Economic Freedom of the World

The foundations of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets. As Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek have stressed, freedom of exchange and market coordination provide the fuel for economic progress. Without exchange and entrepreneurial activity coordinated through markets, modern living standards would be impossible.

Potentially advantageous exchanges do not always occur. Their realization is dependent on the presence of sound money, rule of law, and security of property rights, among other factors. Economic Freedom of the World seeks to measure the consistency of the institutions and policies of various countries with voluntary exchange and the other dimensions of economic freedom. The report is copublished by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada and more than 70 think tanks around the world.

READ MORE:  http://www.cato.org/economic-freedom-world

Census on Obama’s 1st Term: Real Median Income Down $2,627; People in Poverty Up 6,667,000; Record 46,496,000

(CNSNews.com) - During the four years that marked President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

The record total of approximately 46,496,000 people in the United States who are now in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, is more than twice the population of Syria, which, according to the CIA, has 22,457,336 people.

In 2008, the year Obama was elected, real median household income in the United States was $53,644 according to the Census Bureau. In 2012, the last full year of Obama’s first term, median household income was $51,017. Thus, real median household income dropped $2,627—or 4.89 percent—from 2008 to 20.

READ MORE:  

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-obama-s-1st-term-real-median-income-down-2627-people-poverty

Employment Gap between rich, poor widest on record

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The gap in employment rates between America's highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest levels since officials began tracking the data a decade ago, according to an analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press.

Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income families - those earning less than $20,000 - have topped 21 percent, nearly matching the rate for all workers during the 1930s Great Depression.

READ MORE:   http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JOBS_GAP_RICH_AND_POOR?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-16-03-40-33

Amid slow economic recovery, more Americans identify as 'lower class'

A small but surging share of Americans consider themselves 'lower class,' a surprise to some researchers and activists despite the bruising economy.

 

Chris Roquemore once thought of himself as working class. But it's hard to keep thinking that, he said, when you're not working.

The 28-year-old father said he sparred with his supervisors at a retail chain about taking time off after his mother died — and ended up unemployed. Since then, Roquemore has worked odd jobs and started studying nursing at Long Beach City College, trying to get "a career, not a job." All those changes, in turn, changed the way he thought of himself.

READ MORE:  http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lower-class-20130916,0,5616335.story

Banks Seen at Risk Five Years After Lehman Collapse

The Morgan Stanley banker who advised the U.S.  Treasury Department on its rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 and thought she understood the risks to the financial system had just spent a weekend trying to save Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. when she got a message: Would she come back to deal with American International Group Inc. (AIG)?

“The call I got was ‘We worked on the wrong thing,’” Porat, 55, said in an interview last month at the New York headquarters of the bank where she’s now chief financial officer. That AIG “could vanish that quickly and the impact that could have throughout the country, and that nobody could see it coming, was just staggering.”
Porat’s own bank almost vanished when hedge funds, spooked by difficulties getting money out of bankrupt Lehman Brothers, pulled more than $128 billion in two weeks from Morgan Stanley. To stay afloat it sold a 20 percent stake, became a bank holding company and borrowed $107.3 billion from the Federal Reserve on a single day.

Fed will get its inflation; here's who will pay

What's good for central banks isn't always good for the individuals they are supposed to serve, a lesson likely to come into view even more clearly in the days ahead.

Higher inflation that's to come will mean still-tough times for savers and retirees, whose money has generated little return since the Fed took over the post-crisis economy.

After pulling the U.S. economy back from illiquidity and indeed the brink of insolvency during the 2008-09 dark days of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been on a thus-far fruitless crusade to generate positive levels of inflation.

READ MORE   http://www.cnbc.com/id/101018843

Need a Job? The oil and gas industry is the place to go

A number of reports recently have indicated that the oil and gas industry is responsible for a major increase in employment. The Energy Information Administration (EIA), using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, noted that between the beginning of 2007 and the end of 2012, jobs in the oil and gas industry increased by 40 percent, while jobs in the private sector increased just 1 percent. IHS CERA Consulting just released a study touting the increased jobs that have resulted from booming oil and gas production in the United States, spurred by developments in drilling technology. According to the study, the boom created 2.1 million direct and indirect jobs by the end of last year and that number is expected to increase to almost 3.9 million jobs by 2025.

But, the job increase is not the only good news. According to the IHS study, the energy boom added almost $75 billion in federal and state revenues, which could reach over  $125 billion by 2020, and contributed $283 billion to the gross domestic product in 2012, which is expected to increase to almost $533 billion annually beginning in 2025. These new sources of domestic oil and natural gas added more than $1,200 to the discretionary income of the average U.S. family last year, and that number is expected to increase to $2,000 per household per year by 2015 and $3,500 by 2025. The use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology in oil and natural gas drilling sparked more than $120 billion in U.S.-based investment last year. By 2020, the shale boom is expected to lower the U.S. trade deficit by $164 billion (almost a third) as energy imports continue to decline. The lower energy costs will benefit manufacturing and industry, particularly energy-intensive industries such as petroleum refining, aluminum, glass, cement and the food industry.[i]

READ MORE:  http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/09/06/need-a-job-the-oil-and-gas-industry-is-the-place-to-go/

Poverty in N.J. reaches 52-year high, new report shows

TRENTON — Poverty in New Jersey continued to grow even as the national recession lifted, reaching a 52-year high in 2011, according to a report released today.

The annual survey by Legal Services of New Jersey found 24.7 percent of the state’s population — 2.1 million residents — was considered poor in 2011. That’s a jump of more than 80,000 people — nearly 1 percent higher than the previous year and 3.8 percent more than pre-recession levels.

"This is not just a one-year or five-year or 10-year variation," said Melville D. Miller Jr., the president of LSNJ, which gives free legal help to low-income residents in civil cases. "This is the worst that it’s been since the 1960 Census."

READ MORE:  http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/09/poverty_in_nj_reaches_52-year_high_new_report_shows.html#incart_river_default

How the Prevailing Wage Law Stopped Progress

Recently, with encouragement from the County Executive, Tom Gordon, the New Castle County Council voted 7 to 6 against using a $100,000 contribution from the Friends of Rockwood to renovate the county-owned Rockwood Mansion. The argument was that such construction repairs should be subject to Delaware's prevailing wage system.

 

That argument is flawed for two reasons.

 

First, the argument doesn't coincide with state law. Second, the current Delaware prevailing wage system is methodologically flawed, redundant, a waste to taxpayers, and improper use of tax funds.

 

First, under Delaware's statutes, prevailing rates must be paid on new construction projects costing more than $100,000 and on alteration, repair, renovation, rehabilitation, demolition or reconstruction projects costing more than $15,000. For a project to be covered by the law, the State or any subdivision thereof must be a party to the public works contract; and, the State must have appropriated any part of the funds.

 

Because the Rockwood Mansion is county-owned, it is fair to say that the County is a party to any works contract. It is false to claim in this instance, however, that the County has appropriated any part of the funds.

 

Second, two years ago, funded by a foundation grant, CRI conducted a thorough analysis of Delaware's prevailing wage system's methodology.

 

The CRI research (http://www.caesarrodney.org/index.cfm?ref=28200&ref2=1) found that the prevailing wage methodology conducted by the Delaware Department of Labor was seriously flawed and over stated construction wages by occupation in Delaware by an average of 40%. Currently, for example, the prevailing wage for a carpenter working in New Castle County is $50.06, a painter is $42.02, and a laborer $38.30.

 

Using Delaware’s FY-11 capital budget, the research estimated construction savings from paying market construction wages would be approximately $19 million for school projects, $96 million for transportation projects, and $135 million overall. The funds saved could have been used to generate more capital improvements resulting in more construction output, a lower unemployment rate for construction workers, and less strain on Delaware’s unemployment fund.

 

To add insult to injury, every six months under a Federal contract with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Delaware Department of Labor systematically collects detailed construction occupational wage data (the Occupational Employment Statistics survey).

 

Shifting to the OES survey data would save money and staff time for Delaware’s Department of Labor while improving data quality. Compared to the Delaware prevailing wage survey data, the OES has substantially less sample design and response bias, a larger sample size, and fewer methodological errors. Moreover, Delaware taxpayers foot the bill for the state’s prevailing wage survey each year, while the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pays Delaware to conduct the OES survey.

 

Why then this strange vote by the NCC Council? The most obvious explanation would be pressure from the unions. According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just over 10% of Delaware's workers are union members, with only 2% of private sector workers being union members.

 

The Delaware economy is in a slump, and especially the construction industry. It its latest budget, NCC County government projects four straight years of operating deficits. These realities make the position of the County on the generous gift from the Rockwood Mansion Friends even more difficult to understand.

 

Dr. John E. Stapleford, Director

Center for Economics and Policy Analysis

 

SOURCE:  http://caesarrodney.org/index.cfm?ref=30200&ref2=408

Australian gov't faces carbon tax backlash at poll

SYDNEY (AP) — The ruling Labor Party's probable collapse in Australia's next election is largely the consequence of its qualified success in the last one three years ago. To form the coalition she needed to stay in power, then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard reneged on a promise and agreed to place a carbon tax on major polluters.

On Saturday, the bill for that bargain comes due. Voters have never stopped hating the tax and its effect on their electric bills. Longtime Labor Party supporters — even people who have helped cut pollution by installing solar panels at home — have flocked to the opposition.

"Whoever gets rid of it will get my vote," said Mark Keene, a 54-year-old maintenance worker from Sydney who, for the first time in his life, won't be voting for Labor.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has declared the election a "referendum on the carbon tax" — a sure sign of confidence that most voters remain staunchly against it, with many believing that companies forced to pay the tax are simply passing the cost onto consumers.

Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/23359580/australian-govt-faces-carbon-tax-backlash-at-poll#ixzz2eghPBBai

90,473,000: Record Number Not in Labor Force--Up Almost 10M Under Obama

The number of Americans who are 18 years or older and who have decided not to participate in the nation's labor force has pushed past 90,000,000 for the first time, according to data released today by the bureau of labor statistics.

The BLS counts a person as participating in the labor force it they are either 16 years or older and have a job or have actively sought a job in the last 4 weeks.  A person is not participating in the labor force if they are 16 years or older and do not have a job and have not sought a job in the last 4 weeks.

READ MORE:  http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/90473000-record-number-not-labor-force-almost-10m-under-obama

and who have decided not to participate in the nation's labor force has pushed past 90,000,000 for the first time, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/90473000-record-number-not-labor-force-almost-10m-under-obama#sthash.lXFhoSr0.dpuf

(CNSNews.com) - The number of Americans who are 16 years or older and who have decided not to participate in the nation's labor force has pushed past 90,000,000 for the first time, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/90473000-record-number-not-labor-force-almost-10m-under-obama#sthash.lXFhoSr0.dpuf

Fracking Boom Seen Raising Household Incomes by $1,200

Surging oil and natural gas production brought on by hydraulic fracturing is lifting the U.S. economy by lowering energy costs for consumers and manufacturers, according an industry-funded report. 

In 2012, the energy boom supported 2.1 million jobs, added almost $75 billion in federal and state revenues, contributed $283 billion to the gross domestic product and lifted household income by more than $1,200, according to the report released today from IHS CERA. The competitive advantage for U.S. manufacturers from lower fuel prices will raise industrial production by 3.5 percent by the end of the decade, said the report from CERA, which provides business advice for energy companies.

“What really surprised me was how powerful an impact it is having to such a broad base of the economy,” John Larson, vice president of economics and public sector consulting for IHS CERA and lead author of the report, said in an interview. “It makes it to me a story that all Americans really need to come to grips with and understand.”

READ MORE:  http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-04/fracking-boom-seen-raising-u-dot-s-dot-incomes-by-1-200-per-household

Teen employment hits record lows, suggesting lost generation

WASHINGTON — For the fourth consecutive summer, teen employment has stayed anchored around record lows, prompting experts to fear that a generation of youth is likely to be economically stunted with lower earnings and opportunities in years ahead.

The trend is all the more striking given that the overall unemployment rate has steadily dropped, to 7.4 percent in August. And employers in recent months have been collectively adding almost 200,000 new jobs a month. It led to hopes that this would be the summer when teen employment improved.

In 1999, slightly more than 52 percent of teens 16 to 19 worked a summer job. By this year, that number had plunged to about 32.25 percent over June and July. It means that slightly more than three in 10 teens actually worked a summer job, out of a universe of roughly 16.8 million U.S. teens.

READ MORE  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/29/200769/teen-employment-hits-record-lows.html#.Ui3PbX9LNax

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/29/200769/teen-employment-hits-record-lows.html#.UiA4TT-AeWY#storylink=cpy

Obama's Affordable Care Act Looking a Bit Unaffordable

Independent National Journal analysis finds premiums higher under Obamacare as employers weigh dropping coverage.

 

 

Republicans have long blamed President Obama's signature health care initiative for increasing insurance costs, dubbing it the "Unaffordable Care Act."

Turns out, they might be right.

For the vast majority of Americans, premium prices will be higher in the individual exchange than what they're currently paying for employer-sponsored benefits, according to a National Journal analysis of new coverage and cost data. Adding even more out-of-pocket expenses to consumers' monthly insurance bills is a swell in deductibles under the Affordable Care Act.

READ MORE: http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/obama-s-affordable-care-act-looking-a-bit-unaffordable-20130829

New Jersey Property Tax Problems

The mayor of one New Jersey town is actually moving out because he claims he can’t afford to pay the property taxes there.

Egg Harbor Mayor Sonny McCullough bought his home in 1985 for about $350,000 and according to him, now he is officially taxed out.

In 2012, Egg Harbor property taxes were increased by 60% making his home now worth $1.1 million and that comes with close to a $35,000 tax bill.

Depending on which formula you use, New Jersey is either number one or number two in the country for pricey property taxes.

McCullough said, “property tax is the unfairest tax in the world. It’s not based on someone’s ability to earn money.  It’s based on the property value.” 

READ MORE:  http://www.my9nj.com/story/23288092/new-jersey-property-tax-problems

As Predicted, Ratepayers Ripped Off by Bloom Energy

It comes as no surprise the Bloom Energy Fuel Cell Project with Delmarva Power is costing much more than predicted in the Public Service Commission approval process. CRI participated in a marathon nine hour hearing and showed how tariff documents over estimated the benefits of the project at every level. We were the only group opposed to the tariff. Had the PSC commissioners adopted our analysis the tariff would have been rejected. This past Sunday, the Wilmington News Journal highlighted the problems in a front page story and an editorial.

 

            Delmarva and Bloom admitted electric ratepayers would be stuck paying above market prices for power. They said it would be worth it because of claimed economic development benefit of jobs at a new fuel cell factory, offsetting higher future electric prices for conventional power, the avoided cost of buying renewable energy credits, and environmental benefits. Two years down the road our predictions are coming true:

·         The cost will be at least three times expected and could go to a half billion dollars over the twenty year life of the project

·         Overall economic development potential will be one third expected and the Delaware solar industry has been decimated by the offsets in Solar Renewable Energy Credits

·         Environmental benefits would have been eight to ten times higher if a conventional natural gas power plant had been built and electric rates would have gone down instead of up

 

            Delmarva Power submits monthly reports listing the tariff payments, fuel cost, and operating cost of the fuel cell project along with the offsetting revenue from the sale of the electricity. The PSC, using company documents, estimated the comparable levelized above market cost would be $3.30/month for a typical residential customer with 2013 being much lower. With only two thirds of the project complete in October the estimated cost is now $3.83 and, based on the last 14 months of data, we can extrapolate the cost when the project is complete will total $4.50/month.

 

            The $3.30/month cost was to be further offset by $1.96/month through the avoided cost of buying renewable energy credits. However, the price of the credits crashedand the offset will only be $0.35/month. The net monthly cost will go from $1.34/month to $4.15/month, three times higher, about what our worst case estimate suggested. The total above market cost paid by ratepayers will go from an estimated $142 million to at least $437 million and could go higher.

 

            Mistakes in the economic development analysis also overestimated economic development potential by a factor of three. If Bloom actually hires 900 people, a big if, the jobs will cost half a million dollars each in above market electric rates. Bloom is behind schedule in hiring and the News Journal reported most of the license plates on cars at the plant were out-of-state.

 

            Environmental benefits were also exaggerated by comparing air pollution savings only against coal fired generation. The same $350 million investment made for fuel cells would have bought ten times the generation capacity of a typical new conventional natural gas generator leading to eight to ten times the air pollution savings. The power cost would have been a third the cost of the fuel cell generation and would actually have lowered electric rates.   

 

            The key question now is will future conventional power price increases and higher renewable energy prices offset the fuel cell tariff cost down the road. The US Energy Information Agency is predicting fairly stable demand and slow growth in future electric rates (one third the rate of increase used in tariff documents). Renewable energy credit prices reflect the installed cost of new wind and solar projects which have come down dramatically and are expected to fall further. The prospect of either higher electric rates or higher renewable energy credit prices going up enough to bail out ratepayers from the high cost of fuel cell power is extremely low.                     

source: http://caesarrodney.org/index.cfm?ref=30200&ref2=407&utm_source=Dave-+As+CRI+Predicted%3B+Ratepayers+Ripped+Off+by+Bloom+Energy&utm_campaign=Bloom+Energy&utm_medium=email

The “New Economy” Is The No Jobs Economy

August 5, 2013 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: king world news, |  Print This Article

 

Dear Readers,

The “New Economy” Is The No Jobs Economy

Paul Craig Roberts

One of my most popular columns was about escaping from the Matrix existence in which Americans live. It is a world of disinformation and misinformation in which facts are fiction, and abstract theories are substituted for empirical reality.

Official government statistics are make-believe. The government makes inflation and unemployment disappear by how it defines inflation and unemployment, and it makes the economy grow by how it defines Gross Domestic Product. The definitional basis determines the statistical result.

For example, in his report on the official GDP revisions released July 31, John Williams (shadowstats.com) writes that “academic theories, often with strong political biases, have been used to alter the GDP model over the years, resulting in “Pollyanna Creep,” where changes made to the series invariably have had the effect of upping near-term economic growth.” In other words, definitional changes produce economic growth whether or not the economy produces economic growth.

Inflation is made to disappear by substituting lower priced items for higher priced items and by defining price rises as quality improvements. Thus, the higher prices don’t count as inflation.

Unemployment disappears by defining discouraged workers who cannot find employment as people who are no longer in the work force. They simply are disappeared out of the ranks of the unemployed. It reminds me of Punjab’s magic blanket in the old cartoon strip, “Little Orphan Annie.” Punjab disposed of problem people by covering them with his blanket, or perhaps it was a rug, and they disappeared.

Despite the absurdity of the government’s data, Wall Street awaits with baited breath each new release to decide whether markets should go up or down or stay the same. In other words, the financial markets themselves take guidance from make believe numbers. In short, capitalism is rudderless. It has no reliable indicators. Everything is rigged to support the Matrix which keeps the population in a stupor.

Certainly the monthly payroll jobs number is misconstrued and has undeserved influence. If the economy is down, a jobs number significantly higher than the approximately 130,000 new jobs required to stay even with population growth is seen as a beacon of recovery. But the number is so distorted, as John Williams explains, by shifting and unstable seasonal adjustments and an average monthly add-on of 52,000 jobs from the “birth-death” model that no one really knows what the number is. Only a statistician like John Williams who is very familiar with the government’s data procedures can make much sense from the official statistics.
I take a simpler approach. I look at where the reported jobs are alleged to be. In the 21st century, the jobs created by “the world’s largest economy” have been lowly-paid, non-tradable, domestic service third world jobs. Manufacturing and tradable professional service jobs such as software engineering have been moved offshore to low-wage, low-salary locations. The savings in labor costs have enriched corporate executives, Wall Street, and shareholders.

I have made this point monthly for many years, and it has had no effect on economists, policymakers, money managers, or financial markets, all of which continue in their make-believe world of make-believe reality.
Here we go, one more time. Of the 161,000 reported private sector jobs gained in July, 157,000 or 97.5 percent, are in non-tradable domestic services. A non-tradable service is a job that produces services that cannot be exported, such as waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, retail clerks, warehousemen. Thus, no matter how large the number might be, it cannot reduce the huge US trade deficit. Most of these jobs are part-time jobs without health or pension benefits. People in these jobs tend to live hand-to-mouth. These jobs do not produce sufficient income to drive a consumer economy.

Of these 157,000 reported jobs, 63,000 or 40 percent are reported to be in trade, transportation, and utilities. Of these 63,000 jobs, 60,500 of them or 96 percent are in wholesale and retail trade.
Before we go to the next category, ask yourself if you believe that in an economy that has had no recovery, in which there are no new manufacturing or construction jobs, in which the labor force participation rate is down, in which shopping center parking lots are far from full, stores with such a poor sales outlook would hire so many people in July?

Financial activities account for 15,000 of the reported new jobs. The Federal Reserve accounted for 80 percent of these jobs and bill collectors for the rest.

Professional and business services accounted for 36,000 of the new reported jobs. About half of these jobs were temporary help services and services to buildings and dwellings.

Health care and social assistance accounted for 8,300 jobs of which ambulatory health care services comprised 80 percent.

Waitresses and bartenders contributed 38,400 jobs. I have previously noted the anomaly of a population without good employment prospects or rising incomes going out to eat and to drink more and more often, so often that waitresses and bartenders comprise each and every month a significant percentage of the new employees.

In her commissioner’s statement accompanying the jobs report, Erica Groshen acknowledges that 8,200,000 or 6 percent of the currently employed are “involuntary part-time workers” who cannot find full-time employment.

The July 2013 payroll employment level of 136,038,000 stands 2,018,000 below the employment level in January 2008, which was 5 years and 7 months ago. If it requires 130,000 new jobs each month to keep employment equal with population growth, the US economy is behind by 10,728,000 jobs. These missing jobs show up in the declining labor force participation rate and the large number of discouraged workers who are no longer counted as unemployed.

Obviously, there is no economic recovery, despite the reporting of such by the presstitute financial press. Most likely the US economy is sinking further into a depression. The numerous indicators of economic collapse are ignored by economists and financial media busy at work weaving the Matrix to support The Lie.
As former executives of the “banks too big to fail” and their proteges run the US Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and the Federal Reserve, US economic policy has been focused on bailing out the excessively large banks created by mindless deregulation. The purpose of US economic policy is to save the large banks from their bad bets on poorly understood new financial instruments in the gambling casino created by deregulation.

The architects of financial deregulation, such as former Senator Phil Gramm and President Bill Clinton were rewarded for their service with fortunes of their own. The free market dupes, who aided and abetted Bill and Phil and misrepresented the repeal of financial stability as a new beginning for laissez faire capitalism, still pretend that the crisis resulted from Congress requiring banks to make mortgage loans to poor black people who could not pay.

The lack of reality in America is extreme. I do not believe anything like it has ever existed in the modern world. Essentially, no one in government or out understands anything.

The combination of the power of vested interests with ideological thinking remote from empirical reality is destroying the US economy and the economic prospects of the American people. The employment profile of the US economy is increasingly that of a third world country. Economic security, except for the rich, has disappeared. A large and growing percentage of the population experiences the insecurity of poverty or near-poverty, while the waiting lists for $50 million yachts expands. The distribution of income is so skewed upward that people of enormous wealth bid up the prices of used Ferraris from the 1950s and 1960s to $12,000,000 and $35,000,000. I can remember when a used Ferrari was something that a person with a moderate income could afford to purchase. I have a friend who bought and sold for $9,000 in the 1960s the Ferrari that last sold for $35 million.

Detroit, once the fourth largest American city and the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, is bankrupt. The populations of the cities that once were America’s thriving manufacturing base are declining. Cleveland has boarded up homes. St. Louis has 20 percent of its homes vacant. Welfare is under attack by the Republicans and even some Democrats as the plight of the population worsens and despair rises.
Washington only responds to the half dozen powerful, rich private interest groups that fund election campaigns. The American people have no one to represent them. The American people have been placed outside the system of “democratic capitalism” which is only for the one percent.

As Jeffrey St. Clair has made clear, America no longer has a left-wing. America is a right-wing world in which people, including “progressives” have been brainwashed into perceiving reality in racial contrast: the whites are well off and the blacks are poor and destitute.

This is the false reality of the Matrix. As whites are a larger percentage of the population than blacks, there are more poor whites than poor blacks. Moreover, the percentage of poor whites is growing. The way the jobs-offshoring, bail out the rich, US economy operates today makes every one poor, including the remnants of America’s once flourishing middle class. It is not a racial issue. It is a class issue. A few people have the power, and they are driving everyone else into the ground. The US government is their agent.

So go wave the flag, support the troops, believe the government’s and media’s lies, but unless you are the well-connected one percent, don’t expect any future for your children. You have been sold out by “your” government. Obama is making pretty speeches, but only the stupid will be fooled.