Why is the economy going to collapse? Have you ever been ask
ed that question? If so, what did you say? Sometimes it is difficult to communicate dozens of complicated economic and financial concepts in a package that the average person on the street can easily digest. It can be very frustrating to know that something is true but not be able to explain it clearly to someone else. Hopefully many of you out there will find the list below useful. It is a list of 70 numbers that show why we are headed for a national economic nightmare. So why does the title of the article single out Barack Obama? Well, it is because right now he is the biggest cheerleader for the economy. He is attempting to convince all of us that everything is just fine and that the economy is heading in a positive direction. Well, the truth is that everything is not fine and things are about to get a whole lot worse. Certainly others should share in the blame as well. Congress has been steering the economy in the wrong direction for decades, the "too big to fail" banks have turned Wall Street into a pyramid of risk, leverage and debt, and the Federal Reserve has more power over the financial system than anyone else does. Our economy has been in decline for quite a while now, and soon we are going to smash directly into an economic brick wall. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are in denial about this. A lot of people out there doubt that an economic collapse is coming. Well, if you know someone that believes that the U.S. economy is going to be "just fine", just show them the list below.
The following are 70 facts that Barack Obama does not want you to see....
$3.59 - When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is
$3.59.
22 - It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping
22 percent.
23 - According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of
23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States
every single day during 2010.
30 - Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number
is above 30 percent.
32 - The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased
by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
35 - U.S. housing prices are now down a total of
35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.
40 - The official U.S. unemployment rate has been
above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.
42 - According to one survey,
42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
48 - Shockingly, at this point
48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.
49 - Today, an astounding
49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.
60 - According to a recent Gallup poll,
only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.
61 - At this point
the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately
61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
63 - One recent survey found that
63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.
80 - Americans buy
80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.
81 - Credit card debt among Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket has risen by
81 percent since 1989.
86 - According to one survey,
86 percent of Americans workers in their sixties say that they will continue working past their 65th birthday.
93 - The United States now
ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.
95 - The middle class continues to shrink -
95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
107 - Each year, the average American must work
107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.
350 - The average CEO now makes approximately
350 times as much as the average American worker makes.
400 - According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans
combined.
$500 - In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home
for just $500.
627 - In 2010, China produced
627 million metric tons of steel. The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.
877 - 20,000 workers recently applied for just
877 jobs at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama.
$1580 - When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs
more than $1580 an ounce.
1700 - Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping
1700% since 1971.
2016 - It is being projected that the Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. economy
by the year 2016.
$4155 - The average American household spent a staggering
$4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
$6000 - If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now
just $6000.
$10,000 - According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute,
46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and
29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
49,000 - In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than
49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
50,000 - The United States has lost an average of approximately
50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
56,000 - The United States has lost
more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
$85,000 - According to
the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
$175,587 - The Obama administration spent
$175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.
$328,404 - Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to
$328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
$361,330 - This is what the
average banker in New York City made in 2010.
440,00 - If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take
over 440,000 years to totally pay it off.
500,000 - According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing
half a million jobs to China every single year.
2,000,000 -
Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only
about 2 million today.
2,600,000 - In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans
fell into poverty. That was the
largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
5,400,000 - When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are
twice as many.
$20,000,000 - The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street
for children in Pakistan.
25,000,000 - Today, approximately
25 million American adults are living with their parents.
40,000,000 - According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University,
40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
46,405,204 - The number of Americans currently
on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.
88,000,000 - Today there are more than
88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.
100,000,000 - Overall, there are
more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.
$150,000,000 - This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans
every single hour.
$2,000,000,000 - The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being
much higher.
$147,000,000,000 - In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately
147 billion dollars a year.
295,500,000,000 - Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was
$295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
$359,100,000,000 - During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by
359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.
$454,000,000,000 - During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent
over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
$1,170,000,000,000 - China now holds approximately
1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.
$5,000,000,000,000 - The U.S. national debt has risen
by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 - What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011
would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.
$11,440,000,000,000 - The total amount of
consumer debt in the United States.
And this one - pdf of our government looking out for the people. Oh please!
DipJar is an electronic jar of sorts that has been programmed to charge you $1 every time you dip your card into it. So if you want to leave a $5 tip, you're going have to swipe your card five times, so that might sound taxing. But really, how tiring is it to have to dip your card five times into the slot? I'd imagine not very much – though it might wear out the stripe on your card faster.
By parts, we mean the exterior stuff like the case and metal plates because I'm sure no one would be able to leave Apple HQ with the actual insides of an iPhone 5 and live to tell the world about it. (I'm kidding. I think.)
Kristin Wright is a columnist and contributing writer at