A good summary of the problems that the U.S. economy
is currently facing
What a year 2012 has been! The
mainstream media continues to tell us what a “great job” the Obama
administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but
meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle
class. It is imperative that we educate the American people about the
true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening. If
nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs
will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be
suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the
United States will continue to explode. Just “tweaking” things slightly
is not going to fix our economy. We need a fundamental change in direction.
Right
now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to
continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble
bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic “adjustment” that
America has ever gone through. We need to be able to explain to our
fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be
done. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this
article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.
The end of the year is a time when people tend to
gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the
year. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to
help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your
loved ones. Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are
heading into economic oblivion. So if you have someone among your family
and friends that believes that everything is going to be “just fine”, just show
them these numbers. They are a good summary of the problems that
the U.S. economy is currently facing.
The following are 75 economic numbers from 2012 that
are almost too crazy to believe...
#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on
food stamps. Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps. That number has
increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the
mainstream media still has the gall to insist that “things are getting better”.
#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50
Americans was on food
stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds
the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District
of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana,
Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”
#4 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a
safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.
#5 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That
number has risen by 57 percent since the
2006-2007 school year.
#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen
for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during
that time span.
#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a
job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.
#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last
economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all
working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were
employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same
place.
#10 When you total up all working age Americans that
do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.
#11 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all small business owners in America “say
they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the
current environment.”
#12 The number of jobs at new small businesses
continues to decline. According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of
startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…
Bush Sr.: 11.3
Clinton: 11.2
Bush Jr.: 10.8
Obama: 7.8
#14 The United States has fallen in the global
economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#15 There are four major U.S. banks that each
have more than 40 trillion dollars of
exposure to
derivatives.
#16 In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now
there are less than 12 million.
#17 According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent
of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971. Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.
#18 The Pew Research Center has also found
that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it is
harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years
ago.
#19 62 percent of all middle class Americans say
that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
#20 Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be
“low income” or are living in poverty.
#21 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United
States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income”
or impoverished.
#22 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to
paycheck at least part of the time.
#23 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.
Today, less than 65 percentof all men in the United States have jobs.
#24 The average amount of time that an unemployed
worker stays out of work in the United States is 40 weeks.
#25 If you can believe it, approximately one out of
every four American workers makes 10 dollars an hour or less.
#26 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time
record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least
one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.
Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.
#27 Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run
by the federal government. And that does not even count Social Security
or Medicare. Overall, there are almost 80 different “means-tested welfare programs” that
the federal government is currently running.
#28 When you account for all government transfer
payments and all forms of government employment, more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent
on the government.
#29 Barack Obama has been president for less than
four years, and during that time the number of Americans “not in the labor
force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million. Something seems really “off” about that
number, because during the entire decade of the 1980s the
number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose by about 2.5 million.
#30 Electricity bills in the United States have
risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#31 According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills
triple over the past 12 years.
#32 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on
housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#34 As the economy has slowed down, so has the
number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis,
only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old
are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.
#36 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by
employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health
insurance.
#37 Recently it was announced that total student
loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
#39 One survey of business executives has
ranked California as the worst state in America to do
business for 8 years in a row.
#40 In the city of Detroit today, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty, and close to 50 percent of all adults are functionally illiterate.
#41 It is being projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they
turn 18 years of age.
#42 More than three times as many new homes were
sold in the United States in
2005 as will be
sold in 2012.
#43 If you can believe it, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under
the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.
#44 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs
lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs
created since then have been low wage jobs.
#45 Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one
country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
#46 The United States has lost an average of
approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade
Organization in 2001.
#47 According to the Economic Policy Institute,
America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
#48 The U.S. tax code is now more than 3.8 million words
long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them
together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.
#49 According to the IMF, the global elite are
holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banking havens such as the Cayman Islands.
#50 The value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.
#52 Experts are telling us that global food reserves
have reached their lowest level in almost 40 years.
#54 If you can believe it, one recent survey found
that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny
saved for emergencies.
#55 Medical costs related to obesity in the United
States are estimated to be approximately $147 billion a year.
#56 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at
an all-time high. Meanwhile,
wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.
#57 Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans
own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
#58 The wealthiest 400 families in the United States have about as much wealth
as the bottom 50 percent of all Americans combined.
#59 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton
have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percentof all Americans combined.
#60 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all
Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#62 In 2006, only 12 percent of all federal workers made $100,000 or more per
year. Now, approximately 22 percent of all federal workers do.
#63 If you can believe it, there are 77,000 federal workers that make more than the governors of their own
states do.
#64 Nearly 15,000 retired federal workers are collecting federal
pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually. The list includes
such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick
Cheney.
#65 U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the
royal family.
#66 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C.
region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.
#67 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his
fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget
deficit for about 15 days.
#69 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans
was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#71 Medicare is also growing by leaps and
bounds. As I wrote about recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans
on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.
#72 Thanks to our foolish politicians (including
Obama), Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion
dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United
States.
#73 Amazingly, the U.S. national debt is now up
to 16.3 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the
national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.
#74 During the first four years of the Obama
administration, the U.S. government accumulated about as much debt as it did
from the time that George Washington took office to the time that
George W. Bush took office.
#75 Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was
originally created back in 1913.
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