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Police State • Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigra
Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform
BY DAVID KRAVETS05.10.136:30 AM
Illustration: National Institutes of Health
The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.
Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.
Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.
This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.
“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”
For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.
“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.
David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.
“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”
For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.
The committee is scheduled to resume debate on the package Tuesday.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/0 … -dossiers/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sat May 11, 2013 9:58 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
American • Where Is The Recovery? A Higher Percentage Of Americans Had
Where Is The Recovery? A Higher Percentage Of Americans Had Jobs Three Years Ago
By Michael, on May 3rd, 2013
If you think that the latest employment numbers are good news, you might want to look again. In April 2013, 58.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. But three years ago, in April 2010, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Well, you may argue, that is not much of a difference. And that is precisely my point. The percentage of Americans that have a job fell like a rock during the last recession. It dropped from about 63 percent all the way down to below 59 percent, and it has stayed below 59 percent for 44 months in a row. So where is the recovery? This is the first time in the post-World War II era that the employment-population ratio has not bounced back after the end of a recession. So anyone that tells you that we are experiencing an employment recovery is lying to you. Yes, the U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs last month. But it takes nearly that many jobs just to keep up with population growth. The truth is that we are just treading water.
So why has the unemployment rate been going down? Well, it is because the government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans "don’t want jobs" anymore. In fact, an astounding 9.5 million Americans have "left the workforce" since Barack Obama took office.
Some in the mainstream media have started calling them "missing workers". But whatever label you want to use, the reality of the matter is that they are really hurting. They are part of the reason why food stamp enrollment has soared from 32 million to more than 47 million while Barack Obama has been in the White House.
If you still believe that the employment market is getting better, just look at the following numbers. The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been sitting at about the same level for four years in a row…
April 2008: 62.7 percent
April 2009: 59.8 percent
April 2010: 58.7 percent
April 2011: 58.4 percent
April 2012: 58.5 percent
April 2013: 58.6 percent
So why is everyone getting so excited over the latest numbers? When you step back and look at what has happened to the employment-population ratio over the past decade it really is quite horrifying…
Yes, I suppose that we should be thankful that the percentage of Americans with a job has not continued to decline over the past few years. Unfortunately, the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching and that is going to make our employment crisis far worse.
A recovery was supposed to already happen by now. Now we are running out of time before the next major downturn strikes.
And things have been particularly hard for our young people. Even if our young people do go to college, there is a very good chance that good jobs will not be waiting for them once they graduate.
According to Accenture’s 2013 College Graduate Employment Survey, 41 percent of all Millennials who graduated from college during the past two years are working in jobs that actually do not require a college degree.
And a different survey conducted a while back found that 53 percent of all college graduates under the age of 25 are either unemployed or underemployed.
Perhaps you have noticed this. Perhaps you have noticed that there seems to be large numbers of young people that are living with their parents or that can’t seem to get their lives started.
It is because the economy is not producing enough jobs for them.
We have shipped millions of good jobs overseas, we have replaced millions of jobs with technology, and we have created an economic environment that is murdering our small businesses.
Sadly, the future does not look bright for the American worker. The big corporations that dominate our society are feverishly trying to increase profits by getting rid of as many "expensive" American workers as possible. That is one of the reasons why corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at a record high, but wages as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time low.
At this point there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, and that number is going to go a lot higher in the years ahead.
But the financial markets seem to be absolutely thrilled with the present state of affairs. The latest employment numbers caused the Dow to shoot past 15,000 and the S&P 500 to push past 1600.
Of course stocks have become completely and totally divorced from economic reality, but this does happen from time to time and it never lasts forever. At some point there will be a rude awakening.
And I anticipated that we could potentially see the Dow hit 15,000 before it finally crashed. Back in February, I made the following statement…
Right now, everyone seems to be quite giddy about the fact that the Dow is marching toward an all-time high. And I actually do believe that the Dow will blow right past it. In fact, it is even possible that we could see the Dow hit 15,000 before everything starts falling apart.
Well, now we have seen the Dow hit 15,000. But that doesn’t change any of the long-term trends that are absolutely eviscerating our economy.
So enjoy this bubble of false hope while you can
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch … -years-ago
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri May 03, 2013 6:35 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Where Is The Recovery? A Higher Percentage Of Americans Had Jobs Three Years Ago
If you think that the latest employment numbers are good news, you might want to look again. In April 2013, 58.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. But three years ago, in April 2010, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Well, you may argue, that is not much of a difference. And that is precisely my point. The percentage of Americans that have a job fell like a rock during the last recession. It dropped from about 63 percent all the way down to below 59 percent, and it has stayed below 59 percent for 44 months in a row. So where is the recovery? This is the first time in the post-World War II era that the employment-population ratio has not bounced back after the end of a recession. So anyone that tells you that we are experiencing an employment recovery is lying to you. Yes, the U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs last month. But it takes nearly that many jobs just to keep up with population growth. The truth is that we are just treading water.
So why has the unemployment rate been going down? Well, it is because the government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans “don’t want jobs” anymore. In fact, an astounding 9.5 million Americans have “left the workforce” since Barack Obama took office.
Some in the mainstream media have started calling them “missing workers”. But whatever label you want to use, the reality of the matter is that they are really hurting. They are part of the reason why food stamp enrollment has soared from 32 million to more than 47 million while Barack Obama has been in the White House.
If you still believe that the employment market is getting better, just look at the following numbers. The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been sitting at about the same level for four years in a row…
April 2008: 62.7 percent
April 2009: 59.8 percent
April 2010: 58.7 percent
April 2011: 58.4 percent
April 2012: 58.5 percent
April 2013: 58.6 percent
So why is everyone getting so excited over the latest numbers? When you step back and look at what has happened to the employment-population ratio over the past decade it really is quite horrifying…
So exactly what part of that chart are we supposed to get excited about?
Yes, I suppose that we should be thankful that the percentage of Americans with a job has not continued to decline over the past few years. Unfortunately, the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching and that is going to make our employment crisis far worse.
A recovery was supposed to already happen by now. Now we are running out of time before the next major downturn strikes.
And things have been particularly hard for our young people. Even if our young people do go to college, there is a very good chance that good jobs will not be waiting for them once they graduate.
According to Accenture’s 2013 College Graduate Employment Survey, 41 percent of all Millennials who graduated from college during the past two years are working in jobs that actually do not require a college degree.
And a different survey conducted a while back found that 53 percent of all college graduates under the age of 25 are either unemployed or underemployed.
Perhaps you have noticed this. Perhaps you have noticed that there seems to be large numbers of young people that are living with their parents or that can’t seem to get their lives started.
It is because the economy is not producing enough jobs for them.
We have shipped millions of good jobs overseas, we have replaced millions of jobs with technology, and we have created an economic environment that is murdering our small businesses.
Sadly, the future does not look bright for the American worker. The big corporations that dominate our society are feverishly trying to increase profits by getting rid of as many “expensive” American workers as possible. That is one of the reasons why corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at a record high, but wages as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time low.
At this point there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, and that number is going to go a lot higher in the years ahead.
But the financial markets seem to be absolutely thrilled with the present state of affairs. The latest employment numbers caused the Dow to shoot past 15,000 and the S&P 500 to push past 1600.
Of course stocks have become completely and totally divorced from economic reality, but this does happen from time to time and it never lasts forever. At some point there will be a rude awakening.
And I anticipated that we could potentially see the Dow hit 15,000 before it finally crashed. Back in February, I made the following statement…
Right now, everyone seems to be quite giddy about the fact that the Dow is marching toward an all-time high. And I actually do believe that the Dow will blow right past it. In fact, it is even possible that we could see the Dow hit 15,000 before everything starts falling apart.
Well, now we have seen the Dow hit 15,000. But that doesn’t change any of the long-term trends that are absolutely eviscerating our economy.
So enjoy this bubble of false hope while you can.
It will not last much longer.
View full post on The Economic Collapse
They Are Murdering Small Business: The Percentage Of Self-Employed Americans Is At A Record Low
The percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has never been lower in the history of the United States. Once upon a time, the United States was a paradise for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but now the control freak bureaucrats that dominate our society have created a system that absolutely eviscerates them. This is very unfortunate, because by murdering small business, the bureaucrats are destroying the primary engine of job growth in this country. One of the big reasons why there are not enough jobs in America today is because small business creation is way down. As I mentioned yesterday, entrepreneurs and small businesses are being absolutely devastated by rules, regulations, red tape and by oppressive levels of taxation. If anyone doubts that small business in the United States is dying, just look at the charts below. Sadly, this is what the bureaucrats that run things want. They don’t want us to be independent of the system. Instead, they are much more comfortable when as many of us as possible are heavily dependent on the system in one way or another. If all of us have to go running to the government or to one of the big corporations for a job, then we are much easier to control. But as the control freaks continue to construct their bureaucratic utopia, they are also killing off what once made the U.S. economy so great.
The other day I came across the following two charts in an article by Charles Hugh Smith, and I was absolutely stunned by what I saw. This first chart shows that the number of unincorporated self-employed Americans has dropped back to levels that we have not seen since the mid-1980s even though our population has increased by tens of millions of people since that time…
As you can see, from 1970 to the mid-1990s the number of unincorporated self-employed Americans rose steadily. But in the mid-1990s it began to level off and now it is falling rapidly.
This next chart shows the percentage of self-employed Americans as a share of non-farm employment. In other words, those that work on farms are excluded from this chart. The percentage of self-employed Americans was fairly stable between 1970 and 1990, but since 1990 it has been steadily eroding and it has now reached a level never seen before…
At this point, only about 7 percent of non-farm workers are self-employed. That is depressingly low. That means that an overwhelming majority of those that are employed in America are working for the system in one capacity or another.
But isn’t that what we pound into the heads of our children these days? We teach them to work hard in school so that they can “get a good job” when they grow up. From a very early age we train our children to plug themselves into the system.
Not that working for someone else is wrong. Of course not. It is just that we are not fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship in America today. In fact, we seem to be doing everything that we can to kill it off.
In a previous article, I detailed how the number of new businesses (and the number of jobs those businesses create) has been steadily declining. In particular, this decline has accelerated dramatically under the Obama administration. According to an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data performed by economist Tim Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…
Bush Sr.: 11.3
Clinton: 11.2
Bush Jr.: 10.8
Obama: 7.8
Is that a good trend or a bad trend?
It doesn’t take an advanced degree in economics to figure out where things are going.
Kane speculated about why we are witnessing such a decline in his paper…
There is anecdotal evidence that the U.S. policy environment has become inadvertently hostile to entrepreneurial employment. At the federal level, high taxes and higher uncertainty about taxes are undoubtedly inhibiting entrepreneurship, but to what degree is unknown. The dominant factor may be new regulations on labor. The passage of the Affordable Care Act is creating a sweeping alteration of the regulatory environment that directly changes how employers engage their workforces, and it will be some time until those changes are understood by employers or scholars. Separately, there has been a federal crackdown since 2009 by the Internal Revenue Service on U.S. employers that hire U.S. workers as independent contractors rather than employees, raising the question of mandatory benefits. New firms tend to use part-time and contract staffing rather than full-time employees during the startup stage. According to Labor Department data, the typical American today only takes home 70 percent of compensation as pay, while the rest is absorbed by the spiraling cost of benefits (e.g., health insurance). The dilemma for U.S. policy is that an American entrepreneur has zero tax or regulatory burden when hiring a consultant/contractor who resides abroad. But that same employer is subject to paperwork, taxation, and possible IRS harassment if employing U.S.-based contractors. Finally, there has been a steady barrier erected to entrepreneurs at the local policy level. Brink Lindsey points out in his book Human Capitalism that the rise of occupational licensing is destroying startup opportunities for poor and middle class Americans.
In my previous article, I also pointed out some of the other statistics that show that small business in America is dying…
-According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the last recession.
-As a share of the population, the percentage of Americans that are self-employed fell by more than 20 percent between 1991 and 2010.
-As a share of the population, the percentage of “new entrepreneurs and business owners” dropped by a staggering 53 percent between 1977 and 2010.
Unfortunately, this is a crisis that has taken decades to develop and that there are not any easy solutions for. But there are certain factors that should be addressed immediately. The following are some of the things that are contributing to the murder of self-employment and small business in America…
#1 Taxes: The IRS seems to especially enjoy tormenting entrepreneurs and small businesses. In fact, things have gotten so bad that even late night talk show hosts are joking about it. Recently, NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno joked that if Barack Obama really wanted to close down Guantanamo Bay, he should “do what he always does: declare it a small business and tax it out of existence”
#2 Ridiculous Regulations: If you have ever tried to start a small business, you probably know how frustrating it can be dealing with government red tape. In particular, the federal government has burdened our small businesses with gigantic mountains of rules and regulations and it gets worse with each passing day.
#3 State Governments That Are Openly Hostile To Business: A perfect example of this is the state of California. In 2011, the state of California ranked 50th out of all 50 states in new business creation, and yet they just continue to pass more legislation that hurts small businesses.
#4 Obamacare: Our broken healthcare system is a tremendous burden on small businesses, and Obamacare is going to make things much worse.
#5 The One World Trade Agenda: In many industries, U.S. small businesses simply cannot compete against products made by workers that are being paid slave labor wages on the other side of the globe.
#6 Predator Corporations: Time after time we have seen corporate giants extract huge tax breaks and other enormous concessions from local officials which give them an overwhelming advantage. But once the corporate giant moves into town, many of the existing small businesses find that they cannot compete and are forced to shut down.
#7 Our Corrupt Political System: On the national level, elections are almost always won by the politician that raises the most money. Our politicians know that their careers depend on raising money, so they tend to be very good to those that they get big money from. There is a reason why big corporations spend billions of dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying. They do it because it works. Over the decades, the big corporations have been able to shift the rules of the game massively in their favor, and this has been to the detriment of entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Can you think of any other factors that you would add to this list? Please feel free to share your opinion by leaving a comment below…
View full post on The Economic Collapse
Americans Deserve to See Federal Role in National Tests
Neal McCluskey
The drive to impose uniform curriculum standards on the nation’s schools has been one of stealth, and at times, seemingly intentional deception. Most egregious has been the mantra of Common Core proponents that the effort has been “state-led and voluntary,” despite Washington coercing state adoption through the Race to the Top program and No Child Left Behind waivers; standards creators encouraging just such federal “incentives”; and Washington selecting and funding the two groups creating the tests to go with the standards. And now, more than a week after the U.S. Department of Education announced the creation of a “technical review” panel to assess the assessments, it seems increasingly certain that the panel’s work will be done behind closed doors.
At least one report asserts that the meetings will, indeed, be closed to the public. Education Week’s initial reporton the review says that the panel’s “feedback” will eventually be made public in “a yet-to-be-determined form,” but says nothing about the meetings themselves. Cato Center for Educational Freedom efforts to confirm the meeting status with the U.S. Department of Education have come up empty, with calls over two days either resulting in no information or simply going unanswered. At best, then, the meetings will be open to the public but ED has a terrible communications system. At worst the panel’s work will be completely under wraps save for some kind of final – and perhaps heavily filtered – report.
Either scenario is unacceptable. These tests are being funded by taxpayers, and the goal is ultimately to use them to assess the math and reading mastery of the nation’s children. Funders and families deserve to see what this review panel is doing, and shouldn’t have to pull telecommunications teeth to find out if and how they can do that. In addition, Common Core supporters have taken to painting opponents as paranoid, while at the same time denying or downplaying the federal government’s major role in pushing the Common Core. It would not be surprising were they to use the same tactics should Common Core opponents raise questions about the degree to which the Feds are influencing what is on the tests. The panel may well leave test content alone, but given the track record so far it is rational to fear the worst, especially when it seems the review panel is purposely being kept out of real sunlight.
Americans deserve to see all that the Feds are doing with this supposedly non-federal effort.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
American • More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Have No Jobs
More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job
By Michael, on April 7th, 2013
The jobs recovery is a complete and total myth. The percentage of the working age population in the United States that had a job in March 2013 was exactly the same as it was all the way back in March 2010. In addition, as you will see below, there are now more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job. But even though the employment level in the United States has consistently remained very low over the past three years, the Obama administration keeps telling us that unemployment is actually going down. In fact, they tell us that the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10.0% all the way down to 7.6%. And they tell us that in March the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% even though only 88,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. But it takes at least 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So how in the world are they coming up with these numbers? Well, the reality is that the entire decline in the unemployment rate over the past three years can be accounted for by the reduction in size of the labor force. In other words, the Obama administration is getting unemployment to go down by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans simply do not want jobs anymore. We saw this once again in March. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 600,000 Americans dropped out of the labor market during that month alone. That pushed the labor force participation rate down to 63.3%, which is the lowest it has been in more than 30 years. So please don’t believe the hype. The sad truth is that there has been no jobs recovery whatsoever.
If things were getting better, there would not be more than 101 million working age Americans without a job.
So exactly where does that statistic come from? Well, the following explains where I got that number…
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed.
In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are 89,967,000 working age Americans that are "not in the labor force". That is a new all-time record, and that number increased by a whopping 663,000 during the month of March alone.
When you add 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed to the 89,967,000 working age Americans that are "not in the labor force", you come up with a grand total of 101,709,000 working age Americans that do not have a job.
When you stop and think about it, that is an absolutely staggering statistic.
And anyone that tells you that "a higher percentage of Americans are working today" is telling you a complete and total lie. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell dramatically, and since then we have not seen that number bounce back at all. In fact, this is the very first time in the post-World War II era that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back after a recession. At this point, the employment-population ratio has been under 60 percent for 49 months in a row…
Since the end of 2009, the employment-population ratio has been remarkably steady. Just check out these numbers…
March 2008: 62.7 percent
March 2009: 59.9 percent
March 2010: 58.5 percent
March 2011: 58.4 percent
March 2012: 58.5 percent
March 2013: 58.5 percent
We should be thankful that the percentage of working age Americans with a job did not continue to decline, but we should also be quite alarmed that it has not bounced back at all.
If there was going to be a recovery, there would have been one by now. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and that is going to push the employment-population ratio down even farther.
So why is the U.S. economy not producing as many jobs as it used to? Well, certainly the overall decline of the economy has a lot to do with it. We are a nation that is drowning in debt and that is getting poorer by the day.
But since the end of the last recession, corporate profits have bounced back in a big way and are now at an all-time high. So you would figure that the big corporations should be able to hire a lot more workers by now.
Unfortunately, that is not the way things work anymore. Big corporations are trying to minimize the number of expensive American workers that they have on their payrolls as much as possible these days.
One way that they are doing this is through the use of technology. Thanks to robots, computers and other forms of technology, big corporations simply do not need as many human workers as they used to. In future years, this trend is only going to accelerate. I wrote about how this is changing the world of employment in one of my previous articles entitled "Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots Eventually Steal All Of Our Jobs?"
Another way that big corporations are replacing expensive American workers is by shipping their jobs off to the other side of the globe. Big corporations know that they can make bigger profits by making stuff in foreign countries where they can pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits. How in the world are American workers supposed to compete with that?
For much more on how U.S. jobs are being killed by offshoring, please see this article: "55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America".
And of course immigration is having a dramatic impact on the labor market in some areas of the country as well. Cheap labor has dramatically driven down wages in a lot of professions. For example, once upon a time you could live a very nice middle class lifestyle as a roofer. But now many roofers really struggle to make a living.
When you add everything up, it paints a very bleak picture for the future of the American worker.
The cost of living keeps rising much faster than wages do, and the competition for good jobs has become incredibly fierce.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make things even easier for those that are not working. This has caused some Americans to give up completely and to be content with letting the government take care of them. The following is from a recent article by Monty Pelerin…
As we make it easier to get unemployment benefits for longer time periods, more people take advantage of the system. So too with food stamps and disability. All programs are at or near record levels in what is supposed to be four years into an economic recovery. For many, the benefits of becoming a government dependent exceed what they can earn. One study reported that a family of four, collecting all the benefits for which they were entitled, would have to earn $65,000 per annum to have the same after-tax purchasing power.
If you are a product of the government schools and are legal to work (i.e., have skills enough that you are affordable at the minimum wage or higher), at what point do you realize that there is no need to go through the hassle of actual work. You can live pretty well by staying home and taking advantage of the entitlements available to you. That is exactly what a larger and larger percentage of the population are realizing. In many cases, it is economically irrational to work.
This behavior creates a social pathology that only worsens over time. Kids learn from their parents that work is not necessary and the many ways to game the system. In this regard, look for this problem to become worse over time unless these programs are cut back.
In some areas of the country, it actually pays not to work very hard. According to Gary Alexander, the Secretary of Public Welfare for the state of Pennsylvania, a "single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."
But the truth is that most Americans still want to work hard and would gladly take a good job if they could just find one. The following is one example that was featured in a recent Fox News article…
After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.
She’d already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, working with the disabled. But she couldn’t land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.
Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she’ll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.
"I’m not proud of it," says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. "The only way I’m able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on."
And that is how most Americans feel.
Most Americans do not want to be dependent on the government.
Most Americans want to work hard and take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone and it never will again.
So there will continue to be millions upon millions of Americans that find that they cannot take care of themselves and their families without government assistance no matter how hard they try.
And this is just the beginning – things are going to get much worse during the next major wave of the economic collapse.
Yes, at the moment there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, but that number is actually going to go much higher in the years ahead. The anger and frustration caused by a lack of employment opportunities is going to shake this nation.
That is why it is important to try to become less dependent on your own job. In this economic environment, a job can disappear at literally any moment. Anything that you can do to become less dependent on the system would be a good thing.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch … have-a-job
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Apr 07, 2013 8:01 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job
The jobs recovery is a complete and total myth. The percentage of the working age population in the United States that had a job in March 2013 was exactly the same as it was all the way back in March 2010. In addition, as you will see below, there are now more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job. But even though the employment level in the United States has consistently remained very low over the past three years, the Obama administration keeps telling us that unemployment is actually going down. In fact, they tell us that the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10.0% all the way down to 7.6%. And they tell us that in March the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% even though only 88,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. But it takes at least 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So how in the world are they coming up with these numbers? Well, the reality is that the entire decline in the unemployment rate over the past three years can be accounted for by the reduction in size of the labor force. In other words, the Obama administration is getting unemployment to go down by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans simply do not want jobs anymore. We saw this once again in March. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 600,000 Americans dropped out of the labor market during that month alone. That pushed the labor force participation rate down to 63.3%, which is the lowest it has been in more than 30 years. So please don’t believe the hype. The sad truth is that there has been no jobs recovery whatsoever.
If things were getting better, there would not be more than 101 million working age Americans without a job.
So exactly where does that statistic come from? Well, the following explains where I got that number…
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed.
In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are 89,967,000 working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”. That is a new all-time record, and that number increased by a whopping 663,000 during the month of March alone.
When you add 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed to the 89,967,000 working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”, you come up with a grand total of 101,709,000 working age Americans that do not have a job.
When you stop and think about it, that is an absolutely staggering statistic.
And anyone that tells you that “a higher percentage of Americans are working today” is telling you a complete and total lie. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell dramatically, and since then we have not seen that number bounce back at all. In fact, this is the very first time in the post-World War II era that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back after a recession. At this point, the employment-population ratio has been under 60 percent for 49 months in a row…
Since the end of 2009, the employment-population ratio has been remarkably steady. Just check out these numbers…
March 2008: 62.7 percent
March 2009: 59.9 percent
March 2010: 58.5 percent
March 2011: 58.4 percent
March 2012: 58.5 percent
March 2013: 58.5 percent
We should be thankful that the percentage of working age Americans with a job did not continue to decline, but we should also be quite alarmed that it has not bounced back at all.
If there was going to be a recovery, there would have been one by now. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and that is going to push the employment-population ratio down even farther.
So why is the U.S. economy not producing as many jobs as it used to? Well, certainly the overall decline of the economy has a lot to do with it. We are a nation that is drowning in debt and that is getting poorer by the day.
But since the end of the last recession, corporate profits have bounced back in a big way and are now at an all-time high. So you would figure that the big corporations should be able to hire a lot more workers by now.
Unfortunately, that is not the way things work anymore. Big corporations are trying to minimize the number of expensive American workers that they have on their payrolls as much as possible these days.
One way that they are doing this is through the use of technology. Thanks to robots, computers and other forms of technology, big corporations simply do not need as many human workers as they used to. In future years, this trend is only going to accelerate. I wrote about how this is changing the world of employment in one of my previous articles entitled “Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots Eventually Steal All Of Our Jobs?“
Another way that big corporations are replacing expensive American workers is by shipping their jobs off to the other side of the globe. Big corporations know that they can make bigger profits by making stuff in foreign countries where they can pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits. How in the world are American workers supposed to compete with that?
For much more on how U.S. jobs are being killed by offshoring, please see this article: “55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America“.
And of course immigration is having a dramatic impact on the labor market in some areas of the country as well. Cheap labor has dramatically driven down wages in a lot of professions. For example, once upon a time you could live a very nice middle class lifestyle as a roofer. But now many roofers really struggle to make a living.
When you add everything up, it paints a very bleak picture for the future of the American worker.
The cost of living keeps rising much faster than wages do, and the competition for good jobs has become incredibly fierce.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make things even easier for those that are not working. This has caused some Americans to give up completely and to be content with letting the government take care of them. The following is from a recent article by Monty Pelerin…
As we make it easier to get unemployment benefits for longer time periods, more people take advantage of the system. So too with food stamps and disability. All programs are at or near record levels in what is supposed to be four years into an economic recovery. For many, the benefits of becoming a government dependent exceed what they can earn. One study reported that a family of four, collecting all the benefits for which they were entitled, would have to earn $65,000 per annum to have the same after-tax purchasing power.
If you are a product of the government schools and are legal to work (i.e., have skills enough that you are affordable at the minimum wage or higher), at what point do you realize that there is no need to go through the hassle of actual work. You can live pretty well by staying home and taking advantage of the entitlements available to you. That is exactly what a larger and larger percentage of the population are realizing. In many cases, it is economically irrational to work.
This behavior creates a social pathology that only worsens over time. Kids learn from their parents that work is not necessary and the many ways to game the system. In this regard, look for this problem to become worse over time unless these programs are cut back.
In some areas of the country, it actually pays not to work very hard. According to Gary Alexander, the Secretary of Public Welfare for the state of Pennsylvania, a “single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.”
But the truth is that most Americans still want to work hard and would gladly take a good job if they could just find one. The following is one example that was featured in a recent Fox News article…
After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.
She’d already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, working with the disabled. But she couldn’t land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.
Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she’ll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.
“I’m not proud of it,” says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. “The only way I’m able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on.”
And that is how most Americans feel.
Most Americans do not want to be dependent on the government.
Most Americans want to work hard and take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone and it never will again.
So there will continue to be millions upon millions of Americans that find that they cannot take care of themselves and their families without government assistance no matter how hard they try.
And this is just the beginning – things are going to get much worse during the next major wave of the economic collapse.
Yes, at the moment there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, but that number is actually going to go much higher in the years ahead. The anger and frustration caused by a lack of employment opportunities is going to shake this nation.
That is why it is important to try to become less dependent on your own job. In this economic environment, a job can disappear at literally any moment. Anything that you can do to become less dependent on the system would be a good thing.
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American • A Fiscal Lesson in Cyprus for Americans
A Fiscal Lesson in Cyprus for Americans
Jacob G. Hornberger
Once again, the European Union is teaching Americans what lies at the end of the road of out-of-control federal spending and debt. Cyprus is the latest country that has required a bailout. But this time, the authorities have crossed the Rubicon in how they have addressed the problem.
The basic approach to overextended EU countries is to grant them immediate bailout money to enable them to make payments on their debts and other expenses, including their massive welfare doles to their citizenry. As a condition to receiving the bailout money, the EU requires the government to slash expenses, especially by reducing payments to the dole recipients, and to raise taxes. Additionally, bondholders have been required to take a loss on their investments.
With Cyprus, things have taken a different turn. To avoid having to slash expenses and raise taxes, the president of Cyprus announced that the government would simply expropriate money that people have deposited in the country’s banks. Those who have deposits in excess of 100,000 Euros would have about 10 percent of their monies confiscated. Those with less would have about 7 percent confiscated.
So, here you have an entire group of people who have saved their money, never dreaming that they would have to bear the consequences out of control government spending and debt, especially for those on the government welfare dole.
Not surprisingly, the Cyprus plan is having consequences, namely with old-fashioned bank runs. People are trying to get their money out of the Cyprus banks before the parliament formally approves the deal. Even more ominous, depositors are now taking their money out of banks in weaker countries and moving them to stronger countries.
Perhaps that’s why thethe president of Cyprus is keeping the nation’s banks closed on an extended “holiday.” Perhaps that’s also why both he and the parliament are now balking at implementing the bank-deposit confiscation plan.
Several years ago, the Argentine government was faced with a tremendous shortfall of revenues to cover its ever-burgeoning expenses. It simply confiscated people’s retirement accounts.
Would the U.S. government ever do these sorts of things? Well, don’t forget that President Roosevelt did it during the Great Depression when he nationalized gold and made it a felony offense to own it, notwithstanding the fact that it had been the official constitutional money of the United States since the founding of the nation. FDR ordered Americans to deliver their gold to the federal government, which paid them off in cheapened, devalued, irredeemable notes. It was a confiscation of wealth no different in principle from that that was done by the Argentine government and that is now being conducted by the Cyprus government.
Today, there is an enormous debate occurring here in the United States over the issue of out-of-control federal spending and debt.
The statists are saying: “Don’t worry. Be happy. Everything’s fine. The government should just keep spending and spending and borrowing and borrowing. It’s the key to economic prosperity.”
We libertarians are saying: “Out-of-control federal spending and debt is the road to national bankruptcy. Look at Greece, Italy, Spain, and now Cyprus. Governments cannot spend people rich. They spend people into impoverishment. It’s time to get off this road before it’s too late. It’s time to dismantle, not reform, the welfare-warfare state. Otherwise, be prepared for drastic measures employed by the federal government against the American people.”
If Americans continue following the statists, they will rue the day. Only by following the sound-money fiscal policies of the libertarians can we restore fiscal sanity to our land.
Jacob Hornbergeris founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/03.13/lesson.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:22 pm
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American • THE BIGGEST LIE EVER SOLD TO AMERICANS
THE BIGGEST LIE EVER SOLD TO AMERICANS
Posted on 16th March 2013 by AWD in Economy
A succinct presentation about inflation. It’s the silent tax. The U.S. dollar has been devalued 20% in the last decade alone. Did you have investments that went up 20% in the last decade? If not, you’ve been taxed (and you’ve lost money). Cash sitting idly by is melting away, every single day.
Bernanke is printing $118 million dollars every hour of every day, $84 billion every month. Inflation is a lagging indicator, but when it kicks in, it’s unstoppable. And those that believe we can’t have hyperinflation without wage inflation are wrong. In a stagflation picture, wages stay the same or drop as inflation continues skyward. Remember the late 70?s and early eighties? 12% inflation. Worse, interest rates were also 12%. Once inflation takes off (if it isn’t already), interest rate must rise. Then the whole debt bubble threatens to collapse as the debt is unserviceable (never mind the $210 in unfunded liabilities).
Bernanke is out of bullets. At what rate of inflation is he finally going to stop printing money? 20%? 30% If he pulls the punchbowl of QE heroine, or unwinds the Fed portfolio, we’ll have market collapse. He’s pouring gasoline on the fire now, printing billions just to keep the debt bubble inflated. It’s not going to end well.
The Biggest Lie Ever Sold to the American Public
Submitted by Phoenix Capital Research on 03/15/2013 12:53 -0400
The US has been lying to all of us for decades now.
We’re not talking about some kooky conspiracy theory… we’re talking about INFLATION.
By understating inflation, the Federal Government and Federal Reserve have done two things:
Exaggerated our economic growth.
Lied about the true cost of living in the US.
Regarding #1, every time the US prints GDP growth numbers, it adjusts this data for inflation. The reason for this is that if the economy grows at 10%, but prices also rise at 10%, then there really hasn’t been any actual growth.
To deal with this, the US adjusts its GDP measures for inflation to make it appear as f they’re objective. The only problem is that the US adjusts GDP using a phony inflation number that is much lower than reality.
A great example is last quarter when we were told that the GDP grew at an annual rate of 0.1%. The reality is that if you used realistic inflationary measures, the US economy SHRANK at a rate of over -1% last quarter. Yes, negative 1%. The worst GDP print since 2009.
The same lie has been extended to the US population about our standard of living.
For decades now we’ve been told that we were getting wealthier because incomes were growing and asset prices like stocks and real estate were rising. Yet data clearly show incomes have been dropping in the face of rising inflation: a “double whammy”.
However, the reality is that inflation was the source for much of this “growth.” The US Dollar has lost nearly 20% of its value in the last decade. The end result is all of us are paying much more for EVERYTHING. But we’re being told that we’re actually richer because incomes are up
This is why understating inflation is a HUGE LIE: it is a lie to all of us that our living standards are improving when in fact they’re not.
And the media is FINALLY beginning to report on it.
Those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing are said to be cynics. Americans can be forgiven for being a bit cynical, though, when it comes to prices. Their own cost of living rarely seems to be as low as official statistics claim it is.
Friday’s consumer-price index for February is seen rising 0.2% month on month, excluding volatile food and energy costs. That would bring the year-on-year pace to 2%.
A change to the inflation-measuring process 30 years ago by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Uncle Sam’s arbiter of prices, is starting to raise eyebrows again. Since 1983, house prices haven’t been part of the consumer-price index. Instead, the BLS calculates “owners’ equivalent rent,” a mix of actual rents and what homeowners guess their homes would fetch if rented.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 … 55538.html
Look around you. The cost of everything is increasing dramatically. Gas prices are UP. Home prices are UP. Healthcare costs are UP. Energy prices area UP. Everything you need to survive is UP.
Forget the Fed’s CPI measure. Inflation is here now. And things are only going to be getting worse going forward. History has shown us countless times that you cannot print money without prices soaring. There is not one single instance in which currency devaluation has not done this. And the US Federal Reserve is now printing $84 billion every single month.
What effect do you think this will have on the cost of everything?
Make no mistake, now is the time to be preparing yourself and your portfolio for this. Inflation can take its time to arrive. But once it does… things move very very quickly.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=51093
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sat Mar 16, 2013 2:39 pm
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Only 3 in 10 Americans trust the government
Given that our system of government is supposed to be- of, for, and by the people, this isn’t good. Is it that there is a new and deep American self loathing? Or is it that government in the United States has become completely separated from the average citizen? I think it’s the latter. In fact I know it’s the latter.
There’s still plenty of love for the state. But never before has trust in the federal government been this low.
(From washington.cbslocal.com)
Conversely, distrust of federal government is presently at 73 percent. Earlier on in the Obama administration, it reportedly hit a record high of 80 percent, according to a graph constructed and presented by researchers at Pew.
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