75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

[Some real mind bogglers in the list, don't read until after vacation if you want to stay "happy" for a while!]

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/21/2012 17:44 -0500

Compiled by Michael of Investment Watch blog,

What a year 2012 has been! The mainstream media continues to tell us what a “great job” the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class. It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening. If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode. Just “tweaking” things slightly is not going to fix our economy. We need a fundamental change in direction. Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic “adjustment” that America has ever gone through. We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones. Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion. So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be “just fine”, just show them these numbers. They are a good summary of the problems that the U.S. economy is currently facing.

The following are 75 economic numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe...

#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps. That number has increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still has the gall to insist that “things are getting better”.

#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#4 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.

#5 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#7 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.

#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place.

#10 When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.

#11 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all small business owners in America “say they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current environment.”

#12 The number of jobs at new small businesses continues to decline. According to 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

#13 The U.S. share of global GDP has fallen from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011.

#14 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#15 There are four major U.S. banks that each have more than 40 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.

#16 In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now there are less than 12 million.

#17 According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971. Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.

#18 The Pew Research Center has also found that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.

#19 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

#20 Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#21 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#22 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

#23 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percentof all men in the United States have jobs.

#24 The average amount of time that an unemployed worker stays out of work in the United States is 40 weeks.

#25 If you can believe it, approximately one out of every four American workers makes 10 dollars an hour or less.

-- snip of 26 to 50 -- [scratch 50, change to 49, I had to post #50 here]

#50 The value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.

#51 2012 was the third year in a row that the yield for corn has declined in the United States.

#52 Experts are telling us that global food reserves have reached their lowest level in almost 40 years.

#53 One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

#54 If you can believe it, one recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.

#55 Medical costs related to obesity in the United States are estimated to be approximately $147 billion a year.

#56 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.

#57 Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.

#58 The wealthiest 400 families in the United States have about as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of all Americans combined.

#59 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percentof all Americans combined.

#60 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#61 Nearly 500,000 federal employees now make at least $100,000 a year.

#62 In 2006, only 12 percent of all federal workers made $100,000 or more per year. Now, approximately 22 percent of all federal workers do.

#63 If you can believe it, there are 77,000 federal workers that make more than the governors of their own states do.

#64 Nearly 15,000 retired federal workers are collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually. The list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

#65 U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family.

#66 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

#67 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#68 During fiscal year 2012, 62 percent of the federal budget was spent on entitlements.

#69 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#70 It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#71 Medicare is also growing by leaps and bounds. As I wrote about recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.

#72 Thanks to our foolish politicians (including Obama), Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

#73 Amazingly, the U.S. national debt is now up to 16.3 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#74 During the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about as much debt as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that George W. Bush took office.

#75 Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was originally created back in 1913.

Gak, this one is worth commenting on:

#15 There are four major U.S. banks that each have more than 40 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.

- anyone that says they can come close to wrapping their mind around those numbers is either lying or delusional
- note that the 4 are major US Banks only, I've seen global exposure estimated between $1.5 to 4.0 QUADRILLION, ok?

Also worth mentioning, the source article at ZH has live links as source material for all of the points. Worth bookmarking.

imho, THAT NEEDS SHARED WITH EVERYONE WE KNOW.

I know people who are completely oblivious to what is coming. These people are already living on the razor's edge. They avail themselves of all of the freebies and handouts that they can get from their local charities, local and state governments. They are completely immersed in the entitlement mindset. Nothing will shake them from it.

When the boom finally falls where will these type of people turn for their everyday needs? There are millions of them out there. They cannot figure out how to take care of themselves today. What will happen to them when the well runs dry and there is no "free stuff" handed out anymore?

Quote: Palinista wrote in post #4

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I know people who are completely oblivious to what is coming. These people are already living on the razor's edge. They avail themselves of all of the freebies and handouts that they can get from their local charities, local and state governments. They are completely immersed in the entitlement mindset. Nothing will shake them from it.

When the boom finally falls where will these type of people turn for their everyday needs? There are millions of them out there. They cannot figure out how to take care of themselves today. What will happen to them when the well runs dry and there is no "free stuff" handed out anymore?

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For those who haven't viewed the following charts, and at the risk of being repetitive, follow the blue lines and see what our political elite have wrought by signing up on to so-called 'free trade' and globalism:

Blue line= unemployment counting all those in the civilian labor force who are unemployed and who are working part time but need full time plus all those bumped out fo the civilian labor force who want work. Note this chart does not reveal anything about the quality of jobs. The chart only goes back to~1994 when a major overhaul to the U's was released.


Blue line = CPI that measures the cost of a set standard of living, not the cost of a declining one.


Blue line = real GDP created using a CPI that measures the cost of a set standard of living.


Blue line = Real Median Household Income through 2011

You make some very good points.

Quote: FP123 wrote in post #5

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Quote: Palinista wrote in post #4

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I know people who are completely oblivious to what is coming. These people are already living on the razor's edge. They avail themselves of all of the freebies and handouts that they can get from their local charities, local and state governments. They are completely immersed in the entitlement mindset. Nothing will shake them from it.

When the boom finally falls where will these type of people turn for their everyday needs? There are millions of them out there. They cannot figure out how to take care of themselves today. What will happen to them when the well runs dry and there is no "free stuff" handed out anymore?

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Yes, that category that you speak of is certainly at risk, although I am not in the camp of those that predict the "spigots being turned off" any time soon. I believe that government will continue to dole out the "entitlements" for quite some time. Of course the value of those entitlement dollars will keep shrinking but many won't notice that until it is very stark. Only a very substantial "crash" will finally turn off the spigots, at that point we are all done.

The group of the "oblivious" that I am more concerned about are those (say middle income folks) that are still employed, still paying their rent/mortgage, and still eating well. Many are driving very expensive cars and living in very expensive homes. A lot of them are spending discretionary dollars as if there was nothing amiss. At times like this when many will think little of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars (some in cash, some on ever mounting credit card accounts) on gifts and pleasure trips, they should be cutting back on that and investing their $$$ in long-term food, self defense, hard assets, other self sufficiency preps, etc. Many are blindly (consciously or subconsciously) waiting on the next "boom" to come along: their salaries and home prices will rise (in real value), their investments will jump up, and they will remain gainfully employed until retiring with a "healthy" pension and/or government "benefits" to pave their way through nirvana.

What these folks aren't thinking about is that the orchestrated "boom and bust" cycles that we have experienced for all of our lives can not continue indefinitely. Because of the underlying actions of simply "kicking the proverbial can down the road" again and again (which never dealt with driving the mal-investment off of the balance sheet) and the central banks' policies of creating more and more debt across the globe (that has passed the point of being rationally dealt with long ago), the process has an inherent end. The laws of physics (time), mathematics, and economics can only be ignored and stretched for so long. Had we not allowed the central banks to "manage" this charade to the point of no return, all of this could have been avoided. The market place would have taken care of the excesses and deficiencies that naturally occur and the up and down cycles would, over time, continually lead to a healthy and growing economy. That ship sailed, about 100 years ago, it is too late now.

These are the folks that I most concerned with, they could be doing a much better job at preparing and protecting themselves if they only has some awareness as to what is really going on (and has been going on for many decades). Government and the media will not reveal any of this to them. At this point the information is still available (and in easily understood forms) for those that will seek it out. But for too many it will be too late when that first hard shock hits them in a very up close and personal way.

<b>Of course, for the extremely wealthy this doesn't matter that much, most of them will be able to retain enough of their wealth to survive quite well, at least economically.</b>

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Quote: Palinista wrote in post #4

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I know people who are completely oblivious to what is coming. These people are already living on the razor's edge. They avail themselves of all of the freebies and handouts that they can get from their local charities, local and state governments. They are completely immersed in the entitlement mindset. Nothing will shake them from it.

When the boom finally falls where will these type of people turn for their everyday needs? There are millions of them out there. They cannot figure out how to take care of themselves today. What will happen to them when the well runs dry and there is no "free stuff" handed out anymore?

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Thanks for posting those SGS charts, the more often the better in my view.

Once you "know" it is terribly difficult to "unknow" (without the blue pill!). The trick is to just use the knowledge to help yourself prepare in whatever ways that you need to.

These "folks" are many of our family members, neighbors, etc. I try at times, not always very successful. I sent the links to the 8 part Ann Barnhardt videos to my 2 sisters,
one had no comment at all (I doubt that she watched it). The other wrote back and said "that chick is bat-chit crazy."

Quote: Palinista wrote in post #4

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When the boom finally falls where will these type of people turn for their everyday needs? There are millions of them out there. They cannot figure out how to take care of themselves today. What will happen to them when the well runs dry and there is no "free stuff" handed out anymore?

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Zitat

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis

As Polybius explains, the people will by this stage in the political evolution of the state decide to take political matters into their own hands. This point of the cycle sees the emergence of "democracy", as well as the beginning of "rule by the many". In the same way that the descendants of kings and aristocrats abused their political status, so too will the descendants of democrats. Accordingly, democracy degenerates into "ochlocracy", literally, "mob-rule". During ochlocracy, according to Polybius, the people of the state will become corrupted, and will develop a sense of entitlement and will be conditioned to accept the pandering of demagogues. Eventually, the state will be engulfed in chaos, and the competing claims of demagogues will culminate in a single (sometimes virtuous) demagogue claiming absolute power, bringing the state full-circle back to monarchy.

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Quote: FP123 wrote in post #10

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Thanks for posting those SGS charts, the more often the better in my view.

Once you "know" it is terribly difficult to "unknow" (without the blue pill!). The trick is to just use the knowledge to help yourself prepare in whatever ways that you need to.

These "folks" are many of our family members, neighbors, etc. I try at times, not always very successful. I sent the links to the 8 part Ann Barnhardt videos to my 2 sisters,
one had no comment at all (I doubt that she watched it). The other wrote back and said "that chick is bat-chit crazy."

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Quote: Polybius wrote in post #11

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Quote: Palinista wrote in post #4

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When the boom finally falls where will these type of people turn for their everyday needs? There are millions of them out there. They cannot figure out how to take care of themselves today. What will happen to them when the well runs dry and there is no "free stuff" handed out anymore?

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Then there will be chaos. Chaos will lead to demands for order. Then ...... the Anacyclosis keeps going round and round.

Zitat

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis

As Polybius explains, the people will by this stage in the political evolution of the state decide to take political matters into their own hands. This point of the cycle sees the emergence of "democracy", as well as the beginning of "rule by the many". In the same way that the descendants of kings and aristocrats abused their political status, so too will the descendants of democrats. Accordingly, democracy degenerates into "ochlocracy", literally, "mob-rule". During ochlocracy, according to Polybius, the people of the state will become corrupted, and will develop a sense of entitlement and will be conditioned to accept the pandering of demagogues. Eventually, the state will be engulfed in chaos, and the competing claims of demagogues will culminate in a single (sometimes virtuous) demagogue claiming absolute power, bringing the state full-circle back to monarchy.

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Like the maturing of a forest....

http://forestry.about.com/od/environment...t_ecosystem.htm

Nature teaches us about these things as well...

"Forest ecosystems tend to always be moving toward maturity or into what foresters call a climax forest. This maturing, also called forest succession, of the ecosystem increases diversity up to the point of old age where the system slowly collapses."

I'd say America is at the waning days of a mature, "climax forest". But then I thought that before Ronald Reagan became president and he was able to ward it off. I was hoping that Mitt was RR II but evidently our populace did not see the same opportunity I/we saw, and walked on by.