Is The United States On A Road To Becoming Ungovernable? - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Is The United States On A Road To Becoming Ungovernable? Posted: 20 Jun 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG For a long time I have observed the rancor in modern American political discourse, and I have become concerned about where all of this anger and frustration is taking us.  In order for any society to function, there must be some form of government.  And in order for government to function, a certain percentage of the population has to be willing to submit to the authority of that government.   For example, there will always be a few tax protesters out there that refuse to pay their taxes, but if every single American suddenly decided to stop paying taxes our system of taxation would collapse overnight.  Sure, the government could prosecute thousands of us, but if that crackdown still didn’t motivate people to start paying their taxes there is not much that could be done.  The only reason any form of government works is because enough people buy into the narrative that the government is legitimate and should be respected.   Here in the United States, fewer and fewer people are buying into that narrative. The Pew Research Center, Gallup, and NPR have all run polls that show that faith in government is near all-time lows in the United States.  A lot of us have been let down so many times, and most of us simply do not “believe in America” like we once did.  Yes, we may still believe in “the people” or “the values” that the nation was founded upon, but at our core we just do not have faith in our governmental institutions. But simply being disillusioned is not going to be enough to make us ungovernable.   Generations of Americans have complained about government, but they have always gone along with the system.  Unfortunately, things are changing in a fundamental way.  Instead of just complaining about government, Americans are being trained to think of government as the enemy.  We certainly witnessed a great deal of this under Barack Obama, and without a doubt Obama was absolutely terrible, but now under Donald Trump things have gone to an entirely new level. We literally have millions of people in this country that truly believe that President Trump is the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler and that the Republican Party is a bunch of fascists.  Of course some conservatives have been saying similar things about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Democrats for years.  But with Trump we are witnessing something that we have never seen before.  The mainstream media is actually pounding the drumbeats of hatred for our president day after day, and when you say something long enough and loud enough some people are going to believe you. If you truly believe that someone is just like Adolf Hitler, the logical response would be to do whatever is necessary to end the tyranny.  And this is precisely what we have seen from Antifa – their open embrace of violence is justified in their eyes because of the “enemy” that they are fighting. And it isn’t just Trump that the left is targeting.  Just this week a deranged man in Ohio was arrested for threatening U.S. Congressman Brian Mast… A Stuart man was arrested Tuesday after a federal complaint states he threatened U.S. Rep. Brian Mast’s children over the Trump administration’s child-separation immigration policy. Laurence Key called Mast’s Washington office Monday and said, “I’m going to find the congressman’s kids and kill them,” an intern who took the call told the FBI, according to a federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court. “If you are going to separate kids at the border, I’m going to kill his kids.” For those of you that don’t know, Congressman Mast is a double amputee.  He lost both legs serving our nation overseas, and he has a young girl and two young boys that are all younger than 8. Are you starting to understand why more good people don’t run for office in this country? Now that President Trump has signed an executive order that will keep immigrant families together at the border, the left has got to come up with something else to keep the rancor going.  So now we are being told that President Trump is inhumane for “putting entire families in cages” at the border, when that is not true at all. But it really doesn’t matter what the truth is – the key is to keep the narrative going. We have already reached a point where a certain percentage of the population is not going to recognize the legitimacy of our government no matter who is sent to the White House.  Millions upon millions of Americans refer to Donald Trump as “not my president”, and there are millions of us that never accepted the legitimacy of the Obama presidency. So who would the American people accept? Someone in the middle? Sadly, the truth is that Barack Obama and Donald Trump are “the middle” today.  There is no longer a single set of values that unites our nation, and America is becoming more deeply divided with each passing day. The only thing that is really holding us back from mass rioting and chaos on a constant basis is our massively inflated debt-fueled standard of living. As long as people have plenty of food to eat and lots of entertainment to keep them sedated, a complete and total societal meltdown is unlikely. But if our food and entertainment were to be taken away, the American people are primed for the biggest temper tantrum in the history of our nation. We have never had a president that is hated as much as President Trump, and the mainstream media keeps feeding that hatred on a daily basis.  Whatever goes wrong over the next few years will be blamed on him, and the moment a real crisis hits we will start to see cities burn all over the country. The second president of the United States, John Adams, once made the following statement… Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Today, the American people are not very religious and they certainly are not moral.  Suicide rates are absolutely soaring, and we are very deeply unhappy as a nation. It would be wonderful if we could unite behind the values that this nation was built upon, but we discarded those values long ago. So now we face a very uncertain future, and it is only a matter of time before someone lights a spark that sets off mass societal unrest all across the United States. Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Females Are Outperforming Males On Every Educational Level, And That Has Staggering Implications For The Future Of Our Society - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Females Are Outperforming Males On Every Educational Level, And That Has Staggering Implications For The Future Of Our Society

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

It is an uncomfortable truth that most educators simply do not want to talk about.  Females are dramatically outperforming males on every educational level, and many are wondering what this means for our future.  If men do not feel a strong sense of purpose and meaning, they can get into trouble really quickly. 

As I write this article, the vast majority of those that abuse drugs are men, the vast majority of those that commit violent crimes are men, and the vast majority of those that we put into prison are men.  I began researching this article by looking into the fact that the labor participation rate for men has been declining for decades, but our problems run much deeper than that.  Today, so many men feel lost.  Millions of them don’t have a sense of direction, millions of them don’t have anything that really drives or motivates them, and millions of them are deeply depressed and greatly dissatisfied with life.

For a lot of them, it started very early.  As Dr. Michael Thompson told CBS News, all across America girls are outperforming boys at every educational level…

“Girls outperform boys in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, and graduate school,” says Dr. Michael Thompson, a school psychologist who writes about the academic problems of boys in his book, “Raising Cain.” He says that after decades of special attention, girls are soaring, while boys are stagnating.
“Girls are being told, ‘Go for it, you can do it. Go for it, you can do it.’ They are getting an immense amount of support,” he says. “Boys hear that the way to shine is athletically. And boys get a lot of mixed messages about what it means to be masculine and what it means to be a student. Does being a good student make you a real man? I don’t think so… It is not cool.”

Perhaps one of the big reasons why young males are so drawn to sports is because it allows them to do the sorts of things that come naturally to males.  Sporting events allow young males to engage in battle, to hunt and to conquer.  Yes, it is a simulated environment, but sporting events really do bring out something primal in young boys.

We all have natural tendencies, and it appears that modern forms of schooling are doing a much better job of connecting with females.  In fact, one extremely large study found that girls all over the world are substantially outperforming boys in the classroom…

According to a recent study from University of New Brunswick in Canada, girls have been outperforming boys consistently through the years. It is a popular belief that boys perform better in subjects like Math and Science; however, a review of 308 studies involving more than 1.1 million children across the globe has challenged this stereotype. The study looked at data from 1914 to 2011 and the findings suggest that girls do better in school than boys in the classroom regardless of the material.

So it isn’t just in the United States that this is happening. And it is a trend that does not seem to diminish with age.

Young women are dominating in high schools all over the nation, and at one high school in Massachusetts girls make up 70 to 80 percent of the students in advanced placement classes…

At graduation ceremonies last June at Hanover High School in Massachusetts, it was the ninth year in a row that a girl was on the podium as school valedictorian. Girls also took home nearly all the honors, including the science prize, says principal Peter Badalament.
“[Girls] tend to dominate the landscape academically right now,” he says, even in math and science.
The school’s advanced placement classes, which admit only the most qualified students, are often 70 percent to 80 percent girls. This includes calculus. And in AP biology, there was not a single boy.

I suppose the silver lining for young men is that if they really want to meet more girls they should just work really, really hard to get into those AP classes.

But the truth is that this is no joking matter.  At this point, higher education in the United States is totally dominated by women.  Just check out these numbers…

Women earned approximately 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded by U.S. institutions of higher education in the 2016-2017 academic year, according to data released this week by the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education.
That, according to NCES data, makes 2016-2017 the eighteenth straight academic year in which women have earned approximately 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded by U.S. colleges and universities.

Did you understand what that excerpt was saying?

Women have received about 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in this country for 18 years in a row.

Our future doctors, lawyers, politicians and societal leaders come from our pool of college graduates, and the numbers tell us that women are going to be dominating those fields for the foreseeable future.

So what will men be doing?

Well, in recent years more of them have been dropping out of the labor force than ever before.  The following comes from the New York Times…

Among women, the share out of the labor force has fallen from 66 percent in 1950 to 43 percent today. That is not surprising in light of changing social norms and the greater career opportunities now open to women.
Men, however, exhibit the opposite long-term trend. In 1950, 14 percent of men were out of the labor force. Today, that figure stands at 31 percent.

For those of you that prefer graphics, here is a chart from the Federal Reserve that shows this staggering decline over the last several decades.  Please note that we are currently at a much lower level than we were at during the last major recession…

If men aren’t working, how are they supporting themselves?

For many, the social safety net provided by the government is an easy answer.  Here is more from the New York Times…

One might wonder how these less educated, prime-age men support themselves after leaving the labor force. The social safety net plays a role. In a study for the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, Scott Winship reports that “75 percent of inactive prime-age men are in a household that received some form of government transfer payment.” Mr. Winship believes that government disability benefits in particular are one reason for the lack of interest in work.

For others, living with Mom and Dad for as long as possible is the solution.  Today, a staggering 38.4 percent of all Millennials live with their parents, and that number seems to keep going up with each passing year.

We live during an era of dramatic societal change, and many are concerned about where all of this change is taking us.

Yes, we need a society in which females can thrive, but we also need a society in which males can thrive as well, and right now that simply is not happening.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Federal Reserve Is Increasing The Pace Of Interest Rate Hikes Just In Time For The 2018 Mid-Term Elections - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

The Federal Reserve Is Increasing The Pace Of Interest Rate Hikes Just In Time For The 2018 Mid-Term Elections

Posted: 13 Jun 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

If the Federal Reserve really wanted to hurt the U.S. economy, the quickest way that it could do that would be by aggressively raising interest rates.  Lower interest rates make it less expensive to borrow money, and therefore economic activity tends to expand in a low interest rate environment.  Alternatively, higher interest rates make it more expensive to borrow money, and economic activity tends to slow down in a high interest rate environment. 

Since 1913, the Federal Reserve has engaged in 18 previous rate hiking cycles, and every single one of them resulted in a huge stock market decline and/or a recession.  It will be the same this time around as well, and the “experts” at the Federal Reserve know exactly what they are doing.  Interest rates are being aggressively jacked up just in time for the 2018 mid-term elections, and that is very bad news for the Republican Party and the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced an interest rate hike for the 2nd time this year…

The Federal Reserve increased a key interest rate again Wednesday, which will trigger higher rates on credit cards, home equity lines and other kinds of borrowing.
Wednesday’s action, which was widely expected, was the second Fed rate hike this year — and the seventh since it began boosting them in 2015. The latest increase puts the federal funds rate in a range between 1.75 and 2 percent. The Fed previously nudged rates up in March.

Because so much is based on what the Federal Reserve does, now interest rates will be going up throughout our economy.

For example, we should expect the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage to surpass the 4.66 percent mark that we witnessed earlier this year…

Mortgage rates have been climbing. The average rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage climbed to 4.66% this year in May, the highest in seven years, before falling slightly in recent weeks.
Home mortgage rates tend to move with the bond market, but rates can also rise because of a higher federal funds rate. A higher rate makes it more expensive for banks to borrow money, which can translate into higher borrowing rates for consumers.

Needless to say, this is going to have a huge impact on the housing market.

Interest rates will also be going up on credit cards, auto loans and just about every other kind of debt that you can imagine.

This will inevitably slow down economic activity, and it will make the party that is in power in Washington (the Republicans) look bad.

Originally, it was anticipated that the Federal Reserve would raise rates only three times in 2018, but now they are indicating that rates will be raised a total of four times this year.  The following comes from NPR…

The Fed also signaled that it will raise rates more this year than previously expected — four times rather than three.

This is economic sabotage, but nobody in the mainstream media will ever admit this.

Most people do not understand that the Federal Reserve has far more power over the performance of the U.S. economy than anyone else does.  It was the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates and easy money policies that fueled the relative economic improvement that we have witnessed early in Trump’s presidency, and it will be the Fed’s policy of aggressively raising rates that will inevitably cause huge economic turmoil in the coming months.

So why would the Federal Reserve do this?

According to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the Fed decided to raise interest rates to keep the economy from overheating…

The decision reflected an economy that’s getting even stronger. Unemployment is 3.8%, the lowest since 2000, and inflation is creeping higher. The Fed is raising rates gradually to keep the economy from overheating.
“The main takeaway is that the economy is doing very well,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at a news conference. “Most people who want to find jobs are finding them, and unemployment and inflation are low.”

Of course that is a load of nonsense.

As I discussed yesterday, if honest numbers were being used our unemployment rate would be at 21.5 percent, inflation would be at about 10 percent, and GDP growth would be negative.

The U.S. economy is definitely not “overheating”.  In fact, it needs as much help as possible to pull out of the deep slump that it has been in for many, many years.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is supposed to be a Republican, and I suppose that it is possible that he actually believes that he is doing the right thing for the country by aggressively raising interest rates.

But any sort of an economic slowdown will be extremely favorable for the Democrats.

American voters are notorious for “voting their pocketbooks”, and when things get bad they always blame whoever is in power at the time.

In this case, it will be Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress that get the blame for what the Federal Reserve has done.

We know that some among the elite are already discussing the possibility of “a crashing economy” as a way to “get rid of Trump”.  In the short-term, however, the best way to neuter Trump politically would be to have Democrats do extremely well in the 2018 mid-term elections.

If the Democrats take back control of either the House or the Senate in November, Trump’s agenda will come to a crashing halt, and thanks to the Federal Reserve that scenario has just become much more likely.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Big Secret The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Tell You About America’s Soaring Suicide Rates - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

The Big Secret The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Tell You About America’s Soaring Suicide Rates

Posted: 08 Jun 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

This week two celebrity suicides rocked the nation, and neither of them seemed to make any sense.  Kate Spade’s handbag designs had taken the fashion world by storm, and she was supposedly living the kind of lifestyle that millions of Americans can only dream about.  And Anthony Bourdain was one of those rare journalists that was greatly loved by both the left and the right.  His “Kitchen Confidential” book is currently the #1 best seller on Amazon, and his “Parts Unknown” series was one of CNN’s most popular shows. 

Why would people that seemingly have everything going for them decide to kill themselves?  Well, by the end of this article you will learn some things about suicide and depression in the United States that the mainstream media definitely does not want to talk about.  And all you have to do is to follow the money to discover the very disturbing reason why the mainstream media does not want to talk about them.

On average, 123 Americans commit suicide every single day, and now suicide has become the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.

But among Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, it is now the second leading cause of death.

Of course it wasn’t always this way.  Suicide rates used to be much, much lower.  If you can believe it, suicide rates in the United States “have risen nearly 30 percent since 1999” according to the CDC…

Suicide rates in the U.S. have risen nearly 30% since 1999, according to a report released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicides increased in both men and women, in all ethnic groups and in both urban and rural areas. Suicide and “self-harm,” a category that includes attempted suicides, cost the nation $70 billion a year in medical care and lost work time, the CDC says.

The CDC says that rates have increased “among both sexes, all racial/ethnic groups, and all urbanization levels”, and so this is not just a trend that is affecting one particular demographic group.

And virtually all age groups are seeing major increases as well.  For example, hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts and attempts at children’s hospitals approximately doubledover a recent 7 years period…

At children’s hospitals across the country, hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts and attempts doubled from 2008 to 2015, according to a study published last month in the journal Pediatrics. The highest increases were seen among teens ages 15 to 17 years old.

Middle-aged Americans are also seeing a stunning rise in suicides.  According to the CDC, the suicide rate for Americans from the age of 45 to the age of 64 is rising faster than for the general population as a whole…

Earlier research showed that suicides among middle-aged men and women climbed at a higher rate than the overall population. Suicide among men aged 45 to 64 increased 43% from 1999 through 2014. The suicide rate uptick was even higher among women in that age group, though more men died from suicide, the CDC said.

So why is this happening?

History tells us that suicide rates tend to go up during economic recessions, but we are not in a recession at the moment.

According to NBC News, researchers have found that people that kill themselves tend to have certain things in common…

• 42 percent had a relationship problem
• 28 percent had substance abuse issues
• 16 percent had job or financial problems
• 29 percent had some kind of crisis
• 22 percent had a physical health issue
• 9 percent had a criminal legal problem

But those problems have always existed in our society.

To find the truth, we need to go down a rabbit hole, and it is a rabbit hole that the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about.

The use of antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs is absolutely exploding in our society.  According to Time Magazine, the use of antidepressants rose almost 65 percent between 1999 and 2014…

A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that from 2011 through 2014, the most recent data available, close to 13% of people 12 and older said they took an antidepressant in the last month. That number is up from 11% in 2005-2008.
The most recent numbers have increased by nearly 65% since 1999-2002, when 7.7% of Americans reported taking an antidepressant.

And numerous scientific studies have shown that there appears to be a link between antidepressant use and suicide.  In fact, the biggest review of clinical trials ever conducted found that the use of antidepressants “doubled the risk of suicide” for those under the age of 18…

Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide, the biggest ever review has found, as pharmaceutical companies were accused of failing to report side-effects and even deaths linked to the drugs.
An analysis of 70 trials of the most common antidepressants – involving more than 18,000 people – found they doubled the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviour in under 18s.

If you have ever been on any of these drugs, then you already know that they can really mess with your mind, and they can result in people doing some very irrational things.

In the case of Kate Spade, we do have confirmation that she was taking antidepressants.  The following comes directly from her husband’s statement…

She was actively seeking help for depression and anxiety over the last 5 years, seeing a doctor on a regular basis and taking medication for both depression and anxiety.

We also know that Anthony Bourdain really struggled with depression as well…

The television host also discussed thoughts of depression. In a 2016 episode of Parts Unknown, Bourdain traveled to Argentina for psychotherapy — something widely popular in the country.

“Well, things have been happening,” he says on camera. “I will find myself in an airport, for instance, and I’ll order an airport hamburger. It’s an insignificant thing, it’s a small thing, it’s a hamburger, but it’s not a good one. Suddenly I look at the hamburger and I find myself in a spiral of depression that can last for days.”

Considering the fact that he had been dealing with incidents of severe depression for many years, could it be possible that Bourdain was also taking antidepressants?

If anyone out there can confirm this, please reach out to me with that information. Of course the mainstream media is never going to address this link, because they do not want to harm their relationships with the big drug companies.

If you ever spend time watching the major news channels in the evening, then you already know that you are bombarded with one drug ad after another.  It is their major source of revenue, and they aren’t ever going to do anything that could endanger that.

Today, the pharmaceutical corporations spend more than 6 billion dollars a year on advertising.

So there are 6 billion reasons why the mainstream media does not want to tell you the truth, and because they won’t tell you the truth many more Americans are going to needlessly die in the years ahead…

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

$28,166: What It Costs To Provide Health Care For An American Family Of Four For One Year - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

$28,166: What It Costs To Provide Health Care For An American Family Of Four For One Year

Posted: 07 Jun 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

One of the primary reasons why the middle class in America is disappearing so rapidly is because of skyrocketing health care costs.  Families all over the country are being absolutely crushed by extremely high health insurance premiums, ridiculously high deductibles and very large out-of-pocket expenses that were not anticipated.  In fact, medical bills are the number one reason why individuals go bankrupt in the United States today. 

Once upon a time, the medical profession was all about helping people, but today it has become a heartless money-making operation that is dominated by health insurance corporations and pharmaceutical companies.  If we do not make major changes quickly, our out of control health care system will destroy the middle class in our country all by itself.

I knew that health care costs were astronomical, but I had no idea that health care costs for an average family of four for one year had hit $28,166…

The total costs for a typical family of four insured by the most common health plan offered by employers will average $28,166 this year, according to the annual Milliman Medical Index.
The estimate includes the average cost of health insurance paid by employers and employees, as well as deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses.

That is a crazy amount of money.  Once upon a time, you could buy an entire house in America for $28,000.  But now that will only cover health care costs for a single year.
The largest portion of that amount goes to pay for health insurance.  For those that receive health benefits at work, usually the employer pays most of that bill…

Last year, the premium for the most popular health plan offered by employers — what is known as a preferred provider organization  — for family coverage was $19,481, according to the annual survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.
Employers paid $13,430 and employees paid $6,050 of the premium on average.

When you break down that total, it comes to more than $1,500 a month just for health insurance.

That is insane.

And of course those of us that are self-employed or that work for businesses that don’t provide health insurance have to pay for it all on our own.

Needless to say, that can be financially crippling.  And thanks to Obamacare, it is harder than ever before.  Not too long ago, I wrote about one family in Virginia that is now faced with the prospect of paying $3,000 a month for an Obamacare plan…

Could you afford to pay $3000 a month for health insurance? Previously, Ian Dixon had been paying $900 a month for health insurance for his family of four, but thanks to changes in the Charlottesville insurance market, a similar plan will now cost him more than $3,000 a month.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the percentage of Americans that are self-employed is hovering near record lows.  People simply cannot afford the health insurance.

And every year it gets worse.  For 2018, it was being projected that the average rate increase for Obamacare plans would be 37 percent.

If our paychecks were going up 37 percent each year, that would be fine. But of course that just isn’t happening.

This is one of our great long-term challenges as a society.  We have got to get health care costs under control if our system is going to be sustainable.

There is absolutely no reason why an appendectomy in the United States needs to be 10 times more expensive than an appendectomy in Mexico.  The quality of care in Mexico is not 10 times worse than in the United States.  In fact, it is actually pretty comparable to what we have here, and many Americans are now taking “medical vacations” to have procedures performed down there because our system is so badly broken.

Sadly, this figure of $28,166 for a family of four will be out of date by next month.

According to one expert quoted by USA Today, every single month the number goes up by another one hundred dollars…

“But every month, a family of four’s health care costs are going up $100 a month,” Weltz said.
The costs have been going up by that amount — on average — for more than a decade.

I have to admit that our health care system makes me angry.  Today, the U.S. health care system accounts for nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy, but back in 1960 it only accounted for about 5 percent of the overall economy.

There is no reason why we can’t start moving back toward that level.  We just need to reintroduce true competition and free market principles into our health care system.  Those that have been abusing their power need to be held accountable, and something desperately needs to be done about the health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical giants.  In one recent year, more than 100 billion dollars was spent on cancer drugs, and that is absolutely outrageous.

If you go all the way back to 1960, an average of $146 was spent on health care per person for the entire year.

So for a family of four, the total would have been about $600, but now it is over $28,000.
It doesn’t have to be this way.

On a per capita basis, we spend far, far more than anyone else in the world on health care.
If you can believe it, we actually spend nearly twice as much as most of the other industrialized nations in the world on a per capita basis.

The only way that we are going to have a thriving middle class is if we get health care costs under control, but unfortunately Congress is such a mess right now that nothing is likely to get done for the foreseeable future.

So our health care system is going to continue to deteriorate, and many Americans will continue to travel overseas when they need important procedures to be done.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Truth About The Employment Numbers – Nearly 102 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

The Truth About The Employment Numbers – Nearly 102 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now

Posted: 01 Jun 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Don’t get too excited about the “good employment numbers” that you are hearing about from the mainstream media.  The truth is that they actually aren’t very good at all.  For years, the federal government has been taking numbers out of one category and putting them into another category and calling it “progress”, and in this article we will break down exactly what has been happening.  We are being told that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to “3.8 percent”, which is supposedly the lowest that it has been “in nearly 50 years”. 

If these were honest numbers that would be great news.  But these are not honest numbers…
Let’s take this one step at a time, and we are going to use the Federal Reserve’s own numbers.

According to the Fed, there were 6,065,000 working age Americans unemployed in May.
That would be an excellent number if it was an honest number.  But of course that number does not tell the whole story.

We also have to factor in the other category of working age Americans that are not currently employed.  They are not considered to be “officially unemployed” because they are considered to be “not in the labor force”.

According to the Federal Reserve, 95,915,000 working age Americans were “not in the labor force” in May.

That is an all-time record high, and this is how the federal government has been making the employment numbers look so good.  The number of Americans that are “officially unemployed” keeps going down, and the number of Americans “not in the labor force” keeps going up.

When you add 6,065,000 and 95,915,000 together, you come up with a grand total of 101,980,000 working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

So we essentially have 102 million working age Americans that are not employed, and that is the same level that we had four years ago.

And back during the peak of the last recession, the number of working age Americans without a job never surpassed the 100 million mark.

That means that there are more working age Americans without a job right now than there was at any point during the last recession.

All of those economic optimists out there should chew on that number for a while.
According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used our unemployment rate would be somewhere around 21 percent at the moment.  That is a slight improvement from the 22 percent level that we were at not too long ago, but it is not nearly good enough.

So please don’t try to convince me that the U.S. economy is “doing well” until we can get the number of working age Americans without a job under 100 million.

Meanwhile, Americans continue to spend far more money than they are making. In fact, Americans have now been spending more than they are making for 28 months in a row.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

For the 28th month in a row, YoY growth in spending has outpaced incomes, sending the savings rate back down to just 2.8, the lowest since the debt-funded holiday spending spree of December 2017, and just shy of record lows.
Spending YoY is the highest since April 2017:

Adjusted for inflation, real consumption rose 0.4%, double the median projection of 0.2%. The Commerce Department said spending for gasoline and other energy goods, as well as household utilities, were leading contributors to the monthly increase in real outlays. Real durable goods spending, rose 0.3% after a 1.9% increase in the prior month; nondurable goods advanced 0.4% for a second month. Outlays on services, adjusted for inflation, rose 0.4% after a 0.3% gain in prior month.

Obviously this is not sustainable.

And in the final analysis, there is really nothing sustainable about our current economic situation.  We are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble that humanity has ever seen, and there are an increasing number of indications that the party is about to come to a very abrupt end.

We have never recovered from the last recession, and all of our long-term financial imbalances have continued to get even worse.  For the moment, much of the country is enjoying a debt-fueled standard of living that they do not deserve, and most of them have absolutely no idea that there is no way that this state of affairs can continue for much longer.
As individuals, we simply cannot consume far more than we produce indefinitely, and the same thing is true for our nation as a whole.

Time is running out, but most Americans are completely oblivious to this very simple basic fact.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

European Implosion Sends Panic Through Global Markets As George Soros Warns ‘We May Be Heading For Another Major Financial Crisis’ - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

European Implosion Sends Panic Through Global Markets As George Soros Warns ‘We May Be Heading For Another Major Financial Crisis’

Posted: 29 May 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

I told you to keep your eyes on Europe.  On Tuesday, widespread panic shot through European financial markets and this deeply affected U.S. markets as well.  The Dow Jones industrial average fell 391 points, and at this point the Dow and the S&P 500 have been down for three trading sessions in a row. 

But the big news is what is happening over in Europe.  Tuesday’s crash represented the largest one day move for 2 year Italian bonds ever, and Italian bank stocks are now down a whopping 24 percent from their April highs.  Overall, European banks have fallen a total of 11 percent over the last four days, and it isn’t just banks in troubled countries such as Italy and Spain that are hurting. 

The biggest bank in Europe, Deutsche Bank, just keeps on tumbling and is now just barely above all-time lows.  A few days ago when I wrote that the next global economic crisis “could be just around the corner”, there were some people that criticized me for making such a statement.  Well, as you will see below, now this fact has become so obvious that even George Soros is saying it.

Those that are ignoring what is going on in Italy are making a tragic mistake.  Italy is the third largest economy in the eurozone, and even the Wall Street Journal is admitting that its bond market is “in meltdown”…

Risk aversion is back. Italy is the focal point, with its bond market in meltdown, its politics in crisis after President Sergio Mattarella blocked the formation of an antiestablishment government, and its credit rating under threat.
That is all now making bigger waves: Europe’s deepening troubles and disappointing global growth signals are sparking a sudden rally in haven bonds like U.S. Treasurys.

The next financial crisis has already arrived in Europe, and the primary reason for this crisis has to do with the giant mess that Italy’s government has become.  The following summary of the current situation comes from CNBC…

Italy has been without a government since an inconclusive vote in early March, with anti-establishment political groups abandoning their efforts to form a coalition over the weekend amid a dispute with the country’s head of state.
President Sergio Mattarella, who was installed by a previous pro-EU government, refused to accept the nomination of euroskeptic candidate Paolo Savona for economy minister on Sunday.
Instead, he set the country on a path to another snap vote by appointing former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official Carlo Cottarelli as interim prime minister.

Of course the Italian parliament will never accept Cottarelli, and it looks like we are heading for snap elections in either July or August.

What is at stake in these elections is of the utmost importance to all of Europe.  As Politico recently discussed, if the Italian people continue to move toward anti-establishment parties we could actually see Italy leave the euro or even leave the EU altogether…

Italy, the third-largest EU power once Britain leaves, may sooner or later be run by two parties who agree on little other than their apparent eagerness to break stuff. It could be Italy’s debt — a default in the trillions of euros. It could be the euro, if they follow through on past promises to hold a referendum on membership in the single currency. And what’s ultimately broken could be the EU as we know it, if any such referendum goes against Brussels, as most that have been held have done.

The EU survived Brexit, but there is a lot of doubt as to whether it could also survive a defection by Italy.

During a speech on Tuesday, George Soros soberly assessed the current state of affairs in Europe.  According to Bloomberg, at one point he stated that “we may be heading for another major financial crisis.”

It is unusual for Soros to have such a gloomy tone.  He really seemed to quite pessimistic about Europe’s future, and he even went as far to say that “everything that could go wrong has gone wrong”…

The stark warning from the billionaire money manager comes as Italian bond yields have jumped to multi-year highs and major emerging economies including Turkey and Argentina are struggling to contain the fallout from runaway inflation. Soros, who has been the object of ire by the government of his native Hungary, saved his gloomiest outlook for the EU.
“Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” he said, citing the refugee crisis and austerity policies that catapulted populists into power, as well as “territorial disintegration” exemplified by Brexit. “It is no longer a figure of speech to say that Europe is in existential danger; it is the harsh reality,” he said.

I must admit that I agree with his assessment of the situation in Europe.  The EU most definitely is in “existential danger”, and I believe that we are in the beginning stages of the worst financial crisis in modern European history.

So what should be expect to see in the weeks ahead?

Well, here are three things to keep an eye on…

#1 The chaos is likely to continue for Italian financial markets.
#2 The euro is likely to continue to fall relative to the U.S. dollar.
#3 Trouble signs are likely to continue to erupt at European banking giants such as Deutsche Bank.

I have been warning about Italy, the euro and Deutsche Bank for a very long time, but because things didn’t fall apart right away a lot of people thought that the problems had been solved.

But just because something doesn’t happen in the short-term doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to happen.  The long-term trends that are destroying Europe’s financial system took a long time to mature, and we could all see what was happening, but now we have finally reached a major crisis point.

Of course the European elite could try to “extend and pretend” by pulling a few more tricks out of their sleeves, but at some point even they will lose control.  There is only so much that can be done, and those holding the reigns of power in Europe are almost out of ammunition.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.