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 There is nothing wrong with being optimistic, but there is something wrong with having blind faith that things are going to get better when all of the evidence is screaming at you that things are going to get worse. According to a brand new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 71 percent of all Americans consider economic conditions in the United States to be poor right now, but an astounding 58 percent of them believe that economic conditions in the United States will be good a year from now. So what can account for this? Are they insane? Are they hopelessly optimistic? Do they not want to believe the facts that are staring them right in the face? Well, a lot of it probably has to do with the upcoming election. Most Republicans are convinced that things will be "better" somehow if Romney wins in November. Most Democrats are convinced that things will "continue to improve" if Obama wins in November. But the truth is that the economy has been declining steadily in recent years no matter which party has been in power. Today, the American Dream is out of reach for huge numbers of formerly middle class families. Millions of jobs continue to leave the United States, poverty is absolutely exploding and our nation is absolutely drowning in debt. Sadly, nothing is being done to reverse the long-term economic trends that are destroying us. So, a year from now things are not going to be any better. In fact, many analysts are absolutely convinced that things are going to be a whole lot worse by then. (Read More.....)
 Most Americans know that things used to be much better in the United States, but they don't have the facts and the figures to back that belief up. Well, after reading the shocking statistics in this article nobody should be left with any doubt that things have gotten worse in America. There are less jobs, incomes are down, home values have plummeted, poverty is up, consumer debt is way up, dependence of the government has skyrocketed and government debt is totally out of control. Sadly, it hasn't really mattered which political party has had control over the White House. Things have gotten worse under Obama, they got worse under Bush, and they got worse under Clinton. We are in the midst of a horrific long-term economic decline and the American people desperately need to wake up. (Read More.....)
 Today, the number of American adults that can't take care of themselves is at an all-time record high. So what are we going to do if the number of people dependent on the government keeps going up? Some folks like to point out that most Americans that have recently become dependent on the government would rather be working, but because of a lack of jobs they have gotten into a position where they cannot take care of themselves anymore. Some other folks like to point out that the number of Americans that abuse the system and that enjoy being dependent on the government is steadily increasing. Sadly, both of those positions are true. It is a fact that the percentage of working age Americans that actually have jobs has declined dramatically over the past several years because of a lack of jobs. It is also a fact that a growing percentage of Americans believe that it is the job of the government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave. What people need to understand is that the government is the problem and not the solution. We desperately need more jobs in this country, but the federal government has been absolutely killing job growth, it has been creating a culture of government dependency, and it has been going into gigantic amounts of debt trying to take care of so many people. So what are we going to do if the number of American adults that can't take care of themselves continues to set new records year after year? (Read More.....)
 Yes, most Americans realize that the economy is not doing well right now, but most of them also believe that this is just a "temporary" downturn. The mainstream media tells us over and over that a "recovery" has either already begun or that one is right around the corner. Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy is in much worse shape than most Americans think. Yes, there will be economic "peaks and valleys" as we move along, but it is absolutely imperative that all of us understand that we are in the middle of a long-term economic decline that has been caused by decades of horrendous decisions. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs have left the country and they aren't coming back. Last year, 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States and we have lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001. Without enough good jobs to go around, millions of American families have lost their homes and millions of American families have been pushed into poverty. Less good jobs also means that there are less people to pay the taxes we need to keep government services going. Government debt at the local, state and federal levels has exploded as the tax base has dwindled. We have become a nation that is very good at consuming wealth but that is not very good at creating wealth. Just "tweaking" a couple of things here or there is not going to get our economy back "on track". We need fundamental changes to the way that we are doing things, and there are currently no signs that this kind of change is going to happen any time soon. (Read More.....)
 There are 27 members on Barack Obama's job creation panel, and most of them are corporate executives. The formal name of the panel is the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which is kind of ironic considering the fact that many of the CEOs on the panel have been rapidly shipping jobs out of the United States. So what hope is there that things are going to turn around if many of the folks that are supposed to be helping Barack Obama create U.S. jobs are actively destroying them instead? And how is the American middle class ever supposed to recover if corporate executives keep taking their jobs away and sending them to the other side of the world where it is legal to pay slave labor wages? These issues go to the very heart of America's economic problems, and yet very few of our leaders are talking about them. But they should be talking about these things, because the economy is the number one issue for most American voters right now. (Read More.....)
 Is Occupy Wall Street going to represent a major turning point in U.S. history? Over the past several years, many people have been warning that we would see mass economic riots in the United States if the economy continued to get worse. Well, the economic riots are now here and America will never be the same. The Occupy Wall Street protests are starting their third week and now similar protests have sprung up in major cities all over the United States. An increasing number of Americans have totally lost faith in the system and are looking for an outlet for their frustrations. Occupy Wall Street is a spark that has started a fire, but most Americans do not understand where all of this is going. In the years ahead, millions more Americans will lose their jobs, millions more Americans will lose their homes to foreclosure and millions more Americans will find themselves drowning in debt. As the economy continues to decline, millions upon millions of Americans will become even more frustrated. In particular, young Americans are really starting to become angry about the economy and our deeply corrupt financial system. Eventually we are going to see an explosion of anger and frustration on the streets of America that is going to be absolutely unprecedented. Occupy Wall Street is just the beginning. If most Americans could see what is coming next, it would chill them to their cores. (Read More.....)
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