Stats for Americas Economic Collapse
 

Copied from a financial board...

Stats for Americas Economic Collapse:

Total of Foreclosed homes as of December 1st 2010:
1,594,125 homes were foreclosed since November 2008.
http://www.foreclosureconnections.com/

From both US Gov't stats and google searches.

Between Nov. 2008 and Nov. 2010 there were 57,400 factories in the USA that closed up.

Between 2001 and 2008 there were 42400 that closed their doors.

That makes a total of 99,800 factories that closed up on US soil since 2001.

There were 219 banks that closed their doors between Nov. 2008 and Dec 2010.
Some banks plan to close 5,000 brances by 2012 alone.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AL6E720101122
Between 2011 and 2012 there is an estimated 1,000 banks that will close their doors.
See just one list of banks that closed up in 2010.
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/savings ... banks.aspx
There are at the moment 7713 banks in financial trouble in the USA. Almost the entire FDIC insured listing.
http://www.fdic.gov

In 2005 there were 744,000 homeless people in the United States. In Nov. 2008 there were 871,888 homeless people in the USA. In 2009 there were 1.56 million homeless in the USA. Today there are more than 3.5 million homeless families in the USA as of Dec. 1st 2010.
To give an idea of how many homeless all around including gangs, missing children etc. Times that by 2 since there are those who go unrecorded that live on the streets, in gangs, children missing living on the streets, and various illegal aliens who are not recorded living on the streets that go unaccounted for..

The total number of unemployed Americans rose by 632000 to 11.1 million in Jan. 2009. Today (As of Dec. 1st 2010) there are over 27 million unemployed US citizens.
http://www.money.cnn.com
Google search, wiki and Government stats

1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009. The 2010 stats are not found yet.

More than 42 million Americans are now on food stamps.

By the June of 2009 there were 171 tent cities in the USA. Now there are 1,991 tent cities in the USA as Dec 1st 2010..
The last tally found was 1,991 tent cities that could be recorded.
(Based on searches and stats from various locations, which could be higher as a result of high foreclosure rates and unemployment.)

The Government and Federal Reserve spent over 90 Trillion dollars of tax payers money since 2008. You have to wonder where that money went if it didn't build new cities and even the money spent in the last 6 months could have made every American a multi-millionaire. Food stamps are only a few billion each year. So where is all that money going? Not in your pocket, but in some bankers pockets.

So if anyone wants to still think there is hope to get out of this, think again. The toilet has been flushed and we are going down in it with the entire country. There is no getting out of it now. It is far too late in the game to change things to save this Country, all that is left is survival. After a few years and after the people take back the Government only then will we be able to look forward and rebuild this Country. It will be a painful slow process. We will have to start all over again like they did in 1776, but we won't have to rewrite the Constitution at least. Just to rebuild the Country where the Government is controlled by the people this time, not let it get out of hand otherwise this kind of stuff happens like you see above.

Now why do I say rebuild the Government? Because there will not be a Government since it cannot support itself, it needs tax payers dollars to keep going. Eventually the Government will fold into itself and fall apart. The Government has no money, it cannot operate even on printing money out of thin air. The money will be worth nothing, the debt will be so high even printing new money will not work since there is no solid backing even the newly printed money. Those who are in elected offices will starve to death. They will be just surviving like every other American. There will be no military funding, no federal funding, no state funding and it will just vaporize before our own eyes since if they don't get paid, they won't work and then there is no working Government. They have committed suicide by financial suicide, they have destroyed their own jobs and this country along with it. They have let the Federal Reserve steal every penny from this Country and the Federal Reserve people will go back to England with the gold, leaving America broke and starving with no Government left and no money to even pay for its electricity. There will be no future social security, no future disability, no future pensions, no future retirement funds, no education, no college, no welfare, and it will all be extinct.

The Government calls Iran having Nukes a matter of National Security, but is somehow too stupid to realize the real threat to National Security is their crazy spending and not taking control of the Federal Reserve. It will only take a few years and this Nations Government will self destruct from its own insanity and take the rest of America down the toilet with them leaving everyone to survive off what they can and their skills.

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession
Related: ^DJI, ^GSPC, SPY, MCD, WMT, XRT, DIA
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From The Business Insider

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

What we need is not a democracy, because the democracy we have doesn't work. People vote just because they have that right, but they don't realize what they are voting for. We need a savior. We need someone to step in and say, "here's how we're going to fix things, and if you don't like it GTFO." The government is not the entire blame, it's also the people who sit around and bitch about how F'd up things got, but choose to do absolutely nothing. Grab your gun and start the revolution baby! Everything is F'd, housing market is f'd partially cause people buy out of their means. If you just started working at wal mart 3 months ago, you should not be buying a $350,000 house. Then again, your bank shouldn't have given you the loan. Everyone is to blame, and what it's gonna come down to is seperating the weak from the strong.

Now my mind is all twisted for the day...I think I'm gonna go work on assembling some Cyberdyne Systems Model 101's so we can program them to kill the zombies.

Job like flipping burgers are McDonalds were NOT created to help you support a family of 15 kids born out of wedlock when you are 17 years old. Those jobs were created for an easy source of income for some unskilled High School kid to pay for gas. In return McDonalds makes a profit on delicous shit, and you without skill get a quick buck and learn responsibility and self worth.

Increasing minimum wage will only further make things worse. If the pay rate is forced to increase then in turn the most unskilled retard will be in the same job pool as a college graduate. Who is the employer going to pick? Also, if the employer cannot set his own rates and his profit margin doesn't allow for such increases, he will hire LESS.

The problem is NOT the rich are getting richer. The problem is the middle class is getting dumber.


How about these stats to ponder:

• 1.7 million out-of-wedlock babies born last year (41 percent of all births) and their unmarried moms now look to Big Brother as their financial provider.
• 70 percent of unmarried women voted for Barack Obama for president. They vote for the party that offers the richer handouts.
• 42 million American adults can't read at all; 50 million are unable to read at a higher level that is expected of a fourth grader.
• The number of adults that are classified as functionally illiterate increases by about 2.25 million each year.
• 20 percent of high school seniors can be classified as being functionally illiterate at the time they graduate.

what is leads to:

• 70 percent of prisoners in state and federal systems can be classified as illiterate.
• 85 percent of all juvenile offenders rate as functionally or marginally illiterate.
• 43 percent of those whose literacy skills are lowest live in poverty.

What does it all mean?

If they cannot obtain a labor job, they pursue crime, drugs, alcohol, welfare, homelessness and worse. Over 13.4 million American children live below the poverty line. 35 million Americans subsist on food stamps.

In Detroit, so many poor people shoplifted from grocery stores and retail merchants that the businesses bankrupted or vacated the inner city. Thus, the poor cannot find a place to buy their groceries... even with food stamps. On a national scale, shoplifters hoist $35 million a day in goods from retail stores. We all pay for that massive theft. Think of the implications of adding 70 million more immigrants (half of whom are illiterate) to our cities across America.



Compare it to this:

Third world countries have millions and millions of people die every year from famine and disease, yet each year the population increases. How can this be? Because they can out breed the death rate...while you go out and watch football on Sunday, they sit around and breed because they are uneducated don't know any better. They will never learn any better, because anyone that could teach them all die off.



Morally and economically, the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull. Morally, the chance to satisfy demands by force spreads the demands wider and wider, with less and less pretense at justification. Economically, the forced demands of one group create hardships for all others, thus producing an inextricable mixture of actual victims and plain parasites. Since need, not achievement, is held as the criterion of rewards, the government necessarily keeps sacrificing the more productive groups to the less productive, gradually chaining the top level of the economy, then the next level, then the next.

I agree with Brain. A lot of people want to make the salary of an attorney by selling fresh fries, and re-filling your drink. Also, I come across a vast quantity of people that believe things should be given to them.

The majority of my friends' and acquaintances' primary goal is to get that new car and that bling for all to see. Most don't care about savings, and much less about retirement.

Every time this topic comes to discussion, all I can think of is the opening scene of Idiocracy.

The majority of millionaires drive a ford truck. and know how to read.

When will we learn to stop supporting professional sports? Yet another American flaw. We spend $100's of dollars on tickets to sit in a crowded stadium, drink over priced beer, eat over priced food, for what? To watch a guy who gets paid millions throw a ball around and then get tackled? Sounds brilliant to me. While I work 48 hours a week smelting lead, it warms my heart knowing that there's men in this country who sit in mansions all because they can throw a football better than I ever could. At least I can spell and I can multiply.
Let me break it down for ya, from many years ago.
Dan Marino becomes quarterback for the Miami Dolphins.
Dan Marino does really well as quarterback, and becomes a football legend.
Dan Marino does commercials for isotoner gloves.
Isotoner Gloves are started in Oakley, Ohio in 1924.
If you buy isotoner gloves, you will be supporting an American product.
But Dan, WHO THE FUCK BUYS ISOTONER GLOVES?
DO A COMMERCIAL FOR SOMETHING WE NEED DAN!
I still say, if he would've held the laces out for Ray Finkle, shit would be different.

What?! you missed to point.

You are free and willing to spend the $100s of dollars to be entertained and eat over priced food. You weren't forced. You work in order to support and enjoy YOUR OWN life - and if it so happens that you find value in watching Dan Marino exhibit his athletic abilities, you are entitled to spend your money on your own pleasure. Again, men work in order to support and enjoy their own lives.

The point I was making is that in America, we have alternatives to sitting around and breeding and we are educated (somewhat) to know that having a kid is probably not a smart idea if you cannot afford it.

But instead of understanding the point you are too envious of the skill Dan Marino has as a QB and the personal benefits that it created for himself. You wants to make millions like Dan Marino tossing a football around, but you are unable or unwilling to achieve it so therefore instead, you begin to hate Dan Marino and anything associated with football, that my friend is hatred of the good. Leftist love to use this weapon when enlisting the illiterate low class to fight their selfish battles for power.

I couldn't care less about the "middle class" disappearing or the "rich getting richer" and all that.

Those kind of claims are confusing statistical groups with actual people. The people who are actually in the bottom quintile in say, 2000, are not the same people who are in the bottom quintile in 2010.

When you look at class mobility in terms of actual individuals over a period of time, the numbers say something quite different.

I knew what you meant, and that is a good point to make. Don't have kids if you can't afford them, and especially don't have kids if I'm going to have to pay for those little scumbags.
My point, however, was this:
If Dan Marino would've held the laces out like he's supposed to, Ray Finkle would have never had to disguise himself as Lois Einhorn and assume the identity of a missing hiker.

BTW Scott, I am envious of Dan Marino, but I don't want what he has. I'm happy with my own shit. Also for the record, isotoner gloves are awesome.

I loved that movie so much. It is happening. I hate people.

Hating Dan Marino for his skills is like hating the brand new Mustang 5.0 because it's faster than my turbo Miata. I don't care about that, I know what I built..as I know the finely tuned athletic machine that Dan Marino once was. He made that life for himself, I don't hate on that.
Besides, everybody knows that Jim Kelly woulda f'd Dan Marino up any day of the week when they were in their primes. Yes, it's true. I was a '90's Buffalo Bills fan.

like this:

Today, half of all black families are middle-class, earning at least twice as much as the poverty line. Only 1 percent of black families made that claim in l940. Rates of college graduation have skyrocketed. In l940, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for blacks was 19 percent. In fact, at the start of the 20th century, black people had higher marriage rates than whites.

however, Only 50 percent of black students who enter the ninth grade later graduate with a regular high school diploma

Wait a minute...is this a Ace Ventura reference?

Lol! You finally got that!

:facepalm:

Well I coudn't quite get it. and then it dawned on me. I mean it was all out of left field. Don't act like you knew.

jesus wants you to quit college and make babiez!

http://www.icefilms.info/ip.php?v=90636&

Collapse. The sky is falling.

lol @ made up numbers. 3.5 million homeless, bahahahahahahahahha! Don't buy everything some tool on the internet with a strong agenda is selling. Such claims throw into doubt all of the other numbers cited.

And banks closing branches is a wonderful thing because their brick and mortar locations were their highest source of overhead. With the increasing popularity of online banking, far more customers can be serviced with far fewer locations.

And businesses that are weak should fail. If they don't then our free market ceases to function properly. Without strife and failure, there is no improvement.

I thought it was get a manicure and take the kids shopping -Lynzee Stauss

Federal minimum wage is a price fix on the labor market.

+1 I see stupid people...(6th sense)

To the rest of you, these are not my thoughts. Just reposted because they were interesting.

The real cause of the coming end of the Fed Gov as we know it is the debt bomb.
Many empires ended when the cost of servicing the debt (paying interest on it), approached the cost of maintaining the military. And no, just slashing the military budget won't be enough. The biggest elephant in the room is Medicare. The politicians kept promising entitlements that cannot be delivered. They are unsustainable. And this is true of almost all welfare governments of the west:

US DEBT CLOCK
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

WORLD DEBT CLOCK
http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

The sounding board of the Establishment (the hidden political class), now are truly worried too:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north916.html

Here are historical parallels to other empires:
http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FE...aspx?pageid=52

What will happen? Civil war? No. This is what I think:
- the other central banks of the world will cease to buy Treasury Debt, causing interest rates to rise, increasing the cost of servicing the debt
- the FED will buy the debt using money created out of nothing, creating price inflation
- the USD will cease to be the reserve currency of the world
- the deficit will grow tremendously, and the first thing to be cut will be the military budget
- the Fed Gov will stiff the oldsters
- the States will "revolt", invoke the 10th, and hold the tax collections that go to the Fed Gov that just come back with strings attached
- the Fed Gov will cede power to the State Govs
- there will be a long belt-tightening period as the USD erodes and the standard of living drops
- manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced will come back

This de-centralization of power in the long term, will be a good thing. People will realize that the welfare state is unsustainable, and was simply a means to power by the elite.

This doesn't sound half bad...

This is an interesting hypothesis, when do you see all this happening? Within our lifetimes?

Next Thursday.

Brb - going to Walmart for ammunition.

Wal mart? F those jerk offs too. That's the biggest unamerican place to shop in this country.

If you're calling me un-American by where I shop, then fuck you. I'm assuming that, in your glass house, you are self-sustaining and by your definition, a pure American? Yeah, shut the fuck up.

Not saying it applies to you directly, but seeing this on a board where we are in love with the chinacooler and the shanghai churbo, it is humorous.

Wal-mart may be, by and far, the one reason we haven't failed yet. Have you ever noticed how tremendously fast Wal-Mart has grown? It is an example of what America could be if the government stopped pretending that everyone in America was entitled:

• Entitled to a big screen TV
• Entitled to live for years after being diagnosed with and expensive, life-ending, chronic illnesses
• Entitled to own their own home
• Entitled to own a business
• Entitled to a retirement
• Entitled to eat
• Entitled to go to college
• Entitled to own a car
• Entitled to a paycheck

The reality is: no one is entitled to shit for living in America - with three exceptions - which aren't actually entitlements - they are "rights".

Life - We entitle that the government will take no action to end your life, unless you have ended the life of another.

Liberty - The government will not force you to do anything, you are free to do as you will, with one exception. Since you theoretically are self-governing, you must financially support the government, which effectively means you "provide for yourself"

The pursuit of Happiness - Do NOT confuse this with "happiness". The government is not here to provide you with a means to be happy. The right being provided here is "the pursuit", "of happiness" merely defines what it is that you are being provided the opportunity to pursue. You are allowed to act and make decisions which contribute to your own personal happiness.

You are granted these rights, and are able to act on any of them as long as they do not violate the rights of another person. The current government has confused the third liberty "the pursuit of happiness" with "happiness". To provide people with "happiness" they have continued to improve the economic situation of people who have not earned those economic improvements in order to make those people happy. Instead of earning it themselves, the "wealthy" are forced to improve the "poor" economic situation. In addition, to make up for what they can't rob from the "wealthy", we have, for years, asked other countries to work hard for us so that we can live well. Right now, as I type this, there is some old man working his ass off in a factory in China so that a lazy SOB in the United States can pay his cell phone bill instead of helping his baby's momma out with food bills.

The people in China work for low wages and get by as well as those who get paid government paychecks - why doesn't our government allow us to do the same? Nobody needs a 46" 1080p LCD TV. Nobody needs to be able to afford to live in their very own home. Nobody needs to own a car. Nobody needs to be able to retire. Nobody needs to earn more money because they've worked over 40 hours a week. People that I know who work their asses off 50,60,80,100 hours/week for minimum wage make MUCH SMARTER decisions about what they do with their money than those who recieve a paycheck from the government.

I don't care where anybody shops in America. We are free to support anything we want whether it be American or not. I just tried to stir the pot, and it looks like I shook it up. Fuck me? Whatever. I'll drive my import car and buy my underwear at wal mart knowing that a 6 year old prostitute sewed it together in hong kong, and not care. Why? Cause I can shoot my AR 15 off of my deck without a communist government telling me what to do.

What are you talking about? everything about walmart is american.

If you're younger than 40, I would say, almost certainly. And what a lot of people don't get is that almost all of the welfare governments of Europe have the same long-term financial problems.

Historically the turning point of empires' collapses have been when the cost of paying the interest on the debt passes the cost of maintaining the empire's military. This can happen very, very suddenly, when foreign central banks decide not to buy US Debt, raising interest rates. I will guess it is likely within the next 10 years, possibly within the next 4.

While there are few breaks I don't like, the recent talk of extending the Bush tax cuts, *without* any talk of spending cuts, just proves my point that meaningful tax cuts are politically impossible. This will grow the deficit, and hasten the coming insolvency of the Fed Gov.

The debt is essentially unpayable. The Fed Gov *will* default. It is just a question of when and how. I think it will progressively stiff various voting blocs, such as the oldsters and the gov't unions.

Do you think you can cough up $1.011 Million over the next 30 year to pay your share of the public debt?

LOL, Hong Kong is #1 in economic freedom (The USA is #8):
http://www.heritage.org/index/

Taxes are way, way lower, they have far, far fewer regulations that hamper small business, they have the highest # of millionaires per square mile, and are one of the top buyers of luxury items such as Rolex, Fendi, and designer jewelry. They also have a kickass night skyline. Perhaps you are thinking about Bangladesh or Myanmar.

China is the new financial super power.

Yes, but do I get a t-shirt or anything?

No, but if you become a site supporter rick will send you MT.net stickers.

The pursuit of happiness is one of the most commonly misunderstood clauses in the Constitution. In modern times, happiness has come to be considered a mood, often depicted with a smiley face. This is not the original meaning or even the meaning commonly associated with the term 70 or 80 years ago.

Happiness is based in the root word "hap" which means chance or luck. The second part of the word "ness" refers to "the act of being." Happiness was historically used synonymously with "good fortune." Hap is the root of the word haphazard (taking a chance with peril), happenstance (chance circumstance), hapless (don't have a chance), and happen (to occur by chance). For reference.

The meaning the founders intended should rightfully be known as our right to pursue our own good fortune, the right to be free to take our chances, the right to pursue our opportunities unfettered by government. We have the right to make our own road in life, to take grand chances on ourselves, without being bound by or controlled by the government of the United States...or so it says in the paperwork.

Happiness to me means: Fuck you! Pay Me!

You boys do all realise, were it not for the welfare system you all hate so much propping them up, Wal-Mart would not be able to stay in business. The reason they make so much is by keeping the overwhelming majority of their employees only "just" still part time, and therefore eligible for welfare. I have never worked there, but I knew a few people who did a few years back and everyone in the building not in the management team was on 38-9 hrs/week. Apparently they would give out leaflets explaining how to get food stamps in the break rooms.

Shop there all you want, you may as well, you are already subsidising the workforce.

Great company.

Very American.

The Walmart example is illustrative of both the problem with wealth redistibution schemes and our system of entirely too many labor laws. Since people are incentivized to only work so much and companies are incentivized to use part-time workers, those are the fruits the laws will bear.

I have serious concerns about blaming Walmart for the poison fruit planted by the American congress. And I have no doubt Walmart would survive a transition to a full-time workforce.

Perhaps I am being a bit dramatic. You are right they would still survive, but they would not have had nearly the same profits or the meteoric rise over the last 20 years.

It has nothing to do with being American or otherwise. It's about individuals acting in their own economic self-interest, as they have the right to do (except when the government sticks the gun in your face and tells you otherwise, of course, as in healthcare).

Wal-Mart has created a company structure that is profitable in the current system of laws. It's ridiculous to think that they'd try to maintain the exact same company structure and not adapt if the system of laws were to be dramatically changed (such as the end of welfare programs).

Wal-Mart vs. The Morons

1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.

2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.

8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.

11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.






More fun with stats:

a. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.

b. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.

c. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.

d. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.

e. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.

f. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.

g. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

Gov't has FAILED in every "government service" they have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.

The thing is, welfare is designed to help people who have no income, not help corporations retain income. It is meant to help the poor and Wal Mart is using as a benefits package. It may be legal and within the law, but that does not make it right. Every company does this of course to a certain degree but Wal Mart is the far and away world leader.

I would not argue to defend the US welfare system, it is full of problems and abuse. It is necessary in some capacity to maintain a civilised society. It just doesn't work properly the way it is because there is no motivation to get off of it, and it would seem that most Americans don't give a shit about other Americans unless they work 50+ hours a week.

But I left 4 years ago and that was just before everyone became so ridiculously polarised about all of this stuff. It seems to have gone from "how do we fix it", to "lets get rid of it" or "lets never change it".

Its a funny thing viewing your own country from outside, all sorts of things become clear.

Fuck Welfare. It's designed to fuck your face.


I propose the Braineack Welfare System: YOU DONT WORK, YOU DONT GET MONEYS.



Also, do you have proof on the Walmart Welfare mama jamma? And so what if they encourage employees to take advantage of the public system? Now 25 year olds are covered under you parents insurance....we should be mad at that too.

Actually I moved to a country with socialised medical care and love it. I get sick, and I go to the hospital and they fix it. Free. I would much rather my tax dollars (or rather Pounds) go towards that than blowing up people I have never met for being brown and born on oil feilds. But that is a whole other discussion.

No, as I said I have no first hand experience with Wal Mart, only what I have heard. I am sure I could google something and find an article about it. Then we could all have fun chasing it thru 10-15 "source" links. then you would find an article to refute it and that again would be another 10 links to chase. Nobody does any actual reporting in the U.S. any more they all just source each other and retype stuff. This is the internet, we are all talking about "what we heard", nobody but the BBC and NPR can back up anything they say any more, and they never say a damn thing so that's that.

It does not upset me one bit that my parents taxes are helping sick Americans who need help. To my mind that is what civilised people do for one another. It boggles the mind to think that all the flag waving right wingers have decided that to be a true patriot is to ignore the suffering of others because they don't have a job. Particularly given the inscription on the greatest symbol of American freedom (statue of Lib.).

But I am getting on a soap box now and I have been on this forum long enough to know you are not going to change your mind. I also don't know if I can keep up with the intellectual level established by the first line of you last post.

And most importantly, I may need your help in the future with M/S and you seem like the kind of guy who holds grudges, so I am going to stop now before I burn the bridge

You are confusing gov't and society.

You mean "taxpayer funded", not "free".

Do you assume that a free-market system of health services wouldn't be way cheaper per individual than a gov't micro-managed system? Note: There is NO FREE MARKET in health services in the USA, due to heavy regulations - these regulations are lobbied in place by the big players, to protect them against competition from small startups. The pet health care industry is much freer and as a result I pay $20 per month for cat-surance; there are numerous small clinics in my city, including urgent care facilities, than there are for people, and and an eye operation was $2.5k (and covered), vs. $15k for a person.

Why not a gov't run *catastrophic* coverage insurance system, but without the gov't running the hospitals and the docs? Why assume that a socialized insurance system requires the gov't to tell the hospitals and docs how to run their operations?

Agreed, but this is a false dichotomy. Your thinking has been conditioned by the mass media and its false left-right dichotomy, e.g. "you can't have a non-interventionist foreign policy *and* a true free market in health care. And the false statement "the existing screwed up system in the USA is due to the free market".

Don't take this as an attack - but if you have a bias that was strong enough to lead you to immigrate from your home country, it is only natural that you will percieve reality in such a way that backs up your world view.

I believe this is called normalcy bias?

If you believe that Hondabaruvrolet cars are pieces of junk, then every time you see a junky Hondabaruvrolet car on the street or in the shop it will reinforce those beliefs. Nevermind the millions on the road that are NOT junk and NOT in the shop...

You have no first hand knowledge of the alleged abuse you speak of. You likely heard these things from people whom you consider friends, whom you very likely share a worldview with. They might have heard it from somewhere and to avoid having to cite sources called it their own story. People do this all the time. Thats why documentation and citing sources is so important when backing up arguments.

If Wal-Mart felt it could fulfill the needs of its customers better by paying $20/hr they would because the market would reward them for it.

Jobs like Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Taco-Bell etc are NOT the kinds of jobs you need to have if you want to provide for a family. They are for unskilled workers who are getting thier feet in the door and proving they can be reliable and valuable workers. If the skills and value of an employee is not being properly rewarded, it is the responsibility of the worker to find different employment. If the employee stays for the lower rate, then he sends a signal to the market that a person of his skills and assets is worth the amount he is getting paid. He lowers the pay rate for EVERYBODY whom is at the same skill level or less.