Do you remember the days when it seemed like almost everyone in America was middle class? Unfortunately, those days are long gone and the grinding down of the middle class in the United States appears to be accelerating. According to a brand new study that was just released by Pew Charitable Trusts, household spending increased by 14 percent between 2004 and 2014, but median household income decreased by 13 percent during that same time period. Both of those figures were adjusted for inflation. What this means is that the cost of living has steadily gone up, but our incomes have gone down. In fact, as you will see below approximately one-third of all Americans don’t even make enough money to pay for the basic necessities at this point. The middle class is being squeezed like never before, and very few of our leaders seem to care. (Read More...)
Income
Retail Apocalypse: 2016 Brings Empty Shelves And Store Closings All Across America
Major retailers in the United States are shutting down hundreds of stores, and shoppers are reporting alarmingly bare shelves in many retail locations that are still open all over the country. It appears that the retail apocalypse that made so many headlines in 2015 has gone to an entirely new level as we enter 2016. As economic activity slows down and Internet retailers capture more of the market, brick and mortar retailers are cutting their losses. This is especially true in areas that are on the lower portion of the income scale. In impoverished urban centers all over the nation, it is not uncommon to find entire malls that have now been completely abandoned. It has been estimated that there is about a billion square feet of retail space sitting empty in this country, and this crisis is only going to get worse as the retail apocalypse accelerates. (Read More...)
Why Are The Chinese Gobbling Up Real Estate And Businesses In Detroit?
Something very strange is happening to Detroit. Once upon a time, it was the center of American manufacturing and it had the highest per capita income in the United States. But now the city is dying and the Chinese are moving in to pick up the pieces. Lured by news stories that proclaim that you can buy homes in Detroit for as little as one dollar, Chinese investors are eagerly gobbling up properties. In some cases, this is happening dozens of properties at a time. Not only that, according to the New York Times “dozes of companies from China” are investing in businesses and establishing a presence in the Detroit area. If this continues, will Detroit eventually become a city that is heavily dominated by China? (Read More...)
More Than 100 Million Americans Are On Welfare
There are more Americans dependent on the federal government than ever before in U.S. history. According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. Many are enrolled in more than one. That is about a third of the entire population of the country. Sadly, that figure does not even include Social Security or Medicare. Today the federal government runs almost 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and almost all of those programs have experienced substantial growth in recent years. Yes, we will always need a “safety net” for those that cannot take care of themselves, but it is absolutely ridiculous that the federal government is financially supporting one-third of all Americans. How much farther do things really need to go before we finally admit that we have become a socialist nation? At the rate we are going, it will not be too long before half the nation is on welfare. Unfortunately, we will likely never get to that point because the gigantic debt that we are currently running up will probably destroy our financial system before that ever happens. (Read More...)
10 Mind Blowing Facts Which Show How Members Of Congress And Federal Employees Are Living The High Life At Our Expense
If you were asked to guess, what area of the United States would you say has the highest average income? New York City? Los Angeles? Silicon Valley? Well, would you believe that it is actually the Washington D.C. area? Median household income in the region is $84,523, which is the highest in the nation. One of the biggest reasons for this are the huge salaries being pulled down by federal employees in the Washington D.C. area. According to the latest numbers, the average federal employee in the D.C. area brings in total compensation worth more than $126,000 a year. Of course members of Congress are even doing far better than that. Most of the members of Congress are millionaires, and somehow the vast majority of our politicians leave Washington D.C. far wealthier than when they arrived. So if you want to live the high life, you might want to move to the Washington D.C. area. Our “representatives” in Congress and the bureaucrats that work for the federal government are swimming in cash, and it is all at our expense. (Read More...)
22 Statistics That Prove The Elite Are Becoming Fabulously Wealthy While The Middle Class Is Being Ripped To Shreds
In the United States today, the only group that is “doing better” each year financially is the folks at the very top of the income pyramid. Everyone else has seen their incomes decline. Once upon a time, America had a relatively egalitarian system where just about anyone could “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” if they just worked hard enough. But today, there are millions of Americans that can’t seem to get jobs no matter how hard they try. Millions of others feel their tenuous hold on the American Dream slipping out of their grasp just a little bit more each month. The truth is that we don’t have true capitalism in the United States anymore. Over the past several decades, the financial system in the U.S. has been carefully molded and shaped in such a way that all the wealth is funneled to the elite at the very top and to the monolithic predator corporations that now dominate the global economy. Power has become concentrated in the hands of very few individuals, and they are nearly impossible to compete against. If you doubt this, go set up a general store right next to your local Wal-Mart and see how long you can survive. In America today, the elite are becoming fabulously wealthy and the middle class is being ripped to shreds. One of the things that our Founding Fathers were extremely concerned about was not allowing too much power to be accumulated in the hands of any one person or institution, but today we have turned our backs on that principle and now we are paying the price. (Read More...)
Median Household Income Is Falling In Almost Every Single Major American City
Median household income is falling in the vast majority of U.S. states and in virtually every single major U.S. city. According to the Census Bureau’s annual survey of income and poverty in the United States, of the 52 largest metro areas in the nation, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009. Needless to say, that is not good news. If incomes are falling from coast to coast, then how in the world can anyone claim that we are experiencing a “recovery”? The truth is that we are not in the middle of an economic recovery. What we are in the middle of is a long-term economic decline. Incomes are going down and middle class American families find themselves squeezed like never before. Meanwhile, unemployment has skyrocketed in recent years and it has become much harder to get a good job. Less Americans than ever are able to achieve anything even close to resembling the American Dream. Things are getting really tough out there, and as more jobs and factories leave the United States, as the U.S. government goes into even more debt and as the economy continues to implode things are going to get even worse. (Read More...)