We must all REFOCUS on the FACTS for a proper perspective of where America is headed

Common Sense Commentary:

We Americans must refocus our ideas and perspective of exactly where we are as a nation and as individuals. Most Americans are mentally and experientially trapped in a mental blindness known as "Normalcy Bias". This is a disorder which cannot accept extreme changes .... "Because it has never happened before" and therefore cannot be happening now. Please read the following 40 things which are extreme changes in our Democratic Republic of which we must be aware. RB

We are a democracy but ...

"Democratic Socialism, like Nationalist Socialism (NAZI ), is nothing more than Marxist Socialism repackaged"-- Mark Alexander



The following are 40 things that every American should know related to the collapse of the economy:
{ If you don't read these 40, scroll down past them to my summation }

#1-  Right now we are watching what could potentially be the worst Mississippi River flood ever recorded play out right in front of our eyes. One agricultural economist at Mississippi State University believes that this disaster could do 2 billion dollars of damage just to farms alone.
#2-  The "tornadoes of 2011" that we just saw in the southeast United States are being called the worst natural disaster that the U.S. has seen since Hurricane Katrina. It has been estimated that up to 25 percent of all of the poultry houses in Alabama were either significantly damaged or destroyed. It is also believed that millions of birds were killed.
#3-  According to the Wall Street Journal, 5.5 million Americans are currently unemployed and yet are not receiving unemployment benefits.
#4-  The number of "low income jobs" in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#5-  All over America, state and local governments are selling off buildings just to pay the bills. Investors can now buy up government-owned power plants, prisons and municipal buildings from coast to coast. For example, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey recently sold off 16 government buildings (including the police and fire headquarters) just to pay some bills.
#6-  One out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#7-  Most Americans don't realize how much the U.S. dollar has been devalued over the years. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $115.93 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $454.36 today.
#8-  Those that were alive in the 1970’s will remember how much was made of the "Misery Index" during the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1976-1980). At that time, the "Misery Index" was constantly making headlines in newspapers all across the country. Well, according to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, if we calculated unemployment and inflation the same way that we did back during the Carter administration, then the Misery Index today would actually be higher than at any point during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
#9-  When Americans think of "government debt", most of them only think of the federal government, but it is not just the federal government that has a massive debt problem. State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.
#10-  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006. Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month.
#11-  The economic effects of the BP oil spill just seem to go on and on and on. The number of very sick fish in the Gulf of Mexico is really starting to alarm scientists. The following is how one local newspaper recently described the situation....
Scientists are alarmed by the discovery of unusual numbers of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and inland waterways with skin lesions, fin rot, spots, liver blood clots and other health problems.
#12-  All over America, hospitals that care for the poor and needy are so overwhelmed and are so broke that they are being forced to shut down. Recently, a local newspaper in Florida ran an article about two prominent charity hospitals in Illinois that have served the poor for more than 100 years but are now asking for permission to shut down....
Two charity hospitals in Illinois are facing a life-or-death decision. There's not much left of either of them - one in Chicago's south suburbs, the other in impoverished East St. Louis - aside from emergency rooms crowded with patients seeking free care. Now they would like the state's permission to shut down.
#13-  The U.S. dollar is in such bad shape that now even Steve Forbes is predicting that the U.S. is "likely" to go back to a gold standard within the next five years.
#14-  The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#15-  Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.
#16-  It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States.
#17-  According to the Pentagon, there are minerals worth over a trillion dollars under the ground in Afghanistan. Now, J.P. Morgan is starting to tap those riches with the help of the U.S. military.
#18-  Speaking of J.P. Morgan, most Americans don't realize that they are actually the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. In fact, the more Americans that go on food stamps the more money that J.P. Morgan makes.
#19-  When 2007 began, there were about 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are over 44 million on food stamps, and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#20-  Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#21-  Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#22-  The financial system is more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008 before the financial panic. Today, the world financial system has been turned into a giant financial casino where bets are made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks make a ton of money from this betting system. The system is largely unregulated (the new "Wall Street reform" law has only changed this slightly) and it is totally dominated by the big international banks. The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them "financial weapons of mass destruction". It is estimated that the "derivatives bubble" is somewhere in the neighborhood of a quadrillion dollars, and once it pops there isn't going to be enough money in the entire world to bail everyone out.
#23-  The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#24-  In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China was "scrap and trash".
#25-  All over the United States, many of our once great manufacturing cities are being transformed into hellholes. In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.
#26-  During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.
#27-  New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#28-  The European debt crisis could cause a global financial collapse like the one that we saw in 2008 at any time. The world economy is incredibly interconnected today, and the United States would not be immune. A recent IMF report stated the following about the growing sovereign debt crisis in Europe....
Strong policy responses have successfully contained the sovereign debt and financial-sector troubles in the euro area periphery so far. But contagion to the core euro area and then onward to emerging Europe remains a tangible risk.
#29-  According to one study, the 50 U.S. state governments are collectively 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.
#30-  A different study has shown that individual Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
#31-  The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#32-  The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. Thanks to our politicians, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt.
#33-  The U.S. government is over 14 trillion dollars in debt and the budget deficit for this year is projected to be about 1.5 trillion dollars. However, if the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
#34-  Most Americans don't understand that the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that it runs are at the very heart of our economic problems. All of this debt is absolutely crushing us. The U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010, and it is being projected that the U.S. government will be shelling out 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019. This figure will be nearly equal to the entire amount taken in by the IRS for the year in the form of tax payments.
#35-  Standard & Poor’s has altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from "stable" to "negative" and is warning that the U.S. could soon lose its AAA rating.
#36-  U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#37-  59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
#38-  The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third  of all the wealth in the United States.
#39-  The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#40-  The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.
The above is from:  ChaosPreppers.com :: Observe. Prepare. Survive.™


Socialism Destroys Individual Motivation/Self Reliance

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.  That class had insisted that  socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.  The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan"..  All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A...

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.  The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.  As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.  The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. 
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. 
It could not be any simpler than that.

Whatever the future holds, after the seeds of calamity which men have sown upon our homeland come to fruition, there is still a far greater calamity awaiting at the Great White Throne Judgement of God upon sin which is unrepented and unforgiven. That final calamity can be avoided by accepting   Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. He took our sins upon Himself and paid for them on the cross.
RB
"... He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." 2Cor.5:15 

"Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for You." 1Pet.5:7

Pass it on. RB