Right now, we are witnessing a truly historic collapse of the economy, and yet most Americans do not understand what is going on. One of the biggest reasons why the American people do not understand what is happening to the economy is because our politicians and the mainstream media are not telling the truth.
There are millions upon millions of Americans that are sitting at home on their couches right now wondering why they lost their jobs and why nobody will hire them. Millions of others are wondering why the only jobs they can get are jobs that a high school student could do. Families all across America are wondering why it seems like their wages never go up but the price of food and the price of gas continue to skyrocket.
We are facing some very serious long-term economic problems in this country, and we need to educate the American people about why the collapse of the economy is happening.
If the American people don’t understand why they are losing their jobs, why they are losing their homes and why they are drowning in debt then they are going to keep on doing all of the same things that they have been doing. They will also keep sending the same idiot politicians back to Washington to represent us. There are some fundamental things about the economy that every American should know.
The American people need to be shocked out of their entertainment-induced stupor long enough to understand what is really going on and what needs to be done to solve our nightmarish economic problems. If we do not wake up enough Americans in time, the economic collapse that is coming could tear this nation to shreds.
The U.S. economy was once the greatest economic machine in modern world history. It was truly a wonder to behold. It worked so well that entire generations of Americans came to believe that America would enjoy boundless prosperity indefinitely.
But sadly, prosperity is not guaranteed for any nation. Over the past several decades, some very alarming long-term economic trends have developed that are absolutely destroying the economy. If dramatic changes are not made soon, a complete and total economic collapse will be unavoidable.
Unfortunately, the American people will never agree to fundamental changes to our economic and financial systems unless they are fully educated about what is causing our problems. We have turned our backs on the principles of our forefathers and the principles of those that founded this nation. We have rejected the ancient wisdom that was handed down to us.
It has been said that those that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind. We are about to experience the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.
Hopefully we can get the American people to wake up.
1. If we calculated unemployment and inflation the same way we did back during the Carter administration, then the Misery Index today would be higher than at any point during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, according to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics
2. An average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month
3. There are 5.5 million Americans that are currently unemployed and yet are not receiving unemployment benefits, according to the Wall Street Journal
4. All over America, state and local governments are selling off buildings just to pay the bills/
5. State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP
6. f you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards
7. Credit card usage in the United States is on the increase once again. During the month of March, revolving consumer credit jumped 2.9%
8. Last year, Social Security ran a deficit for the first time since 1983, and the “Social Security deficits” in future years are projected to be absolutely horrific.
9. The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year
10. The Mississippi River flooding could do $2 billion in damage to farmland alone, according to a Mississippi State University economist
11. The “tornadoes of 2011” that we just saw in the southeast United States are being called the worst natural disaster that the U.S. has seen since Hurricane Katrina
12. The economic effects of the BP oil spill just seem to go on and on and on
13. The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States
14. All over America, hospitals that care for the poor and needy are so overwhelmed and are so broke that they are being forced to shut down
15. The U.S. dollar is in such bad shape that now even Steve Forbes is predicting that the U.S. is “likely” to go back to a gold standard within the next five years
16. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $115.93 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $454.36 today
17. Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%
18. U.S. oil companies will bring in about $200 billion in pre-tax profits this year. They will also receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks from the U.S. government
19. It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States
20. There are minerals worth over a trillion dollars under the ground in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. Now, J.P. Morgan is starting to tap those riches with the help of the U.S. military
21. J.P. Morgan is actually the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. In fact, the more Americans that go on food stamps the more money that J.P. Morgan makes
22. There are over 44 million people on food stamps, and one out of every four American children is on food stamps
23. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid
24. Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history
25. The financial system is more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008 before the financial panic. Today, the world financial system has been turned into a giant financial casino where bets are made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks make a ton of money from this betting system. The system is largely unregulated (the new “Wall Street reform” law has only changed this slightly) and it is totally dominated by the big international banks. The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them “financial weapons of mass destruction”. It is estimated that the “derivatives bubble” is somewhere in the neighborhood of a quadrillion dollars, and once it pops there isn’t going to be enough money in the entire world to bail everyone out.
26. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976
27. The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990
28. In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China was “scrap and trash”.
29. In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas
30. During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded
31. New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005
32. U.S. home prices have now fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble
33. The average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year, according to a new report from the AFL-CIO
34. The European debt crisis could cause a global financial collapse like the one that we saw in 2008 at any time
35. The 50 U.S. state governments are collectively 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations
36. A different study has shown that individual Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably
37. The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978
38. Health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Today they account for approximately 16.3%
39. One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt
40. The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. Thanks to our politicians, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt
41. The U.S. government is over 14 trillion dollars in debt and the budget deficit for this year is projected to be about 1.5 trillion dollars
42. The U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010, and it is being projected that the U.S. government will be shelling out 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019
43. Standard & Poor’s has altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and is warning that the U.S. could soon lose its AAA rating
44. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income
45. U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes
46. 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another
47. 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year, according to Gallup. Today, that number is at just 27 percent
48. The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States
49. The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States
50. The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population
51. And, there’s still inequality in America
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