Poor Man
Survival
Self
Reliance tools for independent minded people…
ISSN
2161-5543
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
“A smaller
government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a
big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful.”
― Robert Reich
― Robert Reich
Why is the Middle Class in
the US Collapsing?
The U.S. dollar is
progressively buying less and less. The middle class and savers are
impoverished…
When I was growing up, my father was able to support his family of
five on a single income. And when he was growing up, his father could do the
same.
This sort of security simply doesn’t exist anymore.
These days, it typically takes two working parents just to be able to afford a comfortable standard of living. And even then, just barely.
Today people have to borrow on their credit cards just to get by. And young people are forced to indebt themselves decades into the future simply to pay for an increasingly worthless university degree.
This sort of security simply doesn’t exist anymore.
These days, it typically takes two working parents just to be able to afford a comfortable standard of living. And even then, just barely.
Today people have to borrow on their credit cards just to get by. And young people are forced to indebt themselves decades into the future simply to pay for an increasingly worthless university degree.
A typical family suffers from inflation—retail
price inflation.
This is when the cost of goods and services outpaces their wages year after year.
People easily lose track of this. But enough time passes and they find that now two parents have to work just to afford a basic lifestyle, quality food, medical care, and education that one parent used to provide.
This is when the cost of goods and services outpaces their wages year after year.
People easily lose track of this. But enough time passes and they find that now two parents have to work just to afford a basic lifestyle, quality food, medical care, and education that one parent used to provide.
Just since 2005 we’ve lost
40% of our purchasing power because our monetary system has been put into
overdrive printing more and more fiat currency [in reality, digits on a
computer]. Since our own government has
given up control over our currency, we’ve lost 95% of the value of our dollar
since the Federal Reserve was created!
A new
report just released by two academics at the London School of Economics and UC
Berkeley shows just how rapidly the middle class is collapsing in the Land of
the Free.
The top 0.1% (160,00 families with total net assets of more than $20 million in 2012) owned 7% of all wealth in late 1970s. That jumped to 22% in 2012.
The bottom 90%, on the other hand, went from a 36% share to a 23% share in the same period.
The top 0.1% (160,00 families with total net assets of more than $20 million in 2012) owned 7% of all wealth in late 1970s. That jumped to 22% in 2012.
The bottom 90%, on the other hand, went from a 36% share to a 23% share in the same period.
Thanks
to the Federal Reserve, the middle class is slowly being suffocated by rising
food prices. Every single dollar in your wallet is constantly becoming
less valuable because of the inflation the Fed systematically creates.
And if you try to build wealth by saving money and earning interest on it, you
still lose because thanks to the Federal Reserve's near zero interest rate
policies banks pay next to nothing on savings accounts.
The Federal Reserve wants you to either spend your money or to put it in the
giant casino that we call the stock market. But when Americans spend
their paychecks they are finding that they don't stretch as far as they once
did. The cost of living continues to rise at a much faster pace than
wages are rising, and this is especially true when it comes to the price of
food.
The
Land of the Free used to be a place where you could work hard and build wealth
for yourself, either by starting a business, taking some investment risk, or
working your way up the chain.
Yet today, authorities chase away children who have the audacity to operate a lemonade stand without a permit.
The nanny state legally bars most grown adults from investing their own savings in lucrative private enterprises, forcing the masses into overheated, central bank- manipulated stocks and bonds.
And today you’re lucky to work for the same company for more than a few years. As a colleague told me a few months ago, few people have careers anymore.
Instead, human beings are ‘rented’ by companies to perform tasks. There’s no longer a career track, growth, or significant advancement.
Yet today, authorities chase away children who have the audacity to operate a lemonade stand without a permit.
The nanny state legally bars most grown adults from investing their own savings in lucrative private enterprises, forcing the masses into overheated, central bank- manipulated stocks and bonds.
And today you’re lucky to work for the same company for more than a few years. As a colleague told me a few months ago, few people have careers anymore.
Instead, human beings are ‘rented’ by companies to perform tasks. There’s no longer a career track, growth, or significant advancement.
This
is dreadfully, terribly wrong.
The people in charge of this system have completely broken what capitalism is supposed to be. And they’ve replaced it with a new form of feudalism.
This is something that can’t possibly last.
All the technology and tools already exist for individuals to take the power back and divorce themselves from this reality.
You no longer have to live, work, and play in the same country where you were born.
You no longer have to hold the heavily manipulated, degraded currency that they destroy, or use the banking system that they control.
You no longer have to educate your children in the state-controlled school system, or feed your family the genetically-modified crap that the corn lobby bribes onto the store shelves.
You can break free. It’s a matter of choice.
The people in charge of this system have completely broken what capitalism is supposed to be. And they’ve replaced it with a new form of feudalism.
This is something that can’t possibly last.
All the technology and tools already exist for individuals to take the power back and divorce themselves from this reality.
You no longer have to live, work, and play in the same country where you were born.
You no longer have to hold the heavily manipulated, degraded currency that they destroy, or use the banking system that they control.
You no longer have to educate your children in the state-controlled school system, or feed your family the genetically-modified crap that the corn lobby bribes onto the store shelves.
You can break free. It’s a matter of choice.
When the autopsy is written on the death of the middle
class where will you be?
The Social Security Administration has just released
wage statistics for 2013, and the numbers are startling. Last year, 50 percent
of all American workers made less than $28,031,
and 39 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000. If you
worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you
would make $20,000. So the fact that 39 percent of all workers made less
than that amount is rather telling. This is more evidence of the
declining quality of the jobs in this country. In many homes in America
today, both parents are working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make
ends meet. Our paychecks are stagnant while the cost of living just continues to soar. And the jobs that are
being added to the economy pay a lot less than the jobs lost in the last
recession. In fact, it has been estimated that the jobs that have been
created since the last recession pay an average of 23 percent less than the
jobs that were lost. We are witnessing the slow-motion destruction of the
middle class, and very few of our leaders seem to care.
The "average" yearly wage in America last
year was just $43,041. But after accounting for inflation, that was
actually worse than the year before...
American paychecks shrank last year, just-released
data show, further eroding the public’s purchasing power, which is so vital to
economic growth.
Average pay for 2013 was $43,041 — down $79 from the
previous year when measured in 2013 dollars. Worse, average pay fell $508 below
the 2007 level, my analysis of the new Social Security Administration data
shows.
In recent years, the number of men that are
struggling to find work has reached new heights. In fact, the inactivity
rate for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) is now at the highest
level that has ever been recorded.
It has been estimated that it takes approximately
$50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four, and so
the fact that 72 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how
difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner.
The way that our economy is structured now, both
parents usually have to work as hard as they can just to pay the bills.
American people don’t believe
that we can have economic collapse followed by economic and social chaos. They
suffer from normalcy bias.
Yours in freedom,
Bruce ‘the Poor Man’
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Send it to: PoorManSurvivor@Gmail.com
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