From The Business Insider
Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Giant Sucking Sound
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.
Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.
But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.
The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly
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EVEN AS AMERICAN STRUGGLES WITH SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT, AS WELL AS MEX CRIME TIDAL WAVES ACROSS THE NATION, OBAMA, BOXER, PELOSI, FEINSTEIN and REID are yet working for BIT BY BIT AMNESTY!
OFFICIAL OR BIT BY BIT… amnesty train is still mowing us down! BUT WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE?
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, February 11, 2008
In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Gov. Schwarzenegger said California is facing “financial Armageddon”. He is making drastic cuts in the budget for education, health care and services. But there is one place he isn’t making cuts… services for illegal immigrants. These services are estimated to cost the state four to five billion dollars a year. Schwarzenegger said he is “happy” to offer these services. We will have a full report tonight.
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STAGGERING COST OF ILLEGALS ALIENS IN AMERICA
Aliens In America
Taxpayers Taken To The Cleaners
By Frosty Wooldridge
4-10-8
Illegal alien migration into the United States costs American taxpayers $346 billion annually reported by the National Research Council. While employers of illegal aliens rake-in billions of dollars, the US citizens subsidize what may be called organized "Slavery in 21st Century America."
While Congress facilitates outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring of American jobs by the thousands weekly, that same Congress imports 182,000 legal immigrant monthly who need jobs. Another estimated 100,000 illegal aliens arrive each month without jobs. All those immigrants seize jobs from American citizens at slave wages.
What happens to the American taxpayer?
"Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax, and are more likely to receive public benefits than American citizens," said Edwin Rubenstein, reporting on the National Research Council's new book: "The New Americans: Economic, Demographics and Fiscal Effects of Immigration." The Social Contract Winter 2007-08. www.thesoicalcontract.com
The NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal welfare and pays $10,664.00 in federal taxes. Thus, American taxpayers shell out $2,682.00 for each immigrant household.
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LOS ANGELES UNDER MEX OCCUPATION:
Additionally, the county spends $550 million on public safety and nearly $500 million on healthcare for illegal aliens.
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JUDICIAL WATCH.org
County’s Monthly Welfare Tab For Illegal Aliens $52 Million
09/07/2010
As the mainstream media focuses on a study that reveals a sharp decline in the nation’s illegal immigrant population, monthly welfare payments to children of undocumented aliens increased to $52 million in one U.S. county alone.
The hoopla surrounding last week’s news that the annual flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. dropped by two-thirds in the past decade overlooked an important matter; the cost of educating, incarcerating and medically treating illegal aliens hasn’t decreased along with it, but rather skyrocketed to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually.
THIS FIGURE DOES NOT INCLUDE EXTRA MILLIONS PAID FOR ANCHOR BABIES
Those figures don’t even include the extra millions that local municipalities dish out on welfare payments to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, commonly known as anchor babies. In Los Angeles County alone that figure increased by nearly $4 million in the last year, sticking taxpayers with a whopping $52 million tab to provide illegal immigrants’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare benefits for just one month.
That means the nation’s most populous county, in the midst of a dire financial crisis, will spend more than $600 million this year to provide families headed by illegal immigrants with welfare benefits. In each of the past two years Los Angeles County taxpayers have spent about half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the county spends $550 million on public safety and nearly $500 million on healthcare for illegal aliens.
About a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the figures from L.A. County’s Department of Social Services. Nationwide, Americans pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare perks that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for low-income women and their children.
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AND MOST NON-GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA SOURCES SAY THERE ARE 38 MILLION ILLEGALS. NOW YOU SEE WHY CALIFORNIA PAYS OUT $18 BILLION PER YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS. LOS ANGELES ALONE OPERATES ONE BILLION IN THE RED, AND YET PAYS OUT $40 MILLION PER MONTH IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS.
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WHO PAYS FOR MEXICO'S LOOTING?
“THE AMNESTY ALONE WILL BE THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LAST 25 YEARS” Heritage Foundation
"The amnesty alone will be the largest expansion of the welfare system in the last 25 years," says Robert Rector, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and a witness at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in San Diego Aug. 2. "Welfare costs will begin to hit their peak around 2021, because there are delays in citizenship. The very narrow time horizon [the CBO is] using is misleading," he adds. "If even a small fraction of those who come into the country stay and get on Medicaid, you're looking at costs of $20 billion or $30 billion per year." (SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS IN CALIFORNIA ALONE ARE NOT UP TO $20 BILLION PER YEAR. WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN NEVADA, NOW 25% ILLEGAL, IS SOARING!)
THE MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE SPREADS ACROSS THE UNITED
STATES
Everyday there are 12 Americans murdered by Mexicans and 8
children molested!
California Attorney Gen Kamala Harris announced that nearly
HALF of all murders in Mex-occupied CA are by MEX GANGS!
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WILL MEXICO BANKRUPT AMERICA?
CALIFORNIA UNDER MEXICAN-OCCUPATION PAYS OUT $22 BILLION PER
YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS!
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WILL OHIO BE BANKRUPTED BY THE LA RAZA MEX-OCCUPATION THAT
NOT ONE LEGAL VOTED FOR?
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HOW MANY BILLIONS ARE MARYLANDERS FORCED TO PAY FOR MEX
WELFARE AND LOOTING?
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BARACK OBAMA, FIRST HISPANDERING LA RAZA “THE RACE”
PRESIDENT – HIS LA RAZA SUPREMACIST INFESTED ADMINISTRATION:
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OBAMA AND MEXICO PROMISE ILLEGALS JUMPING OUR BORDERS
OBAMACARE, “FREE” MEDICAL, “FREE” ANCHOR BABY BIRTHING = 18 YEARS WELFARE, AND
OUR JOBS!
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ROBERT RECTOR: THE STAGGERING COST OF MEXICO’S INVASION,
OCCUPATION AND EVER GROWING WELFARE STATE
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ONE OF MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORTS NEXT TO DRUGS, AND CRIMINALS
ARE PREGNANT WOMEN. THESE POOR DESPERATE WOMEN JUMP OUR BORDERS FOR “FREE”
ANCHOR BABY BIRTHING = 18 YEARS OF WELFARE FOR EACH CHILD.
THE CHILDREN BORN OF MEXICANS THAT ILLEGALLY CROSSED OUR BORDERS
IS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN BUT STILL A CITIZEN OF MEXICO.
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THE LOOTING OF AMERICA BY MEXICO, BARACK OBAMA and ERIC
HOLDER
OBAMA’S HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA:
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ANCHOR BABIES – HOW MEXICO ANCHORS THEIR OCCUPATION AND
EXPAND THEIR WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS!
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FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE”
by Michelle Malkin
Only in America could critics of a group called
"The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing
identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have
succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."
Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this
week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza,
the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race."
Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who
called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have
legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and
marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that
the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars
and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.
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Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race":
15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
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14."The Race" demands in-state tuition
discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S.
citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.
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13. "The Race" vehemently opposes
cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal
authorities.
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12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border.
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11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds
from entering immigration information into a key national crime database -- and
to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.
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10. "The Race" opposed the state of
Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to
illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal
cooperation and information sharing.
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9. "The Race" joined other open-borders,
anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227, California's
bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
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8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."
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7. "The Race" has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
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6. Former "Race" president Raul
Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S.
English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was
referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group
dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United
States. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and
advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while
avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."
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5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a
poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP
Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as "a radical
racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has
permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a
racist nation out of the American West."
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4. "The Race" is currently leading a
smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called
for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the
airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up
their foes. The New York Times reported that current "Race" president
Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated,
even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."
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3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic
nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8
million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in
Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez
Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los
Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink from a White
water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of
collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain …
ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of
life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
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2. "The Race" has perfected the art of
the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan
standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage
counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and
partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
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1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy
-- and the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian
Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The
National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the
contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the
meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people'-- and that's precisely why we
don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would
not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."
The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza?
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