China is wiping the floor with the United States on the global economic stage, and most Americans are so clueless that they have absolutely no idea what is happening. The number one global economic superpower is in an advanced state of decline, and the number two global economic superpower is becoming stronger with each passing day. Unless something truly dramatic happens, it is only a matter of time before China overtakes America and become the dominant economic force on the planet. In fact, China is already exercising economic superiority over the United States in a whole host of ways. China produces more goods than we do, China does more total trade in goods with the rest of the world than we do, China produces more cars than we do, China produces more gold than we do, China consumes more energy than we do, China produces more coal than we do and China produces more steel than we do. Every single year, we buy far more from them than they buy from us, and this has made them exceedingly wealthy. Our politicians regularly make trips over to China to beg them to lend us back some of the money that they have taken from us. Today, we owe China more than a trillion dollars and the Chinese are sitting on the biggest pile of foreign currency reserves that the world has ever seen. All of this wealth has fundamentally transformed the nation of China over the past couple of decades. Just check out the startling photographs of China from space in this article that show how China dramatically changed between 1992 and 2010. As China continues to become stronger and as America continues to become weaker, will our children some day wake up in a world where the Chinese are telling them what to do? (Read More...)
economic
We Are Witnessing The Slow, Tortuous Death Of The American Worker
Once upon a time, the U.S. economy produced a seemingly unending supply of good paying jobs that enabled American workers to buy homes, raise families and live the American Dream. But now all of that has changed. Over the past several decades, there have been some fundamental shifts in our economy that have steadily eroded the value of the American worker. Thanks to incredible advances in robotics, computers and other fields of technology, many economic activities that once required a tremendous amount of manpower now require very little. Nothing is going to reverse those technological advances, so the jobs that have been lost as a result are now gone forever. But there are millions of other good jobs that we have lost that we could have done something about. Over the past couple of decades, millions upon millions of American jobs have been shipped overseas. Thanks to a whole host of “free trade” agreements that our politicians promised would be very good for our economy, U.S. workers have now been merged into a global labor pool with hundreds of millions of workers on the other side of the globe that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. In such a situation, it is only natural for big corporations to shift production from high wage areas to low wage areas. Unemployment in America has skyrocketed and so have corporate profits. Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low. The lack of decent jobs in the United States is one of the primary reasons why we are in an economic crisis that never seems to end, and things are not going to turn around any time soon. We truly are witnessing the slow, tortuous death of the American worker, and politicians from both political parties are just standing aside and letting it happen. (Read More...)
The Inflation Rate Is A Lie Too
Can we believe any of the economic numbers that the government is feeding us these days? Most of the focus recently has been on the bizarre jobs report that the government released last Friday, but the truth is that the inflation rate is a lie too. In fact, the way that the government calculates inflation has changed more than 20 times since 1978. The government is constantly looking for ways that it can make inflation appear to be even lower. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1990, the inflation rate would be about 5 percent right now. If inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1980, the inflation rate would be about 9 percent right now. But instead, we are expected to believe that the inflation rate is hovering around 2 percent. Well, anyone that goes to the supermarket or fills up their vehicle with gasoline knows that prices are going up a lot faster than that. Just about everything that we buy on a regular basis is steadily becoming more expensive, and so most Americans are not buying it when government officials tell us that there is barely any inflation right now. (Read More...)
Thanks Obama – Here Are 24 Stats That Show How Much You Have Royally Messed Up Our Economy
Under Barack Obama, the U.S. economy has performed worse than it did under any other president since the end of the Great Depression. After every other recession since World War II, the U.S. economy always regained what was lost and got even stronger before the next recession began. During this “economic recovery”, we have not even come close to getting back to where we were in 2008. In fact, the number of Americans living in poverty and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government both continue to explode even as Barack Obama runs up trillions of dollars of new debt. Anyone that believes that Barack Obama is going to “fix the economy” if he is given another four years in the White House has taken way too many sips of the Obama kool-aid. The truth is that Barack Obama is not going to save you. Barack Obama has royally messed up our economy (along with a lot of other things) and that is not something we should be thanking him for. (Read More...)
Completely Surrounded By Psychopaths And Sociopaths As We Approach The Edge Of Societal Collapse
Do you remember when America was a place where you could attend a public gathering without having to worry if a sociopath was going to set off a bomb or start wildly shooting people? Do you remember when America was a place where you could walk down the street without having to worry that a vicious pack of teens might attack you for no reason whatsoever? Do you remember when America was a place where you could leave your car unlocked, your house unlocked and your garage open without having to worry about thieves? Well, only old timers are likely to remember a time when you could leave your front door unlocked, but it was once like that in America. Over the past 50 years America has fundamentally changed. Once upon a time you could trust just about everybody, but these days it is difficult to find anyone that you can truly trust. We are literally surrounded by psychopaths and sociopaths as we approach the edge of societal collapse. The truly frightening thing is that we are watching society break down rapidly even though economic conditions are still relatively good. If this is how bad things are right now, what are they going to look like after the economy collapses and people become really desperate? (Read More...)
Only 24.6 Percent Of All Jobs In The United States Are Good Jobs
Do you want to know why it seems like good jobs are very rare in the United States today? It is because good jobs are very rare in the United States today. According to a paper that was just released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all American jobs qualified as “good jobs” in 2010. Over the past several decades, there has been increasing pressure on corporations to reduce expenses and increase corporate profits. One of the biggest expenses that any corporation faces is labor. Large corporations all over the globe are in an endless race to gain a competitive advantage by pushing labor costs as low as possible. Sometimes this is done by using technology. Computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology have eliminated millions of jobs in the United States and those jobs are never coming back. Millions of other jobs have been eliminated by offshoring. In our globalized economy, American workers have been merged into one giant labor pool with everyone else. That makes it very tempting for big corporations to move jobs from areas where workers are very expensive (such as the United States) to areas of the world where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. When big corporations do this, corporate profits go up, but the number of good jobs in the United States goes down. As a result, there is increased competition for the jobs that remain in the United States and this drives down wages. Meanwhile, the cost of living just keeps going up. So millions of American families have fallen into poverty in recent years, and millions of others have gone deep into debt in an attempt to survive. This dynamic is absolutely shredding the middle class in the United States. (Read More...)
12 Signs That The Next Recession In The United States Has Already Begun
Is the U.S. economy in a recession right now? Has the next recession in the United States already begun? Unfortunately, there are a lot of economic numbers that are pointing in that direction. U.S. retail sales have fallen for three months in a row, U.S. manufacturing activity is contracting and there are numerous indications that the labor market is getting weaker. Of course there are some economists that will argue that we never even left the last recession. For example, the percentage of working age Americans with jobs fell from above 63 percent in 2007 to under 59 percent during the last recession. Since the end of the last recession, that number has not gotten back above 59 percent. In fact, it has been below 59 percent for 34 months in a row. In addition, we have continued to see poverty and government dependence steadily rise during this “economic recovery”. Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6 million and the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 14 million. So it would be really hard to argue with anyone that wants to say that the last recession never really ended. However, the latest economic numbers indicate that things are about to get even worse for the U.S. economy, and that is not good news at all. (Read More...)
The Federal Reserve Is Not Going To Save Us From The Great Depression That Is Coming
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his annual address to Congress on Tuesday, and he did very little to give lawmakers much confidence about where the U.S. economy is heading. Bernanke told members of Congress that recent economic data points “suggest further weakness ahead” and that the Federal Reserve is projecting that the U.S. unemployment rate will remain at 7 percent or above all the way through the end of 2014. Now, it is important to keep in mind that Federal Reserve forecasts are almost always way too optimistic. The actual numbers almost always end up being much worse than what the Fed says they will be. So if Bernanke is saying that the U.S. unemployment rate will be 7 percent or higher until the end of 2014, then what will the real numbers end up looking like? During his testimony, Bernanke seemed unusually gloomy about the direction of the U.S. economy. He seemed resigned to the fact that there really isn’t that much more that the Federal Reserve can do to stimulate the U.S. economy. Yes, the Federal Reserve could try another round of quantitative easing, but the first two rounds did not really do that much to help. The truth is that the United States is absolutely drowning in debt, and when that debt bubble finally bursts the Federal Reserve is simply not going to be able to save us from the Great Depression that will happen as a result. (Read More...)