The US Economy Works
for the Mega-Banks that Financial Deregulation Permitted and for the One Percent but for No One Else
37 Facts About How
Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families
First published in October 2012
Have you ever laid in bed awake at night with a knot
in your stomach because you didn’t know how your family was possibly going to
make it through the next month financially?
Have you ever felt the
desperation of not being able to provide the basic necessities for your family
even though you tried as hard as you could?
All over America tonight,
there are millions of desperate families that are being ripped apart by this
economy. There aren’t nearly enough jobs, and millions of Americans that
actually do have jobs aren’t making enough to even provide the basics for their
families.
When you have tried everything that you can think of
and nothing works, it can be absolutely soul crushing. Today, one of my
regular readers explained that he was not going to be online for a while
because his power had been turned off. He has been out of work for quite
a while, and eventually the money runs out. Have you ever been
there? If you have ever experienced that moment, you know that it stays
with you for the rest of your life. If you are single that is bad enough,
but when you have to look into the eyes of your children and explain to them
why there won’t be any dinner tonight or why they have to move into a homeless
shelter it can feel like someone has driven a stake into your heart. In
this article you will find a lot of very shocking economic statistics.
But please remember that behind each statistic are the tragic stories of
millions of desperately hurting American families.
Over the past decade, things have steadily gotten
worse for American families no matter what our politicians have tried.
Poverty and government dependence continue to rise. The cost of living
continues to go up and incomes continue to go down. It is truly
frightening to think about what this country is going to look like if current
trends continue.
The following are 37 facts that show how cruel this
economy has been to millions of desperate American families…
1. One
recent survey discovered that 40 percent of
all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
2. A
different recent survey found that 28 percent of
all Americans do not have a single penny saved for
emergencies.
3. In
the United States today, there are close to 10 million households that do not have a single bank account.
That number has increased by about a million since 2009.
4. Family
homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in
the entire country) has risen 23 percent since
the last recession began.
5. The
number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over
the past four years.
6. Median
household income has fallen for four years in a row. Overall, it has
declined by
more than $4000 over
the past four years.
7. 62
percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
8. According
to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of
middle class Americans say that it is more difficult to maintain a middle class
standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.
9. In
the United States today, 77 percent of
all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
10. In
the United States today, more than 41 percent of
all working age Americans are not working.
11. Since
January 2009, the “labor force” in the United States has increased by 827,000,
but “those not in the labor force” has increased by 8,208,000.
This is how they have gotten the unemployment numbers to “come down”.
12. Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were
mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low
wage jobs.
13. Today,
about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages
that are at or below the federal poverty level.
14. Right
now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of
workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
15. At
this point, less than 25 percent of
all jobs in the United States are “good jobs”, and that number continues to
shrink.
16. There
are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on
housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
17. According
to USA Today, many
Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.
18. Electricity
bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
19. In
1999, 64.1 percent of
all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today,
only 55.1 percent are
covered by employment-based health insurance.
20. Health
insurance premiums rose faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once again in 2012. In fact, it has been happening for a very long
time.
21. According
to one recent survey, approximately 10 percent of all employers in the United States plan to
drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in
less than two years from now.
22. Back
in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners had 62 cents of debt for
every dollar that they earned. By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
23. Total
home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than
it was just 20 years ago.
24. Total
consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.
25. Recently
it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
26. According
to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this
point.
27. Right
now, approximately 25 million American
adults are living at home with their parents.
28. The
percentage of Americans that find that they are able to retire when they reach
retirement age continues to decline. According to one new survey,
70 percent of middle class Americans plan to work during retirement and 30
percent plan to work until they are at least 80 years old.
29. The
U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
30. In
2010, the number of jobs created at new businesses in the United States was less
than half of what it was
back in the year 2000.
31. Back
in 2007, 19.2 percent of
all American families had a net worth of zero or less than zero. By 2010,
that figure had soared to 32.5 percent.
32. Approximately 57 percent of
all children in the United States are living in homes that are either
considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
33. In
the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near
poor”.
34. In
October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, 46.7
million Americans are
on food stamps.
35. Approximately one-fourth of
all children in the United States are enrolled in the food stamp program.
36. Right
now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run
by the federal government. And that does not even count Social Security
or Medicare.
37. According
to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of
all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial
assistance from the federal government. Back in 1983, that number was
less than 30 percent.
What makes all of this even more frightening is that
many homeless shelters and food banks around the nation are so overloaded at
this point that they are already over capacity. Just consider this example…
When Janice Coe, a homeless advocate in Loudoun
County, learned through her prayer group that a young woman was sleeping in the
New Carrollton Metro station with a toddler and a 2-month-old, she sprang into
action.
Coe contacted the young woman and arranged for her to
take the train to Virginia, where she put the little family up in a Comfort
Suites hotel. Then Coe began calling shelters to see who could take them.
Despite several phone calls, she came up empty. Coe
was shocked to learn that many of the local shelters that cater to families
were full, including Good Shepherd Alliance, where Coe was once director of
social services.
“I don’t know why nobody will take this girl in,” Coe
said. “The baby still had a hospital bracelet on her wrist.”
Keep in mind that Loudoun Country is smack dab in the
middle of one of the wealthiest areas of Virginia.
So if things are that bad in the wealthy areas,
exactly how bad are things getting in many of the poorer areas?
Unfortunately, things continue to get worse for this
economy. DuPont has just announced plans to eliminate 1,500 jobs.
There are more major layoff announcements almost every single day. So how
bad will things get when our crumbling economic system finally collapses? When kind of chaos will
be unleashed all
over the nation when millions upon millions of Americans finally lose all hope?
In the introduction to this article, I mentioned that
one of my regular readers has had his lights turned off. The following is
how he described his
situation…
No gas, no water, no electricity at my house. Couldn’t
pay the bills. I’m broke. Desperately searching for any means of income, or at
least enough cash to get the juice (electricity) restored.
Typing this missive in a dark house using the battery
on my laptop. Feels like I’m camping out at home. Hope to get this situation
fixed tomorrow… somehow. Needless to say, I *…. hate this.
I was ready for this, but it is still a major league
inconvenience. For those of you who DO have power, etc. – and are not ready… oh
brother. You need to get ready. Seriously, you do. Because what I’m going
through is just an inconvenience. It may someday be a normal occurence. Ugh.
(expletives deleted)
Hopefully a way can be found to get his situation
turned around, but the truth is that there are tens of millions of other similar
stories out there in America today.
What about you? What are things like in your
neck of the woods? Please feel free to share your thoughts below…
The original source of this article is The Economic
Collapse and Global Research
Copyright © The Economic Collapse, The Economic
Collapse and Global Research, 2015
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West
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