FedUpUSA

Archive for December, 2010

As the middle class in America continues to be slowly wiped out, the number of working poor continues to increase. Today, nearly one out of every three families in the United States is considered to be “low income”. Millions of American families are finding that they can barely make it from month to month even with both parents working as hard as they possibly can. Blue collar American workers from coast to coast are having their wages decreased at a time when it seems like the cost of virtually every monthly bill is going up. Unfortunately, there is every indication that things are only going to get worse and that average American families are going to be financially squeezed even more in the months and years to come.

The Working Poor Families Project has just released their policy brief for the winter of 2010-11. What they have discovered is that the number of working poor in the United States is higher than they have ever seen it before and it continues to increase at a staggering pace. The following are some of the key findings for 2009 that were pulled right out of their report….

* There were more than 10 million low-income working families in the United States, an increase of nearly a quarter million from the previous year.

* Forty-five million people, including 22 million children, lived in low-income working families, an increase of 1.7 million people from 2008.

* Forty-three percent of working families with at least one minority parent were low income, nearly twice the proportion of white working families (22 percent).

* Income inequality continued to grow with the richest 20 percent of working families taking home 47 percent of all income and earning 10 times that of low-income working families.

* More than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the recession began in December 2007.

Unfortunately, things are not going to be getting any better for the working poor.  In the new “one world economy” that our politicians keep insisting is so good for us, millions upon millions of American workers now find that they have to compete for work with laborers on the other side of the globe that are willing to work for slave labor wages.  This is causing millions of jobs to leave the United States and it is forcing wages down.

Millions of Americans now find that they are making substantially less than they used to.  If that has happened to you, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that you are not alone.  Or perhaps it is not that comforting.  In any event, American workers are not just competing with each other anymore.  Now there is the constant threat that all the jobs could just be sent overseas.

As wages are forced down, a record number of working Americans are finding themselves forced to turn to food stamps and to other government anti-poverty programs.  Millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs in order to supplement their incomes.  Millions of others have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find.

This is all part of a long-term trend.  The numbers don’t lie.  About the only people doing well are those on Wall Street and the very rich.  Nearly every other segment of the population is getting poorer.

The following are 10 statistics that I have shared previously, but I think that they do a really good job of highlighting the plight that the working poor in this country are now facing….

#1 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.

#2 Since the year 2000, we have lost 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 is getting larger.

#3 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are on food stamps and that number keeps rising every single month.

#4 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.

#5 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

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

#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.

#8 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult.  In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.

#9 In 1976, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 8.9 percent of all income.  By 2007, that number had risen to 23.5 percent.

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

The United States is becoming poorer as a nation even as the boys up on Wall Street are busy grabbing a bigger share for themselves.

We are rapidly becoming a nation that will have a very small privileged class of ultra-wealthy and a very large class of “workers” that is just barely trying to survive.

So is the answer even more government handouts and even more government social programs?

Of course not.

What middle class Americans need are middle class jobs.

But as I have written about previously, the United States is rapidly bleeding middle class jobs with no end in sight.

Globalism has permanently changed the game.  The middle class way of life that so many millions of Americans have been enjoying for so many decades is disappearing.

Just because things were a certain way yesterday does not mean that things are going to be the same way tomorrow.  The long-term economic trends that this column keeps talking about day after day after day are taking us all to a very dark economic place.

But instead of facing reality, our federal government, our state governments and our local governments just keep borrowing massive amounts of dollars to try to paper over all of our problems.

It is not going to work.  Unless something is done to fix our structural economic problems, the economic decay is just going to get worse and all of this debt is eventually going to collapse our entire financial system.

If you are a member of the working poor I wish I had better news for you.  Things are not going to be getting better, and unfortunately millions more Americans will probably be joining you soon.

The Economic Collapse

I hope you’re ready.

This, incidentally, is one of the items in my Year End Ticker due out in a few days.

The Chinese raised rates over the holiday, and their market sold off to the tune of 2%, after being reasonably-stable in early trade.  The futures this morning are down fractionally, with Europe getting hit a bit.  A foot of snow isn’t bringing people into work on the East Coast, of course, which will certainly mute trade some today during a week that is usually very light in volume to begin with.

The fatal error that Bernanke has committed is about to become clear: ZIRP can only “work” in a world where the entire world is ZIRP, or close to it.  If it’s not then you get capital flight.  Japan found this out the hard way and became a funding currency for a “Carry Trade”, but they had a huge buffer in the form of personal savings.  That’s now gone, and yet they have been unable to exit their zero interest policy, and in fact have continued to “buy” (monetize) various “financial assets” in a futile and desperate effort to “normalize” their economy.

Ultimately lawmakers and citizens may figure it out: ZIRP, and indeed all of Fed Policy for the last three years, has had nothing whatsoever to do with the general economy or the common weal of our nation, and has been focused on only one point – attempting to prevent recognition of the insolvency of virtually every large financial institution in The United States.

Incidentally, for those who think I’m nuts, it is a matter of record that the same thing happened under Volcker – and he explicitly told the big banks (especially Citi) that he’d let them lie – for a while.  But he also told them that if they didn’t clean up their crap that he’d eventually run out of the ability (or willingness in Congress and elsewhere) to do that, and if he did before they cleaned up their act they’d be toast.  They did, and he did, and the deception remained “hidden” for more than a decade.

Today it’s different.  The banks have been given no timeline to clean up their crap.  Instead Bernanke has engaged in the most-outrageous action of any central banker in the last 100 years and perhaps of all time, literally monetizing more than two trillion dollars of government debt as a means of trying to keep the grand Ponzi Scheme alive.

He will fail.  He must fail for one reason above all others – the banks have refused to take down their leverage and sell off their crap.  Instead they have gone back to their old compensation metrics, paid out over $100 billion in bonuses and wages in the last year, and have extorted Congress and FASB to make legal intentionally-bogus marks on assets that have no relationship to their current value (or any reasonable expectation of future value!)

Tom Coburn has raised the spectre of what he claims is a “8-9% decline in GDP” if we “don’t tackle our unsustainable fiscal situation.”  Uh huh.

Tom ought to pay attention to this:

-8% GDP eh?  We’ve been running that now cumulatively for three years on, faking economic “growth” via debt issuance (just like whipping out the credit card after losing one’s job) and there is no sign that the government intends to stop it.

8-10%?  You’re insane Tom.  There’s a nearly 30% embedded GDP distortion in the system right now!  I warned of this back in 2007 but then, of course, nobody wanted to hear it.  Nobody still wanted to hear it in 2008, or 2009.  No, we were too concerned about making damn sure that a handful of rapacious banksters that, I’d argue, should all be in the dock facing multiple felonies got to keep not only their past “bonuses” but also (and far worse) got to keep up with their BS games!

The record in this regard in terms of the facts, and that I’ve been publishing them for the last three years, is clear.  And no, Tom, we don’t have “three or four years” to deal with it – we’re already in the hole 30% in terms of where our GDP needs to contract to in order to come into balance with our actual productive output, and if we don’t cut this crap out now we’re not going to face 18% unemployment and a 10% contraction in GDP, we’re going to face an economic collapse with “official” unemployment north of 20%, U6 north of 30% and we’ll be lucky if our economic and political system do not fail outright.

Cut the crap Tom.  The forced choices are here now, not three or four years out.

We’re able to choose serious pain (as opposed to collapse) today. 

In three or four years, that choice will have expired.

Many Americans live precariously close to the edge of financial insolvency flirting with economic disaster daily.  If you casually browse mainstream articles and watch any amount of television you would think that the US still had a vibrant and strong middle class.  When we pull back the covers on the current financial situation we realize that many Americans are merely getting by and many would like to live in some 1984 Orwellian fantasy world where suddenly things are back to financial equilibrium.  43 million Americans are depending on government food assistance to get by.  But many more millions are merely living paycheck to paycheck hidden in the cellar of the headlines.  1 out of 3 Americans has zero in any retirement account (not one slowly eroding dollar).  Half of Americans have $2,000 or less which puts them one month away from needing government assistance.  With the volatile job market and turbulent Wall Street middle class Americans are feeling the once prided stability being slowly washed away.  Let us examine how retirement is now becoming more of a fantasy for many Americans.

Many Americans especially young adults realize that saving large amounts of money is a key to a sustainable retirement:

Over 84 percent of 18 to 29 year olds surveyed feel they need at least $1 million saved up in order to stop working some day.  60 percent of those 30 and older feel that they will also need $1 million saved up.  Yet the actual figures are somewhat disturbing in contrast to the perceptions of many:

Source:  Census

The median retirement account for US households is $2,000.  This is why the vast majority of retirees depend on Social Security as their primary source of funds in old age even though Social Security was never designed to be a long term pension system.  You’ll notice that the average retirement account is closer to $50,000 a year but this is heavily skewed by the top 1 percent that keep most of their funds in stock wealth.

The reason retirement is slipping through the fingers of many like sand is the disjointed income equality in the country that has grown in the last decade.  If we look at income growth it has been heavily tilted at the top:

Source: Census, Chart: Wikipedia

There has been virtually no real income growth for most Americans.  The real significant wage growth over the last 50 years has occurred at the very top 10 percent of income earners in the country with this inequality accelerating in the last bubble decade.  What is more important is that 75 percent of Americans largely depend on a job as a primary source of income which seems rather obvious:

Source:  Federal Reserve

If you examine the chart closely, it is only the top 10 percent that really benefit from a buoyant and thriving stock market.  As we have mentioned earlier 1 out of 3 Americans has zero, nada, or zilch in their retirement account.  The movement of the stock market is like watching the score of a football game where the outcome means nothing to the individual.  Yet the problem is that Wall Street has taken the one item that was stable like a rock for Americans, housing and turned it into another commodity to be gambled and speculated against.

The share of income flowing to a smaller and smaller group of Americans is draining the life blood out of the middle class:

“From 1950 to 1989, nearly 40 years of data the top 1 percent earned roughly 7 to 8 percent of all the nationwide income.  Today it is inching closer to 20 percent, a figure resembling the massive income inequality seen during the Great Depression.”

Even within the top 1 percent the difference in incomes is striking:

This kind of income inequality is coming at the cost of the middle class.  Banks and the financial press would like you to believe that this isn’t the case but just look at how far your dollar is now going.  If you are fortunate to have a retirement account it is likely you don’t have the gambling devices of options, hedges, and other items that are largely new casino devices for Wall Street.  Most Americans are comfortable with income discrepancies but not at these levels and not when much of the gains are based on bets that hurt the overall economy.

The problem as many are now seeing is the financial sector is largely rent seeking by pilfering the future of many middle class Americans.  The banking system extracts wealth by devaluing the US dollar, by charging interest or fees on retail banking, and ultimately suckering many Americans to dump money into a stock market that is operated like a casino.  Washington Mutual, a once popular bank used to offer free checking for life.  JP Morgan Chase took over Washington Mutual in a government shotgun wedding.  Now, Chase is looking to extract $10 to $12 per month merely for having a checking account.  Of course they’ll waive this if you have $5,000 saved in a handful of their accounts.  Look above again.  1 out of 3 Americans have no savings so how will this be accomplished?

As we mentioned Social Security is largely becoming the retirement account default of many Americans.  Yet the growing number of beneficiaries is now putting strain on the system:

The above chart will only continue to show expansion.  Where will all this money come from?  We have a smaller workforce with the young that are already having a tough time saving any money in this economy.  Many of the good paying jobs of today require a college education and college has largely entered its own student loan bubble.  Many of the future middle class are merely trying to service their own massive debt even before they begin their careers.  To save that $1 million will become a daunting task moving forward.  Also, if the Federal Reserve has its way $1 million 30 or 40 years from now may not be much.

With 17 percent of Americans unemployed or underemployed many are simply looking for that next paycheck let alone planning for a retirement where they can sip margaritas in some picturesque beach location.  Wall Street has pilfered the pockets of the middle class through bailouts for their reckless gambling and incredible excess.  Many Americans now understand this yet the current political class is merely interested in protecting the established plutocracy by pillaging the American village.  Most Americans are becoming exhausted by both political parties and their pandering to Wall Street that provides a revolving door of money, jobs, and connections.

The younger generation is seeing their ability to grow their net worth diminishing:

This figure has only dropped even further in the last few years.  Retirement was once thought of as a place where one would reach a comfortable existence after many years of hard work.  Not an extravagant lifestyle but one in where a home was paid off and enough money came in for food and daily necessities.  But now with Wall Street turning housing into a giant commodity and stripping bear the employment base of the country; many are wondering if retirement is even an option especially when the stock market is at the same level as it was one decade ago.

Ultimately what needs to happen is to get money out of politics and to split up commercial and investment banking.  The answer is obvious but the plutocracy is relentless in keeping this game going as long as possible.  As this continues, retirement will continue to look more and more as a fantasy to millions of Americans.

My Budget360

So as I sit here waiting for my pie crust to chill so it can be rolled out, and prepare to stick my extremist pumpkin pie and extremist turkey breast in the oven, along with all the other fixings that I’m preparing for dinner today, I thought I’d muse a bit on what we should hope for out of our CHRISTmas this year.

Hope, of course, is one of the three things that all organized religion attempts to teach.  The other two are faith and love.  But do we really find them in organized religion – of any stripe? 

There have been many times over my life that I’ve doubted the existence of God.  But never more than in the last few years, as the trappings of what our nation began with, The Constitution, drawn by a few dozen wise men, guided by provenance, has been systematically shredded into confetti and used for toilet paper.

To be sure this is not exactly a new thing.  Our tripartite system of checks and balances was utterly trashed in days gone by, with two of the most-egregious examples being FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court and the introduction and passage of the 17th Amendment, which instantly and permanently eviscerated the 10th Amendment – part of the grand bargain by the colonies for the adoption of The Constitution in the first place.

Indeed, if one looks back through the outrages of Federal Government expansion, you’ll find they pretty much began with the 17th Amendment, and the reason is clear: Its passage removed the ability of The States to block federal legislation.

Yet that fundamental construct – a modest and weak federal government and a comparatively strong set of state governments, is exactly what all those in our nation signed up for roughly 235 years ago.  The Constitution is in fact a contract – but like all contracts, it is only as good as the willingness of the parties to enforce it.

Liberals of all stripes talk incessantly about “The living Constitution.”  That, of course, is a crock.  The Constitution is a set of black letters arranged on a very-dead tree.  Yet it is not inflexible – the means to amend it to suit the needs of the day is embedded within.  For better or worse that path was allowed, and in some cases, such as the 17th Amendment, I argue we so amended it foolishly, in the heat of political “wedge issue” arguments that in fact date back to the founding of politics itself.  Yet when a liberal wants something he can’t have under The Constitution he typically ignores the constraint - such as those who argue that the black letter language of The Second Amendment means that only ”The National Guard” has the right to bear arms never mind that The Constitution was drawn when “The National Guard” was comprised of every able-bodied man, keeping and bearing his own arms suitable for military purpose (which most-certainly include rifles and handguns), whether organized into military units or keeping their own homes and land safe from potential – and actual - marauders.  Such a force comprised of all citizens willing to bear their own arms in what we now call The United States in fact dates back more than 370 years, to the 1630s!  In 1903 the “organized” role of the National Guard was subsumed into the Army Reserve force, where it remains.  But the original militia envisioned by the founders did not (of course) disappear – it remains in the form of every citizen willing and able to bear arms in defense of the nation, of the state, and of him or herself.  It’s just inconvenient to acknowledge that fact when you’ve got a particular agenda you want to pursue – like Statist or even Marxist control of the people.  How soon we forget that one of Hitler’s first acts was to disarm the population, and that this almost-certainly made possible mass-murder of Jews and dissidents.  In short, The Left keeps some damn strange bedfellows.

Conservatives of all stripes talk incessantly about “The Rule of Law.”  That too is a crock, considering that The Rule of Law most-certainly includes all of The Bill of Rights – not just the parts congruent with what they want to do if and when convenient.  The Constitution provides, among other things, that in all matters of controversy that exceed $25 in value, and for all criminal offenses no matter how petty, you have a right to trial by jury.  Try to assert that right for a traffic offense carrying a $200 fine and see how quickly you’re ruled against.  The 4th Amendment prohibits searches and seizures without a warrant specifying probable cause and the specific item(s) to be searched for and seized under that probable cause, yet I don’t recall the last time I saw an alleged Conservative actually demand that all of the illegal searches and seizures that take place every day in this country cease.  The Constitution also provides for explicit equal protection under the law, yet we have a multitude of Statutes that explicitly violate same, not to mention blatant refusal to prosecute black-letter crimes – even admitted crimes – when the criminal is some powerful institution like a bank.  The Right keeps some damn strange bedfellows too, when one considers the admitted and alleged crimes involved - organized tax fraud, breaking and entering, burglary, theft, money laundering in support of drug running and terrorism - to name just a few.

We have Statutes that are wantonly and willfully violated without recourse every single day.  One such example is The Federal Reserve Act which explicitly mandates price stability.  Those two words are clear and bear no interpretation or argument.  Yet Ben Bernanke and those who have come before him have continued to hold the office while asserting that “2% inflation annualized” meets the mandate.  Really?  In 1776 an 8th grade education was sufficient for anyone to know that over a mere 50 years such a mandate would result in the devaluation of saved capital by 63%, and over 100 years, almost the duration of The Federal Reserve to date, it would result in an 86% devaluation.  Never mind that the actual rate has been closer to 3%, resulting in a devaluation of about 95% over that time. Such is the nature of compound functions.  How this sort of thing comports with the word “stable” is beyond anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size. 

That we, the people, have and do permit this is proof positive that our shoe size exceeds our intellect.

Then we have so-called “Security Apparatus” such as the TSA.  A pilot was recently “disciplined” for disclosing via videos what I’ve talked about repeatedly since 2001 – The TSA provides no security of meaning at all.  Proof of this is found in the fact that airport employees simply go through a card-reader door to get to “sterile” areas of the airport and are not searched on the way in – or the way out.  This, of course, leaves a wide-open path for someone to either impersonate a worker (trivial if all you need to do is duplicate or steal his access card) – or bribe him or her.

A baggage screener was arrested in 2008 for stealing more than $200,000 worth of electronics from the pass-through X-ray belt that your carry-ons go through.  She was caught when she allegedly stole a camera belonging to CNN, which they found listed on eBAY for resale.  Oops.  Nor was this the only incident of this type - as of 2008, 465 ”officers” have been fired for theft.   Left unsaid, of course, is that if I can steal something from your bag I can put something in it too, and that “something” might be a bomb.

Then there’s the fact that just a few days ago a man accidentally carried on a handgun – it went right through the security check at the airport X-ray machine.  It wasn’t a little gun either – it was a .40 pistol!  Experts tell us that the “fail” rate to catch weapons carried on approaches and in some cases exceeds 70%.  Are these people sleeping at the monitor?  Again, if that’s the “accidental” failure rate how hard is it to bribe one of the men or women watching that X-ray machine at an “appropriate” time if you have nefarious intent? 

We’re told that we should “submit” to full-body X-rays which will do nothing about this problem, since a carry-on bag isn’t, of course, on your person.  And we continue to accept that the “underwear nut-burner” would have been “caught” with such screening even when 70% of the time guns, which are a hell of a lot easier to spot than a splotch of explosives splayed around one’s genitals, are missed by people using the same technology at much higher power levels and resolution with your carry-on bags and despite the fact that the crotch-bomber was walked around security and check-in formalities by someone – therefore, scanner or not, competent operator or not, he would not have been caught by it!

The truth is this: While there are plenty of terrorists nearly all of them are cowards.  Oh sure, they’ll try to send a bomb in a toner cartridge from Yemen (exactly how many toner cartridges are manufactured in Yemen, may I ask?) while they sit on the ground chortling at their grand attempt to blow a plane up.  There are terrorists who will pack a van full of what they think are explosives and park it near a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, intending to kill dozens if not hundreds of people, including children, by remote control using a cell phone while safely beyond the expected blast radius.

There are damn few terrorists, and most of them seem to have an IQ well below room-temperature, who are willing to die in the commission of their intended act.  This appears to be a matter of innate wiring of the human brain, and is a good thing.

But in our mass-hysteria we allow “Big Sis” to tell us that a risk that is 100 times less likely to result in our injury or death than the simple drive to the airport to catch our flight suddenly requires that we forget that the 4th Amendment to The Constitution exists.  Never mind that nearly all of the arrests and prosecutions that the TSA manages to actually commence (despite their bungling success ratio) have nothing whatsoever to do with airline security – the arrestees are, by and large, busted for things such as drugs. 

Isn’t it funny how the “Security Theater” game, complete with entirely-inept employees that can’t detect a gun 70% of the time in a carry-on bag, thereby rendering them in my opinion unfit to ask “would you like fries with that”, manages to get us to give up one of our fundamental rights by waving around a risk that is documented to be 100 times less likely to kill you than the drive to the airport?

Who’s the dummy when our collective IQ is so low that we fail to detect and refuse to accede to this obvious and intentional lie?

So as we celebrate CHRISTmas this year, let us pray that should God actually be out there that we not receive material gifts under our tree, or even the love of our fellow man.

No, let us pray that the New Year brings a sense of outrage.  A demand for justice.  A bent to prosecute, not loot.  A demand that each and every of our Constitutional Rights be respected and that those who try to abrogate them be ejected from public service and jailed.  That we become a people unwilling to sit still and twiddle our thumbs (or other bodily parts) while the roughly 6% of our population that is psychotic and malevolent strips the productive people and assets of this nation to the bone, then throws what’s left into our own funeral pyre and uses what’s left of The Constitution to ignite it.

We have the ability to demand that these acts stop and that those who committed them in the past, throwing people from their homes, blowing serial asset bubbles through lies and obfuscations, stealing through misrepresentation and fraud or making promises that were known to be fundamentally unsound and impossible to keep be identified in public, indicted, prosecuted and imprisoned.

We, the people, can take this nation back.

It is within our power.

We only need the will, and the Grace of God, to do so.

If you and your family are blessed and prosperous this holiday season, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate, because there are tens of millions of other Americans that are desperately hanging on by their fingernails.  The Christmas stories that you are going to read below aren’t going to give you any warm fuzzies.  They aren’t about “Santa Claus” sliding down the chimney to leave huge piles of presents around the tree.  Rather, they are representative of what so many American families are feeling this holiday season – horrible, suffocating, soul-crushing despair.  As you and your family gather around the holiday tree on December 25th, millions of other Americans will be facing a Christmas with absolutely no gifts.  As you and your family dig into a delicious holiday meal, millions of other Americans will be breaking out the meager supplies they picked up at the food bank or that their food stamps have enabled them to purchase.  As you and your family tell stories around the fire, millions of other Americans will literally sit shivering in their own homes because they have no money to heat them.  The stories of those who are suffering so deeply very rarely get put on television, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t very real.

The truth is that there are millions upon millions of American families that have been pushed to the edge of despair by the lack of jobs.  In August 2009, only 10 percent of the unemployed had been out of work for 2 years or longer.  Today that number is up to 35 percent.

One very disturbing sign of the times is that many churches are now holding “blue Christmas” services to comfort those who are going through hard times.  Back during the “good times” such a thing would have been unimaginable, but now they are being held from coast to coast.

All over the nation, food banks, aid agencies and homeless shelters find themselves absolutely overwhelmed this winter.  Connie Lassandro, Nassau County’s director of Housing and Homeless Services, recently was quoted in the Huffington Post as saying that she has never seen a greater demand for her agency’s services….

“The new faces we’re seeing are families who have never before faced the risk of actually being homeless. Children don’t understand. ‘Where’s my bedroom? Where’s my toys? Where are my friends?’”

Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy no longer produces even close to enough jobs for everyone, so somebody is going to suffer.  Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.  It can be really easy to quote economic statistics such as this, but sometimes what gets lost in all the numbers are the very real stories of the people that are actually living through all of this.  This year there are literally millions of American families that have sad Christmas stories to share.

On The American Dream blog, a reader of my column identified as “momma loses hope” recently left a comment in which she really opened up and shared her story with us. Sadly, her story is so similar to what so many millions of other young American families are going through this holiday season….

While my husband has experience, and an education, he is yet to find and keep a job that is worth anything, that would be possible to pay back these $400/mnth loans on deferment, let alone keep us going barely.

Despite his greatest effort and attempts, to locate work that would pay anything over $10 an hour in the field he trained for, or some cross over skills in another profession, still nothing has been happening beyond numerous and then dwindling interviews in the last 2 years.

He is currently working at a $10/hr people mill that has outrageous expectations that are near impossible to meet, just to keep your job. Much of what you are supposed to control, is not within your control! That was after having lost unemployment due to its exhaustion, where we had nothing coming in for 30 days. He found this job and went through training. We were thankful to have anything coming in, but it is not going well. Half of his training class is gone either bc they quit or were fired. We are finding out this is the normal for this business.

Prior to the unemployment of 99 weeks, he had a great new job. $60 k a year was good from having some on the job experience at another job prior to that which was an internship, he got. So this was a good option for a chance out of school. They were content with his level of experience of 3- 4 years in IT w/ the hands on education and internship. We moved to relocate for this job 2500 miles away and then he was let go 6 months later, after he was able to clean up a bunch of unresolved problems for them. They wanted someone with 10 years of experience, all the sudden, despite they knew his skill level! Anyhow, the network was held together with tape and bubble gum. So long “best practice” theory.

I guess they had been left in the lurch bc someone left without notice, they advertised for help for months even out of state, and then they hired my husband to fill the desperate gap. Then they didn’t want to keep shelling out the money to keep him. Used him and turned us away, like no big deal; They fired him after 6 months, after we spent all our savings to move to another state… That is when we went on unemployment, and hubby returned for more education, while still looking for a job too.

We moved back home confused as could be. We were helpful that something would come along back home. Things only got worse for the prospect of careers being offered.

I was hoping they were going to improve, but no they have not. We are dying here. But that is not the end of our troubles.

Last year my husband got a $10 a hour job, got H1N1 and Dble Pneumonia and went to the hospital for 14 days or whatever. He was fired by Stream for not being in training and they refused to place him in another training class when he got out the ICU. Then we were left with over $10,000 ( the other $90 grand was forgiven) and we have collectors after us. We survive day by day, we don’t have anything extra to pay anyone or anything….

So, we don’t have any savings,( we used it to relocate to gain employment as I already mentioned) & we have needed things bc we have a baby coming. We haven’t made it long enough to get anything else saved up to rely on, bc unemployment doesn’t pay you what you were making at your job. The unemployment is gone and there is none left, if he loses this job. We don’t qualify for anymore student loans at this stage. This job is shaky at best and these people fire and lose people like there is no tomorrow, and have constant training going on. What a nightmare! We are not able to get a career in the IT Industry that he trained for and paid for with these loans. What do we do? We have a 6 year old and a baby that is on the way in 3 months.

We are so lost and without hope. We trust in Jesus, but what do we do beyond trying to get a better job? It takes effort to gain a job, but there are not enough possiblities hiring as this article states, and I testify to. All my husband does beyond going to this crap job, and playing with our son, is scouring the internet for jobs, and this has been going on for so long!….

I can’t believe this is happening again…..What is a mother and wife to do? We can’t get on track! We don’t drink or drug or sabotage ourselves and our family, and yet we cannot get on track “with the go to school and get a great job” crap I have heard my whole life. Something is broken and cannot be fixed. Sometimes we wonder why God hadn’t just taken my husband’s life when it was in peril and the rest of our family, as it would be better than dealing with this pain and unresolved heartache.

I am so scared and lonely, I could just die. My tears go unnoticed. I sit here without answers. I am one of millions going through the same thing.

Can you imagine being in such a situation?  What is perhaps saddest of all is what this economy is doing to so many children.  According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

Poverty is absolutely exploding all over the United States.  The number of Americans living in poverty has increased for three consecutive years, and the 43.6 million poor Americans in 2009 was the highest number that the U.S. Census Bureau has ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.

So, no, this Christmas is not “a season of joy” for many Americans.  For example, a commenter on the Unemployed-Friends website identified only as “jobless_in_MA” says that her holidays are going to be quite depressing since she has been out of work for 2 Christmases in a row now….

Well, this is now my 2nd Holiday season in a row being jobless, and this year seems far bleaker than last years. Ive always been the type to love this time of they year. I would look forward to it. I was always the one in the family who would be the great gift giver, especially to the younger members of my family.

Last year I was REALLY upset because I couldn’t do 1/4 of what I normally would do, but still managed to enjoy the season. Im not so sure about it this year.

A lot has happened to my situation in the past year, Ive lost my place, filed bankruptcy, lost some of my dignity, and my marriage is on the rocks.

I am NOT in the holiday season at all, and its really bringing me down.

Usually around now we would be talking about getting a tree. Sometimes we would cut our own tree down, and decorate it together.

We would always have a family holiday party at our place, and I don’t see that happening this year at all.

Yes, every year there are some Americans that are “down and out”, but it is undeniable that the number of Americans that are suffering extreme economic pain has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years.  Today, one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in a federal anti-poverty program.  As 2007 began, “only” 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program and that number keeps rising every single month.

Sadly, there are millions upon millions of Americans that do have jobs and yet barely find themselves able to hang in there.  Many Americans have been forced to grab whatever job they can find.  In fact, the number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to make a living in the United States.  Today, half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week.

Could your family get by on $505 per week?

That is something to really think about.

So is anyone doing well?

Well, the only group that saw their household incomes increase in 2009 was those making $180,000 or more.

Not that being wealthy is a bad thing, but what that statistic shows is that the middle class in America is being wiped out.

We are seeing this in community after community across the nation.  A reader of this column identified as “Bibi” recently left a comment that did a great job of describing the economic decline and economic despair that we are now seeing all across America….

I have recently traveled from coast to coast and then some. This is a synopsis of what is really going on.

Californians seem to be in lalaland. Look good and spend money, lots of it that you don’t have. LA has become very dangerous. Police will knock on your van if you stop to rest with a coffee even if you are at a convenience store. It is illegal to sleep in your vehicle and you will be arrested.

Las Vegas is full of poor and homeless wandering around aimlessly. Tent cities and blocks of people living on the streets. dirty and super dangerous. The decline is in your face. Police and security presence are at ‘ad nauseum’ levels.

AZ and NM are ****holes. My family refused to get out of the van in Albuquerque. Sedona is still nice but its surrondings make it on borrowed time. Little artsy towns will be taken over quickly when TSHTF.

The only city I went to in TX was Amarillo. Didn’t see much but it looked seedy and dirty along the highway.

OKlahoma- ***. If I didn’t stay on a military base, I would have broke the speed limit to get through it.

The thought of getting gas in Little Rock still gives me nightmares. Enough said. AK- Lots of boarded up towns. Saw this all along Route 40.

TN- Stay away from Memphis if you want to live. Nashville is the craziest city I have ever seen. Everyone acts like they are on speed. When you get around Pigeon Forge, Maggie Valley and Gatlinburg, you see the true beauty of this state but they are tourist traps.

W. VA is beautiful, but the people are very backward. I could live in Northern W. VA.

East coast- VA. Beach has been in decline and was just dubbed the “most drunken city in the U.S.” They must be proud. Lots of trouble here. Big police presence. Took 10 minutes for me to get questioned about my out-of- state plates.

N&S Carolina- Bigger cities are dangerous, especially Columbia, SC. Big police presence. Baltimore- be afraid, be very afraid. Keep going.

NJ- Something like a horror movie. Do people really live here? Scary and smelly.

NYC- Was advised by thruway attendent to “keep going and don’t stop” Overturned cars, tons of high rise ghettos, not a safe place. I was terrified my van would break down.

Albany, NY.- my destination. Ghettopolis. Stopped by police within minutes as to why I was driving in city so late. ? Informed it was not safe. Stopped again the next day regarding my plates at a police check. They threatened to tow my van because my “license didn’t come up”. [he was holding it] Stopped again for seatbelt violation. I always wear it but he said he couldn’t see it. Am I imagining it or did I really see National Guard walking around with rifles? Well, I promply left NYS and will never go back.

The Florida panhandle is far from perfect and has an ever expanding police force, but it is quiet. Not safe, but quiet.

Once upon a time, there were a few cities and towns around the U.S. that were obviously in a state of decline, but now it is happening everywhere.

In fact, there are many areas throughout the country that scream “economic despair” the moment you drive into them.  It is almost as if someone has sucked the life right out of them.

So why is this happening?  Well, as I recently pointed out, America’s economic pie is rapidly shrinking.  As our national wealth continues to be destroyed, even more American families are going to suffer.

For decades we have enjoyed a debt-fueled binge of prosperity that was unlike anything the world has ever seen.  But now the day of reckoning is fast approaching and things are going to get even worse.

So if you are doing really well this holiday season, be thankful, because next year it may be you that has the sad Christmas story.

The Economic Collapse