55 Interesting Facts About The U.S. Economy In 2012

FEBRUARY 23, 2012

How is the U.S. economy doing in 2012?  Unfortunately, it is not doing nearly as well as the mainstream media would have you believe.  Yes, things have stabilized for the moment but this bubble of false hope will not last for long.  The long-term trends that are ripping our economy and our financial system to shreds continue unabated.  When you step back and look at the broader picture, it is hard to deny that we are in really bad shape and that things are rapidly getting worse.  Later on in this article you will find a list of interesting facts that show the true state of the U.S. economy.  Hopefully many of you will find this list to be a useful tool that you can share with your family and friends.  Each day the foundations of our economy crumble a little bit more, and we need to wake up as many Americans as we can to what is really going on while there is still time.  We have accumulated way too much debt, we consume far more wealth than we produce, millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas, our big cities are decaying, family budgets are being squeezed more than ever, poverty is rampant and we have raised several generations of Americans that expect the government to fix all of their problems.  The U.S. economy is at a crossroads, and the decisions that the American people make in 2012 are going to be incredibly important.

The statistics listed below are presented without much commentary.  They pretty much speak for themselves.

After reading this list, it will be hard for anyone to argue that we are on the right track.

The following are 55 interesting facts about the U.S. economy in 2012….

#1 As you read this, there are more than 6 million mortgages in the United States that are overdue.

#2 In January, U.S. home prices were the lowest that they have been in more than a decade.

#3 In Florida right now, some drivers are paying nearly 6 dollars for a gallon of gas.

#4 On average, you could buy about 10 gallons of gas for an hour of work back in the mid-90s.  Today, the average hour of work will get you less than 6 gallons of gas.

#5 Sadly, 43 percent of all American families spend more than they earn each year.

#6 According to Gallup, the unemployment rate was at 8.3% in mid-January but rose to 9.0% in mid-February.

#7 The percentage of working age Americans that have jobs is not increasing.  The employment to population ratio has stayed very steady (hovering between 58% and 59%) since the beginning of 2010.

#8 If you gathered together all of the workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States into one nation, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the entire world.

#9 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million.  Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

#10 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

#11 According to Reuters, approximately 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.

#12 There are about 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment.  That is an all-time record high.

#13 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.

#14 Back in the year 2000, about 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.  Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs.

#15 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#16 Amazingly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.

#17 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#18 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent.

#19 An all-time record 49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all at this point, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.

#20 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.

#21 In the United States today, corporate profits are at an all-time high.  The percentage of Americans that are living in “extreme poverty” is also at an all-time high according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

#22 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

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

#24 The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent since 2007.

#25 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#26 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#27 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#28 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.  Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.

#29 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

#30 After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.

#31 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012.  If you went out right now and starting spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#32 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#33 Incredibly, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#34 The average interest rate on a credit card that is carrying a balance is now up to 13.10 percent.

#35 Of the U.S. households that do have credit card debt, the average amount of credit card debt is an astounding $15,799.

#36 Overall, Americans are carrying a grand total of $798 billion in credit card debt.  If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent a million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent $798 billion by now.

#37 It may be hard to believe, but the truth is that consumer debt in America has increased by a whopping 1700% since 1971.

#38 At this point, about 70 percent of all auto purchases in the United States involve an auto loan.

#39 In the United States today, 45 percent of all auto loans are made to subprime borrowers.

#40 Mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP has more than tripled since 1955.

#41 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#42 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.

#43 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850.  Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#44 The number of Americans that are not paying federal incomes taxes is at an all-time high.

#45 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#46 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#47 During 2012, the U.S. government must roll over nearly 3 trillion dollars of old debt.

#48 The U.S. debt to GDP ratio has now reached 101 percent.

#49 At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of $15,419,800,222,325.15.

#50 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

#51 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#52 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#53 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#54 Right now, the U.S. national debt is increasing by about 150 million dollars every single hour.

#55 Spending by the federal government accounted for about 2 percent of GDP back in 1800.  It accounted for 23.8 percent in 2011, and according to former U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, it will account for 36.8 percent of GDP by 2040.

Bad news, eh?

But it isn’t just our economy that is decaying.

We are witnessing a tremendous amount of social decay as well.  As I wrote about the other day, America is rapidly decomposing right in front of our eyes.

When the water level of a river drops far enough, it will reveal rocks that have been hidden from view for a very long time.  Well, a similar thing is happening in America right now.  For decades, our debt-fueled prosperity has masked a lot of the social decay that has been going on.

But now that our prosperity is evaporating, a lot of frightening stuff is being revealed.

Unfortunately, another major financial crisis is rapidly approaching and economic conditions in the United States are going to get a lot worse.

So what is our country going to look like when that happens?

That is a very good question.

this content is copyright protected 2012 by SEA CHANGE, llc.

Obama fails to deliver on deficit promise

FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Now that President Obama has gotten the platitudes out of the way, let’s see the real budget — one that combines necessary fiscal discipline with selected spending that will move the United States forward.

The spending end of his budget shows vision on the latter. His $3.8 trillion proposal also claims to reduce the deficit in the short run, assuming it is based on numbers that even come close to reality — a broad assumption; this is politics — and also cut it as a percentage of the gross domestic product within five years. But the national debt would continue to grow to $19.2 trillion by 2022. That’s the wrong direction.

The budget aims to increase spending for education, job creation and infrastructure improvements, all of which are connected on some level. He is right that we cannot “cut our way to growth” and that we must not allow our roads, bridges and institutions to deteriorate. But …

Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, a promise this budget does not keep. It does cut the deficit to $901 billion next year and to $612 billion by 2017 (down from this year’s projected $1.3 trillion). His budget aims to do that in part by raising taxes, especially on people with the highest incomes.

In a column published below, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank calls it a nonstarter — even Senate Democrats, who sit in the majority in that chamber, are balking. Republicans, pushing back against anything that could be construed as a tax increase, have effectively declared the plan dead on arrival.

Critics have a point that Obama’s budget recommendation is more than likely a campaign platform than a spending proposal with a realistic chance of getting through Congress. The Republican budget effort, led by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, may have more than a hint of election-season flavor, too, and neither is likely to stand much chance of passage as written.

The budget fight promises to be contentious, pitting Republicans’ stated mission to slash government spending — the consequences of which would fall hardest on the lower and middle classes — against Democratic pressure and widespread public support for measures to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Neither side has shown willingness to consider the reality that reducing the debt will take a combination of spending cuts and new revenue, including possible tax increases or expiration of President George W. Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy.

And there has been little if any movement toward meaningful debt-reduction talks since the issue came to a head last year over Obama’s proposal to increase the debt ceiling. A similar confrontation looms just around the corner.

The Bowles-Simpson commission provided a road map for cutting the debt, even if almost every American might have found something unpalatable in it. But this was a serious attempt to address a problem that, uncorrected, will pose a real risk to our economic and, possibly, national security. We may not be Greece, but we got a wake-up call when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating last year.

In an election year, when Republicans’ No. 1 goal is to make Obama a one-term president and his goal is to win another four years in the White House, it’s hard to imagine that any progress is possible.

In a small step in the right direction, it does appear that House and Senate negotiators have reached a compromise on extending the payroll tax. It would be good to see that cooperation extend into other areas where the two sides share some common ground.

this content is copyright protected 2012 by SEA CHANGE, llc.

18 Statistics That Prove That The Economy Has Not Improved Since Barack Obama Became President

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Has the economy improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States?  Of course not.  Despite what you may be hearing in the mainstream media, the truth is that when you compare the U.S. economy on the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated to the U.S. economy today, there is really no comparison.  The unemployment crisis is worse than it was then, home values have fallen, the cost of health insurance is up, the cost of gas is way up, the number of Americans living in poverty has soared and the size of our national debt has absolutely exploded.  Anyone that believes that things are better than they were when Barack Obama was elected is simply being delusional.  Yes, things have stabilized somewhat and our economy is not in free fall mode at this point.  But don’t be fooled.  This bubble of false hope will be short-lived.  The problems we are seeing develop in Europe will erupt into another full-fledged global financial crisis and economic conditions in the United States will get even worse.  When that happens, what possible ” economic solutions” will Barack Obama have for us?  We never even came close to recovering from the last great financial crisis, and now something potentially even worse is staring us in the face.  This is not a great time to have a total lack of leadership in Washington.

The following are 18 statistics that prove that the economy has not improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States….

#1 Today there are 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment.  That is an all-time record high.

#2 When Barack Obama was elected, the percentage of unemployed Americans that had been out of work for more than 52 weeks was less than 15%.  Today, it is above 30%.

#3 There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America today than there were when Barack Obama was inaugurated.

#4 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million.  Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

#5 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

#6 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent.

#7 Since Barack Obama has been president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased by 90 percent.

#8 Since Barack Obama has been president, home values in the United States have declined by another 13 percent.

#9 Under Barack Obama, new home sales in the U.S. set a brand new all-time record low in 2009, they set a brand new all-time record low again in 2010, and they set a brand new all-time record lowonce again during 2011.

#10 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by more than 6 million.

#11 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#12 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#13 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” is now sitting at an all-time high.

#14 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850.  Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#15 Since Barack Obama became president, the size of the U.S. national debt has increased by 44 percent.

#16 During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#17 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#18 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per daysince the beginning of the Obama administration.

Oh, but Barack Obama is promising that things will be much better very soon.  Barack Obama is pledging that 2 million more jobs will be added to the economy in 2012.

Do you believe him?

Congress certainly seems to think that things will be getting better.  Congress has reduced the maximum amount of time that the unemployed can receive unemployment benefits to 73 weeks.  That change will go into effect later this year.

But there are still millions of very talented Americans that cannot find work after years of looking.

So what are they supposed to do?

A recent Business Insider article featured the story of Helen Hatat, a woman from southern California that has been unemployed since 2009….

She lost her job in public relationships in 2009 after more than 20 years of working in the entertainment industry, the Southern California resident said.

“When you don’t have a job, you don’t find a job, and when you don’t have a job, you don’t find a home,” she said.

At first she tried moving into a homeless shelter, but left because they treated her “like garbage.” Eventually she found a friend she could stay with, but this arrangement won’t last forever.

“I’ve found you lose most of your friends, you know. If you have money people love you. If you don’t have any money people hate you. They treat you like you are contagious.“

As government finances get tight, things are going to get really tough for women like her.

When evaluating the health of the American economy, the key is not to focus on the short-term economic numbers.  Sometimes they go up and sometimes they do down.

Instead, the key is to look at the long-term balance sheet numbers.  When you do that, it quickly becomes apparent how appalling our economic decline has been.

The size of federal government debt is exploding, state and local governments all over the country are drowning in debt, our collective national wealth is decreasing and our ability to produce new wealth is also being reduced as our economic infrastructure is systematically gutted.

Of course all of the blame should not go to Obama.  The truth is that the Federal Reserve has much more power over the economy than Obama does.  But the American people are constantly told that the Federal Reserve is “not political” and that we should not criticize the Fed.

So it is kind of ridiculous that presidents are judged by the performance of the economy.  Yes, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama have all greatly contributed to the mess that we are in, but they are not solely responsible for it.

In the end, however, the outcome of the next presidential election will probably be very heavily influenced by how the U.S. economy performs during the rest of 2012.

Sadly, as our economy declines it is bringing out the worst in many Americans.  For example, “sugar daddy” websites are absolutely exploding in popularity.  Young women that are hungry for cash are selling their “services” to sick older men who are willing to finance the lifestyles of these desperate young women in exchange for “companionship”.

The following comes from a recent article in The Independent….

In America’s booming online dating market, few sectors are hotter than so-called “sugar daddy” sites, which help rich men to make “arrangements” with attractive and financially needy younger women. Between them, these specialist sites now account for 10 percent of the entire industry. That’s no small beans, given that in the US the online dating business now generates profits estimated at $700m ($442m) per year and, according to the polling firm GlobeSpan, has helped just over one in five Americans to find their life partner.

As the economy gets even worse, millions upon millions of Americans are going to become extremely desperate and will do things for money that they never dreamed that they would do.

That is a very frightening thing.

America is changing, and not for the better.

You better get ready for what is ahead, because Barack Obama is not going to save you.

this content is copyright protected 2012 by SEA CHANGE, llc.

Oh,The badly uniformed American Voter

by Austin Farrell

With the dust beginning to settle on the election/eviction and the demo-nuts spinning wildly in the media you'd think that the epic fail of the Pelosicrats is purely a problem of the american electorate. According to the hired talking heads (hi Alan!) the problem is that voters simply weren't paying attention when Mrs. Pelosi was teaching the class.

Sure.

Their admonishment sounds something like: When principal Obama gets ahold of us, we're darn well gonna understand that they know best for us and resistance is futile!

The only problem with their plan is the American people were correct in understanding that Progressivism is a destroyer of freedoms,not an builder of them.

What is regretable about the democratic party is that these true believers are not swayed at all and have completely hijacked the party.

Bill Clinton, the master triangulator, is worried deeply about the irreparable damage the ObamalosiReid Hydra has done to his party...

Oh, woe is Hillary. She originally thought that being banished to the political tundra of the State Department would keep her visible but somehow above the roiling discontent of the country. Whoops.

Apparently the dung spread by the progressives splashes higher and sticks much longer than all had hoped. Time for the scrubbling and sanitizing to begin. After all there's campaigning to do shortly and so the revisionist lying needs to start now

To the progressive's chagrin, America has been paying attention.

Now they get to stand in the corner. I'm just hoping the punishment includes Summer school in American history. Pay attention and take notes during the Constitution part of class Harry...

thank you Mike Hoover for the photo