1 out of 4 Americans employed make less than $10 per hour.

The US has one of the highest number of employees working in low wage jobs of high paying industrialized nations. 1 out of 4 Americans employed work in jobs that pay less than $10 per hour.

• Posted by mybudget360 in average income, economy, government, income, middle class, wall street

Low wage jobs have been a big part of the so-called recovery.  What they also signify is a more troublesome trend that continues to eat away at the middle class in this country.  I’ve noted that the per capita average income for Americans is $25,000 and many seem to be shocked when they hear how low this figure is.  A recent presentation only reinforces this figure by discussing the number of working Americans in low wage fields.  The problem with having such a large portion of our population in low wage work is that as the cost of living goes up many of these people have a harder time providing for necessities like food, education, and also healthcare.  Surprising or not, the nation has been seeing a massive divide between the working class and those at the top.  The low wage employment growth signifies a continuation of this trend.

Number of Americans in low wage jobs
An interesting chart below was presented by economist Tim Taylor.  The chart is illuminating:

Source:  Conversable Economist  
Taking a look at some of the industrialized nations with higher incomes in the world and the US has one of the largest numbers of those employed working in low wage fields.  It is helpful to define what low wage work is; low wage work is employment positions that pay less than $10 an hour.  It is an interesting trend that has continued for well over three decades.  A large portion of Americans are working in lower wage work (assuming they have work).  The $25,000 per capita average of income doesn’t seem so farfetched when one out of four employed Americans find their source of employment to be in the low wage segment of the economy.
An interesting observation is made by Tim Taylor:

“The issue here can be summed up with this question: If someone in the U.S. economy is a law-abiding citizen who works full-time for a period of years, can they earn a level of wages that let them afford a slice of middle-class standard of living? If you are earning $10/hour and working 2,000 hours per year, your annual earnings of $20,000 would put you below the poverty line of $22,891 for a single parent with three children.”

This fact also highlights the large silent numbers that we see with Americans on food stamps.  Some are part of the working poor.  Over 46,000,000 Americans are receiving some form of food assistance today:

  

Source:  Zero Hedge
You can see how quickly things went up from 25 million or so before the recession hit to 46 million today.  Is this really a recovery?  Not if we define a recovery as paving the road to a middle class lifestyle for many Americans.  Much of this path has been paved over even in the last couple of decades.  The 2000s appeared on the surface to usher in prosperity for Americans but in reality, wages were stagnant and all the outward signs of spending came from diving deep into unsustainable levels of debt.  Now that we are dealing with the aftermath of deleveraging people are realizing a growing divide in our country that is becoming more prominent and hard to ignore.
The growing divide
Some parts of the country have done exceptionally well in the last few decades:

Most of the gains have come to the top one and five percent of the nation.  While those in the middle fifth of income saw income rise by 25 percent since the 1970s those in the top 1 percent have seen a stunning 281 percent average jump.  Those on the low income segment have done much worse seeing only a 16 percent rise in income.
These are issues we need to explore since it appears the middle class is disappearing in our country.  The stock market may be up over 100 percent since the low days of 2009 but most Americans have very little invested so it really hasn’t changed their lives:

Most Americans, especially the young have little invested in anything.  Part of this comes from the massive number working in low wage fields.  When examining employment trends we find that some of the top number of jobs for the future will come from lower wage sectors.  How much as a nation do we value having a strong and vibrant middle class?  You can’t call it a middle class when a large portion of employees are at the bottom.

Tension Mounts Over Anahiem Police Shooting

By NBCLosAngeles.com and wire reports

ANAHEIM, California -- Protesters broke the windows of least a half-dozen storefronts in Anaheim on Tuesday resulting in 24 people being arrested and leaving six injured in the second major clash between police and demonstrators since an officer shot dead an apparently unarmed man.

Mayor Tom Tait had called on Monday for a state and federal review of the shooting of the man, a suspected gang member.

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More than 600 demonstrators gathered at City Hall on Tuesday, where officials were holding a regular meeting, police said.

NBCLosAngeles.com reported that crowds converged on the building at around 4 p.m. (7 p.m. ET) to urge council members to investigate a series of recent officer-involved shootings and reform the city's police force, which residents have accused of racial profiling.

Officials say there have been eight officer-involved shootings in the city this year.

The council chamber reached capacity and police in riot gear blocked access to the meeting, according to NBCLosAngeles.com.

Jonathan Gibby / Getty Images

Protesters clash with police during a demonstration at Anaheim City Hall on Tuesday.

Some protesters threw patio chairs through the windows of a Starbucks, a witness told Reuters. No one in the coffee shop was injured, said Anaheim police spokesman Sergeant Bob Dunn.
In the same block-long strip mall, at least five other businesses also had windows smashed, a witness said.
Afterward, officers toting shotguns stood guard in front of the storefronts.

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Dozens of officers wielding night sticks faced off against the demonstrators, who at one point threw water bottles and rocks toward the line.
More photos: Protests in Anaheim
At least one person was transported to the hospital after being shot in the head with a pepperball, Dunn told NBCLosAngeles.com. No officers were injured.

Aerial footage showed several fires near the scene of the protest -- one in a trash bin, another near a bus bench.

The tensions flared after police shot and killed a man on Saturday afternoon.

Alex Gallardo / Reuters

A protester is arrested during a demonstration in Anaheim, Calif., on Tuesday.

Two officers had tried to approach three men in an alley who fled, Dunn said earlier this week. The officers followed on foot and one caught up to one suspect, police said.
The officer shot the man, who police said they later identified as Manuel Diaz, a known gang member. Diaz was not found to have been carrying a gun, police said.
'Transparency is essential'Police fired pepper pellets at angry residents near the scene of the shooting on Saturday.
Late on Sunday Anaheim officers tried to stop a car and killed a man who police said fled and opened fire on them during a foot chase.
He was the fifth person to die in an officer-involved shooting in Anaheim this year.

Tait called for a state and federal probe of the fatal shootings during a news conference Sunday, during which some 70 protesters stormed the lobby.

"Transparency is essential," Tait said Sunday. "The investigation will seek the truth. And whatever the truth is, we will own it."

At least four agencies are involved in or are expected to join the investigation, including the U.S. Attorney's office, the State Attorney General, the Anaheim Police Department's Officer of Internal Affairs and -- as is usual for officer-involved shootings -- the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

Anaheim was among six California cities with a population over 100,000 that saw the biggest spikes in violent crime in 2011, according to an analysis of FBI crime data released last month.

Fresno Ca the poorest county in Cali

California's poorest county: Fresno

• Poverty rate: 26.8%
• Poverty rate of residents under 18: 38.2%
• Median household income: $44,869

The poorest county in the Golden State isn't so sunny. While Fresno's poverty rate is relatively low compared with those of some of the other counties on our list, the county has a large number of people living below the poverty line -- 245,330 to be exact. Only two counties on our list have more residents living in poverty.
to read the full story click here

25 Signs The Collapse Of America Is Speeding Up As Society Rots From The Inside Out

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Monday, July 9, 2012
The problems that America is experiencing right now are not just confined to the field of economics.  The truth is that there are signs of deep decay wherever we look, and without question the United States is rotting from the inside out in thousands of different ways.  For a long time our debt-fueled prosperity has masked much of the social decay that has been festering underneath the surface, but now it is becoming increasingly apparent that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is beginning to disappear.  For many Americans, it is easy to point a finger at a particular group or political party and blame them for all of our problems, but the reality of the matter is that our societal decay cuts across all income levels, all political affiliations and all regions of the country.  We are being destroyed from within, and this decay can be seen on the streets of the most dilapidated sections of major U.S. cities and it can also be seen in the halls of power in Washington D.C. and on Wall Street.  It is undeniable that something has fundamentally changed.  The American people do not seem to possess the same level of character that they once had.  So where do we go from here?
The following are 25 signs the collapse of America is speeding up as society rots from the inside out….
1. Homicides in Chicago are 38 percent ahead of where they were last year at this time.  In fact, the Daily says that “homicide victims in the Windy City outnumber U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year”.  Things are taking a turn for the worse in other major U.S. cities as well.  Just check out the carnage that happened in New York City this past Friday night….

Across barely eight hours, at least seven New Yorkers were murdered and another 21 shot, stabbed or slashed across the city — with only three suspects arrested before the blood stopped flowing

2. Speaking of New York City, a teacher there recently posted the following on her Facebook page….

“Crupi and I survived a shootout today…Thank God we are ok…To all the wanna be gangstas of Staten Island (who say they are from Brooklyn but really aren’t), be grateful you have what you have and stop trying to live a lifestyle you will never understand.”

About a week later, her husband discovered her dead in a pool of her own blood in their apartment.  She had been stabbed numerous times.
3. Reporter James Carlini recently discussed the growing problems that roaming gangs of youths are causing along the Magnificent Mile in Chicago….

There is an increase in problems at night with small gangs roaming around looking for the right prey.
Don’t bother looking for any cops, they are far and few between. Little perfume-size pepper spray canisters may be in vogue, politically correct and fit in a purse, but they are not practical. Forget about pepper spray, you’d need a gallon jug of it to stop five or six assailants.
Do you now need a .357 Magnum to walk down the Mag Mile? Maybe a compact .45 or a high-capacity 9MM “just to be on the safe side” is more what you should have. Even the police are telling each other that they better “carry large caliber” off-duty and not be caught unarmed.

4. Down in Florida, a lifeguard named Tomas Lopez was recently fired for attempting to saving a man that was drowning “outside his patrol zone“….

Lopez, 21, was hired by Jeff Ellis Management to monitor a portion of a public beach in Hallandale Beach, Fla. The company allegedly gave Lopez strict instructions to stay inside his patrol zone, ABC News reports.
But when Lopez spotted a man in distress outside his patrol zone Monday afternoon, he ignored those instructions and leapt into action.
By the time lifeguard Tomas Lopez got to the man, other bystanders had already pulled him to shore, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports. Lopez stayed with the man until paramedics arrived.
That valiant act was Lopez’s last as a lifeguard, as his employer fired him for straying 1,500 feet outside his patrol zone.

5. Authorities say that thieves are stealing identities and filing fraudulent tax returns on a scale never seen before….

With nothing more than ledgers of stolen identity information — Social Security numbers and their corresponding names and birth dates — criminals have electronically filed thousands of false tax returns with made-up incomes and withholding information and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful refunds, law enforcement officials say.
The criminals, some of them former drug dealers, outwit the Internal Revenue Service by filing a return before the legitimate taxpayer files. Then the criminals receive the refund, sometimes by check but more often though a convenient but hard-to-trace prepaid debit card.

In all, the IRS says that there were approximately 940,000 fake tax returns filed for 2010.
6. U.S. Secret Service agents are supposed to be “the best of the best” and are charged with guarding our top public officials.  But even they have exhibited a consistent pattern of moral decay for many years according to one recent report….

Secret Service agents and officers have been accused of leaking sensitive information, publishing porn, sexual assaults, illegal wiretaps, embezzlement and drunkenness on duty, according to a 229-page log released yesterday.
After a prostitution scandal in April, when agents consorted with hookers while preparing for President Obama’s arrival in Colombia, Service Director Mark Sullivan apologized. But he said it was an isolated case, not a “systemic issue.”
However, the log, which the Service Service released yesterday after news organizations requested it under the Freedom of Information Act, shows a pattern of misdeeds dating back to 2003.

7. These days thieves will steal just about anything that is not bolted down and that they can sell for money.  For example, three thieves recently broke into a Chicago beauty supply store and took off with hair extensions that were worth a total of $230,000.
8. Up in Minnesota, thieves are stealing Bronze Stars from hundreds of military graves, and down in Fresno, California thieves have actually been stealing metal crosses from churches.
9. According to one shocking new report, one out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a “clinical psychopath”.  That is a rate about 10 times higher than the general population.
10. Even many police are going crazy these days.  Over in Seattle, police zapped a pregnant woman with a taser three times just because she refused to sign a ticket.
11. Down in California, one man recently sliced off the ear of another man with a knife over an unpaid debt.
12. These days we are seeing senseless crimes being committed even in small towns in the heartland of America.  Just check out what happened in Helena, Montana about a week ago….

Helena Police are working to identify two young men after what they call a random act of violence over the weekend. Helena Police found a 40-year-old homeless man badly beaten in an alley behind the Gold Bar around 2 a.m. Sunday morning.
Helena Police Detective Sergeant Richard Drysdale states,” The video shows two white males surrounding the victim as he was entering the walkway yelling at him and then knocking him down to the ground where they beat and kicked him until he was unconscious.”

You can find a video report about this incident right here.
13. One town in Connecticut was forced to shut down a beautiful new public fountain because too many people were using it as a toilet.
14. According to one very shocking study, the percentage of U.S. households that contain a married couple with children has fallen from 44.3% in 1960 to 20.2% today.
15. A huge brawl between parents erupted during one recent preschool graduation ceremony down in the Los Angeles area.
16. We continue to see “mob robberies” at retail establishments all over the nation.  During one recent mob robbery in Detroit, thugs beat the living daylights out of one very unfortunate stock clerk.
17. Speaking of Detroit, nobody is immune to the spreading violence in that city.  For example, just check out what happened recently to a 22-year-old pregnant woman….

A 22-year-old pregnant woman survived after being bound, driven to Detroit, set on fire and shot early Saturday morning.
The woman, who was nine-months pregnant, had returned from a movie with her boyfriend and dropped him off at his house in Warren when she was approached from behind, Warren police Sgt. Dave Geffert said.
The woman’s hands, feet and eyes were bound with duct tape. She was then forced into her car and driven to an unknown place in Detroit where she was doused with lighter fluid, set on fire and shot once in the upper back, he said.

18. Many families returned to their homes following the recent wildfires in Colorado only to discover that their houses had been robbed and looted.
19. One 33-year-old art teacher in Arizona was not satisfied with only having sex with one of her students.  In fact, police have charged her with having sex with four of her male students.
20. Down in Florida, one man has actually been charged with biting the lips off of a kitten.
21. Over in Waco, Texas a 22-year-old man recently strangled and ate the family dog while he was high on drugs.
22. Of course most of us have heard of the recent outbreak of “zombie attacks” around the nation where criminals have actually been biting their victims and chewing their flesh.  The following is another example of this phenomenon from a recent case in central New York….

A synthetic drug known as “bath salts” is blamed for some bizarre behavior in central New York.
The Utica Observer-Dispatch reports that police officers were called to Stanley’s Bar Saturday night to check out a woman described as emotionally disturbed. When an officer approached her, she lunged at him and tried to bite his face. Police say she screamed that she wanted to “kill someone and eat them.”
The woman was taken to St. Luke’s Memorial Hospital for a mental health evaluation.

Another very disturbing “zombie incident” took place down in Georgia recently….

Karl Laventure, 21, was believed to be high on bath salts when he tried to attack the officers in Lilburn, Georgia.

And after they had managed to subdue him he began threatening to eat them.
Laventure appeared out of some woods and was seen running naked around a golf range near Atlanta, swinging a club around his head and screaming.

Police said that it took several officers to subdue the man who had ‘super-human strength’.

23. All over America, people seem to be losing their minds.  Just check out what one man in New Jersey did recently when police arrived at his home….

Officers got a call that morning when a witness said Carter was threatening to harm himself with a knife. Two cops responded, kicked in the door and found Carter in the corner, the station reported.
Carter allegedly ignored officers’ orders to put down the knife, and instead began stabbing himself in the abdomen, neck and legs.
An attempt to pepper spray the bleeding man had no effect, the Associated Press reported.
That’s when Carter — disemboweled but responsive — reportedly threw bits of his skin and intestines at the officers.

24. One woman in the St. Louis area was recently caught cooking meth in her purse inside a Wal-Mart store.
25. Anyone that believes that slavery has been abolished in America does not know what they are talking about.  Every single night sex slaves are being horribly abused all over the United States.  The following is from a recent Daily Mail article….

The FBI has rescued 79 teens held against their will and forced into prostitution from hotels, truck stops and stores during a three-day swoop on sex-trafficking rings across the country.
The sex slaves were aged between 13 and 17, although one said she had been involved in prostitution since she was just 11, authorities said.
During the sting operations across 57 U.S. cities – including Atlanta, Sacramento and Toledo, Ohio – 104 alleged pimps were arrested.

It is estimated that “100,000 children are victims of prostitution and trafficking each year” in the United States.
Are you starting to get the picture?
Sadly, there are dozens and dozens more examples like these.  If you want to see more examples of how the collapse of America is speeding up, check out these articles that I recently published….
“70 Reasons To Mourn For America”
“20 Signs That Society Is Breaking Down And That America Has Been Overrun By Psychos”
The frightening thing is that this breakdown of our society is happening at the same time that our economy is completely falling to pieces.
This economic decline that we are experiencing is shredding the middle class and it is plunging millions of Americans into very desperate circumstances.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent Rolling Stone article….

Every night around nine, Janis Adkins falls asleep in the back of her Toyota Sienna van in a church parking lot at the edge of Santa Barbara, California. On the van’s roof is a black Yakima SpaceBooster, full of previous-life belongings like a snorkel and fins and camping gear. Adkins, who is 56 years old, parks the van at the lot’s remotest corner, aligning its side with a row of dense, shading avocado trees. The trees provide privacy, but they are also useful because she can pick their fallen fruit, and she doesn’t always­ have enough to eat. Despite a continuous, two-year job search, she remains without dependable work. She says she doesn’t need to eat much – if she gets a decent hot meal in the morning, she can get by for the rest of the day on a piece of fruit or bulk-purchased almonds – but food stamps supply only a fraction of her nutritional needs, so foraging opportunities are welcome.
Prior to the Great Recession, Adkins owned and ran a successful plant nursery in Moab, Utah. At its peak, it was grossing $300,000 a year. She had never before been unemployed – she’d worked for 40 years, through three major recessions.

You can read the rest of the article right here.
What would you do if you were in a similar situation?
Sadly, many more Americans will end up just like her.  As I wrote about the other day, the U.S. economy is not going to be able to produce enough jobs for everyone anymore.  In fact, the overall employment picture is going to keep getting worse for working Americans.
Things have gotten so bad that even many very highly educated scientists cannot find jobs in America right now.  Almost everybody is hurting, and we haven’t even gotten to the next wave of the economic collapse yet.
The next time that there is a major spike in the unemployment rate, millions of Americans will lose all hope and will become very desperate.
And desperate people do desperate things.
The rot and decay that we are witnessing right now is just the beginning.
Things are going to get a lot worse.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.

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60 Days In prison & $12k Fine For Home Bible Sudy

60 Days In Prison And A $12,180 Fine For Hosting A Home Bible Study In Arizona

Michael Snyder
The American Dream
Monday, July 9, 2012
The war on home Bible studies and house churches is heating up again.  Down in Phoenix, Arizona a man has been sentenced to 60 days in prison and has been fined $12,180 for hosting a Bible study in his home.  Since 2005, Michael Salman and his wife have been hosting gatherings of about 15 or 20 people where they share food, fellowship and discuss the Bible.  Unfortunately, that kind of thing is against the law in Phoenix, Arizona apparently.  At one point, nearly a dozen armed police officers raided their home and “evidence” of their “crimes” was gathered.  Michael Salman was found guilty of 67 “code violations”, and now he is going to be ripped away from his family and put in prison for two months.  In addition, the assistant city prosecutor is asking the court to “revoke his probation and convert it into a 2 1/2 year jail sentence since he continues to hold worship gatherings on his property despite court orders.”  This kind of case has the potential to have a huge “chilling effect” on home gatherings of all kinds all over the United States.
You may be thinking that you are glad that this man is being put in prison because you aren’t a Christian and you don’t have any sympathy for Christians.
Well, what if you wanted to hold small gatherings in your home to discuss the U.S. Constitution?
Or what if you wanted to hold small gatherings in your home to play cards or watch football?
The U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”, and when the constitutional rights of one person are under attack, it is an attack on all of us.
In America today, we actually do not own our homes and our properties.  Instead, we are only allowed to use them in very, very narrowly-defined ways, and if we “rebel” against those rules the control freaks that run things will smack us hard.
A while back I wrote about how control freak bureaucrats all over the country are using “code violations” to force preppers back on to the grid.  In some cases, they are even using “code violations” to force preppers completely off of their properties.
They want to run our lives, and if we do not live within the very narrow constraints that they define for us then they will send armed men to raid our homes.
So how did Michael Salman’s problems start?
You can probably guess.
His “neighbors” complained about noise and “traffic congestion“.
So that is how city officials got involved.  We have become a nation of informers and tattlers, and this is another perfect example of that.
Michael Salman did have a big cross and a big sign outside his home, and in this situation that was rather foolish.  Perhaps if he had kept a lower profile things would have been different.  But it still does not excuse what authorities in Phoenix are doing to him.
People should be able to have small gatherings of friends and family in their own homes.  If we can’t do that, what do we have left?
And these days, just about everything is illegal in America, so if you want to sick the authorities on your neighbors it is quite easy to do.
What is this nation turning into?
The implications of this story are staggering.
Over the past couple of decades, the number of “house churches” in the United States has absolutely exploded as an increasing number of Americans reject the big, institutional churches for one reason or another.
Now we are seeing a backlash against the home church movement.
Are we going to start to see authorities systematically coming after home Bible studies and house churches all over America?
Sadly, we have already seen quite a few examples of this. The following is one example from California….

A Christian couple from Orange County, Calif., were fined earlier this month for holding Bible studies and for what city officials called “a regular gathering of more than three people” in their homes. They have now been told they face a $500 fine if they continue to hold their home Bible study gatherings.

Fortunately, authorities in that case have backed off at least for now after immense public pressure.
But this is just the beginning.  Bible-believing Christians are now considered to be “outside the mainstream” and are being attacked in unprecedented ways.
For example, the head of Personhood USA (Keith Mason) had his home brutally vandalized after he was featured in a recent Newsweek article.  When that article was posted on the website of The Daily Beast, someone left a comment that contained his home address.  Unfortunately, some very sick individuals decided to “pay a visit” to the home and hurled a boulder that destroyed the glass in his front door.  In addition, they took red spray paint and painted cuss words and red coat hangers on his house and on his sidewalk.
The following is how this attack was described in a recent Newsweek article….

Mason says he was awake at the time of the attack. “I was in the basement, catching a movie and having a beer, to just chill,” Mason says. “I heard a loud noise and thought one of our kids had fallen down the stairs.” Mason says he ran upstairs from the basement, then “ran through a bunch of glass” and “saw red.” He describes the scene as “surreal—I didn’t know if it was blood on the glass or what. It turned out to be spray paint. There was red paint all over the side of our house. They spray-painted coat-hangers all over my sidewalk and door. We called 911. The police were there within three minutes.”

The family has moved from the home and they say that they have no plans to return.
This is what America is turning into.
Hate and anger are rising to unprecedented levels and it seems like psychopaths are running around everywhere.
I truly fear for the future of this nation.

Another Example Of How We Have Went From Capitalism To Criminalism

CEO gets cool $44M severance package for one day of work

12 hrs ago

How much severance would you expect after one day on the job? Not a lot, right? Well, the now ex-CEO of Duke Energy Corp., Bill Johnson, is getting up to a cool $44.4 million for his one day at the helm. Johnson had previously been CEO of another energy company that merged with Duke and signed a contract to be Duke's chief officer when the merger took effect. That was July 2. Suddenly, on July 3, he resigned (though rumors speculate it was more of a firing). Either way, Johnson stands to collect $7.4 million in severance, a $1.4 million bonus and some hefty stock awards to round out the rest. A quick look at the calculator shows that's an hourly rate of $5.5 million. Not bad for a day's work.

Why There Will Never Be Enough Jobs In America Again

Michael Snyder The Economic Collapse Saturday, July 7, 2012 Well, we just had another bad jobs report. The U.S. economy created just 80,000 new jobs during the month of June. Normally, about 125,000 new jobs need to be created every month just to keep up with population growth. So it is a bit odd that the official unemployment rate did not rise above 8.2%. What is even more alarming is that the Social Security Administration is telling us that 85,000 U.S. workers “left the workforce” and enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program during the month of June. That means that the number of Americans enrolling in Social Security Disability actually exceeded the number of new jobs that was created.

 That is definitely not a sign of recovery. Unfortunately, this is about as good as things are going to get. Right now corporate profits are at an all-time high and usually after a recession has ended the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs bounces back very strongly. But that has not happened this time, and when the next economic crisis hits things are going to get a lot worse. The headline to this article states that there will never be enough jobs in America again. How could that possibly be true? Well, the sad truth is that it is very hard to make a profit on an employee in the United States today. Every year, the control freaks that run things just keep dumping more taxes, more laws, more regulations and more demands on employers. Hiring even a low level employee today is very complicated and very expensive. These days a lot of small business owners have decided that it is simply not worth the hassle to hire more employees. If you can’t make a profit on them, what is the point? If there was going to be a major rebound in hiring, we would have seen it by now.

Corporate profits are at an all-time high as I mentioned earlier. How much more money do they need to make before they start hiring? But I don’t blame them. Our politicians have loaded the system with plenty of incentives NOT to hire workers. Yesterday, I wrote about how Barack Obama has been a one man wrecking crew when it comes to killing jobs. But he is not the only one to blame. The truth is that politicians from both political parties have been making things more difficult for employers for decades. Today, many employers are trying to replace as many employees as possible with computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology. Those are jobs that are not ever going to come back. However, sometimes human labor is still actually needed. But instead of hiring American workers, many big corporations are taking advantage of the emerging “one world economy” and are setting up shop in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

So how are American workers supposed to compete with that? The truth is that they can’t. Today, you aren’t just competing for jobs with your neighbors. Your competition also includes millions upon millions of hard working people on the other side of the globe that will gladly work 12 hour shifts in nightmarish conditions for a dollar an hour. The United States has been losing millions of jobs to lower wage countries, and the fierce competition for the jobs that remain is driving down wages in this country.

 As a result, many of our greatest cities that were once the envy of the entire world have become cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness. We are going to continue to bleed jobs because both major political parties are fully convinced that merging our labor pool with the labor pool of the rest of the world is a grand idea. Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that a one world economic system is actually “conservative”. They have been told that it is “conservative” to merge our economy with countries ruled by third world dictators and brutal communist regimes that have no respect for human rights at all. Democrats have been brainwashed into believing that merging our economy into a one world economic system is “good for American workers” and will bring more prosperity to this country. Barack Obama is even negotiating a treaty right now that would reportedly ban all “Buy American” laws. How stupid can we be? If we merge our labor pool with the labor pool of the rest of the world with no protection, guess where our wages and our standard of living is going to go? The answer is obvious. The “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so many years ago has become a reality. It is just basic economics. If I go to the store and I see two similar products and one is priced at $10 and the other is priced at $100 I am going to go for the one priced $10.

Well, it is the same thing with employees. U.S. workers can’t compare with low wage workers on the other side of the world. It is simply no contest. Meanwhile, our control freak politicians continue to shove more jobs out the door by piling on even more taxes, rules and regulations. Unfortunately, these trends are not going to change. It doesn’t matter who gets elected. The bleeding of jobs is going to continue. In fact, we should probably be celebrating that things are still as good as they are. In the future they will be a whole lot worse.

The period we are in right now was supposed to be the recovery. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with jobs fell dramatically. Since the end of the recession, that number has stayed remarkably flat…. There Will Never Be Enough Jobs In America Again Employment Population Ratio June 2012 440x264 Now the next major downturn is rapidly approaching. When it hits, the unemployment rate is going to go well up into the double digits. At the moment, our failing economy is being propped up by unprecedented amounts of debt.

When our debt-fueled false prosperity ends, the true horror of the decay of our economic system will be revealed. If you think it is hard to find a job now, you just wait. What is coming is going to be a total nightmare. As I have written about before, many years of pain are ahead. But that doesn’t mean that you have to lose hope. On my website, people often share how their lives have been absolutely devastated by this economy.

Some of them are even so down that they are considering giving up completely. But that is the exact wrong response to all of this! The reason why I try so hard to explain what is coming is so that it will not be a surprise to people. If you make plans and preparations now, the times that are coming will not overwhelm you. I believe that there will be people that will be greatly blessed even in the midst of what is coming. However, millions of Americans that are not listening to the warnings now will have their lives totally destroyed by what is coming.




 The world is changing. Nothing is going to stop that. The unprecedented prosperity that we have been rolling in is going to shrivel up and go away. But that does not mean that your life is over. In fact, if you get yourself physically and mentally prepared for what is ahead the times that are coming can be the greatest times of your life. One of my goals is to give people hope. There is hope in understanding what is coming. There is hope in being prepared. There is hope in being a light in the middle of the darkness. There is hope in being willing to love people in the midst of a world that is going crazy. The following is from a comment that one reader left on a recent article…. I wanted to thank you, the author of this article, whoever you are. I haven’t completely ruled out killing myself but you’ve certainly given me something to think about. And thank you for trying to give people like me a little hope. A little kindness, even if only through words, is at a premium these days especially in my life. I will think carefully about what you’ve said. Best wishes to you and your efforts.

God bless. Everyone out there that is in a similar position – please do not ever, ever, ever give up. No matter how bad things look right now, there are people out there that care. One thing I have learned in life is this – there is always a way that things can be turned around. Sadly, in the future a lot of Americans are going to give in to despair and will completely give up on life. We saw it happen during the Great Depression of the 1930s and we are seeing this in Greece and other European countries right now. But the truth is that your life is not over no matter how bad things get out there. You can let the times that are coming destroy you, or you can make them the greatest adventure of your life. The choice is up to you. I urge you to get ready, to get more independent of the system and to start focusing on the things that really matter in life.

Is Wal-Mart Destroying America? 20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You

 


Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
America absolutely loves Wal-Mart.  100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country.  But is Wal-Mart good for America?  That is a question that most people never stop and ask.  Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with super cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Wal-Mart is destroying America in a lot of ways.  As you will see below, Wal-Mart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades.  Wal-Mart has become a gigantic retail behemoth that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States.  Unfortunately, about 85 percent of all the stuff sold at Wal-Mart is made overseas.  What that is costing the U.S. economy in terms of lost jobs and lost revenue is incalculable.  But Wal-Mart is a perfect example of where our economic system is headed.  Our economy is becoming completely and totally dominated by highly centralized monolithic predator corporations that ruthlessly crush all competition and that will stoop to just about anything in order to cut costs.  In the future, will we all be working for gigantic communal entities that funnel all of the wealth and economic rewards to a very tiny elite?  That sounds very much like how communist China works, and red-blooded Americans should want no part of that.  America is supposed to be about free enterprise and competition and working together to build up this country, and Wal-Mart is destroying all of that.
The following are 20 facts about Wal-Mart that will absolutely shock you….
#1 The average U.S. family now spends more than $4000 a year at Wal-Mart.
#2 In 2010, Wal-Mart had revenues of 421 billion dollars.  That amount was greater than the GDP of 170 different countries including Norway, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates.
#3 If Wal-Mart was a nation, it would have the 23rd largest GDP in the world.
#4 Wal-Mart now sells more groceries than anyone else in America does.  In the United States today, one out of every four grocery dollars is spent at Wal-Mart.
#5 Amazingly, 100 million customers shop at Wal-Mart every single week.
#6 Wal-Mart has opened more than 1,100 “supercenters” since 2005 alone.
#7 Today, Wal-Mart has more than 2 million employees.
#8 If Wal-Mart was an army, it would be the second largest military on the planet behind China.
#9 Wal-Mart is the largest employer in 25 different U.S. states.
#10 According to the Economic Policy Institute, trade between Wal-Mart and China resulted in the loss of 133,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2006.
#11 The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in a single hour than a full-time Wal-Mart associate makes in an entire year.
#12 Tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and their children are enrolled in Medicaid and are dependent on the government for healthcare.
#13 Between 2001 and 2007, the value of products that Wal-Mart imported from China grew from $9 billion to $27 billion.
#14 Sadly, about 85 percent of all the products sold at Wal-Mart are made outside of the United States.
#15 It is being reported that about 80 percent of all Wal-Mart suppliers are in China at this point.
#16 Amazingly, 96 percent of all Americans now live within 20 miles of a Wal-Mart.
#17 The number of “independent retailers” in the United States declined by 60,000 between 1992 and 2007.
#18 According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart spent 7.8 million dollars on political lobbying during 2011.  That number does not even include campaign contributions.
#19 Today, Wal-Mart has five times the sales of the second largest U.S. retailer (Costco).
#20 The combined net worth of six members of the Walton family is roughly equal to the combined net worth of the poorest 30 percent of all Americans.
All over the country, independent retailers are going out of business because they cannot compete with Wal-Mart and their super cheap Chinese products.  Often communities will give Wal-Mart huge tax breaks just to move in to their areas.  But what many communities don’t take into account is that the introduction of a Wal-Mart is often absolutely devastating to small businesses….

A study of small and rural towns in Iowa showed lost sales for local businesses ranging from -17.2% in small towns to -61.4% in rural areas, amounting to a total dollar loss of $2.46 BILLION over a 13-year period.

When we buy stuff made by people working for slave labor wages in China, we destroy good paying American jobs and we make America poorer.  This is a point that I have tried to make over and over.
Wal-Mart often tells one thing to the public and then does another thing in private.  Sadly, the truth is that Wal-Mart does not care about U.S. manufacturing jobs.  Wal-Mart just wants to get products as cheaply as they possibly can, and most of the time that means getting them from China.
Just check out this first-hand testimony from an 81-year-old retired apparel manufacturer….

I was president of the Southwestern Apparel Manufacturers Association. There was a meeting sometime between 1985 and 1990. Walmart had contacted our organization and asked if they could meet with us at our beautiful Apparel Mart we had here in Dallas, which has now been razed, because all the independent merchants don’t exist that used to come to it. Two people from Walmart came down and they said they were going to be sourcing goods from overseas and we would have to meet those prices for consumer products and to get ready for it—we are going to be sourcing the world. Walmart was the only company that came out and said this.
It was sort of shocking: I was selling them some merchandise at the time. On the back of their trucks it was saying “Bring it Back to America!” They had the big “keep it in America” program going at that time on the big signs in the stores. Meanwhile when I reminded the buyer of that, she told me, “that is just for domestic consumption, we’re going to buy at the cheapest we can anywhere on earth.”

As I have written about previously, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
We are losing millions of good jobs that cannot be replaced.  If you can believe it, the United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China was the biggest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world, and Wal-Mart played a huge role in that.
In fact, Wal-Mart has actually been forcing some U.S. manufacturers to pack up and move overseas.  The following is from a recent article by Amy Traub….

Walmart’s market power is so immense that the even the largest suppliers must comply with its demands for lower and lower prices because they cannot afford to have their goods taken off its shelves. Companies that used to manufacture products in the United States, from Levi’s jeans to lock maker Master Lock, were pressured to shut their U.S. factories and moved manufacturing abroad to meet Walmart’s demand for low prices.

Unfortunately, the vast wealth that Wal-Mart is sucking out of our communities is not put back into our communities.  The profits are funneled out to Wal-Mart executives and shareholders.  We may enjoy the low prices, but very little of the money that we give to Wal-Mart gets recycled in our local areas.
In the old days, you could actually support a family selling electronics or running a general store.  But you can’t support a family working at Wal-Mart.  The vast majority of the jobs that Wal-Mart creates are very low paying.  Large numbers of Wal-Mart employees are actually on welfare, and this is part of the reason why we have seen such an explosion in the number of the working poor in America.
At this point, more than 40 percent of all jobs in America are low wage jobs and the middle class is rapidly disappearing.
If we do not support American jobs and American manufacturers they will continue to go away and the welfare rolls in this country will continue to explode.
There is not going to be any prosperity in this country without jobs.  Unfortunately, most Americans simply do not understand how good jobs are being systematically destroyed in America every single day.
The path that America is headed on today is only going to end in complete and total disaster.  We are being transformed from a wealthy nation into a poor nation.  In the end, we will be dominated by a very tiny elite and everyone else will either be among the working poor or will be totally dependent on the government.
Our system is supposed to be about open, honest competition.  But that is not what Wal-Mart is about.  Wal-Mart is about crushing small businesses and manufacturers here in America and getting us all to buy their super cheap Chinese-made goods.
Shame on Wal-Mart.  They are an un-American disgrace.
So what do all of you think about Wal-Mart?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

Complete Disaster Non-Preparedness: DC Grocery Stores Out of Food, Gas Unavailable, Grid-Down As Summer Heat Rages

Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
July 3, 2012
We’ve seen it time and again over the last decade. An emergency strikes and panic grips the city or region for days or weeks on end.
We saw a complete breakdown of emergency response and law & order during Hurricane Katrina. The 2011 Snowpocalypse on the east coast led to runs on grocery stores and empty shelves within a matter of hours. Widespread blackouts during Hurricane Ike left large sections of the Houston power grid down for up to four weeks. In all these cases gas was almost impossible to find, what was in your pantry was what you had until food distribution resumed, local water was not safe for consumption, and government response was limited to reinstating essential services first and foremost.
The bottom line, as Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project notes, is that after billions have been spent by Department of Homeland Security, FEMA and local law enforcement, we are no more prepared today than we were the day before September 11, 2011.

After a short but unusually severe thunderstorm that roared through the D.C. area on Friday night, the entire Washington Metropolitan Area was thrown into chaos.
Three days later, countless traffic lights are still out, hundreds of thousands of residents are without power, including myself, grocery stores and gas station are closed for lack of power, and the federal government is encouraging employees to telework.
[SHTFplan Editor's note: Brilliant recommendation from the best and brightest - to "telework" when the grid is down. ]
…
Is this the work of a terrible terrorist attack? No, it is the complete disaster non-preparedness a decade after 9/11. Despite the fact that billions if not trillions have been spent since 9/11 on counter-terrorism and so-called “homeland security” measures, one of the major terrorist targets, the nation’s capital, cannot cope with a severe thunderstorm.
…
I received a message from PEPCO that most D.C.-area residents may not have power until next Friday at 11:00 pm – a full week after the storm hit. With temperatures this week set for the mid to upper-90s, that is a long time for residents to be with air conditioning, or fans, or refrigerators.
Two years ago, the Washington Post’s comprehensive examination of the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on “homeland security,” “Top Secret America” reflected that the D.C. metropolitan area was burgeoning with infrastructure, though apparently none of it focused on keeping the D.C.-area up and running after a severe thunderstorm.
…
I am not the only D.C. taxpayer wondering, where are billions in “critical infrastructure” protection and “homeland security?” They are not going toward obvious solutions like putting power lines underground.
The D.C. area’s responsiveness to unexpected events has not improved, but taxpayers’ pockets have been drained to create an entire secret city of “national security” in northern Virginia. Making sure citizens have food and power in an emergency should be a top priority, not a distant second to security theater like taking our shoes off before getting on an airplane.

(Pictured: Run on grocery stores; Snowpocalypse 2010)
Once again we are provided with ample evidence that not only is the government ill-prepared to handle a large scale city-wide emergency, but the residents of this nation are completely oblivious to the fact that if the shit hits the fan, no one will be there to provide assistance.
When Houston was hit almost head on by Hurricane Ike in 2008 the residents of the entire metropolitan area were shocked. Never mind the mass chaos as millions tried to flee the region, with drives to neighboring cities taking upwards of ten times longer than they normally would. Power for 90% of the city went out, and for some areas, including where we lived, power was not restored for almost a month. Suffice it to say our community was anxiety ridden, frustrated and tempers were flaring. When gas became wholly unavailable and the generators stopped running and we were overtaken with near 100 degree heat during the day, the situation for many became untenable.
FEMA’s own web site calls on Americans to have a two week supply of emergency items, yet most citizens have only a three day supply of reserve food available – whatever’s in the kitchen when disaster strikes is what they’ve got until things get back to normal.
Even after these recommendations from the very people who are tasked with responding to emergency and disaster situations, not a single resident in our community that we were aware of had emergency supplies on hand when Ike hit – even though many had gone through countless hurricanes before and knew what to expect.
After Katrina, Ike, the various earthquakes, wildfires, snow storms, “Derechos,”  power outages, and tens of billions in taxpayer funds supposedly appropriated into infrastructure, security and emergency response, it’s simply incredible that we are so unprepared as a society.
Imagine, for a moment, what happens in a scenario that affects not a single city, but an entire multi-state region, or, perhaps the entire nation. And imagine that the event(s) is so widespread that government is totally overwhelmed – food transportation stops, refineries can’t get gas to local areas, water and power utility workers stay home to care for their families, law enforcement is faced with widespread looting, the internet becomes inaccessible as do all avenues of communication due to blackouts, and grocery store shelves remain out of stock for weeks or months.
Such a scenario may be unlikely, but certainly possible – and the resulting effects on the population and our way of life would be nothing short of complete and utter pandemonium, especially for those who have failed to prepare.

Totally Dependent On The Grid

If One Storm Can Turn D.C. Dark For Several Days, What Would A Massive EMP Burst Do?

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Sometimes we all get a little reminder of just how completely and totally dependent we are on the power grid.  Massive thunderstorms that ripped through Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia left millions without power over the weekend.  At this point it is being projected that some people may not get power back until the end of the week.  The “super derecho” storm that pounded the Washington D.C. area on Friday night with hurricane-force winds is being called unprecedented.  But the truth is that there are other events that could happen that would be far more damaging to our power grid.  For example, a substantial EMP burst over a major U.S. city would fry virtually all of the electronics in the city and take the power grid in the area down indefinitely.  A gigantic EMP burst over the entire country (caused by a massive solar storm or a very large nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere) could theoretically take down the entire national power grid.  Just try to imagine a world where nobody has any electricity, nobody can pump gas, nobody can use their credit cards or get any more money, where most vehicles won’t start, where nobody has the Internet, where all cell phones are dead and where nobody can heat or cool their homes.  That is how serious an EMP burst could potentially be.  We are talking about an event that could be millions of times worse than 9/11.
Hopefully this latest storm has reminded Americans about how vulnerable our power grid really is and about how close we really are to being knocked back to the late 1800s.
Let’s review some of the damage that this “super derecho” storm caused to the D.C. area….
-Thousands of businesses have been forced to close temporarily because they cannot operate without electricity
-Many federal agencies were closed on Monday because there was no power
-Many 911 call centers throughout Northern Virginia were down over the weekend and could not respond to emergencies
-Without electricity, many families have not been able to cook warm meals
-Without warm water, many families have not been able to take hot showers
-A “boil water advisory” was put into effect for several areas of northern Virginia
-Many families that still do not have power are in danger of losing much of the food in their refrigerators and freezers
-Many gas stations were not able to operate because of a lack of electricity and so this has made filling up the gas tank a major hassle for many families
-Hundreds of traffic lights are still out and this is making commuting a major problem in some areas
-Without air conditioning many families are absolutely sweltering as high temperatures remain well above 90 degrees
-During the power outage some people have been without cell phone service because many cell phone towers were inoperable
-Without electricity, thousands upon thousands of people have not been able to use their computers for several days and this is causing a lot of frustration
-Several major websites were totally knocked offline by the storms as Robert McMillan of Wired Magazine explained….

Hurricane-like storms knocked an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, offline last night, and a chunk of the internet felt it. The six-hour incident temporarily cut off a number of popular internet services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Heroku, and Instagram.

But to be honest this was not a major disaster.
After a few days the damage will be fixed and people will start to forget what just happened.
Well, what if the damage was permanent and the entire nation had to go without electricity for the foreseeable future?  The following is from a USA Today article by Dan Vergano….

The sky erupts. Cities darken, food spoils and homes fall silent. Civilization collapses.

End-of-the-world novel? A video game? Or could such a scenario loom in America’s future?
There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb, both capable of disabling the electric grid that powers modern life.

As I have written about previously, an EMP attack could fundamentally change life in America in a single instant.
What would you do if such a scenario happened?
Would you try to go somewhere?  Even if the electronics in your car were not totally fried, you would not be able to pump more gas anywhere.
Would you try to call someone?  Most phones would be totally dead and all normal communications networks would be down.  So who would you call?
Would you bunker down and try to survive on what you have at home?  Most of the food in your refrigerator and freezer would rapidly go bad and most Americans only have enough food to last a few days or a few weeks.  In addition, most Americans would no longer be able to heat or cool their homes, so extreme cold and extreme heat would become huge problems very quickly.
How in the world would any of us survive in a world without electricity?
In past centuries our forefathers knew how to survive in such a world, but most of us do not have the same skills or resources that they had.
The following is how an article in the Wall Street Journal once described what a massive EMP burst would do to this nation….

No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a “giant continental time machine” that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.

What would you do if you were suddenly cut off from all electricity, all money, all modern forms of communication, all modern forms of transportation and all modern forms of shopping?
Don’t think that it can’t happen.
Scientists tell us that massive EMP bursts generated by gigantic solar storms have hit our planet in the past and that it is inevitable that it will happen again.
In addition, nations all over the planet are aware of what an EMP burst can do and have been developing “Super-EMP” weapons that can take power grids down in a single strike.
The following is a short excerpt from a statement by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on March 8th, 2005….

Russian and Chinese military scientists in open source writings describe the basic principles of nuclear weapons designed specifically to generate an enhanced-EMP effect, that they term “Super-EMP” weapons. “Super-EMP” weapons, according to these foreign open source writings, can destroy even the best protected U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.

That doesn’t sound good.
But perhaps even more troubling is that North Korea has been reportedly developing this type of weapon.  In fact, it has been reported that North Korea may have tested a “Super-EMP” weapon all the way back in 2009….

North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states

In time, these kinds of weapons will get into more and more hands.
Will someone try to use this kind of weapon at some point?
Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, believes that a single EMP burst could potentially end up killing the vast majority of the population of the United States….

“Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity”

Once you understand these kinds of threats, it makes it a lot easier to understand why preppers are so busy preparing for the future.
Our world is becoming incredibly unstable.  Another major economic crisis could hit us at any time, war in the Middle East could erupt without warning, earthquakes and other natural disasters are becoming more frequent and society seems to get a little crazier with each passing day.
The era of tremendous peace and prosperity that we have all been enjoying is rapidly coming to an end.  In a world filled with instability and chaos, it only seems prudent to take some precautions.
You might want to get prepared while you still have time.