Vast Stretches Of America Are So Depressed That They Look Like Something Out Of A Horror Movie

The Economic Collapse Blog ^ | 08/18/2024 | Michael Snyder

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

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[frank ballenger]

Remember all those people in surveys who have never heard of the bad side of Biden-Harris? Around 20-30% know.

These scenes should be in GOP ads all over the place.

Near me, the Denny’s and the big pet supply warehouse closed, now a Big Lots and every one of the Rite Aids in Michigan are closing down. Maybe they can bring in mattresses for illegals to sleep there.

Happy days?

[Jonty30]

Once wealth starts accumulating in the hands of the wealthy, it starts concentrating. As one millionaire put it, “It’s hard work to invest where you become worth $1 million. You can’t make many mistakes. However, it’s inevitable to increase your wealth once you hit $100 million.

A reset is coming, whether we like it or not. It’s just another sign of the end of our age.

[ifinnegan]

“ We have already reached a stage where a large portion of the population cannot even afford the basics.”

But they can afford drugs.

Bs article.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The other day I heard someone go on a rant about how "the only people doing well are people who own stocks and people who bought houses before 2020." Dude. That is the majority of the country. If that was true things would be going along pretty well. But it is not true.

Yes, our house and land is going up in value. And that means our taxes are going up and up. Which is not a good thing if you are on a fixed income. Yes, you can sell the land and house and.... do what? Live in your car? Live with someone because you can not afford to buy another residence? How is that doing well?

And the majority of people who own stock are people who have 401Ks or IRAs. Dipping into those or borrowing against them comes with huge tax penalties and it is just another debt you have to repay at a high interest rate. You don't do it unless it is a dire emergency.

One of the things I find interesting about this election year is that for the first time in a while it seems like there is a bit of a light being shown on the poor who are not urban. People who are struggling to get by. People that the rest of the country acted like did not exist for the past 30 years at least.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

No. They can't afford drugs either.

And the majority do not take them.

[metmom]

In areas where most people have lost hope of ever finding a better life, drug addiction often runs rampant, and that is precisely what Binksy witnessed…

That’s in large part because people have abandoned faith in God. There are many parts of the world where the poverty rate is far worse, and they are not in the depths of despair or turning to drugs.

Even during the Great Depression people didn’t respond as they do today.

The other thing is, the image we’re seeing is selected by the MSM. If Trump was president, be sure you’d be seeing our screens flooded with images showing this.

As it is, we’re being gaslit into believing that under democrat governance, everyone is happily and safely strolling down clean, homeless free city streets in bright, sunny utopias happily scrolling through their cell phones.

[frank ballenger]

Good food for thought.

[Persevero]

As you said they can afford drugs.

And if we are starting to skip meals I suppose the obesity epidemic is ending?

I don’t deny that there is poverty. But a lot of these folks could stop drinking smoking and doing drugs, and many of us should be skipping some meals here and there. We have a ways to go.

[Biblebelter]

The media talks about food insecurity.

I don’t see it.

Who is poor and who is not, I can’t say.

I see young working age folk who I know don’t have a job, but they don’t look hungry.

They drive a car and got a cellphone and go to fast food joints.

In fact I see a lot of fat and sassy women who live off having kids with ADC or whatever they call it these days.

My worry is the folk that I don’t see.

I worry about old folk trying to live on a fixed income who have to make decisions about their prescriptions or food.

I believe under the Democrats a big chunk of what was once the middle class has become the working poor.

I believe retired folk trying to get by on just SS are struggling mightily.

But under the Marxists being a non working person of a working age times have never been better whether you be a natural born citizen or an illegal invader.

Working hard and playing by the rules is no longer the key to prosperity under this illegitimate Marxist regime in occupation of the once great nation’s capitol.

[ViLaLuz]

No tattoo parlors going out of business either.

[linMcHlp]

Recession accounts for increase of Walmart shoppers.

Also, American refugees moving from crime to non-crime (hopefully) - Americans fleeing (liberals/realtors narrative/spin ignores).

[logi_cal869]

Votes - and willful submission to the true pandemic - have consequences.

The time to start worrying is when the coffee shops begin to close for other than ‘safety’ or ‘union’ matters.

Oops:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/starbucks-is-closing-7-locations-in-this-one-us-city/ar-AA1hOtn0

[faithhopecharity]

Meanwhile at all the Free Grocery places, all the cars in the parking lot are nice new or recent shiny models. Mostly Hondas, Accords, Toyotas, Lexuses, and so forth. But one guy was having a Heck of a time trying to stuff all of his newly-acquired Free Groceries into his nice new car. Difficult because it was so itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny. Porsche.

[doorgunner69]

“But they can afford drugs.”

Like the bums around where I live always have money for cigarettes.

And drugs, by implication.

[rexthecat]

Thousands of small towns in America are dying. They are slowly becoming ghosts as their populations continue on a long decline. This includes the small town in Eastern Washington where my German ancestors settled in the 1870’s. A hundred years ago 1,500 people lived there. Today, only 120 remain. Businesses, stores and schools have closed, reducing employment opportunities. Farm mechanization was the initial cause and it remains a major factor today. Most of the people who remain are poor, with limited access to goods and services.

[Jeff Chandler]

39 percent of Americans have been forced to skip meals

I don't believe that. Nutritious food can be incredibile inexpensive.

[nathanbedford]

If Trump was president, be sure you’d be seeing our screens flooded with images showing this.

I think there is a better than even chance that these are precisely the images that will flood our screens because there is a better than even chance that when Donald Trump takes the oath he will have inherited a giant, stinking turd of a rapidly sinking economy, soaring unemployment, tax shortfalls and kinetic threats abroad. It may come at a point when merely reviving the energy sector, cutting regs and taxes cannot become effective in time to write our sinking fiscal ship.

These remedies might well come too late to restore the nation's capacity to borrow because the nation has lost credibility altogether, leaving us with no capacity even when we, presumably, have the desire to borrow and spend our way past this next crisis.

Images of bread lines which confronted my parents in the 1930s are quite conceivable considering the precarious state of our federal, state and local finances. Sadly, our government institutions are no more profligate than our personal finances. Our credit card accounts, automobile repossessions, mortgage foreclosures, and general personal indebtedness data constitute but the tip of an iceberg of visible and submerged debt.

Our financial world is grotesquely leveraged in conventional terms but I for one cannot even begin to understand or contemplate the dimensions of our leveraged liabilities lurking in the dark corners of the world of derivatives.

Trump might inherit the bitter harvest of Democrat profligacy but have very few effective levers with which to work. Even if he knows what to do he might be prevented from doing that which he knows is necessary by a leftist Congress operating selfishly under air cover provided by the media.

A hardscrabble situation in which the rest of the country begins to look like those parts afflicted with the images described in this article means that Trump would likely be confronted with a desperate and disaffected citizenry that will turn not to the economics of the von Mises Institute but to the siren of Marxist class warfare.

The history of people in distress in modern times shows them turning reflexively not to the right but to the left. We have virtually no institution today in the United States upon which we can rely that will stand against the tide of demagoguery which must inevitably surge. One is hard-pressed today to name a single institution upon which we might rely today while the music still plays on so one is even more hard-pressed to conceive of an institution upon which we might rely in a world of want and hunger.

When Donald Trump lifts his hand from the Bible he might find he has very few cards to play.

[alexander_busek]

As I shared yesterday, I was absolutely shocked to learn that 39 percent of Americans have been forced to skip meals so that they will have enough money to make their housing payments…

Wow! When you consider that the homeownership rate in the U.S., as of 2021, stood at 65.5%, and many of those homeowners have already completely paid off their mortgages, that must mean that the overwhelming majority of American homeowners admit to "skipping meals" in order to make their house payments.

But what, exactly, do they mean by "skipping meals?" Do they perhaps mean not dining out as frequently? Then: Bravo!

Also, in view of obesity rates in America... Bravo!

Regards,