Posted on 04/30/2012 11:10:20 AM PDT by arthurus
The human capacity for self-delusion truly is remarkable. Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face. Take the U.S. economy for example. Barack Obama wants to believe that his policies have worked and that the U.S. economy is improving. So that is what he is telling the American people. The mainstream media wants to believe that Barack Obama is a good president and that his policies make sense and so they are reporting that we are experiencing an economic recovery. A very large segment of the U.S. population still fully supports Barack Obama and they want to believe that the economy is getting better so they are buying the propaganda that the mainstream media is feeding them. But is the U.S. economy really improving? The truth is that it is not.
(Excerpt) Read more at rightsidenews.info ...
My immediate problem with Obama economy is 50% of new college graduates can not find adequate jobs. I got 2 kids in college, one of them will graduate in one more year.
#1 The percentage of Americans that own homes is dropping rapidly. According to Gallup, the current level of homeownership in the United States is the lowest that Gallup has ever measured.
#2 Home prices in the U.S. continue to fall like a rock as well. They have declined for six months in a row and are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble. The last time that home prices in the United States were this low was back in 2002.
#3 Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
#4 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.
#5 When Barack Obama first became president, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was 2.6 million. Today, it is 5.3 million.
#6 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is about three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#7 Despite what the mainstream media would have us to believe, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing. Back in March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2011, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. So how can Barack Obama and the mainstream media claim that the employment situation in the United States is getting better? The employment rate is still essentially exactly where it was when the last recession supposedly ended.
#8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
#9 In 1962, 28 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. In 2011, only 9 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.
#10 In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
#11 According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
#12 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the price of gasoline has risen by more than 100 percent.
#13 The student loan debt bubble continues to expand at a very frightening pace. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
#14 Incredibly, one out of every four jobs in the United States pays $10 an hour or less at this point.
#15 Household incomes all over the United States continue to fall. After adjusting for inflation, median household income in America has declined by 7.8 percent since December 2007.
#16 Over the past several decades, government dependence has risen to unprecedented heights in the United States. The following is how I described the explosive growth of social welfare benefits in one recent article....
Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages. In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages. Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.
#17 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.
#18 Right now, more than 25 percent of all American children are on food stamps.
#19 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, today 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives some form of benefits from the federal government.
#20 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.
#21 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.
#22 At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.
#23 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.
#24 The Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
#25 The Federal Reserve continues to systematically destroy the value of the U.S. dollar. Since 1970, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 83 percent of its value.
Number 16 explains it all. Barack is allowed to say “my presidency compared to the eight prior years.” He then goes on to say, “we tried their way”. The response must be, you tried our way for the first 190 years and it worked, it is Barack’s way over the last 47 years that has not worked [slowly at first, but now at a much feverish pace].
The “youth” voted for Obama, so they must learn from it. I suppose they could do what American kids have done for decades, be grateful for whatever job they can find. I refuse to foot the bill for my adult kids, it does pain me to watch them struggle, but it is better in the long run. Now that Obama has offered to buy the “student loan” vote, we shall see. I told my four, no loans, no way, work like the rest of us did. I think they appreciate things much more that way.
There is a good chance that whatever job he gets he/she gets they could have gotten with a high school diploma. You might have been better off taking the money you spent and just used it to help them open a business.
Bkmk.
Cheer up! With your kids’ compatriots all out marching in OWS demos and getting forehead tattoos, your kids will be well positioned top compete for those jobs. I’ll bet your kids will both be in the 50% that gets hired.
Forget a job - prepare your kid to be self employed in some type of way - no such thing as good jobs for college kids anymore.
My Dad eked his way through on the GI bill and ROTC and lots of work. My Momma saved for three years for her first year and became a dorm resident and worked in the engineering department where she and Dad met.
I worked every minute I could as did my brother and sister and brother-in-law. My son worked his way through and earned an ROTC scholarship, he is paying it back and then a whole lot more now.
Between us we have engineers, a teacher, a doctor, and a veterinarian. Only the doctor had debt and that was paid off quickly. One of us is gone now, another is retired the rest work and pay lots of taxes. We get little in return for that. We are all self-employed and responsible for all of our own well being.
Ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.