Tag: Michael Snyder

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

A lot of ultra-rich people are quietly preparing to “bug out” when the time comes.  They are buying survival properties, they are buying farms in far away countries and they are buying deep underground bunkers.  In fact, a prominent insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland says that “very powerful people are telling us they’re scared” and he shocked his audience when he revealed that he knows “hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand”.

So what do they know?  Why are so many of the super wealthy suddenly preparing bug out locations?  When the elite of the world start preparing for doomsday, that is a very troubling sign.  And right now the elite appear to be quietly preparing for disaster like never before.

The insider that I mentioned above is named Robert Johnson.  He is the president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, and what he recently told a packed audience in Davos is making headlines all over the planet…

With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.

But he didn’t stop there.

In a separate interview, Johnson admitted that “very powerful people are telling us they’re scared” and that the elite “see increasing evidence of social instability and violence”.  You can watch video of the entire interview below…

Continue reading “What Do They Know? Why Are So Many Of The Super Wealthy Preparing Bug Out Locations?”

Guest Post by Michael Snyder

When the stock market starts to behave like a roller coaster, that is a sign that a major move to the downside is right around the corner.  As I have stated repeatedly, when the market is very calm it tends to go up.  But when the waters start getting really choppy, that is a clear indication that stocks are about to plummet.  In early 2015, volatility has returned to Wall Street in a big way.  At one point on Tuesday, the Dow was up more than 300 points.  But then the bottom dropped out.  From the peak on Tuesday, the Dow plunged nearly 700 points in less than 30 hours before recovering more than 100 points at the end of the day.  The Dow has now experienced the longest losing streak that we have seen in 3 months, but that is not that big of a deal.  Of much greater concern is the huge price swings that we have been seeing. Remember, the three largest single day stock market increases in history were right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008.  So if stocks go up 400 points tomorrow that is NOT a good sign.  What we really need is a string of days when stocks move less than 100 points in either direction.  If stocks keep making dramatic moves up and dramatic moves down, history tells us that it is only a matter of time before they collapse.  Any student of stock market history knows that what we are witnessing right now is exactly how markets behave right before they crash.

Examine the chart below very carefully.  It is a chart of the CBOE Volatility Index from 2006 to 2008.  As you can see, volatility was very low as stocks soared during 2006.  Then things started to get a bit choppy in 2007, and investors should have recognized this as a warning sign.  Finally, you can see that the VIX absolutely skyrocketed during the financial crisis of 2008…

Looking back, it seems so obvious.

So why aren’t more people alarmed this time around?

As CNN is reporting, the VIX is up almost 20 percent so far in 2015…

Volatility has returned with a vengeance this January. The Dow has been moving up or down by at least 100 points nearly every day this year.

CNNMoney’s Fear & Greed Index is showing signs of Extreme Fear again. And a volatility gauge known as the VIX, which is one of the components in our index, is up nearly 20% so far this year.

Meanwhile, there are lots of other signs of trouble on the horizon as well.

For example, the price of copper got absolutely hammered on Wednesday.  As I write this, it has fallen more than 5 percent and it has not been this low in more than five years.

In financial circles, it is referred to as “Dr. Copper” because it is such a valuable indicator regarding where the global economy is heading next.

For example, in 2008 the price of copper was close to $4.00 before plummeting to below $1.50 by the end of that year as the global financial system fell apart.

Now the price of copper is plunging again, and many analysts are becoming extremely concerned…

One growing global worry is the steep decline in copper, which is used in many products and is often viewed as good gauge on how China is doing. The price of copper hit its lowest price since 2009 on Wednesday at $2.46. Copper is down nearly 7% this week alone.

Meanwhile, the recession (some call it a depression) in Europe continues to get even worse, and the euro continues to plunge.

Continue reading “This Is Exactly How Markets Behave Right Before They Crash”

By Michael Snyder at End Of The American Dream blog

2014 was quite a bizarre year, wasn’t it?  The past 12 months brought us MH370, Ebola, civil war in Ukraine, civil unrest in Ferguson, the rise of ISIS and the fall of the Democrats in the midterm elections.  Our world is becoming crazier and more unstable with each passing day, and I have a feeling that things are going to accelerate greatly in 2015.  But for the moment things are relatively quiet as much of the world stops to celebrate the holiday season, so now is a good time to look back and see where we have been over the past year.  The facts that I am about to share with you sound false, but they are all quite true.  If you doubt any of these facts, just click the link on the number to find the source.  It has been said that truth is stranger than fiction, and that was definitely the case during the past 12 months.  In no particular order, the following are 50 numbers from 2014 that sound fake but that are actually real…

2.5 – Researchers have discovered that characters in cartoons for children are 2.5 times more likely to die than characters in adult dramas.  But as long as those characters look cute and make funny noises it must be okay.

$4.20 – The price of ground beef just hit a brand new record high of $4.20 a pound.  Exactly 10 years ago, it was just $2.21 a pound.  What do you think Clara Peller would say about this?

19.8 percent – This holiday season, nearly 20 percent of all American families are on food stamps.  But since the stock market is soaring, most of the rest of the country doesn’t seem to care.

$20 – If you want to “lock down that new man for Christmas”, you can buy a positive pregnancy test on Craigslist for just 20 dollars.

29.0 years – The average age when a man in America first gets married has reached an all-time high of 29.0 years.  Thus the need for the fake pregnancy tests.

31.1 percent – An astounding 31.1 percent of all U.S. young adults in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket are currently living with their parents.  But the good news is that demand for tacky basement decor is at an all-time high.

33 percent – According to the Wall Street Journal, close to one-third of all Americans have a file in the FBI’s master criminal database.

34.6 percent – According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in America officially meet the criteria for being obese.

36 – At this point only 36 percent of the U.S. population can name all three branches of government.

43 – The new EPA regulations issued while Barack Obama has been president are 43 times as long as the entire Bible.

45 percent – One survey discovered that 45 percent of all Americans “dread” the Christmas season.

48 percent – Only 48 percent of Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.

50 – An MIT research scientist is warning that if current trends continue 50 percent of all children in America will be autistic by the year 2025.

50 percent – Half of all college graduates in America are still financially dependent on their parents when they are two years out of college.

52 percent – According to a survey that was conducted earlier this year, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are currently living in right now.

54 percent – For the first time ever, more than half of all U.S. doctors support the legalization of assisted suicide.

57 percent – A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of all Americans consider race relations in America to be “bad”.  That is the worst number in 20 years.

59 percent – One very disturbing recent poll discovered that 59 percent of Americans are in favor of torturing our prisoners.

60 percent – In the United States today, 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees are earned by women.

64 percent – It would be a great understatement to say that pornography is popular with men in America.  This is true even among men that are supposed to be religious.  For example, one survey discovered that 64 percent of all Christian men ages 31 to 49 look at porn at least monthly.

65 percent – One shocking new poll found that 65 percent of Americans believe that the government is “broken”.  The shocking part of the survey was that it was only 65 percent.

65 percent – According to a Census Bureau report that was released in December, 65 percent of all children in America are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.

70 percent – Right now, about 70 percent of all government spending goes toward dependence-creating programs.

78 percent – According to a Pew Research Center study that was released earlier this year, 78 percent of U.S. women “want a spouse with a steady job”.  Apparently the other 22 percent want an unemployed bum that stays home all day playing video games.

85 percent – 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are now made in China, and there is a rumor that Santa and his elves are considering a permanent move to the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

1979 – The United States has become the nation of the “permanent emergency”.  In fact, there has been at least one “state of emergency” in effect in this country since 1979.

7,500 – The worldwide Ebola death toll has surpassed 7,500 for the first time, but most Americans seem to believe that the crisis is over.  The truth is that it may just be beginning.

20,000 – Right now McDonald’s has 14,267 locations in the United States, but payday lenders have more than 20,000.

$30,000 – According to the Social Security Administration, 52 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

80,000 – Back in 1980, there were only about 3,000 SWAT raids conducted in the United States.  But today, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year in this country.

100,000 – It is estimated that there are at least 100,000 underage sex workers in the United States.  In case you were wondering, yes that means that we are a very sick nation.

$1,000,000 – We are supposed to be a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, but at this point more than half the members of Congress are millionaires.

1,400,000 – Thanks in large part to unchecked illegal immigration, there are now 1.4 million members of criminal gangs living in our cities.

2,400,000 – There are currently more than 2.4 million people behind bars in America, and since 1980 the number of people incarcerated in our prisons has quadrupled.

2,500,000 – According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, there are now 2.5 million homeless children in the United States.

4,000,000 – Right now there are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

9,700,000 – Almost 10 million more Americans have enrolled in Medicaid since Obamacare first launched.

15,000,000 – More than 15 million Americans have cosmetic procedures done each year, and Christmas is the busiest season of the year for plastic surgeons.

30,000,000 – In America today, more than 30 million Americans are taking antidepressants.  And keep in mind that antidepressants are only one class of pharmaceutical drug.  Overall, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are currently on at least one prescription drug according to the Mayo Clinic.

$40,000,000 – More than 40 million dollars has been spent just on vacations for Barack Obama and his family since he has been in the White House.

49,000,000 – An astounding 49 million Americans are considered to be facing food insecurity at this point.

110,000,000 – Approximately one-third of the entire population of the United States (110 million people) currently has a sexually transmitted disease according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

156,600,000 – The population of Bangladesh (156,600,000) is actually larger than the population of Russia (143,500,00).  But nobody is scared of Bangladesh.

3,000,000,000 – For the first time ever, there are now more than 3 billion people on the Internet around the globe.  I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

$600,000,000,000 – Americans will spend more than 600 billion dollars this Christmas season.  That is an amount of money greater than the entire GDP of Sweden.

$1,200,000,000,000 – Student loan debt has hit a grand total of 1.2 trillion dollars in the United States.  That number has grown by about 84 percent just since 2008.

$2,000,000,000,000 – The war in Iraq cost U.S. taxpayers more than 2 trillion dollars, but now a radical jihadist terror organization known as ISIS controls nearly a third of the entire country.

5,000,000,000,000 – There are now 5 trillion little pieces of plastic floating around in the oceans of the world, and lots more plastic is being dumped into our oceans every single day.

$18,031,021,541,347.52 – The current size of the U.S. national debt.  It increased by more than a trillion dollars during the fiscal year that ended a few months ago, and it is on pace to approximately double during Obama’s eight years in the White House.

$40,000,000,000,000 – There are five “too big to fail” banks in the United States that each have more than 40 TRILLION dollars worth of exposure to derivatives.  This is a “sword of Damocles” that could destroy our financial system and our entire economy at any time.  Let’s just hope that it does not happen in 2015.

So what numbers would you add to this list?

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/50-numbers-from-2014-that-sound-fake-but-that-are-actually-real

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The End of The American Dream blog,

Do you ever feel like you are living in a “Bizarro World”?  That is how I feel much of the time.  I look around and it seems as though some form of mass psychosis has descended on most of the population.  Things that would have had Americans angrily marching in the streets a generation or two ago are now just accepted as “normal” by the “sheeple” that populate this nation.  If the talking heads that endlessly spew nonsense at us through our televisions tell us to believe something, no matter how absurd it is, most people just go along with it.  Before we had televisions and radios and computers and movies and the Internet, people actually had to do the hard work of thinking for themselves.  But now we are all plugged into this giant “matrix” that tells us what to think, what to believe and how to feel about things.  And unfortunately, the people that are telling us what to think and believe are delusional themselves.  The blind are leading the blind, and as a result our nation is coming apart at the seams all around us.

The following are 19 signs that you live in a country that has gone completely insane…

#1 When those occupying the highest offices in the land tell you that an $18,000,000,000,000 debt is “under control“, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#2 When your president starts acting like an emperor and begins ruling by decree and your elected representatives won’t lift a finger to do anything to stop it, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#3 When the greatest dream in life for millions of your fellow citizens is to win the Powerball jackpot, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#4 When dressing up sex dolls in fashionable clothing and photographing them is considered to be art, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#5 When only 36 percent of the population can name all three branches of government, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#6 When a boy can sue his high school for not letting him use the girls’ restrooms and win $75,000 in “damages”, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#7 When people that want to have sex with their own family members start demanding “equal rights”, you live in a country that has gone completely insane…

#8 When pregnancy is considered to be a “disease” and babies are considered to be “liabilities”, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#9 When the federal government collects billions of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about it, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#10 When 30 million of your fellow citizens are taking antidepressants, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#11 When an endless stream of gang members, drug dealers, sexual predators, welfare parasites and Middle Eastern terrorists can enter the country illegally and nothing is done, but anyone who criticizes this is in danger of being put on an “enemies list“, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#12 When you can get arrested for “encouraging terrorism on Twitter“, but not for publicly burning the American flag in the middle of the street, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#13 When your military airdrops huge loads of weapons into the hands of the very terrorists that they are supposed to be fighting, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#14 When there are 2.5 million homeless children living in your nation and nobody is calling it a “national emergency”, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#15 When a fifth-grade student can get suspended from school for making an imaginary gun with his fingers, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#16 When Congress has to pass a law to keep federal workers from watching porn all day long, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#17 When the number of payday lenders is greater than the number of Starbucks locations, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#18 When an illegal immigrant can get a drivers’ license, but the head of a fire department of a major U.S. city is suspended from his job without pay for promoting sexual morality, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

#19 When the general public knows far more about Kim Kardashian than it does about the Federal Reserve, you live in a country that has gone completely insane.

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The End of The American Dream blog,

If you could stay home and watch television, play video games and hang out with your friends all day at government expense, would you do it?  Of course most Americans that collect money from the government each month are not abusing the system.  Many truly are incapable of taking care of themselves, and others are just receiving government benefits (such as Social Security) that they feel that they have earned by a lifetime of hard work.  But with each passing year the number of Americans jumping on board “the safety net” continues to grow rapidly, and a lot of these people should be able to take care of themselves.  Today, the American people collectively receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes.  And remember, the federal government uses our money to build roads, inspect our food and fund the military as well.  So what does this say about our economy?  Could it survive without all of these debt-fueled transfer payments?  And what does this say about our society?  At one time, our nation was known for our work ethic.  What would our forefathers say about us today?  The following are 21 facts that prove that dependence on the government is out of control in America…

1. According to a Congressional Budget Office study that was just released, approximately 60 percent of all U.S. households get more in transfer payments from the government than they pay in taxes.  Here is more about this stunning report from Mark J. Perry’s Carpe Diem blog…

Some additional analysis and commentary will be provided here that reveal a yet-to-be discussed major implication of the CBO report – almost the entire burden: a) of all transfer payments made to American households and b) of all non-financed government spending, falls on just one group of Americans – the top one-fifth of US households by income. That’s correct, the CBO study shows that the bottom three income quintiles representing 60% of US households are “net recipients” (they receive more in transfer payments than they pay in federal taxes), the second-highest income quintile pays just slightly more in federal taxes ($14,800) than it receives in government transfer payments ($14,100), while the top 20% of American “net payer” households finance 100% of the transfer payments to the bottom 60%, as well as almost 100% of the tax revenue collected to run the federal government. Here are the details of that analysis.

 

 

The figures in Row 6 in the table above (and displayed in the graph above) show the amount of federal taxes paid by the average household in each income quintile minus the average amount of government transfers received by those households in 2011. For each of the three lower income quintiles, their average government transfer payments exceeded their federal taxes paid by $8,600, $12,500, and $9,100 respectively, and therefore the entire bottom 60% of US households are “net recipients” of government transfer payments.

2. About 70 percent of all government spending now goes toward dependence-creating programs.

3. From 2009 through 2013, the U.S. government spent a whopping 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs.

4. The percentage of the U.S. population that gets money from the federal government grew by an astounding 62 percent between 1988 and 2011.

5. According to an analysis of U.S. government numbers conducted by Terrence P. Jeffrey, there are 86 million full-time private sector workers in the United States paying taxes to support the government, and nearly 148 million Americans that are receiving benefits from the government each month.

6. According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  Sadly, that figure does not even include Social Security or Medicare.

7. Currently, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens in the United States.  By 2050, that number is projected to skyrocket to 89 million.  Supporting all of those senior citizens is going to be extraordinarily expensive.

8. Right now, more than 64 million Americans are receiving Social Security benefits.

9. Right now, more than 54 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare.

10. Right now, more than 70 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid.

11. The number of Americans enrolled in the Social Security disability program now exceeds the entire population of the state of Virginia.

12. If the number of Americans on Social Security disability were gathered into a separate state, it would be the 8th largest state in the entire country.

13. In 1968, there were 51 full-time workers for every American on disability.  Today, there are just 13 full-time workers for every American on disability.

14. At this point, the federal government runs about 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and almost all of those programs have experienced substantial growth in recent years.

15. The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 46 million today.

16. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

17. 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.

18. Today, the number of Americans on food stamps exceeds the entire population of the nation of Spain.

19. 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.”

20. According to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, 43 percent of all immigrants that have been in the United States for at least 20 years are still on welfare.

21. Most Americans are not earning enough to support themselves and their families without government help anymore.  The following are some statistics about wages in the U.S. from a Social Security Administration report that was recently released…

-39 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-52 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-63 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-72 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

In order to have a middle class, you have got to have middle class jobs, and those are disappearing from our system very rapidly.

As a result, the number of people that are financially independent continues to drop.

So what will the future look like?

Will the government eventually have to take care of almost all of us?

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Do you want to know why Millennials seem so angry?  We promised them that if they worked hard, stayed out of trouble and got good grades that they would be able to achieve the “American Dream”.  We told them not to worry about accumulating very high levels of student loan debt because there would be good jobs waiting for them at the end of the rainbow once they graduated.  Well, it turns out that we lied to them.  Nearly half of all Millennials are spending at least half of their paychecks to pay off debt, more than 30 percent of them are living with their parents because they can’t find decent jobs, and this year the homeownership rate for Millennials sunk to a brand new all-time low.  When you break U.S. adults down by age, our long-term economic decline has hit the Millennials the hardest by far.  And yet somehow we expect them to bear the burden of providing Medicare, Social Security and other social welfare benefits to the rest of us as we get older.  No wonder there is so much anger and frustration among our young people.  The following are 24 reasons why Millennials are screaming mad about our unfair economy…

#1 The current savings rate for Millennials is negative 2 percent.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Not only aren’t Millennials saving any money, they are actually spending a good bit more than they are earning every month.

#2 A survey conducted earlier this year found that 47 percent of all Millennials are using at least half of their paychecks to pay off debt.

#3 For U.S. households that are headed up by someone under the age of 40, average wealth is still about 30 percent below where it was back in 2007.

#4 In 2005, the homeownership rate for U.S. households headed up by someone under the age of 35 was approximately 43 percent.  Today, it is sitting at about 36 percent.

#5 One recent survey discovered that an astounding 31.1 percent of all U.S. adults in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket are currently living with their parents.

#6 At this point, the top 0.1 percent of all Americans have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined.  Needless to say, there aren’t very many Millennials in that top 0.1 percent.

#7 Since Barack Obama has been in the White House, close to 40 percent of all 27-year-olds have spent at least some time unemployed.

#8 Only about one out of every five 27-year-olds owns a home at this point, and an astounding 80 percent of all 27-year-olds are paying off debt.

#9 In 2013, the ratio of what men in the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket were earning compared to what the general population was earning reached an all-time low.

#10 Back in the year 2000, 80 percent of all men in their late twenties had a full-time job.  Today, only 65 percent do.

#11 In 2012, one study found that U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#12 Another study released back in 2011 discovered that U.S. households led by someone 65 years of age or older are 47 times wealthier than U.S. households led by someone 35 years of age or younger.

#13 Half of all college graduates in America are still financially dependent on their parents when they are two years out of college.

#14 In 1994, less than half of all college graduates left school with student loan debt.  Today, it is over 70 percent.

#15 At this point, student loan debt has hit a grand total of 1.2 trillion dollars in the United States.  That number has grown by about 84 percent just since 2008.

#16 According to the Pew Research Center, nearly four out of every ten U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 40 are currently paying off student loan debt.

#17 In 2008, approximately 29 million Americans were paying off student loan debt.  Today, that number has ballooned to 40 million.

#18 Since 2005, student loan debt burdens have absolutely exploded while salaries for young college graduates have actually declined…

The problem developing is that earnings and debt aren’t moving in the same direction. From 2005 to 2012, average student loan debt has jumped 35%, adjusting for inflation, while the median salary has actually dropped by 2.2%.

#19 According to CNN, 260,000 Americans with a college or professional degree made at or below the federal minimum wage last year.

#20 Even after accounting for inflation, the cost of college tuition increased by 275 percent between 1970 and 2013.

#21 In the years to come, much of the burden of paying for Medicare for our aging population will fall on Millennials.  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.  In addition, it has been estimated that Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.  That comes to approximately $328,404 for every single household in the United States.

#22 In the years to come, much of the burden of paying for our exploding Medicaid system will fall on Millennials.  Today, more than 70 million Americans are on Medicaid, and it is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#23 In the years to come, much of the burden of paying for our massive Ponzi scheme known as Social Security will fall on Millennials.  Right now, there are more than 63 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits.  By 2035, that number is projected to soar to an astounding 91 million.  In 1945, there were 42 workers for every retiree receiving Social Security benefits.  Today, that number has fallen to 2.5 workers, and if you eliminate all government workers, that leaves only 1.6 private sector workers for every retiree receiving Social Security benefits.

#24 Our national debt is currently sitting at a grand total of $17,937,617,036,693.09.  It is on pace to roughly double during the Obama years, and Millennials are expected to service that debt for the rest of their lives.

Yes, there are certainly some Millennials that are flat broke because they are lazy and irresponsible.

But there are many others that have tried to do everything right and still find that they can’t get any breaks.  For example, Bloomberg recently shared the story of a young couple named Jason and Jessica Alinen…

The damage inflicted on U.S. households by the collapse of the housing market and recession wasn’t evenly distributed. Just ask Jason and Jessica Alinen.

 

The couple, who live near Seattle, declared bankruptcy in 2011 when the value of the house they then owned plunged to less than $200,000 from the $349,000 they paid for it four years earlier, just as the economic slump was about to start. Jason even stopped getting haircuts to save money.

 

“We thought we’d have a white picket fence, two kids, two dogs, and we’d have $100,000 in equity,” said Jason, 33, who does have two children. “It’s just really frustrating.”

Can you identify with them?

Most young Americans just want to work hard, buy a home and start a family.

But for millions of them, that dream might as well be a million miles away right now.

Unfortunately, most of them have absolutely no idea why this has happened.

Many of them end up blaming themselves.  Many of them think that they are not talented enough or that they didn’t work hard enough or that they don’t know the right people.

What they don’t know is that the truth is that decades of incredibly foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way, and they just happen to be caught in the crossfire.

Sadly, instead of becoming informed about what is happening to our country, a very large percentage of our young people are absolutely addicted to entertainment instead.

Below, I want to share with you a video that I recently came across.  You can find it on YouTube right here.  A student at Texas Tech University recently asked some of her classmates a series of questions.  When they were asked about Brad Pitt or Jersey Shore they knew the answers right away.  But when they were asked who won the Civil War or who the current Vice-President of the United States is, they deeply struggled.  I think that this video says a lot about where we are as a society today…

 

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Most people that discuss the “economic collapse” focus on what is coming in the future.  And without a doubt, we are on the verge of some incredibly hard times.  But what often gets neglected is the immense permanent damage that has been done to the U.S. economy by the long-term economic collapse that we are already experiencing.  In this article I am going to share with you 12 economic charts that show that we are in much, much worse shape than we were five or ten years ago.  The long-term problems that are eating away at the foundations of our economy like cancer have not been fixed.  In fact, many of them continue to get even worse year after year.  But because unprecedented levels of government debt and reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve have bought us a very short window of relative stability, most Americans don’t seem too concerned about our long-term problems. 

They seem to have faith that our “leaders” will be able to find a way to muddle through whatever challenges are ahead.  Hopefully this article will be a wake up call.  The last major wave of the economic collapse did a colossal amount of damage to our economic foundations, and now the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.

#1 Employment

The mainstream media is constantly telling us about the “employment recovery” that is happening in the United States, but the truth is that it is just an illusion.  As the chart below demonstrates, just prior to the last recession about 63 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  During the last wave of the economic collapse, that number dropped to below 59 percent and stayed there for a very long time.  In the past few months we have finally seen the employment-population ratio tick back up to 59 percent, but we are still far, far below where we used to be.  To call the tiny little bump at the end of this chart a “recovery” is really an insult to our intelligence…

 

#2 The Labor Force Participation Rate

The percentage of Americans that are either employed or currently looking for a job started to fall during the last recession and it has not stopped falling since then.  The labor force participation rate has now fallen to a 36 year low, and this is a sign of a very, very sick economy…

 

#3 The Inactivity Rate For Men In Their Prime Years

Some blame the decline in the labor force participation rate on the aging of our population.  But it isn’t just elderly people that are dropping out of the labor force.  In fact, the inactivity rate for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) continues to rise and is now at the highest level that has ever been recorded…

 

#4 Manufacturing Employees

Once upon a time in America, anyone that was reliable and willing to work hard could easily find a manufacturing job somewhere.  But we have stood by and allowed millions upon millions of good paying manufacturing jobs to be shipped out of the country, and now many of our formerly great manufacturing cities have been transformed into ghost towns.  Over the past few years, there has been a slight “recovery”, but we are still well below where we were at just previous to the last recession…

 

#5 Our Current Account Balance

As a nation, we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  In other words, we perpetually consume far more wealth than we produce.  This is a recipe for national economic suicide.  Our current account balance soared to obscene levels just prior to the last recession, and now we have almost gotten back to those levels…

 

#6 Existing Home Sales

Our economy has never fully recovered from the housing crash of 2007-2008.  As you can see from the chart below, the number of existing home sales is still far below the level that we hit back in 2006.  At this point we are just getting back to the level we were at in 2000, but our population today is far larger than it was back then…

 

#7 New Home Sales

Things are even more dramatic when you look at new home sales.  This is an industry that have been absolutely emasculated.  The number of new home sales in the United States is just a little more than half of what it was back in 2000, and it isn’t even worth comparing to what we experienced during the peak of 2006.

 

#8 The Monetary Base

In a desperate attempt to get the economy going again, the Federal Reserve has been wildly printing money.  It has been so reckless that it is hard to put it into words.  When I look at this chart, the phrase “Weimar Republic” comes to mind…

 

#9 Food Inflation

Thankfully, much of the money that the Federal Reserve has been injecting into the system has not made it into the real economy.  But enough of it has gotten into the system to force food prices significantly higher.  For example, my wife went to the store today and paid just a shade under 10 bucks for just four pieces of chicken.  And as you can see from the chart below, food prices have been steadily going up in America for a very long time…

 

#10 The Velocity Of Money

One of the reasons why we have not seen even more inflation is because the velocity of money is extraordinarily low.  In general, when an economy is healthy money tends to flow through the system rapidly.  People are buying and selling and money changes hands frequently.  But when an economy is sick, money tends to stagnate.  And that is exactly what is happening in the United States right now.  In fact, at this point the velocity of the M2 money stock has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

 

#11 The National Debt

As our economic fundamentals have deteriorated, our politicians have attempted to prop up our standard of living by borrowing from the future.  The U.S. national debt is on pace to approximately double during the Obama years, and it increased by more than a trillion dollars in fiscal year 2014 alone.  Despite assurances that “the deficit is under control”, the federal government borrows about a trillion dollars a year to fund new spending in addition to borrowing about 7 trillion dollars to pay off old debt that is coming due.  What we are doing to future generations of Americans is absolutely criminal, and it is just a matter of time before this Ponzi scheme totally collapses…

 

#12 Total Debt

Of course it is not just the federal government that is gorging on debt.  When you add up all forms of debt in our society (government, business, consumer, etc.) it comes to a grand total of more than 57 trillion dollars.  This total has more than doubled since the year 2000…

If you know anyone that believes that we are in good economic shape, just show them these charts.

The numbers do not lie.  Our economy is sick and it is getting sicker by the day.

And of course the next major financial crisis could strike at any time.  U.S. stocks just experienced their worst week in three years, and if cases of Ebola start popping up around the country the fear that would cause could collapse our economy all by itself.

The debt-fueled prosperity that we are enjoying today is not real.  We are living on the fumes of our past, and every single day our long-term problems get even worse.

Anyone with half a brain should be able to see what is coming.

Sadly, most Americans will continue to deny the truth until it is far too late.

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog,

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel, says that society would be far better off if people quit trying to live past age 75.  His new article entitled “Why I Hope To Die At 75” has the following very creepy subtitle: “An argument that society and families—and you – will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly”.  In the article, Emanuel forcefully argues that the quality of life for most people is significantly diminished past the age of 75 and that once we get to that age we should refuse any more medical care that will extend our lifespans.  This is quite chilling to read, considering the fact that this is coming from one of the key architects of Obamacare.  Of course he never uses the term “death panels” in his article, but that is obviously what Emanuel would want in a perfect world.  To Emanuel, it is inefficient to waste medical resources on those that do not have a high “quality of life”.  So he says that “75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop”.

Emanuel believes in this philosophy so much that he says that he would like to die at age 75.  Of course he has no intention of committing suicide, but if he happened to drop dead once he hits his 75th birthday he would be very happy about that.  The following is an excerpt from his new article…

I am talking about how long I want to live and the kind and amount of health care I will consent to after 75. Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal.

 

I reject this aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop.

And so Emanuel plans to start rejecting pretty much all medical tests and treatments that will prolong his life once he reaches that age…

At 75 and beyond, I will need a good reason to even visit the doctor and take any medical test or treatment, no matter how routine and painless. And that good reason is not “It will prolong your life.” I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings, or interventions. I will accept only palliative—not curative—treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability.

 

This means colonoscopies and other cancer-screening tests are out—and before 75. If I were diagnosed with cancer now, at 57, I would probably be treated, unless the prognosis was very poor. But 65 will be my last colonoscopy. No screening for prostate cancer at any age. (When a urologist gave me a PSA test even after I said I wasn’t interested and called me with the results, I hung up before he could tell me. He ordered the test for himself, I told him, not for me.) After 75, if I develop cancer, I will refuse treatment.

 

Similarly, no cardiac stress test. No pacemaker and certainly no implantable defibrillator. No heart-valve replacement or bypass surgery. If I develop emphysema or some similar disease that involves frequent exacerbations that would, normally, land me in the hospital, I will accept treatment to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the feeling of suffocation, but will refuse to be hauled off.

A couple of decades ago, an article like this would have sparked mass public outrage.

But today, this article hardly even gets any attention.

That is because this kind of philosophy has spread everywhere.  It is being taught at colleges and universities across the United States and it is even represented throughout the ranks of the Obama administration.

For example, Barack Obama’s top science adviser John P. Holdren believes that implanting sterilization capsules under the skin of women could be a way to reduce the size of the population and increase the quality of life for everyone…

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

 

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

Yes, this guy is a total nutjob.

But he also has the ear of the man occupying the White House.

And we are not just talking about a few isolated crazies like Holdren.  This agenda have been fully embraced by our politicians in Washington.

For instance, did you know that the federal government actually has an “Office of Population Affairs“?

On the website of the Office of Population Affairs, you can find information about abortion, female sterilization, male sterilization and a vast array of contraceptive choices.

U.S. taxpayers are paying for all of this, but most people don’t even know that it exists.

Of course this agenda has been moved forward by both Democrats and Republicans for decades.

And the woman that is very likely to be our next president is also a very strong proponent of this philosophy.

When Hillary Clinton accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award back in 2009, she spoke glowingly of Sanger…

In a speech to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Awards Gala, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she admires “Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision.” Secretary Clinton said she is “really in awe of” Sanger for Sanger’s early work in Brooklyn, New York, “taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions.”

But the truth is that Sanger was deeply racist and was determined to do whatever she could to help control the population growth of the poor.  The following is one of her most famous statements…

“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

Hillary Clinton is also a huge supporter of the United Nations Population Fund.  If you are not familiar with the United Nations Population Fund, it is an organization that funds abortion, forced sterilization and brutal eugenics programs throughout the developing world.

Population control advocates such as Emanuel, Holdren and Clinton are fully convinced that they are doing the right thing.

They actually believe that the world will be a better place if less people are born and if the elderly do not live as long.

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace.  Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment.  But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate. 

Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working has gone way down, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously.  Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline for five years in a row, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high.  Being a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs.  We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing.  The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?

And in this economy, you don’t even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class.  Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly.  Bloomberg calls this “the no-raises recovery”…

Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.

 

Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.

There are so many families out there that are struggling right now.  So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don’t even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions.  Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class.  And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years.  Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.

The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed…

1. In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall.  But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall.

2. According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.

3. One out of every seven Americans rely on food banks at this point.

4. One out of every four military families needs help putting enough food on the table.

5. 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase “inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families”.

6. One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“.

7. Only 48 percent of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.

8. The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families.  For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high of $3.884 a pound.

9. According to one recent study, 40 percent of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now.

10. The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.

11. The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at an all-time low.

12. According to one recent survey, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.

13. The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years.

14. Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made to someone with subprime credit.

15. Amazingly, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

16. One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job.

17. 36 percent of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement.

18. According to one survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

19. More than half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year in wages.

20. Only four of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor’s degree or better.

21.  In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency.

22. Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.

23. Median household income in the United States is about 7 percent lower than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation.

24. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

25. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

26. According to one study, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.

27. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

28. If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn’t have more than a million public school children that are homeless.

29. If you can believe it, Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.

30. In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now in just 19th place in the world.