Posted on 07/24/2011 8:45:13 PM PDT by blam
Broke! 10 Facts About The Financial Condition Of American Families That Will Blow Your Mind
July 24, 2011
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.
If you happen to navigate all of these hurdles and make a profit, watch out for greedy unions waiting to suck the life out of your business. Then you face Obama and the socialist democrats at the end of the day wanting to redistribute your wealth demanding crushing taxes that strip away your working capital. He wants to redistribute it to people who don’t work or pay tax at all.
My view, let someone else be the crazy hero to put their life savings at risk to hire employees in this hostile employer environment. I think I will just get a computer to answer my phones, computerize every function of the office, I even have robot floor cleaners to avoid cleaning crews.
Truth is this country has made having employees a tremendous, beuracratic, expensive, legal risk. I am trying to keep the employees I have. However, this golden goose is on strike and will not be hiring further until it makes economic sense to do so.
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.
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Numbers 7 and 8 are misleading to say the least. When poverty statistics are formulated, they do NOT include all the “freebies” that people recieve from the taxpayers. So a family could be getting food stamps, free meals for the kids at school, free or subsidized housing and utilities, free medical care, and even a free cell phone! and none of that is counted as income. So they could be receiving all these benefits plus have some income but they are still counted as living in poverty.
It is not the “poor” who are being tooled. It’s the middle class. Pretty soon there won’t be one. We will have the very rich and the dependent class. Sounds like third world socialist hell doesn’t it?
Well, those uber uber rich are all in the tank for Obama...it is so easy to be liberal when you are set for 100 lifetimes. All the rest of us in what used to be the middle class - we are just crunchy things under the Democrat Fascist Jackboots. F - them.
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.
My vote is that the "federal government bureaucracy" destroys the economy -- if you are asking me to make a choice.
America has lost its industrial base, and so has lost its middle class.
What amazes me is that except for Donald Trump on the right and Dennis Kucinich on the left, no politician seems to care about this.
Why isn't Obama doing anything to bring US jobs back? Why isn't Palin or Romney screaming about this? I truly don't understand at all.
Maybe China will come in and take us over and we will be happy to kowtow to them as long as they assure that nobody gets any more than anybody else.
Oakland, California. Really good example of this.
It is government bureaucracy and fiscal policy that makes it enticing for corporations to move their operations to China. We need to fix the root cause, not treat the symptoms.
“Free trade”.
What does it really _cost_?
Just wonderin’...
For 50 years our elected federal representatives have sold us out for personal gain, grandizement or to further political or economic agendas not in the best interests of American citizens.
They are still doing it.
It might be too late to save the country for two reasons:
1 - They have intentionally brought in, or allowed in, so many foreigners who come here only for personal gain, not to become Americans as did the great waves of immigrants of the previous 100-200 years.
2 - They have created culture of dependance on the federal government and inculcated a sense of entitlement in a huge segment of the population. These people will vote for the politician who promises the most “free stuff”.
That makes it almost impossible for anyone who promises to end the handouts and wealth redistribution to get elected.
The gas prices are absolutely killing us, and my customers are slow to pay me, and the cycle is spiraling out of control...We are exhausted, and scared to death, always..
If but for the virtual majority of people on this board being rabid anti-union, NOBODY would be employed.
It has become popular on the left to hate America. (And, those ranks are growing) The American loving Democrats had to switch to the Republican party. That's why we have so many RINO's.
The left can't seem to condem America enough to the rest of the world...note, Clinton's and Obama's apologizing tours.
To be patriotic and American loving is no longer 'cool.' That's for fanatical, flag-waving, religious, right-wing nuts that don't know they're suppose to hate America. And, because you're not cool, they'll often add the word 'backward' in describing you.
They're only part of it, but yes, they're two of the root causes.
On the west-side of Michigan (N of Benton Harbor to several lenghts N, and several lengths W from the coast of Lake Michigan), they had to let the fields go fallow.
No workers to harvest the aaparegus crop.
I believe that the government should MAKE people work according to what the government says they should do (under the force of a gun-point). That most especially true if the people targeted are on welfare.
How long before we have to begin importing food?
“I believe that the government should MAKE people work according to what the government says they should do (under the force of a gun-point). That most especially true if the people targeted are on welfare.”
You seem to have forgotten a sarc tag.
So why aren't more people aware? The last "recovery" highlighted the problem -- remember it well here on FR. "nobody wants those buggy whip jobs!" "It's your fault that you are not prepared for those high paying jobs a comin' thanks to free trade. . . ."
Oh yeah?
This is from just one of Mr. Roach's columns. I like what he says here or at least I like what I think he is saying. I think this is the problem.
Top-class analysis from Stephen Roach (www.morganstanley.com) on the last "recovery." Excerpts:
"Wage and salary disbursements -- by far the dominant component of personal income -- are basically unchanged in real terms fully 21 months into this recovery [that'd be late 2003, early 2004 I believe]; by contrast, at this juncture in the past six upturns, real wage income has been up, on average, by about 9%. The gap between the current cycle and the norm of earlier cycles works out to a shortfall of about $320 billion in real terms, or 4.4% of the current level of real disposable personal income. In other words, the foreign sourcing of domestic demand via imported productivity has given rise to a significant income leakage that already has had a material impact on household purchasing power. Absent other sources of support -- tax cuts, home mortgage refinancing, or a renewal of vigorous hiring -- this shortfall of internally driven income generation could end up spelling serious trouble for the overly indebted, saving-short American consumer. In short, there's good reason to doubt the sustainability of a recovery built on a foundation of imported productivity."
Notice that Mr. Roach included home mortgage refinancing as a source for funding. Back then home equity was indeed a source and one that was encouraged by Fed Chairman Greenspan and the Bush Administration if I remember correctly. Look where being suckered-in got us.
P.S. I do not know if this column is still available to the public via Morgan-Stanley but parts and all are here and there about the 'Net.
"In short, there's good reason to doubt the sustainability of a recovery built on a foundation of imported productivity."
Call me a bigot.. please!
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