September 21st, 2013 | Author: Posted by Ben Hart
One of my favorite websites for learning the truth about the economy is Shadow Government Statistics by John Williams (http://www.shadowstats.com/).
What Williams does is show what the economy is really doing based ways we measured economic performance in 2000, 1990, 1980, etc. By doing this, he shows us how the government keeps changing the way it measures economic performance in order to make the economy appear do be doing better than it really is. Examples . . .
FACT #1: The Federal Reserve keeps telling us inflation is low. But if we measure the Consumer Inflation rate the way we measured it in 1980, according to Williams, inflation today is rising at a rate of about 9 percent per year, not the 1% or 2% the government is claiming.
FACT #2: We keep hearing that the U.S. economy (GDP) is growing at a rate of 1.5% per year — which is truly horrible when compared to the typical 4-6% annual growth rate we typically experience after recessions. But IN FACT, the situation is much worse than this. If we factor in the true inflation rate of 9% per year (see FACT #1 above), the U.S. economy has actually been shrinking every year since 2005. In other words, we’re not just in a recession, we’re in a full-blown Depression. But there’s more . . .
FACT #3: Median household yearly income in America has fallen five years in a row, now at $51,017, acccording to the Census Bureau — a drop of $4,600 since 2007. This is the lowest level since 1995 (adjusted for inflation). How can this be happening if we are in a recovery?
FACT #4: The drop in median family income is, of course, much worse than this if you use the true annual inflation rate of 9 percent (cited in FACT #1 above) — not the manipulated inflation rate.
FACT #5: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that one in six Americans today is living in poverty and 146,000,000 Americans are “either poor or low income.” The poverty rate in America today is 16 percent — higher than it was when the so-called “War on Poverty” was launched in the mid 1960s.
FACT #6: Today, approximately 20 percent of America’s children live in poverty. This is the worst its been since 1975.
FACT #7: Americans receiving disability benefits have increased by 29 percent since President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009 — from 6.3 million to 8.8 million.
FACT #8: Today, 47 million Americans are on Food Stamps, compared to 32 million on Barack Obama’s first day as President. That’s a 49% increase.
FACT #9: We now have more than 90,000,000 working-age Americans who have decided to leave the labor force — not because the economy is good, but because job prospects are so dismal. We now have the lowest work force participation rate in 35 years (since back in the days when most women did not work). The number of working-age Americans who are not working now totals more than 100,000,000.
FACT #10: About 500,000 more Americans are leaving the labor force every month.
FACT #11: Seven of eight jobs created during this so-called recovery have been part-time jobs. A big reason for this is ObamaCare. Employers don’t want to be saddled with the ObamaCare mandate that they provide employees with expensive health insurance.
FACT #12: 60% of the jobs lost during the recession were mid-wage jobs. But 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low-wage jobs. So the Obama economy is trading good-paying jobs for low-paying jobs. In fact, one of every ten jobs in America is being filled by a temp agency.
FACT #13: The largest employer in America is Wal-Mart. The second largest is Kelly Services, a temp agency. Not that there is anything wrong with these companies. But this sure doesn’t look like the 27-year economic boom we saw from Reagan through Clinton.
FACT #14: The real unemployment rate is 11.1 percent if we use the size of the workforce as it stood in 2008, not the 7.3 manipulated rate the Obama Labor Department is reporting. And the more reliable U-6 measure (which includes those marginally connected to the labor force) shows the real unemployment rate still at around 14 percent.
FACT #15: Those being paid $10 per hour or less make up 25% of the American workforce.
FACT #16: To keep the U.S. economy marginally afloat, the Federal Reserve is printing about $1 TRILLION new dollars per year. The result is an astonishing decline in the value of the dollar. It’s why the prices of most commodities have increased by 50-100% or more since Obama’s first day in office. For example, gold has gone from $800 per ounce to $1,400 per ounce today (though down from its peak of $1,900 per ounce in 2011). The price of a regular gallon of gas for your car was $1.85 on Obama’s first day in office. The price of corn is up 100 percent under Obama. If you go down the list of raw materials traded on the Chicago Commodities Exchange (materials we all rely on to survive), we find an average annual inflation rate of near 20 percent during the Obama years. This tends to confirm the point in FACT #1 that the official inflation rate is a manipulated number that is complete fiction.
FACT #17: The number of people getting mortgages has dropped to the lowest level since October of 2008. This is not a good sign for the housing industry.
FACT #18: 60% of children in Detroit are now living in poverty. This despite the multi-billion-dollar government bailouts of GM and Chrysler. Something’s not right.
FACT #19: Contributing to Detroit’s woes comes news that 47% of Detroit’s adults are functionally illiterate — meaning they can’t read well enough to fill out a job application or perform basic adding, subtracting, and multiplying — can’t possibly fill out their income tax forms, for example. Even more alarming, half these illiterate Detroiters managed to secure their high school diplomas. In other words, public schools not working. Other large urban areas in America are heading down this road.
FACT #20: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 57% of America’s children live in a “poor” or “low income” home. F
FACT #21: Barack Obama says one of his goals is to spread the money around and to create more income equality. But it hasn’t worked out that way. CNBC reports that the 400 wealthiest Americans now have more money than the poorest 50 percent of all Americans combined. We see much more income inequality today than during the Reagan era.
Yes, we did produce a near-perfect Republic! But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of Freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.” -Thomas Jefferson