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Economics 101..a drunk monkey could do better?

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  • fl57caveman

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    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-24/58-facts-about-us-economy-2015-are-almost-too-crazy-believe



    #1 These days, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. At this point 62 percent of all Americans have less than 1,000 dollars in their savings accounts, and 21 percent of all Americans do not have a savings account at all.
    #2 The lack of saving is especially dramatic when you look at Americans under the age of 55. Incredibly, fewer than 10 percent of all Millennials and only about 16 percent of those that belong to Generation X have 10,000 dollars or more saved up.
    #3 It has been estimated that 43 percent of all American households spend more money than they make each month.
    #4 For the first time ever, middle class Americans now make up a minority of the population. But back in 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle class households.
    #5 According to the Pew Research Center, the median income of middle class households declined by 4 percent from 2000 to 2014.
    #6 The Pew Research Center has also found that median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013.
    #7 In 1970, the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income. Today, that number has plummeted to just 43 percent.
    #8 There are still 900,000 fewer middle class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began, but our population has gotten significantly larger since that time.
    #9 According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
    #10 For the poorest 20 percent of all Americans, median household wealth declined from negative 905 dollars in 2000 to negative 6,029 dollars in 2011.
    #11 A recent nationwide survey discovered that 48 percent of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 believe that “the American Dream is dead”.
    #12 Since hitting a peak of 69.2 percent in 2004, the rate of homeownership in the United States has been steadily declining every single year.
    #13 At this point, the U.S. only ranks 19th in the world when it comes to median wealth per adult.
    #14 Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been one of the primary engines that has fueled the growth of the middle class in the United States, but today the level of entrepreneurship in this country is sitting at an all-time low.
    #15 For each of the past six years, more businesses have closed in the United States than have opened. Prior to 2008, this had never happened before in all of U.S. history.




    and many more, it is a frightening read...:bored:

    #16 If you can believe it, the 20 wealthiest people in this country now have more money than the poorest 152 million Americans combined.
    #17 The top 0.1 percent of all American families have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all American families combined.
    #18 If you have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket, that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of all Americans.
    #19 The number of Americans that are living in concentrated areas of high poverty has doubled since the year 2000.
    #20 An astounding 48.8 percent of all 25-year-old Americans still live at home with their parents.
    #21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month, and nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty right now.
    #22 In 2007, about one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, that number is one out of every five.
    #23 According to Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, the authors of a new book entitled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America“, there are 1.5 million “ultrapoor” households in the United States that live on less than two dollars a day. That number has doubled since 1996.


    and more

    #24 46 million Americans use food banks each year, and lines start forming at some U.S. food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning because people want to get something before the food supplies run out.
    #25 The number of homeless children in the U.S. has increased by 60 percent over the past six years.
    #26 According to Poverty USA, 1.6 million American children slept in a homeless shelter or some other form of emergency housing last year.
    #27 Police in New York City have identified 80 separate homeless encampments in the city, and the homeless crisis there has gotten so bad that it is being described as an “epidemic”.
    #28 If you can believe it, more than half of all students in our public schools are poor enough to qualify for school lunch subsidies.
    #29 According to a Census Bureau report that was released a while back, 65 percent of all children in the U.S. are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.
    #30 According to a report that was published by UNICEF, almost one-third of all children in this country “live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income”.
    #31 When it comes to child poverty, the United States ranks 36th out of the 41 “wealthy nations” that UNICEF looked at.
    #32 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty”.
    #33 40.9 percent of all children in the United States that are being raised by a single parent are living in poverty.
     
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    Mozella

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    These statistics are indeed sad, especially the financial situation of most Americans and the poor condition of many small businesses. However, when it comes to the "homeless", the "poor", those below the "poverty level", and those qualifying for various forms of "government assistance" it must be remembered that if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In other words, if you're involved in a branch of government which identifies person (especially a child) as "poor", or "hungry", or "afflicted with ADD", or "transgender", or any number of other categories, then the more you identify, the larger your slice of the pie and the more powerful your agency becomes.

    For example, 78% of American households have two TVs while 65% of those living below the poverty line have two TVs and 78% have air conditioning. The list of amenities the impoverished enjoy is extensive and not all that different from regular Americans. None of my friends live in poverty, but I am on speaking terms with two families who are.

    I just returned from living as a permanent resident in Italy and I can say with some confidence that the average middle-class Italian has a lifestyle significantly more primitive than that experienced by Americans living in poverty. Many of my middle-class Italian friends have no TV at all, while 97.7% of impoverished Americans have at least one TV.

    No doubt the U.S. is in a big mess, but few Americans are truly going down the drain except for the mentally ill who, if it weren't for liberal Democrats, wouldn't be living on the street.
     

    fl57caveman

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    another lesson on socialism.


    Does Socialism Work? A Classroom Experiment............

    An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

    The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

    After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

    The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

    When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

    As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

    To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

    It could not be any simpler than that.

    There are five morals to this story:

    1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

    2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

    3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

    4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

    5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

    =================================

    I’ll make one final point. There are five morals to the story, but there are dozens of nations giving us real-world examples every day.

    Sort of makes you wonder why some people still believe this nonsense?
     

    Brandon_SPC

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    The $50 lesson.....
    Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog.
    During our friendly conversation, I asked their 12 year old daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.
    Both of her parents - liberal Democrats - were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"
    She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."
    Her parents beamed with pride!
    "Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said. "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that!" I told her.
    "What do you mean?" she replied.
    So I told her, "You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."
    She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"
    I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."
    Her parents aren't speaking to me.
    Author unknown
     

    fl57caveman

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    Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife in West Virginia on Sunday when he was confronted by members of the audience who were clearly angry about Hillary’s promise to put coal miners out of business.
    Coal is pretty important in West Virginia.
    The Washington Free Beacon reported:
    Hostile Protesters Confront Bill Clinton in West Virginia
    Bill Clinton was repeatedly interrupted by protesters during a rally for Hillary Clinton in Logan, West Virginia Sunday before the state’s primary on May 10.
    The group booed the former president and confronted him about Hillary Clinton’s promise to destroy coal jobs, a long-standing staple of West Virginia’s economy.
    During the rally, Clinton recounted that he had asked his wife to send him to “any place in America that feels left out and left behind.” The protesters then began shouting at the former president, to which he reacted with disdain.
    “This is where they start screaming because they don’t want to hear this,” Clinton said with his hand raised. The crowd applauded and stood up to face the protesters, who continued booing and were ushered out.
    “The difference between us and them is that we listen to them,” Clinton said.
    Prior to Clinton’s appearance in Logan, city officials emailed Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) attempting to prevent his visit, according to WVNS-TV.
    “Bill and Hillary Clinton are simply not welcome in our town,” their email stated. “Mrs. Clinton’s anti-coal messages are the last thing our suffering town needs at this point. The policies that have been championed by people like Mrs. Clinton have all but devastated our fair town, and honestly, enough is enough.”
     

    fl57caveman

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    could have predicted this...

    aising the minimum wage is one of those wonderful-sounding ideas that, whenever tried, unfortunately never quite works the way it was promised. To its credit, the Washington Post has noticed.The Post recently highlighted a new study from a group of economists who were commissioned by the city of Seattle to look at that city's minimum wage hike from $9.96 an hour to $11.14 an hour. What they found was enlightening.
    To begin with, the economists said, some of the workers weren't helped at all, since their pay would have likely gone up anyway with experience and tenure on the job.
    But the city didn't bargain for what happened to other workers it had sought to help: "Although workers were earning more, fewer of them had a job than would have without an increase," the Post said. "Those who did work had fewer hours than they would have without the wage hike."

    http://www.investors.com/politics/c...sson-from-seattles-minimum-wage-hike/?ref=yfp
     

    fl57caveman

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    when you hear how we should have 5 to 7% growth per year in a "healthy" economy, remember this: it is unsustainable




    9:12 long, worth the time, parts 2 to 8 on youtube
     

    fl57caveman

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    Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
    ~ P.J. O’Rourke


    Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
    If it moves, tax it.
    If it keeps moving, regulate it.
    And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
    ~ Ronald Reagan
     

    Mouser

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    The middle class is a bell-shaped standard, normal curve of income distribution. Virtually all things in nature and our world fall into some sort of bell-shaped curve as the average represents the majority...now the issue; when humans "control" or attempt to do so, the natural order of things is disrupted. Those doing the controlling are better off and those who are subject to control become worse off...that is very predictable.

    The middle class is a uniquely American characteristic born of a free market and freedom to trade. Over the years, various controlling and manipulating occurs as the rich seek to put down any threats to their empire and the poor are duped into believing that they are entitled to another person's wealth and the rich are going to help them get it, in the name of 'fairness'. And here we are...identity politics, crony capitalism, a full blown constitutional crisis, and our primary law enforcement agencies, the media and many political figures buying into the gravy train...meanwhile the mindless zombies march towards their damnation and the rich, like a kids game of musical chairs, are working feverishly to ensure they have a seat at the big table when the music stops.

    Will the music stop in my lifetime? I doubt it, but I think it is sooner than later. The rich get richer and the middle class erodes away...the middle class was where most of the wealth of the country was contained and that is why any new spending endeavor is sure to land on the shoulders of the middle class...we are the ones with the money, but not enough money to hide or fight...so our wealth is evaporating before our eyes as the zombies chant...give me Hillary, give money, give me equal pay, give me $15/hr for flipping burgers, give me free birth control, give me free phones, give me food stamps, give me more stuff!!!! The zombies will vote for those who promise the most free stuff but the zombies always think their saviors are talking about someone else's money...the rich fat cats...they don't realized the people promising free stuff ARE the rich fat cats and they will run out of other people's money sooner or later.

    One issue nearly every person I know runs in to...their basic premise is that the govt, the people in the govt and our society is working on behalf of its citizens. Nothing can be farther from reality. When you wonder why a person in power wants to import people you say 'that doesn't make sense'. It doesn't if your basic assumption they are working on your behalf...they are not. They don't like America, want to change it and want to import voters to ensure they are elected and our way of life is diluted...only then can they ensure they have a seat when the music stops.

    The second amendment is there for the day the music stops...make no mistake about it...the second amendment, free speech and a free press are necessary for our country to thrive. Unfortunately, the free press is gone and free speech is under attack via political correctness and the second amendment is strong, for now.
     
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    fl57caveman

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    the trouble with socialism is, you eventually run out of OPM, other peoples money...

    then the fecal matter hits the rotating air movement device, and you have a revolution..
     

    FrankT

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    Sad sad sad, and I wonder WHY the billionaires like gates and the others send $$ overseas to non Americans instead of giving here in America FIRST...That IS why Trump was elected in the end...America First!
     

    fl57caveman

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    Sad sad sad, and I wonder WHY the billionaires like gates and the others send $$ overseas to non Americans instead of giving here in America FIRST...That IS why Trump was elected in the end...America First!


    they think it gives them extra brownie points in liberal lala land....bad news for them, God is THE Conservative....


    and they might help a homeless vet by mistake here, they are just part of the industrial/military complex..bad juju for libs..
     

    fl57caveman

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    anyone who believes in big government knowing best, and socialist policies, take notice;
    it don't work...

    While that scenario is really bad, the uncertainty for the country’s output is probably skewed to the downside. The economic, political and humanitarian crisis is only getting worse. The government is in a debt vice, and it is hard to see how it will meet payments this year. The IMF predicts that inflation is running at a 13,000 percent annual rate. GDP is expected to shrink by 15 percent this year.
    The flamingo-eating, wild-horse-slaying, rabbit-breeding-for-food utopian society is falling apart as Reuters reports that while truck heists have long been common in Latin America’s major economies from Mexico to Brazil, looting of cargoes on roads has soared in Venezuela in recent times.


    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018...d-max-violence-soars-venezuelas-lawless-roads
     
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