Americans are being CRUSHED by credit card debt and it's about to get worse
Nolte: Amount of Money People Believe They Need for Retirement Jumps 53% in Biden’s America
Bidenflation is freaking people out as they look forward to their retirement years. The amount of money American adults believe they will need to save in order to retire has jumped 15 percent over last year and 53 percent(!) since 2020.
“It would take $1.46 million to retire comfortably, according to a recent survey of 4,588 adults released Tuesday,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “That is up from $1.27 million a year ago. And over $1 million more than the average survey participant’s nest egg.”
“Anxiety about retirement is sky-high,” Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist, told the Wall Street Journal. Concerns about healthcare costs and long-term care (nursing home) are at the top of people’s worry lists.
More from the WSJ:
Millennials, those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s, sharply raised their estimates compared with before the pandemic. When they retire, millennials now expect to need $1.65 million. That is up from just under $1 million in 2020. Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, said they would need $990,000, up from $830,000 in 2020, according to the poll, the latest installment of which was conducted in January.
The pandemic has nothing to do with this change in outlook. What people are freaking out over, and understandably, is Bidenflation. In just a little over three years, the cost of everything, especially the basics of life — housing, energy, and food — has exploded. Watching a dozen eggs jump from 99 cents under former President Trump to $4.00 under His Fraudulency Joe Biden is beyond unnerving. The price of gas jumped from $2.40 per gallon under Trump to $3.53 today. Then there’s the cost of buying a home, high mortgage rates, exploding auto and rent prices, and those booming healthcare costs Obamacare promised to save us from.
For the most part, people can get used to anything if there’s stability. Under Biden, though, the only stability is a lack of stability, making it impossible for anyone to plan for the future, especially young people. If eggs cost $4.00 a dozen today, how much will they cost in 20 or 30 years? How much will a gallon of gas cost?
Even in normal times, figuring out how to save for retirement is stressful. How long will I live? How much money will I need? Will Social Security be around? What if I end up in a nursing home (which Medicare does not cover)? How much money do I want to leave to my heirs? How much do I want to give to charity?
Add to those everyday worries Joe Biden’s insane economy caused by his excessive government spending, his deliberate crippling of domestic energy production, and flooding the country with illegal aliens who compete with Americans for wages, housing, and goods… What do you end up with? A stressed-out population pressuring itself to save $1.46 million instead of $1.1 million.
The anti-human left probably sees this development as a win-win. Because stress is a killer, it shortens life, so you won’t need as much money to retire, so what are you whining about?
Here’s a little retirement tip from me to you… What you save for retirement is important. Equally important, however, is not having any debt. If your house, car, and credit cards are paid off, that reduces the nut you have to crack each month, which allows you to retire with less money. Also, the sooner those things are paid off, the more money you can put away for retirement.
Yes, you will always have to pay property taxes and the like, but debt is slavery. Once your house is paid off, it is yours. Once your vehicle is paid off, it is yours. And things like credit cards with their 18 percent interest rates are nothing less than legalized loan sharking.
I’ll never have anything close to a million dollars, but because I have zero debt, no one owns me, and I can retire on very little — after my Blu-Ray addiction is cured. But it will only be cured when I own all the Blu-Rays! All of them!
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Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania. JOHN BINDER
As Breitbart News reported, Biden’s campaign is being backed by nearly “all the big banks” on Wall Street, according to CNN analysis, and Wall Street executives and employees have donated more than $74 million to elect the former vice president.
Joe Biden Faces Significant Problem on Economy with Young Voters
President Joe Biden is underperforming among young voters who are concerned about their economic plight, recent polling shows.
Fresh out of left-leaning academic institutions, young voters are typically a demographic that overwhelmingly supports Democrat candidates. Biden won 61 percent of voters under 30 in 2020.
WATCH — CNBC’s Sullivan: The Haves Like Bidenomics Way More than the Have-Nots:
The 2024 election cycle could produce different results. In Biden’s America, many young voters face severe challenges of burdensome student debt, an expensive rental market, increased costs via Biden’s inflation, and credit card debt.
Below is the percentage of young voters in 2024 who listed Biden’s economy as the top issue, a Gallup poll released Monday found:
- Ages 18-29: 47 percent
- Ages 30-49: 43 percent
- Ages 50-64: 28 percent
- Ages 65+: 19 percent
The percentage of young voters who see Biden’s economy as a top issue in 2024 is drastically greater than in 2020:
- Ages 18-29: 11 percent
- Ages 30-49: 18 percent
- Ages 50-64: 15 percent
- Ages 65+: 11 percent
Biden is bleeding support among young swing state voters, according to a March Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll. Trump leads among the demographic in swing states by seven points (47-40 percent). In 2020, Biden won 61 percent of voters under 30 in 2020.
One reason for the shift appears to be the impact of the pandemic.
“They had a more severe impact of Covid itself in a direct economic way,” Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Newhouse director of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, told Bloomberg. “Whether it’s gas, or housing, or rent or health care, they’re having a really hard time having affordability for that because of the lack of stored wealth.”
RELATED VIDEO — CNN’s Sellers: “It’s Hard for Me to Say Bidenomics Is Working”:
The White House argues that wages increased under Biden’s leadership, but that only represents half the story, Bloomberg reported:
Much of those wage increases have also been eaten up by higher rent costs, which rose about 18% between October 2020 and January 2024, according to Redfin. Buying a property is increasingly out of reach for many young adults, with home prices up 21% over the same period, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Swing-state voters ages 18-34 are more likely than any other age cohort to list housing costs as important for their vote in 2024, according to the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
Debt is also souring some younger Americans’ views about the economy, according to EY Chief Economist Gregory Daco. Adults in their twenties and thirties have higher rates of credit-card debt that have deepened into serious delinquency, meaning the debt is 90 days or more past due, according to data from the New York Fed.
Many young adults are making payments on federal student debt that they had hoped would be forgiven by Biden’s plan. The White House has used more narrow methods to approve nearly $144 billion in forgiveness, targeting specific groups, including those with disabilities, some former for-profit college students and public servants who have been paying their loans for years.
While young voters struggle to gain financial freedom, U.S. Federal Reserve data revealed Thursday that the wealthiest one percent in Biden’s America set a record with a net worth of $44 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter.
A majority of Americans still live paycheck to paycheck, a recent LendingClub study found, raising concerns that so-called “Bidenomics” failed to help average Americans.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
Joe Biden’s America: Wealthiest 1% Set Record with $44 Trillion Total Net Worth
The wealthiest one percent in President Joe Biden’s America set a record with a net worth of $44 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter, U.S. Federal Reserve data revealed.
Biden casts his administration as opposed to the widening wealth gap, even though a majority of Americans still live paycheck to paycheck, a recent LendingClub study found, raising concerns that so-called “Bidenomics” failed to help average Americans.
A majority of voters are “worse off financially” under Biden, up 25 points since he assumed office in 2021, a Fox News poll found Wednesday.
The fourth quarter gains resulted from stock holdings, thanks to an end-of-year rally, CNBC reported:
The total net worth of the top 1%, defined by the Fed as those with wealth over $11 million, increased by $2 trillion in the fourth quarter. All of the gains came from their stock holdings. The value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by the top 1% surged to $19.7 trillion from $17.65 trillion the previous quarter.
While their real estate values went up slightly, the value of their privately held businesses declined, essentially canceling out all other gains outside of stocks.
The quarterly gain marked the latest addition to an unprecedented wealth boom that began in 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic market surge. Since 2020, the wealth of the top 1% has increased by nearly $15 trillion, or 49%. Middle-class Americans have also seen a rising wealth tide, with the middle 50% to 90% of Americans seeing their wealth increase 50%.
A U.S. Federal Reserve chart shows the wealth of the top one percent in America.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
The Democrat party is a Potemkin village
"Most people see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what they've been told to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see - not what is right in front of them in its pristine condition." --Vincent Bugliosi
A Potemkin village is a façade, an attempt to fool people into believing things are better or different than they are.
Nothing has revealed the shallow, empty façade of the Democrat party like the rather obscene fundraiser held Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall.
Joe Biden’s campaign is going so badly that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were resurrected from the shadows to bolster Biden’s sinking polling numbers.
Whoever is running the campaign apparently thinks people are so stupid that getting those two former presidents on board will fool voters into thinking Biden is not the failed, demented, callous man he is.
So along with Obama and Clinton they gathered up some reliably lefty performers like Queen Latifah, the quite unappealing Lizzo, and a few others with whom most people are unfamiliar to put on a show. Missing was Sean Combs, better known as P. Diddy, who campaigned vigorously for Biden in 2019. He got his home raided by police last week for a host of serious crimes: sex trafficking of minors, drug dealing and abuse, etc.
One can’t help but wonder if Combs and Hunter were party pals since they have similar lifestyle tastes.
According to the media, there were five thousand people in attendance, many of whom paid as much as five hundred thousand dollars to attend. A picture with the three presidents cost one hundred thousand dollars.
It was a disgraceful event, especially since the funeral of the most recently murdered policeman killed in New York was taking place a few miles away.
That is where President Trump was. Biden hardly, if at all, acknowledged this most recent senseless murder by yet another thug with so many previous violent crimes to his name, he should not have been on the streets. Biden similarly ignored the murder of Laken Riley by one of the ten million illegal aliens he has ushered into the country. Biden and his Marxist handlers could not care less about the victims of their soul-crushing policies. These are cruel and corrupt people. Their shabby bit of cheap and tawdry theater that allegedly raised $25 million only proves how unethical and tone deaf they truly are. They are about one thing, one thing only – money.
Who are those five thousand people who paid obscene amounts of money to wallow in the imagined glow of Obama, Clinton and Biden?
They are one-dimensional charlatans, self-appointed elites who think that being a Democrat makes them superior beings. Their relentless virtue-signaling would be amusing if it were not so eternally predictable. Outside of the event, about five hundred of their former and current base protested Israel’s self-defensive war against the terrorist organization, Hamas. This is ironic because those in attendance probably agree with the protestors.
The pro-Hamas, hate-Israel crowd are as one with the hate-America throng wildly applauding for a president that has brought America to the brink of disaster on every score – economic, national security, militarily and our sovereignty. Our judicial system has been Stalinized; Democrats are free to break all laws, conservatives will be punished severely for minor infractions. Our law enforcement agencies have been thoroughly weaponized.
Rampant crime is the chaos the Democrat party needs to further its agenda.
What has been done to the people who were present at the Capitol on January 6 is Stalinist in the extreme as is the lawfare perpetrated against Trump.
On top of that, Biden intentionally destroyed the energy independence we enjoyed under Trump. His open border has forever altered the demography of the nation and not in a good way. The migrants pouring over the border are not coming to be productive citizens; they are coming to be taken care of by American taxpayers. They are not grateful for what they are receiving, and they expect more. That’s what we get when other countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending their worst our way.
Democrats routinely, endlessly present themselves as the party of democracy while they censor narratives and opinions they do not like.
They abhor the Constitution because, as Obama often noted, it is a document of negative rights; it lays out what the government must not do.
That the SCOTUS is right now weighing the value of the First Amendment tells us just how far they have succeeded to that end.
The Democrat party as a democratic institution is a false front.
It has no interest in the freedom of individual citizens. We are each only members of one or another identity group to them. We are oppressors or oppressed, white or minority, labeled according to our sexual orientation – LGBTQ++ or not. The party as currently constituted means to control every aspect of how we live, the more constrained the better.
For example, mandating EVs without building a requisite number of charging stations is just one way they strive to restrict our movement. The party loves to rage against Trump as an authoritarian but we’ve never had to endure a president more authoritarian than Joe Biden.
This Democrat party has to be commended for its hive mind – not one of them deviates from the mandated party line. They are not allowed to think for themselves. One has to assume that their leadership has something, some sort of leverage, on every one of them.
If Republicans were similarly of like mind, the country would not find itself in the grave state of near destruction that it currently is. Republicans present not a Potemkin village front but a fractured one which has rendered them self-destructive losers who infuriate their constituents. RINOs like Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowsky, Ken Buck, et al. are happy to betray their once-declared conservative tenets because they have no core values.
Like the Democrats who bow down in servitude to their leaders, those rascally Republicans think nothing of betraying those who voted for them. They do not care, they feel no allegiance to them. Like the Democrats, it is all about, only about, getting and keeping the power to get rich and stay rich. The American people therefore have very few men and women in power who have their best interests at heart.
Who does?
Trump does. That’s why they have to destroy him. The Democrat party is not what it pretends to be. The truth is that it is waging war against the American people while faking it all the way to the bank. That is what that Radio City extravaganza was all about. It takes money to cheat and they will cheat again.
“Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power.” --Robert Greene
Image: Erica Fischer, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0
Yes, Biden’s campaign overflows with cash, but Trump is getting the ‘good’ money
While Trump was attending Officer Jonathan Diller’s funeral, Joe Biden was at a ritzy fundraiser where people paid up to $500,000 for a seat, and Biden’s campaign raked in $26 million. That’s a huge haul for a single fundraiser. Indeed, Biden has a great deal more money than Trump, who’s also been seeing his money sucked away by the Democrats’ despotic lawfare. But sometimes things aren’t what they seem. The reality is that almost half of Biden’s money comes from a small group of elite leftist donors, while Trump is getting most of his money from huge numbers of voters.
Fox Business analyzed FEC records to see where the money is coming from for the two candidates’ presidential campaigns. (Hat tip: Matt Margolis.)
The analysis shows that there’s a big difference in the source of Biden’s 2024 campaign money compared to his 2020 haul. In 2020, he received 49% of his money from small donors (defined as people contributing less than $2,000) and 25% from big donors (that is, people contributing more than $2,000). This year, only 38% of his money comes from small donors, while 35% of his money comes from big donors.
Meanwhile, Trump has significantly increased the contributions he gets from small donors. In 2020, 52% of the money for his campaign came from small donors, while 19% came from big donors. By 2024, that ratio shifted: 61% of Trump’s donations come from small donors, while big donors dropped to only 9%.
Image by AI.
Nothing more clearly shows that the Democrat party is the elitist, oligarchic party, while Trump is the chosen candidate for America’s normal individuals and families. In addition, nothing more clearly shows where voter enthusiasm lies.
Corporations can fill your coffers, but a corporation does not cast a vote; its line workers do. Likewise, someone like Bill Gates can write a big check, but he’s only one vote. All those ordinary people who dug into their pockets (digging a lot deeper than the Bill Gates of the world do) are also the people who will go to their polling places and cast a vote. That’s why I say that Trump got the good money because he got the money with the actual voters standing behind it.
And speaking of money, I wrote the other day that the outpouring of anger and grief for Officer Jonathan Diller might be seen as something of a tipping point in this political year. The fact that someone with 21 arrests for serious crimes was armed and on the streets and then shot a police officer to death exemplifies everything wrong with Democrat politics. It may not be the straw that broke the Democrat donkey’s back, but it’s certainly weighing heavily on that donkey.
In that regard, it’s significant that a fundraiser set up for Stephanie Diller, Jonathan’s widow, raised over $900,000 over a few days, significantly exceeding its $750,000 goal. Of the almost 12,000 donors, many were big donors (including Bill Ackman, Brian Kilmeade, and the San Francisco Police Officers Association). However, as with Trump, most of the money came from ordinary people tossing whatever they could into the pot.
“Follow the money” is a good dictum. Normally, we have a habit of following only the big money. Sometimes, however, the most useful information comes from the small.
"America’s elites, now overwhelmingly represented by the Democratic Party, have a single overriding interest: their self-indulgent lifestyle."
Class Conflict within the Democratic Party
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/class_conflict_within_the_democratic_party.html
By Steve McCann
Over many decades, the American Left, the Democratic Party and their mutual propaganda arm, the self-styled “mainstream media,” have successfully portrayed conservatives and the Republican Party as a coalition of the wealthy and intolerant. Further, the Democrats and the left have claimed that they are the true champions of the working or middle class as they unceasingly fight to defeat and marginalize this evil menace.
The reality, however, is that this cabal has virtually no interest in defending or aiding the working class as they are, in fact, the party of a bifurcated constituency: the wealthy and those dependent on the largess of the government.
Of the fifty wealthiest congressional districts throughout the country, the Democrats now represent forty-one. Of the remaining nine represented by Republicans, three are in Texas, the only red state on the list of fifty districts. Not coincidentally the residents of these same fifty districts are supposedly among the most well-educated and sophisticated. This transformative process is not a recent phenomenon as the trend began in the 1980’s and accelerated rapidly in the early 2000’s.
America’s elites, now overwhelmingly represented by the Democratic Party, have a single overriding interest: their self-indulgent lifestyle. This is manifested in their mistaken belief that conservatives (i.e. the “right”) are hell bent on enforcing their version of morality on the nation, thus potentially calling into question the lifestyles of the rich and solipsistic.
The veracity of this claim is immaterial as it would require an element of deliberation not emotion -- a trait in extremely short supply among the nation’s privileged class, nearly all of whom have difficulty in generating an original thought due to the ill-education rampant in America’s universities. Thus, the mindless accusations of racism, misogyny and Fascism directed at the conservative rubes in middle America are acceptable, and in far too many instances believed, particularly as many had the temerity to vote for Donald Trump – who, although wealthy and Ivy League educated, is considered the ultimate unsophisticated rube.
As conservatives are the dominant force in the Republican Party and this nation cannot function politically with more than two major political parties, the alternative is the Democratic Party. An entity dominated by the American Left, an assemblage whose core philosophy is antithetical to the interests of the wealthy and privileged. Yet, determined to protect their lifestyles and vilify conservatives, they willingly ally with the left and overwhelmingly support virtually any Democratic candidate. In the recent 2018 mid-terms, Democratic House candidates outspent their Republican opponents by a two to one margin thanks primarily to this wealthy but myopic assemblage.
Their colleagues in the Democratic Party, and the preponderance of the membership, are those dependent on the largess of the federal and state governments. On the other hand, the growing segment of the citizenry who are working and self-sufficient are increasingly joining those who believe in limited government in migrating to the Republican Party-- a process that is accelerating with the policies and tactics of Donald Trump in combating the entrenched left and their determination to culturally and economically transform the nation. The Republican Party will inevitably become the party of the working or middle class. As such, they could potentially dominate the political agenda for the foreseeable future.
The left and the Democratic Party, in order to offset this possibility, must aggressively seek to increase the number of dependents by promoting the legalization and ultimate citizenship for untold millions of illegal immigrants and promising all Americans cradle to grave economic security. In order to enact this strategy to defeat the Republicans, the left must have the active participation and financial support of the nation’s wealthy-- which they have.
The Democratic Party has evolved into essentially an incompatible two-tier class-driven entity encompassing the nation’s wealthiest and the nation’s poorest. Nonetheless, it is at present a convenient home for the elites to hold off the imaginary horde of conservatives outside their gilded doors.
However, the voting numbers within the party are overwhelmingly with those who generally support the leftist philosophies of redistribution (e.g. socialized medicine and guaranteed incomes) and curtailing of freedom (e.g. speech, assembly and religion). While it may not manifest itself to the affluent who have cast their lot with the Democrats, the redistribution of wealth must, by necessity, come from the wealthy, as that is where the bulk of the nation’s wealth resides. It is also this same small-in-numbers group that benefits the most from freedom of speech and assembly.
Once fully embroiled in this marriage of convenience, a divorce will be impossible as the co-inhabitant of the Democratic Party, the dependent class, must continue grow in order to electorally defeat the Republicans and protect the left’s agenda. Further, the oversold expectations promulgated by the left will never be satisfied regardless of how many promises are made or token redistributive programs are enacted by the current ruling class. Only a complete transformation of this nation into a failed socialist state will satiate the left, their acolytes and their attendant army of dependency. A goal more in reach than ever thanks to the inability of the nation’s elites to give a damn about the future of the country.
There is not a more short-sighted and self-absorbed group of citizens in this nation than the white, wealthy well-educated urban and suburban voters. They are willing to rend the fabric of this nation in order to protect their privilege and lifestyle. While the vast majority of Americans will ultimately pay the price, the current ruling class and their progeny will have far more to lose.
