Wars abroad leave crumbling US infrastructure at home

While politicians in Washington recklessly call for bombing Syria and Iran, they ignore the economic costs of failed US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It calls into question the competence of leadership elites in the US, not to mention fundamental issues of governance involving the preservation of constitutional democracy. In the past, the US paid […]

Economic rape in the United States

It is an understatement that it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of forty years ago. Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago. The average standard of living in the U.S. […]

Life on Two Dollars a Day in Third World America

The U.S. is beginning to look like the Third World. Latest poverty statistics that show the number of American families with an income of less than two dollars per person per day more than doubled between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million. Note, those are households, not people. The number of children, alone, […]

The Economy and the Greek debt swap deal

CNBC – Stocks closed sharply lower Tuesday, with the Dow posting its first triple-digit decline in 2012, fueled by fears over a Greek default and amid economic growth concerns. The Dow Jones Industrial Average logged its biggest decline since November 23, 2011. … The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in […]

Perspective on the decline of America by Noam Chomsky

American decline is real, though despite piteous laments, the U.S. remains the world dominant power by a large margin. China and India have recorded rapid (though highly inegalitarian) growth, but remain very poor countries, with enormous internal problems not faced by the West. China is the world’s major manufacturing center, but largely as an assembly […]

Another 81 million Americans one step from poverty

What does it mean to be poor? If it means living at or below the poverty line, then 15 percent of Americans — some 46 million people — qualify. But if it means living with hardly any savings — so that one piece of bad luck, one major financial blow, could land you in serious, […]

Citigroup Replaces JPMorgan as White House Chief of Staff

We’ve already made our choice for the best headline of the year, so far: “Citigroup Replaces JPMorgan as White House Chief of Staff.” There’s simply too much truth in that headline; it says a lot about how Wall Street and Washington have colluded to create the winner-take-all economy that rewards the very few at the […]

US unemployment in actuality surpasses 22%

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said 200,000 new jobs were created which dropped the unemployment rate to 8.5%. Economist John Williams of Shadowstats.com says the government reported more than 40,000 jobs that didn’t exist. In his latest report, Williams said, “The December 2011 payrolls included a false, seasonally-adjusted gain of roughly 42,000 […]

American statistics heading into 2012

50 million Americans live below the official poverty line, while another 100 million live in “near-poverty,” struggling to support themselves on incomes so low that they are one misfortune away from destitution. According to a study by the McKinsey consulting firm, it took six months for the US economy to return to pre-recession job levels […]

The US Economy statistics are unbelievable

The following are economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe…. #1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty. #2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be […]