Broke! 10 Facts about the Financial Condition of American Families that Will Blow You

[rockclimber]

http://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/br...your-mind/

Quote:Broke! 10 Facts about the Financial Condition of American Families that Will Blow Your Mind
Posted on July 25, 2011 by coto2admin| 3 Comments

By Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse

The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families. For many Americans, “flat broke” has become a permanent condition. Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are. The financial condition of average American families continues to decline and this is showing up in all of the recent surveys.

For example, according to a new Gallup poll, “lack of money/low wages” is the number one financial concern for American families. To make ends meet, many American families are going into even more debt and more American families than ever are turning to government assistance. Right now, more Americans than at any other point since World War II are flat broke and have lost hope. Until this changes, the frustration level in this country is going to continue to grow.

The following are 10 facts about the financial condition of American families that will blow your mind:

#1 Only 58 percent of Americans have a job right now.

#2 Only 56 percent of Americans are currently covered by employer-provided health insurance.

#3 The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261.

#4 The average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.

#5 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

#6 At this point, American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007.

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

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

#9 Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, and nearly half of them are children.

#10 According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment.

So what is causing all of this? Where in the world did all of the good jobs go?

Well, the truth is that millions of them have been shipped overseas.

Our politicians promised us that merging our economy with the economies of other nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to workers would not create more unemployment inside America.

They were dead wrong.

Now we are being told that we just need to accept a lower standard of living.

For example, billionaire Howard Marks says that it is time for all of us to just accept that the standard of living of American workers is inevitably going to decline to the level of the rest of the world….

“In addition to balancing the budget and growing the economy, I think we have to accept that the coming decades are likely to see U.S. standards of living decline relative to the rest of the world. Unless our goods offer a better cost/benefit bargain, there’s no reason why American workers should continue to enjoy the same lifestyle advantage over workers in other countries. I just don’t expect to hear many politicians own up to this reality on the stump.”

Are you willing to accept that?

Well, most Americans appear to be willing to accept this “new reality” because they keep sending most of the exact same bozos back to Washington D.C.

Meanwhile, the job losses continue to get worse. As I wrote about the other day, as the U.S. economy has started to slow down again we are starting to see another huge wave of layoffs all over America.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where all of our jobs are going. But unfortunately, most Americans don’t understand what is happening because neither the mainstream media nor our politicians are telling them the truth.

For much more on how millions of our good jobs are being shipped out of the country, please see another article I recently published entitled “How Globalism Has Destroyed Our Jobs, Businesses And National Wealth In 10 Easy Steps“.

But it is not just the globalization of the economy that is destroying our jobs.

The federal government bureaucracy has become so oppressive that it is amazing that anyone is still willing to hire workers in this day and age. Hiring workers has become so complicated and so expensive that many small business owners want to avoid it at all cost.

For example, a small business owner identified as “007″ recently left the following comment on one of my recent articles….

Speaking as a small employer, I would rather have a root canal than another employee. Let’s see. You first have to hire someone you trust without some labor lawyer suing you for some type of discrimination. Then you have OSHA to make sure your work place is safe. Then you have workmans compensation insurance, unemployment taxes, health insurance, liability insurance, now Obamacare. Oh be careful not to be deemed to have a “hostile work environment”. Then you have to negotiate the labor laws. The Department of Labor is constantly cranking out regulation.

Then you get the pleasure of paying payroll taxes both state and federal along with the required filing of a multitude of payroll forms. Miss filing or paying these taxes and you will be crushed with interest and penalties.

Of course, you are competing with businesses that can hire at a fraction of the cost of American Labor and with very little regulations. In this economy, no one in their right mind is hiring into this unstable and declining economy.

If business turns down all you have to worry about is laying off workers. Of course your unemployment insurance tax will go up 200% for years. Then you only have to then worry about a wrongful termination law suit.

The entire system is stacked against American workers.

If you are a blue collar worker, you should give up hope that things are going to get better. The system has failed you.

You can stop waiting for the “good jobs” to come back. They aren’t coming back.

That is one reason why I try to encourage everyone to become more independent of the system.

As our economic system continues to degenerate, Americans are going to become increasingly desperate.

Sadly, desperate people do desperate things. Already we are starting to see signs that the fabric of American society is starting to be ripped to shreds.

So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?

There is a limit to how many people we can actually put in prison. The reality is that the number of Americans in prison has nearly tripled since 1987.

Our prisons are already dangerously overcrowded. As society falls apart, many communities will simply not be able to shove more people behind bars.

Even with our prisons stuffed to the gills, many of our largest cities continue to be transformed into absolute hellholes.

Detroit is now the 3rd most dangerous city on the entire planet and New Orleans is now the 9th most dangerous city on the entire planet.

So what are our leaders doing about all of this?

Well, they appear to be too busy fighting with each other and cheating on their wives to do much about our problems.

According to Politico, U.S. Representative David Wu is the latest member of Congress to be accused of a sex scandal….

Rep. David Wu has been accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend, the latest scandal to engulf the troubled Oregon Democrat.

This country is a complete and total mess. Tens of millions of American families are flat broke and are about to slip into poverty. Meanwhile, our politicians continue to prove that they are some of the most corrupt on the planet.

There are many out there that still believe that America has a bright future ahead.

It is getting really hard to see why anyone could possibly believe that.

[yeti]

(07-26-2011 02:10 AM)jeunose Wrote:  American Families that Will Blow You

Desperate times call for desperate acts, I guess...

[Dunamis]

It does have to be pointed out:

Quote:America (definition)
also the A·mer·i·cas The landmasses and islands of North America, Central America, and South America.

I can remember seeing something the other day, where someone was asking a US cop what their nationality was, at first they said "American", until they were enlightened on the fact that Brazilians could be defines thus. American is like unto the term "European", or "Asian", but what is a US persons nationally...United Statian?

[yeti]

Canadians call themselves Canadians or North Americans, but not Americans.

[Easy Skanking]

(07-26-2011 03:45 AM)Dunamis Wrote:  It does have to be pointed out:

Quote:America (definition)
also the A·mer·i·cas The landmasses and islands of North America, Central America, and South America.

I can remember seeing something the other day, where someone was asking a US cop what their nationality was, at first they said "American", until they were enlightened on the fact that Brazilians could be defines thus. American is like unto the term "European", or "Asian", but what is a US persons nationally...United Statian?

We tend to refer to ourselves as being from the individual states and not from the Union of States. I am a Tennessean and was a Texan for a while, for example. While I don't speak for the sheeple masses, most of the folks I converse with have the same kind of mindset. We see ourselves as identifying with the individual states and not as a follower of the Union. That seems to be putting the cart before the horse from our perspective. That nationalistic view is harped and pushed very hard to rally everyone under a single predetermined banner instead of having individual states decide and then allowing the federal government to carry out those wishes. The perverted view is definitely being pushed by the self styled global elite to encourage us to give up our personal and states liberties.

But no matter what state we are from, we are all getting fucked financially by those same global asshole psychopaths. That's our common banner that we should rally behind.

[rockclimber]

I know a few Brazilians who take offense to the way we use the word America as if we are THE America and that they don't exist. I see their point.

[FastTadpole]

(07-26-2011 04:07 AM)yeti Wrote:  Canadians call themselves Canadians or North Americans, but not Americans.

North Americans¿ Never heard that one in Alberta in all my life. The globalist program must be a few steps ahead out east or maybe just because Oshawa is so close to the border.

Always Canadians or Edmontonians but mostly Albertans but family is pretty big in these parts here still although it is slipping so you're default association is family like saying "I'm a Smith" .. or a "Johnston" or a "Negelski".

Often people here refer to themselves by their distant heritage, especially the Italians even though they don't speak a word of it. Half the immigrants up around my part will identify themselves by their place of birth, wherever it may be. I'm seeing a lot of Jamaicans, Indians, Chinese and Kenyans. I guess you couldn't call Newfies immigrants but they kind of have their own language and culture.

As for Americans. You should really be identifying with your state since you are supposed to be merely a trade and defence union.

[yeti]

(07-26-2011 11:40 PM)FastTadpole Wrote:  

(07-26-2011 04:07 AM)yeti Wrote:  Canadians call themselves Canadians or North Americans, but not Americans.

North Americans¿ Never heard that one in Alberta in all my life.

It's not common for us Canadians to call ourselves North Americans. My point was that if we describe ourselves with the word 'American', it is always preceded by the word 'North'. Canadians never refer to ourselves as Americans.

Interestingly, people in Ontario almost never refer to ourselves as Ontarians. We're Canadians from <insert city here>.

(07-26-2011 11:40 PM)FastTadpole Wrote:  The globalist program must be a few steps ahead out east or maybe just because Oshawa is so close to the border.

Oshawa?? What a shit hole! I'm in Ottawa. I would never live in Oshawa, even if my job was there.

BTW, I'd bet my middle testicle that the percentage of awake people is way higher in Ontario than Alberta.

[FastTadpole]

Oops I got your locale confused with a buddy of mine from Oshawa. Kind of like calling a New Zealander an Aussie?

Thanks for the clarification on the norm. Up in Edmonton we'd like to differentiate ourselves from Calgarians so Albertans isn't really that common either but the usual way for people to say where they're from in these parts to someone abroad over the net is Edmonton, Alberta, Canada as opposed to Edmonton, Canada.

As far as "awake" well that's a broad term..

I hate to speak in demographic terms but generally speaking we have a pretty community based province with a strong sense of community and family values still relatively intact, although like anywhere else we have seen a decline in those areas.

And there is different types of awake, there is those that are aware of the conspiracy that go and blame the masters, the system and and maybe even protest about it. There is the next level in organization and philosophical discussion in places like town halls and ConCen. Then there are those that will do the legwork to enact the plan and get things done. Albertans are a culture of doers, so they are kept fat and happy for the most part and don't have a lot to complain about unless they look at the big picture. The pot boiling the frog is on a very low simmer over here so there is not a lot of people looking for change just yet.

Alberta is really pro-military and quite religious (mostly Christians) so in that aspect we're still running the old program for the most part. There is the new program of new age, socialism and globalization that is creeping in though.

If Alberta did wake up to that fact and had more of a compelling personal reason to act upon it we'd make a pretty big impact, given our wealth of resources and food industry but they're being sold off from under our noses to multinationals.

We are very skilled technically as well boasting the highest test scores year after year in Canada for what that is worth. Education can mean indoctrination but we're talking math and science. So there is the minds to take an applicable at building a new society. We also have a huge amount of entrepreneurs in the province.

So down east there is aware people but what are they doing about it generally speaking? Britain is "awake" but all they do is protest it seems all the while the island fortress is being built up. I remember hilly7 saying something about plans rolling in that you don't like it.

So if they try installing a CCTV down in Tennessee it is time for shotgun practice awake or not; which is more important than being "awake" if you're keeping score.

A good (impromptu) way to quantify "score" is adding up the following (per capita):

* how many children are playing outside
* how many lawyers are there
* how many chain stores are there
* how much is the government spending
* how big is the police force
* how long does the average person work
* how many of their neighbours do people know on average
* how many cameras per person
* how many people are on welfare and/or working for the government
* how many people are employed by big corporations
....

for a start.

Pardon the off-topicness.