to the
U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a
home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal
government. Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.
#27 Right now, more
than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by
the federal government. And that does not even count Social Security or
Medicare. Overall, there are almost 80 different “means-tested welfare
programs” that the federal government is currently running.
#28 When you account
for all government transfer payments and all forms of government employment,
more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially
dependent on the government.
#29 Barack Obama has
been president for less than four years, and during that time the number of
Americans “not in the labor force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million.
Something seems really “off” about that number, because during the entire
decade of the 1980s the number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose
by about 2.5 million.
#30 Electricity bills
in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for
five years in a row.
#31 According to USA
Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past
12 years.
#32 There are now
20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.
That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#33 Right now,
approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
#34 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.
#35 At this point,
only 24.6 percent of all jobs in the United States are good jobs.
#36 In 1999, 64.1
percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.
Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
#37 Recently it was
announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one
trillion dollar mark.
#38 If you can
believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#39 One survey of
business executives has ranked California as the worst state in America to do
business for 8 years in a row.
#40 In the city of
Detroit today, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty, and
close to 50 percent of all adults are functionally illiterate.
#41 It is being
projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least
once before they turn 18 years of age.
#42 More than three
times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as will be sold
in 2012.
#43 If you can
believe it, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age
of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.
#44 The U.S. economy
continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs
lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs
created since then have been low wage jobs.
#45 Our trade deficit
with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that
one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
#46 The United States
has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since
China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#47 According to the
Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every
single year.
#48 The U.S. tax code
is now more than 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William
Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would
only be about 900,000 words long.
#49 According to the
IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore
banking havens such as the Cayman Islands.
#50 The value of the
U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was
first created.
#51 2012 was the
third year in a row that the yield for corn has declined in the United States.
#52 Experts are
telling us that global food reserves have reached their lowest level in almost
40 years.
#53 One recent survey
discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
#54 If you can
believe it, one recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not
have a single penny saved for emergencies.
#55 Medical costs
related to obesity in the United States are estimated to be approximately $147
billion a year.
#56 Corporate profits
as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, wages as a
percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.
#57 Today, the
wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent
combined.
#58 The wealthiest
400 families in the United States have about as much wealth as the bottom 50
percent of all Americans combined.
#59 The six heirs of
Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the
bottom 30 percentof all Americans combined.
#60 At this point,
the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the
wealth in the United States.
#61 Nearly 500,000
federal employees now make at least $100,000 a year.
#62 In 2006, only 12
percent of all federal workers made $100,000 or more per year. Now,
approximately 22 percent of all federal workers do.
#63 If you can
believe it, there are 77,000 federal workers that make more than the governors
of their own states do.
#64 Nearly 15,000
retired federal workers are collecting federal pensions for life worth at least
$100,000 annually. The list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole,
Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.
#65 U.S. taxpayers
spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on
the royal family.
#66 Family
homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in
the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.
#67 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.
#68 During fiscal
year 2012, 62 percent of the federal budget was spent on entitlements.
#69 Back in 1965,
only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one
out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#70 It is being
projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid
rolls.
#71 Medicare is also
growing by leaps and bounds. As I wrote about recently, it is being projected
that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to
73.2 million in 2025.
#72 Thanks to our
foolish politicians (including Obama), Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities
of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to
approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
#73 Amazingly, the
U.S. national debt is now up to 16.3 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first
took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.
#74 During the first
four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about
as much debt as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the
time that George W. Bush took office.
#75 Today, the U.S.
national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal
Reserve was originally created back in 1913.
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