The Coming Demographic and Financial Disaster – Median income of Americans 65+ is $19,167.  What happens when less affluent youth move back home and clash with older generations?

What happens when a society that prides itself on a middle class and self-sufficiency suddenly starts losing both?  For over a decade the middle class in the US has been shrinking.  This isn’t some speculation but is reflected in the stagnant household income data.  You also have a giant demographic train in that many baby boomers are now retiring in mass.  Over 10,000 baby boomers enter into retirement each day and many have an inadequate amount of savings (if any) to get them through the leaner years.  Couple this with a less affluent younger generation and you have a recipe for financial and social turmoil.  Many of these younger Americans, many saddled with large student debt, are moving back home with parents that have seen their entire home equity evaporate.  Do you think these are happy households especially when the median income of those 65+ is $19,167?

Median income of the old     

There seems to be this misconception that older Americans are simply well off.  The data shows us otherwise:

Source:  US Dept. of Health

What is troubling about the above data is that during some of the most affluent decades in US history, most Americans have very little income in older age.  In fact, most rely on Social Security as their primary source of income:

“Social Security constituted 90% or more of the income received by 34% of beneficiaries (21% of married couples and 43% of non-married beneficiaries).”

How is this even possible?  Keep in mind the average Social Security payout is roughly $1,000 per month and this is fixed.  Since the government has juiced the CPI data most of these fixed income Americans are seeing their energy and healthcare costs soar all the while they are told inflation is virtually non-existent.  Try arguing that after going to the grocery store.

There is also this sense that since many older Americans own their home, they are somehow immune to the housing bubble.  That is not true:

“In 2009, 48% of older householders spent more than one-fourth of their income on housing costs – 42% for owners”

Many older Americans still spend a lot of money on housing even if they are owners.  Much of this comes from property taxes and costs associated with owning a home.  Since many older Americans do own their home this housing bubble crash has harmed their largest asset.

Read the rest at My Budget 360

A higher percentage of the American population is receiving government benefits than ever before.  Yes, there have always been poor people that have needed our assistance, but what does it say about our economy that the number of Americans dependent on the government is at an all-time high?  Every night on the evening news we are told that the economy is improving, and Barack Obama is endlessly giving speeches about the “economic recovery” that is supposedly underway.  But that is not the reality on the ground for those on the bottom rungs of the income ladder in America.  People are really hurting out there, and the number of Americans that are turning to the government for financial assistance just continues to increase.  Yes, we should always have a “safety net”, but right now our “safety net” is becoming massively overloaded as millions more Americans jump on to it every single year.  What all of these impoverished Americans really need are jobs, but the U.S. Congress and the past several administrations have been systematically killing job growth in America.  So unfortunately the number of poor Americans is going to continue to rise, and that is really bad news for a nation that is already drowning in debt.

Some people out there want to blame the poor for the statistics that you are about to read, but that is a mistake.  Yes, there are a lot of people out there that are abusing the system, and that needs to be stopped.

But many Americans that are dependent on the government are in that situation because there simply are not enough jobs in this country.

And unfortunately, the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress continue to pursue the same job-killing policies that have gotten us into this mess in the first place.  So millions of Americans that have learned to survive as government dependents are not being given the opportunity to break out of that cycle.  When there is a shortage of decent jobs, it is easy to give up.  Many tend to become more and more comfortable being dependent on the government as time goes by.

Once you become addicted to getting a government check in the mail, it can be very difficult to give that up.  There are some that get trapped in a life of government dependence for years or even decades.

The following are 16 statistics which show that the number of Americans dependent on the government is at an all-time high….

#1 According to the Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that gets direct monetary benefits from the federal government.  Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.

#2 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#3 The number of Americans receiving Social Security disability benefits has increased by 10 percent since Barack Obama first took office.

#4 Back in 1990, the federal government accounted for 32 percent of all health care spending in America.  Today, that figure is up to 45 percent and it is projected to surpass 50 percent very shortly.

#5 The number of Americans on food stamps recently hit a new all-time high.  It has increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama first entered the White House.

#6 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.  This is unprecedented in American history.

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

#8 Back in 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income.  In 2010, government transfer payments accounted for 18.4% of all income, which was a new all-time high.

#9 By the end of 2011, approximately 55 million Americans received a total of approximately 727 billion dollars in Social Security benefits.  As the retirement crisis becomes much worse, that dollar figure is projected to absolutely skyrocket.

#10 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

#11 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse.  It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#12 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than previously anticipated.

#13 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars.

#14 It is being projected that entitlement spending by the federal government will nearly double by the year 2050.

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

#16 When you total it all up, American households are now receiving more money directly from the federal government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

Once again, I am not blaming the poor.  Almost all of us know of someone that is on government assistance.  Most of them are not dependent on the government because they are lazy or because they want to cheat the system.  Most of them have just had their dreams crushed by this horrible economy and need a helping hand.

It is incredible how anyone can run around claiming that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction with all of this going on.

Yes, things are going fairly well for the boys and girls down on Wall Street, but for the vast majority of Americans things are looking quite bleak.

For example, things have gotten so bad that the state of Florida is actually considering using ballparks and sports stadiums as shelters for the homeless.

But when it comes to so many people being financially dependent on the federal government, there is a major problem.

The problem is that the federal government is absolutely drowning in debt.

So why don’t our politicians just explain to the American people that we need to start cutting back and reducing the size of some of these programs?

Well, if any of our politicians try to do that they won’t get elected next time around.

The truth is that the American people are deeply addicted to government money.

Any politician that proposes significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare is a goner.

Every poll or survey that is done on this subject shows that the American people are overwhelmingly against cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare.

So politicians will just keep spending money like there is no tomorrow, and the American people will just keep sending them back to Washington.

But just like we saw in Greece, a day of reckoning comes eventually.

There will come a time when the federal government will not be able to steal 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren.

There will come a time when there will not be enough money for all of these growing social programs.

So once the government checks stop rolling in, what is going to happen then?

The Economic Collapse

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is proclaiming that the economy is improving.  Barack Obama is endlessly touting the “improvement” in the economy, the mainstream media is constantly talking about “the economic recovery” and an increasing number of Americans seem to be buying into this line of thinking.  A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe that the economy will improve over the next year, while only 17 percent of Americans believe that it will get worse.  But is the economy actually improving?  Not really.  At the moment things are relatively stable.  Some economic statistics are improving slightly and some continue to get even worse.  However, it is very important to keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons why things have stabilized is because the federal government is pumping more than a trillion dollars a year into the economy that it does not have.  The Obama administration is engaging in a debt binge unlike anything America has ever seen before, and yet many economic indicators are still in decline.  So what is going to happen when the federal government stops injecting gigantic waves of borrowed money into the economy?  That is a frightening thing to think about.  The best efforts of our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are not accomplishing a whole lot.  The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as low as they can go and the federal government is spending unprecedented amounts of money.  But even with the federal government and the Federal Reserve pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, the economy is still not improving much at all.  Millions upon millions of Americans out there are anticipating some sort of a “great economic recovery”, and they are going to be bitterly disappointed.

But right now there are some “bright spots” in the economy, and you are bound to run into family and friends that will repeat to you the nonsense that they are hearing on the television about how the economy is recovering.

When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions….

If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?

If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?

If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?

If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining?  Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?

If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of “long-term unemployed workers” stay so high?  When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million.  Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

But there is some good news.

When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850.  Today, the price of an ounce of gold is over $1700.

The era of great prosperity that America has enjoyed for so long is coming to an end.

In fact, our long-term economic decline is about to accelerate.

So enjoy this “bubble of hope” while you can, because it won’t last long.

As I have written about previously, many are warning that Europe is on the verge of a nightmarish financial crisis that could potentially plunge us into a global recession even worse than 2008.

So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.

Just because the economy is about to go through hard times does not mean that you have to go through hard times personally.

Right now, you can decide to make an investment or start a business that will thrive in a tough economic environment.

Victory often goes to the most prepared.  So don’t just sit there while the storm clouds gather.  Instead, this should be a time when you are gathering resources and developing a gameplan for the coming economic chaos.

Those that choose to have blind faith in “the system” are going to be tremendously disappointed in the years ahead.  Just because you have a job right now does not mean that it is always going to be there.  Just because your stock portfolio is doing well right now does not mean that will always be the case.

Hopefully we all learned some important lessons from 2008.  The global financial situation can turn on a dime.  When markets fall apart, they tend to do so very rapidly.

Ultimately, the debate about whether the economy is improving or not is going to be ended very emphatically.  When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, there will be no doubt about what direction things are going.

Don’t let the next wave catch you by surprise.

Now is the time to prepare.

The Economic Collapse

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

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

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

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

-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Economic Collapse

It seems that more and more Americans are becoming desperate enough to steal scrap metal in order to survive this economy.  With staggering unemployment figures at an all-time high; home foreclosures in the millions, and with little hope of ever achieving that “American Dream”, stealing scrap metal here and there to put food on their tables may be the only option left for some Americans.

All over America today, desperate people are doing desperate things.  As the economy continues to crumble, the American people are starting to become very frustrated.  Millions have lost their homes and millions have lost their jobs.  As hopelessness and despair rise, an increasing number of Americans are turning to crime or are lashing out in unpredictable ways.  Many parts of America are rapidly turning into lawless hellholes.  In some of the areas that have been the hardest hit by the declining economy, police forces are being severely cut back and desperate criminals are being given a lot of freedom to roam.  In fact, in some major cities (such as Oakland, California), the police have announced that there are certain types of crime that they will not even respond to any more.  For a couple of decades, crime had been steadily declining in the United States, but now we are seeing very disturbing reports from all over the nation of desperate people doing desperate things as they scramble to survive or as they vent their frustrations.  If the examples that you are about to read are any indication, then America is headed down a very dark path.

• According to the Demos report “The Downslide before the Downturn,” five years ago, three-quarters of middle-class families lacked sufficient financial assets to cover even a subset of their essential expenses for a few months if they lost their income or hit a bump in the road.
• And the last five years have been bumpy indeed. With no equity in their homes, no savings to speak of, and no adequate safety net in place, many families have turned to credit cards to pay for essentials. More than 40 percent have used credit cards to buy necessities like groceries or gas — putting off payments and inflating them with astronomical interest rates. Already in a hole financially, these families have dug themselves deeper just so they can survive.
• When you are barely getting by, and it’s already a hard choice between putting food on the table and gas in your car, every unexpected expense — from a kid’s growth spurt and need for new shoes to having to repair your roof — is a stressful event.
• This is exactly what millions of working- and middle-class families have been dealing with. The wild weather since late August has only added to the pressure.
• One grandmother in Florida has been accused of trying to sell her newborn grandson for $75,000.
• In Antioch, California a total of approximately 300 power poles were recently knocked down by thieves and stripped of their copper wiring.
• In Minnesota recently, a mob of teen girls brutally pummeled a mother and her two daughters until they were black and blue.  Apparently the mob of teen girls was enraged over a pair of missing sunglasses.
• In Asheville, North Carolina thieves recently took off with 4 metal tables and 16 metal chairs that were sitting outside a pizzeria.
• In Florida, thieves have actually been stealing storm drain covers.
• In Oregon, thieves recently broke into a Salvation Army community center and stole 3 large air conditioning units.  Now all the people that come to that facility for help and for community programs this summer will be absolutely sweltering.
• In the Cleveland area, two young boys that had set up a lemonade stand were robbed in broad daylight.  The crooks got away with approximately 12 dollars.
• In Oklahoma, thieves recently broke into a church and stole “arts and crafts supplies meant to help teach bible stories to children”.
• A 59 year old man from North Carolina named Richard James Verone was so desperate for money that he actually robbed a bank and got caught on purpose so that he could be put in prison and be given free health care.
• In the Cleveland area, two young boys that had set up a lemonade stand were robbed in broad daylight. The crooks got away with approximately 12 dollars.
• In Oklahoma, thieves recently broke into a church and stole “arts and crafts supplies meant to help teach bible stories to children“.
• A 59 year old man from North Carolina named Richard James Verone was so desperate for money that he actually robbed a bank and got caught on purpose so that he could be put in prison and be given free health care.

The Coming Depression

Have you ever been so poor that you had to live in your car?  Have you ever been so low on funds that the only place you could afford to live was a rat-infested motel?  Have you ever spent a night living in a tent city or sleeping in the streets?  If not, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate.  As the recent Black Friday madness demonstrated, there are still lots of Americans that are doing well enough to go on wild shopping sprees, but the reality is that there are also millions of American families that are falling through the “safety net” to a place of total desperation.  In a previous article I talked about the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced that a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than has ever been measured before.  Not only that, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty last year.  That was also a new all-time record.  As you read this, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one our of every four U.S. children is on food stamps.  Tens of millions of American families are living on the edge of desperation.  In many communities across the United States, there is so much despair in the air that it is almost tangible.  When you look into the eyes of many Americans these days, it almost seems as if all the hope has been sucked right out of their hearts.  Economic despair is at epidemic levels, and unfortunately the economy is about to get a whole lot worse.

Did you see the report on families that are living in their cars that Scott Pelley did for 60 Minutes the other night?

If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend that you take a few minutes to check it out.

At one school in Florida alone, Pelley met 15 children who had been living in  their cars.

The following is a brief excerpt from Pelley’s report….

This is the home of the Metzger family. Arielle,15. Her brother Austin, 13. Their mother died when they were very young. Their dad, Tom, is a carpenter. And, he’s been looking for work ever since Florida’s construction industry collapsed. When foreclosure took their house, he bought the truck on Craigslist with his last thousand dollars. Tom’s a little camera shy – thought we ought to talk to the kids – and it didn’t take long to see why.

Pelley: How long have you been living in this truck?

Arielle Metzger: About five months.

Pelley: What’s that like?

Arielle Metzger: It’s an adventure.

Austin Metzger: That’s how we see it.

Pelley: When kids at school ask you where you live, what do you tell ‘em?

Austin Metzger: When they see the truck they ask me if I live in it, and when I hesitate they kinda realize. And they say they won’t tell anybody.

You can view the entire 60 Minutes report below….

Did you ever think that this would happen to America?

What makes things even sadder is that there are millions upon millions of empty homes right now in the United States.

Millions of American families have been foreclosed upon in recent years and home prices keep falling with no end in sight.

In fact, today it was reported that home prices are now the lowest that they have been in eight years.

So why aren’t people renting or buying more homes?

Well, the truth is that you can’t afford a mortgage payment or a rent payment if you don’t have a decent job.

When someone can’t find a good job, then none of the other economic statistics that many of us love to talk about so much really matter.

That is why I write about what is happening to American jobs so often.  Today, big corporations are shipping as many jobs as they can out of the country.  An average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year.  Even though our population is rapidly increasing, there are 10 percent fewer middle income jobs in the U.S. today than there were a decade ago.  Until this trend gets reversed, the number of American families living in their vehicles is only going to increase.

Unfortunately, the U.S. economy is about to get even worse.

Today, it was announced that American Airlines has filed for bankruptcy.  Sadly, there will be many more companies filing for bankruptcy during the upcoming economic downturn.

As I wrote about yesterday, we really are on the verge of a major league collapse of the financial system in Europe.

Jim Cramer of CNBC says that because of what is happening in Europe, the global financial system is at “DEFCON 3, two stages from a financial collapse that is so huge it’s hard to get your mind around.”

Unfortunately, Jim Cramer is not exaggerating.  The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble if something dramatic is not done immediately.

This is not a drill.  Bert Van Roosebeke, an economist with the Center for European Policy, recently made the following statement about the cold, hard reality now facing Europe….

“We’re actually really running out of money”

Back during the early 1930s, the flow of credit was greatly restricted and that was one of the primary causes of the Great Depression.  Back in 2008, another massive credit crunch just about brought the financial world to its knees.

Well, now it is starting to happen again.  A nightmarish credit crunch has already begun in Europe, and nobody seems to have any answers about how to stop it.

The following comes from an article in the New York Times….

From global airlines and shipping giants to small manufacturers, all kinds of companies are feeling the strain as European banks pull back on lending in an effort to hoard capital and shore up their balance sheets.

The result is a credit squeeze for companies from Berlin to Beijing, edging the world economy toward another slump.

When there is a credit crunch of this magnitude, it causes the money supply to start to shrink.  This is already happening all over Europe as a recent article in the Telegraph noted….

All key measures of the money supply in the eurozone contracted in October with drastic falls across parts of southern Europe, raising the risk of severe recession over coming months.

Right now, we are seeing the money supply in each of the “PIIGS” nations fall at a staggering rate.  The following comes from the same Telegraph article referenced above….

Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors said “narrow” M1 money – which includes cash and overnight deposits, and signals short-term spending plans – shows an alarming split between North and South.

While real M1 deposits are still holding up in the German bloc, the rate of fall over the last six months (annualised) has been 20.7pc in Greece, 16.3pc in Portugal, 11.8pc in Ireland, and 8.1pc in Spain, and 6.7pc in Italy. The pace of decline in Italy has been accelerating, partly due to capital flight. “This rate of contraction is greater than in early 2008 and implies an even deeper recession, both for Italy and the whole periphery,” said Mr Ward.

Those numbers are really, really bad.

But instead of doing something to prepare for the coming economic crisis, members of the U.S. Congress are focused on stripping even more of our liberties and freedoms away from us.

As I wrote about yesterday, a new law (S. 1867) is being pushed through the U.S. Senate that is extremely frightening.

If this bill becomes a law, the United States of America would officially become part of the “battlefield” in the war on terror, and any American citizen could easily be flagged as a “potential terrorist”.

Once identified as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military would be able to arrest you, take you to a foreign prison and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything.

What in the world is happening to America?

Unfortunately, as the economy gets even worse civil unrest in this country is going to intensify and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is going to start to disappear.

In response to the coming civil unrest, the U.S. Congress will try to pass laws that will be even more repressive than S. 1867.

Our nation has entered a downward spiral and things are going to become very frightening if this thing is not turned around.

The Economic Collapse

How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt?  30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt.  How in the world do supposedly rational people living in “the greatest nation on earth” allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that?  It almost seems like there should be some sort of official ceremony in Washington D.C. to commemorate this achievement.  It really takes something special to be able to roll up 15 trillion dollars of debt.  To get to this level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending.  For example, did you know that the U.S. national debt grows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute?  All of this debt has fueled an unprecedented boom of prosperity for the last 30 years, but now that prosperity is drying up.  Today, there are over 45 million Americans that are on food stamps.  America is being deindustrialized at a blinding pace and there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.  Poverty is exploding all over the nation, and millions of families have lost their homes to foreclosure.  Unfortunately, there are zero solutions on the horizon.  The leaders of both major political parties seem even more clueless right now than in past years.  We really could use some hope, but hope is in very short supply.

When evaluating the health of America’s economy, it is important not to look at the short-term numbers.  Rather, the key is to look at the long-term trends and the balance sheet numbers.

For example, if a mother and a father gave their teenage kids a bunch of credit cards and told them to go out and buy whatever they wanted, that would create a lot of “economic activity”, but it would also send that family to the poorhouse really quickly.

Well, we have basically done the same thing as a nation.  We are drowning in debt, and all of this debt is going to destroy us financially.

Unfortunately, the federal government continues to spend money as if there was no tomorrow.  Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP.  Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

When you are running up a credit card, it can be a lot of fun and it can seem like there aren’t any consequences.

But when it comes to debt, there are always consequences.  The following is what former Republican Senator Alan Simpson (of the Simpson-Bowles Commission) recently had to say about the horrific debt crisis we are currently facing….

“It’s very simple. If you spend more than you earn, you lose your butt”

In the United States, we love to have the government spend money on all sorts of things, but we never want to pay for it.

So the debt just keeps piling up higher and higher.

A lot of Republicans say that spending on social programs has gotten out of control.  A lot of Democrats say that spending on the military has gotten out of control.

They are both right.  As I have written about previously, the U.S. military accounts for close to half of all the military spending in the world.  In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of the next 15 countries combined.

Yes, we will always need a very powerful military, but we can have one without going broke in the process.

But an even larger problem is our rampant spending on social programs.

The following comes from a recent article by Janet Tavakoli….

In 1950 spending for social programs was only one percent of the total Federal Budget. As the economy grew, social programs expanded to include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Supplemental Security for the Disabled, and educational programs. In 1983 as the United States pulled out of an ugly recession and brought inflation under control, social programs consumed 26% of the budget. In fiscal year 2012, they’ll eat up an estimated 57% of the budget.

Tens of millions of Americans have become absolutely addicted to government money.  Nobody ever wants “their government benefits” to be cut, but nobody ever seems to want to have their taxes raised to pay for them.

To get a really good idea of how government transfer payments have absolutely skyrocketed over the years, just check out this chart.

Obviously, the course that we are on is not anywhere close to sustainable.

To say that the “war on poverty” was a failure would be a huge understatement.

The more money we seem to spend on social programs, the more that poverty seems to grow.

Right now, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps.  The economy is supposed to be “recovering”, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by over 8 percent in just the past year.

Food stamps are the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned bread lines.  The federal government is now feeding an almost unbelievable number of Americans.

According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps.  That means that approximately one out of every seven Americans is dependent on the federal government for food.

That is not just a crisis – that is a total nightmare.

So what can be done?

Well, we certainly shouldn’t let our people starve in the streets.

But handouts should only be a temporary solution.

What these people really need are good jobs.  Unfortunately, our “leaders” have created a business environment in this country that is incredibly toxic, and they have stood by as millions upon millions of good jobs have been shipped out of the country.  That is one of the reasons why I write about the insane trade policies of the globalists over and over and over.  The American people need to understand that globalization is going to mean a continuing loss of jobs for this country and it is going to result in the destruction of the middle class.

If we are not going to provide good jobs for American workers, then we are going to have to pay higher taxes in order to feed them and take care of them.

But what happens when the “safety net” breaks?

Even now, a lot of state and local governments all over the country are flat broke and they are cutting back on assistance for the poor.

The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article about this issue that was posted on the Fiscal Times….

For years, hundreds of thousands of people in dire straits – mentally or physically disabled, homeless and unemployed, ineligible for federal welfare, disability, or food subsidies – could generally count on state or local government largesse for modest handouts of cash to help scrape by. Under the rubric of “General Assistance,” these down-and-out Americans received modest payments – often no more than a few hundred dollars a month – to help defray the cost of necessities including rent, food, clothing, toilet paper, aspirin, phone cards, and bus tickets.

But in the midst of the worst recession of modern times and changing attitudes about the poor, many states have been gradually chipping away at general assistance programs or eliminating them altogether. Only 30 of 50 states currently offer any form of general assistance – down from 38 in 1989. And just this week, Washington State formally ended its “Disability Lifeline” program for an estimated 18,000 to 22,000 economically desperate residents.

Sadly, even more of us may be joining the ranks of the poor soon.  The layoffs just keep on coming.

Normally, most major store closings do not happen until after the holiday season.  You see, the reality is that most troubled retailers tend to want to bring in one more year of holiday sales before they finally shut the doors.  If you announce store closings before the holidays, that is going to make holiday shoppers less likely to shop at those stores.

So that is why some of the recent store closing announcements have been so troubling.

For example, it just came out that all 46 Syms and Filene’s Basement stores are closing.

Also, Gap recently announced plans to close 189 stores in the United States.

So if this is what we are already seeing now, what is going to happen after the holidays?

That is a very good question.

So many jobs are being lost all around the nation.  These days, there is massive competition for just about any job that is available.

People are getting desperate.  They just want to be able to pay the bills and take care of their families.

The other day, thousands upon thousands of people lined up to apply for casino jobs in south Florida.  Scenes like this are going to become even more frequent in the years ahead.

So do our politicians have any solutions?

Of course not.

The worst of the Republican candidates are actually at the top of the polls.  The cold, hard truth is that Romney, Cain and Perry are all clueless when it comes to the economy.

Of course you might as well call Barack Obama “Captain Clueless” when it comes to the economy.  Obama keeps giving great speeches about jobs while at the same time signing more “free trade” agreements that will send thousands more businesses and millions more jobs out of the country.  Even the CEOs on Obama’s jobs creation panel are shipping huge numbers of jobs out of the United States.

Obama gave a speech in Washington D.C. today that exemplified his clueless approach to the economy.  During the speech, Obama made the following statement….

“If Congress tells you they don’t have time, they got time to do it. We’ve been in the House of Representatives, what have you guys been debating? John, you’ve been debating a commemorative coin for baseball? You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That’s not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work”

First of all, Obama is not putting people back to work.  He has been helping big corporations ship jobs out of the country at a record pace.

Secondly, how does he know what God wants?

A lot of people actually think that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible.

But it isn’t.

A while after the Obama speech, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made matters worse when he told reporters the following….

“I believe the phrase from the Bible is ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves”

But once again, there is no such verse in the Bible.

Okay, so quoting a “mystery verse” from the Bible is not that big of a thing at the end of the day, but this is yet another example of how the Obama administration just can’t seem to get anything right.

Look, everyone makes mistakes once in a while.  I know that I certainly do.

But when you are wrong about almost everything almost all of the time, that is a major problem.

Especially when you are the president of the United States.

But both political parties are to blame for the mess that we are in.  Budget deficits exploded during Republican administrations just like they have under the Democrats.

Both political parties are responsible for us being 15 trillion dollars in debt.

Both political parties are responsible for 45 million Americans being on food stamps.

Both political parties are responsible for the fact that there are not nearly enough good jobs.

If Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Rick Perry is elected in 2012, we are just going to have more of the same.

America is running out of time.  If we are going to change course, we need to do it immediately.

The borrower is the servant of the lender.  We are enslaving ourselves and we are enslaving future American generations by going into so much debt.

Shame on the politicians that have rolled up so much debt in our name and shame on us for continuing to send those same politicians back to Washington D.C. time after time after time.

It is so sad to watch what is happening to America.

The Economic Collapse

The bad news just keeps rolling in. Keeping up with it is almost a full-time job. Here’s a recent sample featuring wage slaves, vanishing pensions and soaring health care costs.

1. It’s Not Too Late To Revive Slavery

A recent report notes that it’s not enough to create jobs. You’ve also got to create jobs which pay a living wage. Imagine that! What are these guys? Socialists? From Not getting by on minimum wage (September 27, 2011)—

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Most experts agree that to get out of the economic slump, we need more jobs.

But another problem is that millions of Americans already have jobs that don’t pay very much.

Getting the economy going will require more than just creating a large number of low-wage positions, said Paul Osterman, economics professor at MIT. Raising the minimum wage to get more cash to the working poor is just as crucial, he said.

About 20% of American adults who have jobs are earning only $10.65 an hour or less, according to Osterman’s analysis. Even at 40 hours a week, that amounts to less than $22,314, the poverty level for a family of four.

The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour (18 states set their own rates above the federal level, maxing out at $8.67 an hour in Washington State).

Here’s the kicker.

But increases have not kept up with inflation. When adjusted for inflation, the highest federal minimum wage was in 1968, when it was the equivalent of $10.38 in today’s dollars…

With a greater percentage of the nation’s income going to corporate profits than ever before, Osterman argues that businesses can afford a higher minimum wage.

“There needs to be standards in the job market,” he said. “If the object is simply to minimize costs, we can use slaves again.”

2. Your Vanishing Pension

The Daily Ticker recently reported on the Retirement Heist! — U.S. Pensions Plundered By Corporate Greed, Author Says (video below).

As if the average worker didn’t have enough to worry about, Ellen Schultz, an award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter and author of Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers, says that in some instances the fat paychecks of the top paid executives are coming directly out of the pocket of average workers.

“As recently as a decade ago there was a trillion dollars, a quarter of a trillion in surplus assets,” in corporate funds, Schultz tells The Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task in the accompanying clip. “There was plenty of money in pension plans; there was plenty to pay the benefits but corporations went about taking the money away.”

… Schultz believes this was no accident, claiming corporations have been “exaggerating their retiree burdens” and plundering retirement plans in a variety of ways, including:

• Siphon billions of dollars from their pension plans to finance downsizings and sell the assets in merger deals.
• Overstate the burden of rank-and-file retiree obligations to justify benefits cuts, while simultaneously using the savings to inflate executive pay and pensions.

And so on… Corporate big shots are stealing worker pension funds and then reducing their retirement benefits. It’s really very simple, the opposite of complicated. It’s not a head-scratcher. No need to pore over the details. What did George Carlin say about corporate big shots?

They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension which disappears the minute you go to collect it…

The American Dream, folks. Of course, you’ve got to asleep to believe it.

3. If You Shoot Yourself In The Head…

McClatchy Newspapers reports that job-based health insurance premiums have risen sharply this year.

WASHINGTON — After modest increases last year, the cost of job-based health insurance for families and individuals has jumped sharply this year, even though insurers are paying less in benefits as cash-strapped American workers opt for less medical care.

For the estimated 150 million workers with employer-sponsored coverage, the average cost of family health insurance jumped 9 percent this year to $15,073, while the price of individual coverage rose 8 percent to $5,429.

Both increases are the largest since 2005.

Click to enlarge.

And when McClatchy says this—

Each far outpaced a national 2 percent hike in wages and a 3.2 percent rise in inflation, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,100 businesses that the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust released Tuesday.

you should bear in mind that it is nearly a certainty that the wages of working Americans have not increased this year, while those of the top wage-earners did.

All is not lost. You can avoid these soaring health care costs. My solution? If you shoot yourself in the head, you won’t have to pay those rising premiums. If you don’t own a gun, be creative!

Bonus Video

Decline of the Empire

Do you have friends, neighbors and relatives that can’t find work?  Well, unfortunately the current U.S. jobs famine is about to get a whole lot worse.  Right now there are approximately 13.9 million unemployed Americans.  That does not count those that “are not looking for work”.  That does not count those that are working part-time jobs but that are desperate for full-time work.  The truth is that we need tens of millions more full-time jobs in order to give one to everyone that wants one.  Sadly, the long-term trends that have caused this mess continue to get worse.  Unless truly dramatic changes are made, the U.S. economy is going to continue to bleed jobs and that is going to suck the hope right out of this country.  It is time to wake up America!  It is not a big mystery why we don’t have enough jobs.  But sadly, very few of our leaders are talking about the real issues.

Something has got to be done.  Unemployment is already at epidemic levels, and this country can’t afford for things to get much worse.  Just check out how a recent article in The Wall Street Journal summarized our current predicament….

There are more unemployed than the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Idaho and the District of Columbia.

If they were a country, the 13.9 million unemployed Americans would be the 68^th largest country in the world, bigger than the population of Greece or Portugal (each of which has 10.8 million people) and more than twice the population of Norway (4.7 million.)

Isn’t that incredible?

The number of unemployed Americans is larger than the entire population of Greece.

There are millions of Americans that will be sitting at home in front of their televisions tonight wondering why they can’t find jobs.  Last month, only 58.1% of Americans over the age of 16 were employed.  Our economy should be able to do far better than that.

All over the Internet there are stories of people that have sent out hundreds (or even thousands) of resumes and nobody even wants to interview them.  One recent survey found that approximately 80 percent of all Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job right now.

Unfortunately, things are going to get much, much worse before all this is over.

The following are 10 very obvious reasons why the devastating U.S. jobs famine is going to suck the hope right out of America….

#1 Our politicians simply do not care that America is bleeding jobs.  Amazingly, even with rampant unemployment plaguing this nation, Obama administration officials continue to declare that it is okay that we are losing manufacturing jobs because a lot of cheaper products are things that “we don’t want to make in America” anyway.  The following is what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post the other day….

Let’s increase our competitiveness… the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don’t want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don't want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.

The economic negligence that recent administrations have demonstrated has been absolutely mind boggling.  Blue collar male workers in particular are being absolutely devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs.  Back in 1967, 97 percent of men with a high school degree between the ages of 30 and 50 had jobs.  Today, that figure is down to 76 percent.

#2 The Obama administration has now instituted a policy of “backdoor amnesty” for illegal immigrants by executive fiat.  Janet Napolitano has announced that from now on there will be a case-by-case review of all deportation cases.  Cases involving criminals will be prioritized and most others will be thrown out.  A list of 19 factors that will allow government officials to use “prosecutorial discretion” in immigration cases has been distributed.  Recently, I listed a few of those “factors” on The American Dream website….

-arrival in the U.S. as a young child

-actively “pursuing an education”

-serving or served in the U.S. military

-spouse of someone in the U.S. military

-18 years old or younger

-”elderly”

-pregnant or nursing

-victim of a “serious crime”

-serious disability or health problem

-caring for a family member with a serious disability or health problem

Obviously, it is not going to be too difficult for most illegal immigrants to fit into at least one of those categories.

On top of everything else the Obama administration has announced that it will now allow illegal immigrants to apply for work permits….

Illegal aliens living in the United States typically don’t apply for work permits for fear of deportation, but under the new policy, they could apply for work permits if granted deferred action or parole and compete with 22 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job.

So now blue collar Americans workers will have even more competition for the dwindling number of jobs.

#3 State and local governments all over the country are dead broke, and an atmosphere of austerity is sweeping the nation.  Right now state and local governments are slashing jobs at an unprecedented rate.

In the past, government jobs were considered to be very secure and they definitely paid a lot higher than average.  But now that era is coming to an end, at least on the state and local government levels.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, state and local governments have eliminated more than half a million jobs since August 2008.  UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will cut 450,000 more jobs by the end of 2012.

#4 U.S. businesses are being absolutely crushed by mountains of nightmarish regulations, and yet the federal government, the state governments and local governments just continue to pile them on.  For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.  Due to these kinds of ridiculous regulations, many business owners have simply given up and many other potential business owners figure that owning a business is just not worth the hassle.

#5 As I have written about so many times before, the “global economy” is really bad for American workers.  When we merged our economy with the economies of nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, we made it inevitable that we would start losing massive amounts of jobs.

Why would a giant corporation pay a U.S. worker 10 to 20 times as much as a worker on the other side of the globe?  Investors actually expect big companies to have an “outsourcing” strategy today.  When more jobs get shipped out of the country, profits go up, stock prices go up and executive bonuses go up.

Big corporations don’t exist to provide you with jobs.  They exist to maximize shareholder wealth.  If taking your job away and giving it to someone in Asia will make more money for them, then that it exactly what they are going to do.

#6 Unfair trade is absolutely killing our economy.  It would be one thing if the U.S. was running a massive trade deficit solely because we were incompetent.  But the truth is that a big factor is that a number of our “trade partners” are economic predators that are purposely trying to prey on us.

The other day, I wrote about some of the things that China does to steal our jobs, our factories and our wealth….

China massively subsidizes their biggest corporations, they brazenly steal technology from anyone that they can, they openly manipulate exchange rates and they allow their workers to be paid slave labor wages.

Today, we spend about 4 dollars on imports from China for every 1 dollar that China spends on imports from us.  China now even makes more beer than we do.  Even the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall was made in China.

Until our politicians start insisting on a level playing field, all of this is going to continue.

#7 Small businesses are traditionally one of the primary engines of job growth in this country.  But right now, small businesses all over America are having a really hard time getting anyone to loan them money.  A big reason for this is that the Federal Reserve is actually paying banks not to make loans.  Unfortunately, if small businesses can’t get the money that they need, then they can’t hire people.

#8 A lot of people may not want to hear this, but businesses in the United States are being absolutely taxed into oblivion.  The U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, but that is only a very small part of the story.

Michael Fleischer, the President of Bogen Communications, wrote an op-ed last year for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I’m Not Hiring”.  The following is how Paul Hollrah of Family Security Matters summarized the nightmarish taxes that are imposed when Fleischer hires a new worker….

According to Fleischer, Sally grosses $59,000 a year, which shrinks to less than $44,000 after taxes and other payroll deductions. The $15,311 deducted from Sally’s gross pay is comprised of New Jersey state income tax: $1,893; Social Security taxes: $3,661; state unemployment insurance: $126; disability insurance: $149; Medicare insurance: $856; federal withholding tax: $6,250; and her share of medical and dental insurance: $2,376. Roughly 25.9 percent of Sally’s income is siphoned off by Washington and Trenton before she receives her paychecks.

But then there are the additional costs of employing Sally. In addition to her gross salary, her employer must pay the lion’s share of her healthcare insurance premiums: $9,561; life and other insurance premiums: $153; federal unemployment insurance: $56; disability insurance: $149; worker’s comp insurance: $300; New Jersey state unemployment insurance: $505; Medicare insurance: $856; and the employer’s share of Social Security taxes: $3,661.

Over and above her gross salary, Bogen Communications must pay an additional $15,241 in benefits and state and federal taxes, bringing the total cost of employing Sally to approximately $74,241 per year. Sally gets to keep $43,689, or just 58.8% of that total.

After reading all that, can you really blame business owners for not wanting to hire additional workers?

#9 The national debt is like a giant albatross around the neck of the economy. The U.S. national debt has increased by more than 4 trillion dollars since Barack Obama took office.  The rampant government spending that has been going on has not done much to create new jobs, but it will be a massive burden that will weigh down economic growth for many years to come.

When a nation is drowning in debt, a tremendous amount of economic resources must go to servicing that debt.  Right now, hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could be used to build up our economy are instead being used to pay interest on the national debt.  If interest rates go up significantly, we could soon be paying over a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

#10 Right now America is very deeply divided and a tremendous sense of pessimism has set in.  One recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.  With such a negative feeling in the air, it is going to make it even less likely that business owners will be in the mood to hire people.

I know that I pick on Detroit a lot, but it really is a microcosm of what is happening to America.  The following video contains some absolutely amazing footage of the ruins of Detroit….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI261NDLWlM

Sadly, what is happening to Detroit is happening in hundreds of other communities across the United States.

All over America, neighborhoods that were once teeming with hope and prosperity are now falling apart.  Hopelessness is rampant and it is spreading.  The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.  If not for our increasingly overwhelmed “safety net”, we would already have mass rioting in the streets.

Sadly, we are already seeing all sorts of signs that society is collapsing.  As the economy continues to fall apart, the violence in our neighborhoods is going to get even worse.

The following is one very shocking recent example from the Chicago Tribune….

Moments before she was slain last week on Chicago’s Southwest Side, 17-year-old Charinez Jefferson begged the gunman not to shoot because she was pregnant, prosecutors said today.

Despite her plea, Timothy Jones, 18, opened fire on Jefferson anyway, yelling an expletive at her as he shot her in the head, prosecutors said. He then stood over her as she lay on the ground and fired several more times, striking her in the chest and back.

America is changing.  The country that so many of us have loved all of our lives is becoming unrecognizable.  Large numbers of communities have had all of the hope sucked right out of them.  Tens of millions of Americans that want to do things the “right way” are rapidly losing faith in the system.

When you can’t get a decent job after months and months of trying it can be absolutely soul-crushing.

What do you tell someone that has spent a year sending out resumes and has used up all of their savings?

The era of endless prosperity for America is at an end.  The cold, hard consequences of decades of bad decisions are starting to set in.

Unless a dramatic change of course happens, the long-term trends noted above are going to get progressively worse.  It won’t matter who is running Congress and it won’t matter who is in the White House.

Right now our economy is rapidly hurtling downhill on a bus without breaks and we are headed directly for a cliff.

Please wake up America.

The Economic Collapse

We’re done folks.

Responses to the Business Outlook Survey this month suggest that regional manufacturing activity has dipped significantly. The survey’s broad indicators for activity, shipments, and new orders all declined sharply from last month. Firms indicated that employment and average work hours are lower this month. Price indexes continued to show a trend of moderating price pressures. The broadest indicator of future activity also weakened markedly, but firms still expect overall growth in shipments, new orders, and employment over the next six months. The collection period for this month’s survey ran from August 8-16, overlapping a week of unusually high volatility in both domestic and international financial markets.

The survey’s broadest measure of manufacturing conditions, the diffusion index of current activity, decreased from a slightly positive reading of 3.2 in July to -30.7 in August. The index is now at its lowest level since March 2009 (see Chart).

This resulted in an immediate dive in the market, which was already down 300+, to more than -450.

The fraud and phony games are over.

The “Tea Party” claims to have taken the high ground.  They’re lying.

All I hear is Bachmann and others wrapping themselves in the “cause of the day” but failing to stop it, and the idea that somehow “Guns, Gays and God” will carry the day or that we should have “Dominionism” in the Federal Government is an outrage.  That’s utter and complete bullshit; having “dominion” over a smoking crater will be cold comfort in January of 2013.

Where the hell were these people in 2008?  Where were they in 2009?  Where was the attempt to stop Bush, Paulson or Kanjorski?  Oh I know, they were all elected in 2010.  Ok, it’s 2011 now and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt in that you can’t do anything until you get into office (despite, I note, your utter refusal to run on these issues in 2010 – I did call you all out on that) so let’s start there.

Has anyone heard any demands to lock up the fraudsters stealing homes with fraudulent documents?  To break up the “too big to fail” banks and toss their executives in prison where they belong?  To put a stop to the fraudulent issuance of credit economy-wide?  To take Bernanke out behind the woodshed and stuff a sock in his mouth via adding an “or else” to The Federal Reserve Act so that he cannot debase the currency and he and his cohorts will all be imprisoned (or hang on The Mall, which seems more appropriate to me) if they do?  To enforce a zero-inflation mandate?  To end ZIRP and distortions in the bond market?  To balance the budget right damn now, and quit playing Ponzi with the Federal Budget, Medicare, Medicaid, Student Loans and more?  To tell the truth to our Seniors and everyone else – you will NOT GET what you were promised, because YOU CAN’T – the money does not exist!

No.

You have not heard any of this.  Not one damn word.

Oh sure, there are the token claims, such as those from Southerland and Bachmann.  That’s very nice, but it’s both insufficient and immaterial.  Without legislation and regulation, which means punishment for those who have screwed the American public serially for 30 years none of this will change and you will keep getting bent over the table and serially violated.

Unfortunately for Congress it’s too damn late now.  In 2007 I faxed a letter to all 535 members of Congress.  I urged them to set aside a couple hundred billion dollars – cash, not bogus credit – to provide “three hots and a cot” for up to 25% of the population for a period of at least one year.  NOT subsidy via unemployment, food stamps or any such thing.  A soup line, a bunch of cots in formerly-closed military base hangers and barracks, and a place to take a shower and a crap.  One quarter – or less – than what we would spend now on the same thing.  This would have allowed the housing market to collapse and subsequently clear, the banks would have blown to bits, but from the rubble entrepreneurs would have started new banks, houses would have been resold into the market to new owners and the economy would have cleared the bad debt on its own through bankruptcy and liquidation, which is the essential purpose of recession.

I was not only ignored I was called a lunatic and crazy, that things couldn’t get that bad.

Then 2008 happened and some eyes opened – a bit, because it sure looked like it might get that bad.  The response?  More fraud.

By 2009 the callers of “fool”, “lunatic”, “haha” and “clown” began again.

Well, how’s it look now folks?

Need it in pictures?  Here it is:

Gee, almost back to the depths-of-hell 2009 lows, eh?  So what’s this crap about “no recession”?

Oh wait – there’s no recession: This is a continuing Depression that our government, conspiring with the banksters and media, have intentionally and fraudulently covered up and it is no longer working.

Did you get back into the market America?

More to the point if you did get back in: Did you get out in time this time around or were you listening to “Tout TV” again?

Gee, all bad numbers in that table on the current situation.  New orders collapsed by twenty-six points, shipments collapsed by almost ten points, and both employee count and workweek collapsed by nearly 14 and 9 points, respectively.

Worse, on a forward basis inventories, delivery times, unfilled orders and the employee workweek collapsed on a six-month forward look, with employment numbers remaining only mildly positive.

This means that personal income is going to collapse as well and with it tax receipts, exactly as I have forecast.  The government’s revenue forecasts, to be blunt, are screwed.

To our government: Either get your arms around this now and consolidate, meaning massive cuts in spending and a fundamental reorganization of tax and trade policy (and no, not more “free trade” either), or we will go “overcenter” on that nasty little debt table I’ve been talking about – at which point there will be nothing you can do about it.