The human capacity for self-delusion truly is
remarkable. Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to
believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face. Take the U.S.
economy for example. Barack Obama wants to believe that his policies have
worked and that the U.S. economy is improving. So that is what he is telling
the American people. The mainstream media wants to believe that Barack Obama is
a good president and that his policies make sense and so they are reporting that
we are experiencing an economic recovery. A very large segment of the U.S.
population still fully supports Barack Obama and they want to believe that the
economy is getting better so they are buying the propaganda that the mainstream
media is feeding them. But is the U.S. economy really improving? The truth is
that it is not.
The rate of employment among working age Americans is
exactly where it was two years ago and household incomes have actually gone down
while Obama has been president. Home ownership levels and home prices continue
to decline. Meanwhile, food and gasoline continue to become even more
expensive. The percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is
at an all-time record high and the U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5
trillion dollars under Obama. We simply have not seen the type of economic
recovery that we have seen after every other economic recession since World War
II.
The horrible statistics about the U.S. economy
that you are about to read are not talked about much by the mainstream media.
They would rather be "positive" and "upbeat" about the direction that things are
headed.
But lying to the American people is not going to
help them. If you are speeding in a car toward a 500 foot cliff, you don't need
someone to cheer you on. Instead, you need someone to slam on the brakes.
The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the
U.S. economy is in far worse shape than it was four or five years ago.
We have never come close to recovering from the
last recession and another one will be here soon.
The following are 25 horrible statistics about
the U.S. economy that Barack Obama does not want you to know....
#1 The percentage of Americans
that own homes is dropping rapidly. According to Gallup, the current level of
homeownership in the United States is the lowest that Gallup has ever measured.
#2 Home prices in the U.S.
continue to fall like a rock as well. They have declined for six months in a
row and are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble. The last time
that home prices in the United States were this low was back in 2002.
#3 Last year, an astounding 53
percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed
or underemployed.
#4 Back in 2007, about 10
percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or
longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
#5 When Barack Obama first
became president, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United
States was 2.6 million. Today, it is 5.3
million.
#6 The average duration of
unemployment in the United States is about
three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#7 Despite what the mainstream
media would have us to believe, the truth is that the percentage of working age
Americans that are employed is not increasing. Back in March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In
March 2011, 58.5 percent
of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. So
how can Barack Obama and the mainstream media claim that the employment
situation in the United States is getting better? The employment rate is still
essentially exactly where it was when the last recession supposedly ended.
#8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had
jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have
jobs.
#9 In 1962, 28 percent of all
jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. In 2011, only 9 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.
#10 In some areas of Detroit,
Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
#11 According to one recent
survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time
at this point.
#12 Since Barack Obama entered
the White House, the price of gasoline has risen by more than 100 percent.
#13 The student loan debt bubble continues to expand at a
very frightening pace. Recently it was announced that total
student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
#14 Incredibly, one out of every four jobs in the United States pays $10 an
hour or less at this point.
#15 Household incomes all over
the United States continue to fall. After adjusting for inflation, median
household income in America has declined by 7.8 percent since December 2007.
#16 Over the past several
decades, government dependence has risen to unprecedented heights in the United
States. The following is how I described the explosive growth of social welfare
benefits in one recent article....
Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages. In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages. Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.
#17 In November 2008, 30.8
million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 46
million Americans are on food stamps.
#18 Right now, more
than 25 percent of all American children are on food stamps.
#19 According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, today 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives some
form of benefits from the federal government.
#20 Over the next 75 years,
Medicare is facing unfunded
liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United
States.
#21 During the first quarter of
2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion
dollars.
#22 At this point, the U.S.
national debt is rising by
more than 2 million dollars every single minute.
#23 The U.S. national debt has
risen by
more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took
office. In a little more than 3
years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents
combined.
#24 The Federal Reserve bought
up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury
Department during 2011.
#25 The Federal
Reserve continues to systematically destroy the value of the U.S. dollar.
Since 1970, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 83 percent of its value.
But the horrible economic statistics only tell
part of the story.
In communities all over America there is a
feeling that something fundamental has changed. Businesses that have been
around for generations are shutting their doors and there is a lot of fear in
the air. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Richard Yamarone, the senior economist at Bloomberg Brief....
You have to listen to what the small businesses are telling you and right now they are telling you, ‘Hey, I’m the head of a 3rd or 4th generation, 75 or 100 year old business, and I’ve got to shut the doors’ or ‘I’ve got to let people go. And if I’m hiring anybody back, it’s only on a temporary basis.’
Sometimes they do this through a hiring firm so that they can sidestep paying unemployment benefit insurance. So that’s what’s really going on at the grassroots level of the economy. Very, very, grossly different from what you’re seeing in some of these numbers coming out in earnings releases.”
All over the country, millions of hard working
Americans are desperately looking for work. They have been told that "the
recession is over", but they are still finding it incredibly difficult to find
anyone that will hire them. The following example is from a recent CNN article....
Joann Cotton, a 54-year-old Columbus, Mississippi, resident, was one of those faces of poverty we met on the tour. Unemployed for three years, Joann has gone from making "$60,000 a year to less than $15,000 overnight." Her husband is disabled and dependent on medicines the couple can no longer afford. They rely on food stamps, which, Joann says, "is depressing as hell."
Receiving government aid, however, has not been as depressing as her job search. Joann says she has applied for at least 300 jobs. Even though she can barely afford gas, she drives to the interviews only to learn that the employers want to hire younger candidates at low wages.
The experiences have taken a toll: "I've aged 10 years in the three years that I've been looking for a job," Joann told us. "I want to get a job so I can just relax and exhale ... but I can't. After a while you just give up."
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his family continue
to live the high life at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.
Even many Democrats are starting to get very
upset about this. The following is from a recent article by Paul Bedard....
Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.
It simply is not appropriate for the Obamas to be
spending millions upon millions upon millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on luxury
vacations when so many Americans are deeply suffering.
But Barack Obama does not want you to know about
any of this stuff.
He just wants you to buy his empty propaganda one more time so that he can
continue to occupy the White House for another four yearsSOURCE: American Dream