Misery Index: The Obama Depression - "Private sector doing just Fine"

[Soul Crusher]

We’ve Been Impoverished and It’s Only Going to Get A Whole Lot Worse
SHTFPlan ^ | 12/30/2011 | Mac Slavo



The dollar is losing value, but this fact is not just some recent phenomenon. In case you missed the charts comparing the decline of the US dollar to the Roman silver denarius, what they show is that the US dollar has, over the course of the last one hundred years, experienced a steady decline amounting to about a 95% loss in purchasing power, closely mimicking the fall of the world’s reserve currency circa the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Every single day our central bank and the US government utilize the stealth tax known as inflation to make you poorer by increasing your cost of living. It’s so subtle that most Americans don’t even notice – or care.

In just the last decade alone, Brits have lost about 43% of their purchasing power for the most essential of all goods – food and energy.

Ordinary families have been crippled by the rocketing cost of essential goods over the past decade, a report has found.

The price of basic purchases, such as food and fuel, soared by 43 per cent over the decade from 2000.

These rising costs – far above general inflation – have already wiped out most of the gains in living standards made by families on low and modest incomes in the early 2000s, before the downturn began, according to research.

The statistics in the United States don’t fair any better. According to the inflation calculator, an item costing $100 in 2000 would now cost you $126, destroying some 26% of your purchasing power in just ten years. And, these calculations are based on the official statistics. Utilizing the actual, alternative data, prices have soared over 50% for essentials like food and gas in the last ten years.

Had you kept your money in cash since 2000, half of your wealth would have been wiped out by inflation (not including investment losses).

Despite what we’re told about our monetary policy and efforts to maintain a strong dollar, the evidence clearly shows that the dollar is moving in exactly the opposite direction over time, and it’s not done yet.

You can fully expect costs to rise going forward, as reported by the LA Times:

Get ready for more high food prices going into 2012 –- the USDA is projecting that next year will bring an overall spike of 2.5% to 3.5%.

…

Grocery store shoppers this year watched prices rise as much as 4.75% while diners in restaurants saw menu prices go up as much as 2.5%, with a surge near the end of the year.

As of last month, beef prices were up 9.8% compared with the same month last year. Pork prices were up 6.9% and poultry was 3% higher.

These predictions, of course, are based on the official projections. As we’ve learned from past experience, whatever the government projects, you can triple it. In this case, we’ll likely see another ten percent plus increase in prices, and thus, even more erosion in your standard of living.

In normal times the price inflation could be ignored, as wages would adjust somewhat accordingly and employment would be plentiful. But the last decade has been anything but normal, and what’s actually happening is that our wealth is being deliberately and progressively transferred into the hands of government and the corporate elite.

Recent data reiterate this point, with some 100 million Americans in poverty or right on the edge. We are, by all accounts, becoming poorer and inflation has played a huge role.

The thing is, the historical perspective on inflation isn’t even the scary part.

What’s scary is that the US dollar’s domination as the world’s reserve currency may very well be coming to an end over the next few years. As that happens the dollar will lose even more value, likely more rapidly than ever before. So, what was once just a subtle and easily ignored effect on personal wealth and finances, will become a major crisis area for most American families.

And that doesn’t even consider the real possibility of a waterfall event, in which major US creditors and private sector investors lose complete confidence in the US central bank and Treasury department, and choose to take their credit investments elsewhere. If and when this happens the poverty rate in this country will sky rocket – and fully 90% or more of the population would, almost overnight, become as impoverished as those living in any third world nation.

It can happen, and the way things have gone historically, and the multitude of problems we face on an economic, financial, social and political scale, it is becoming increasingly probable the this will be the eventual result.

The only way to protect yourself in an atmosphere where wealth is being destroyed by the powers that be is to put as much of it into assets that completely take you out of their game. As we wrote in January of 2010 in Buy Commodities at Today’s Lower Prices, Consume at Tomorrow’s Higher Prices. It is our view that, even though we’re two years hence since we first made that recommendation, the advice is still as timely today as it was then. Consider those things that become money when the traditional mechanism of exchange is wiped out. Most essential assets like food, firearms and tools will not only retain their value, but increase it – and if stored and maintained properly, they’ll be available for use many years down the road.

So, while most Americans are scrambling to the perceived safety of things like cash, blue chip stocks and US Treasury bonds, leaving themselves at risk because those assets are denominated in dollars and require exchanges to operate, you can become your own central bank and commodities warehouse by investing in assets such as the 11 foods that last a lifetime and other post-collapse barter items and trade skills that will maintain their inherent value when other traditional assets become worthless.



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[Soul Crusher]

Americans’ Incomes Have Dropped 6.7 Percent During the ‘Recovery’
Weekly Standard ^ | November 1, 2011 | JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
Posted on January 2, 2012 12:21:59 PM EST by upchuck

New evidence suggests there’s a reason why this economic “recovery” hasn’t felt much like a recovery. Figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession from which they’ve allegedly been recovering. 

According to Sentier’s report, the median American household income has actually fallen during the “recovery.”  Not only that, but it has fallen even more than it did during the recession. Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the report (with fellow Census veteran John Coder), says, “Real income fell by 3.2 percent during [the recession].  And during the recovery it went down by 6.7 percent.” So “income [has] declined twice as much in the recovery as in the recession itself.”

According to the report — which has been referenced by both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times — in early 2000, Americans’ median annual household income was $55,836, in real (inflation-adjusted, June 2011) dollars. By the start of the recession (in December 2007), Americans’ real incomes had fallen 0.9 percent, to $55,309 — a decline of $527. During the recession (which ended in June 2009), their incomes fell an additional 3.2 percent, to $53,518 — a decline of another $1,791. During the first two years of the “recovery” (from June 2009 to June 2011), they fell an additional 6.7 percent, to $49,909 — a decline of another $3,609.

So, from the start of 2000 to mid-2011, the typical American household’s real income dropped nearly $6,000 — and more than 60 percent of that drop (over $3,600) came after the start of the “recovery” and thus squarely on Obama’s watch. 

While the real median income of American households dropped 6.7 percent during the first two years of the “recovery,” the incomes of many households dropped even more than that. The income drop was steeper for those under 25 years of age (their incomes were down 9.5 percent), for those between 25 and 34 years of age (down 9.8 percent), for black Americans (down 9.4 percent), for families with three or more children (down 9.5 percent), and for families headed by part-time workers (down 11.5 percent). And that’s despite the fact that the report’s income tallies include unemployment compensation and monetary public assistance (both state and federal).

In fact, the anemic economy has meant that Americans’ incomes have declined during the “recovery” even without adjusting for inflation. According to Green, in actual (non-inflation-adjusted) dollars, the median American household income was $51,140 at the start of the “recovery,” but it fell to $49,909 two years later. 

Suffice it to say, such declining incomes are giving new meaning to the word “recovery.”

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[Soul Crusher]

30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012
Submitted by ilene on 01/02/2012 22:13 -0500




30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing.  The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012.

The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden.  Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades.  Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families.  Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty.  In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before.  The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace.

As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale.  This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.

Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices.  I honestly don't know how most families make it these days.  I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food.  That was after I "saved" 67 dollars on sale items.

When the cost of the basic things that we need - housing, food, gas, electricity - go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.

Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge....

-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.

-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.

-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.

-The number of Americans that are considered to be "poor" continues to grow.

-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.

After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.

The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012....

#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.

#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people.  Only about 140 million of them are working.

#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.

#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in "the fretful zone just above it".

#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or "near poverty", and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or "near poverty".

#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.  Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.

#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today.  Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.

#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns.  Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent.  In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.

#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.

#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by18,000% since 1913.  The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.

#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.

#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#15 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years.  During 2010 it got even worse.  Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.

#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days.  Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace.  The price of beef is up9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.

#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.

#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.

#22 If the number of Americans considered to be "looking for work" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012.  Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.

#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.

#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.

#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".  By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".

#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.

#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#30 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5%of all the wealth in the United States.

Sadly, this article could have been much, much longer.  There are so many other statistics about the middle class that could have been included.

For even more insane economic numbers that show just how dramatically the U.S. economy is declining, just check out this article: "50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe".

What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.

We have already had "the economic recovery", such as it was.

Now we are heading for another major financial crisis.  Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.

But we never recovered from the last financial crisis.  We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.

And who is going to get hurt the most?  It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course.  Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.

If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it.  If you don't have a job, do your best to get one while you still can. Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.

But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system.  Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side.  Yes, it will likely cut into your television time.  If someday you were to lose your job you don't want to be left with zero income.

Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.

Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.

I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.

Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.

But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.

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http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/30-statistics-show-middle-class-dying-right-front-our-eyes-we-enter-2012

[Soul Crusher]

Tracking the Unreported (15.6%) Unemployed
By Aparna Mathur & Matt Jensen
President Barack Obama took office in January 2009 after having campaigned on the broad promise of "hope" and "change." However, to stay in office, there is one thing President Obama should hope for: an improvement in the employment picture before the 2012 elections.

The last three years have seen some of the highest unemployment rates reported since the Great Depression. The official rate moved from 5 percent in January 2008 to a high of 10.1 percent in October 2009, and a current rate of 8.6 percent. It rests 3 points above the 1948-2007 average of 5.6 percent. Unfortunately, the reality is even worse than these numbers suggest.

This is because of the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the official unemployment rate. Conceptually the unemployment rate seems simple - it is just the number of unemployed divided by the number of people in the labor force. However, deciding whom to include in the labor force is a complicated task. In the official unemployment rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the labor force as those who are employed or who have actively looked for work within the last four weeks. As a consequence, the official rate excludes workers who have decided to drop out of the labor market altogether because economic conditions have discouraged them, or for other reasons. The official rate also ignores those who settle for part-time work since they are unable to find a full-time job.


So, the way in which we calculate unemployment might mask the actual weakness of our economy. Paradoxically, if pessimism about the economy drives workers to stop looking for work or to settle for a part time job, it could actually cause the official unemployment rate to fall because of a bad outlook.

To compensate for this problem, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has published an alternative measure of the unemployment rate based on an analysis of the Current Population Survey, a household survey. This measure, referred to as the "U-6 rate", includes those that would still like a job and have looked for work in the last twelve months, not just the last four weeks. It also includes people who opted to work part-time even though they would like full-time jobs. Unfortunately, this measure is not cited nearly enough.

The U-6 rate offers a clearer picture of how precarious a situation we are in. It has moved from 8.8 percent in December 2007 to 17.4 percent in October 2009 and 15.6 percent in November 2011. Today the gap between the U-6 rate and the official rate is 7 percentage points, meaning that the number damaged by the weak job market is almost twice what the official number would suggest. At the start of the recession, there was only a 3.8 percentage point difference. By comparison, during the 2001 recession, which lasted only a few months, the difference grew by a meager 0.9 points from 3 percent to 3.9 percent.

For a historical perspective, we obtained data on these two measures going back to 1994. The evidence reveals the gap between the official rate and the U-6 rate has averaged less than 4 percentage points, and has not exceeded 5 percentage points except for the first month in 1994. October 2008 is the first time that the difference exceeded 5 points, and since then has averaged around 7 points.

Currently more than 5.7 million Americans have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks, or an astounding 43 percent of all unemployed. The tremendous increase in long-term unemployment is one factor driving the unprecedented disparity between the official measure of unemployment and the alternative measure. Long-term unemployment has a damaging psychological impact on workers' willingness to keep searching for work and motivates them to accept part-time work.

More importantly, however, long-term unemployment has a real impact on their ability to find a job because skills erode and employers tend to recoil from large gaps on a resume.

The silver lining of this bleak jobs outlook might be that more workers are settling for part-time work rather than dropping out of the labor force completely. When individuals opt for and are able to obtain part-time work, it enables them to retain their skills and, at least partly, finance their household expenses and needs. In December 2007, only 0.2 percent of the labor force was discouraged from looking for work for economic reasons. Today, the number is 0.7 percent. The percent of the labor force that is willing to settle for part-time work has grown much more, from 3 percent to 5.4 percent.

The frailty of the labor market may be a symptom of broader issues facing the economy. Trillions of dollars of spending portend an unsustainable fiscal future, and regulatory uncertainty is high. The reasonable response of businesses to higher expected tax rates and the possibility of new regulations may be to offer part-time and temporary jobs instead of hiring full-time workers. As bad policy forces businesses to seek flexibility, the chasm between the U-6 and official unemployment rates may become a permanent fixture of the economic landscape.

The main challenge facing the Obama administration is to improve the employment situation. An easy way to start is by restoring faith in the economy and providing certainty about the future in the minds of consumers and businesses. To do this, President Obama needs Benjamin Franklin's kind of "change." A penny saved is a penny earned, and today, it may also be a job saved.

 

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) economist and resident scholar Aparna Mathur writes about wages and taxes.  Matt Jensen is an economic researcher at AEI. 

   

[Soul Crusher]

Jobless black hole
By JOHN CRUDELE
Last Updated: 12:38 AM, January 3, 2012

Posted: 12:32 AM, January 3, 2012

This coming Friday could be a very tricky day for America’s psyche.

People in this country are more confident about the economy these days than they have been since last summer.

But there really isn’t any reason to be: the housing crisis is getting worse, the Federal budget deficit is still ballooning; European countries are deteriorating financially and there aren’t nearly enough jobs being created here or abroad.

And that’s just to name a few of the problems.

So why are polls showing that folks are feeling more confident about the economy than they were five months ago? Mostly because people think the job market is improving.

Now I’m going to tell you why this isn’t necessarily a good thing.

First, here are some facts you need to know.

The Labor Department will announce the December jobs figures at precisely 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The experts think 150,000 jobs were created in December compared with 120,000 in November.

Even 150,000 new jobs would be a paltry number.

But that figure could be difficult to achieve because — one, it wasn’t a banner retail season where stores were hiring aggressively and, two, December isn’t one of those months when Washington is fast and loose with assumptions about hidden jobs allegedly being created by companies that might not exist.

But the blow to the American confidence won’t be coming from that part of the Friday report.

The number to watch this month is the unemployment rate.

In the most recent Labor Department announcement, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent from 9 percent.

People who didn’t know any better heralded this as a wonderful achievement. Those who were savvy realized that more than half that astounding decline occurred not because people had found jobs but because they had stopped looking for work.

People aren’t considered unemployed if they haven’t looked for work in a particular month. And people typically stop looking for a job when they think the quest would be fruitless.

Fast forward to today when Americans are expressing more confidence about the job market. So unemployed folks should be getting off the couch and looking for work.

And when that happens the unemployment rate should rise again — maybe, even, by a stunning amount.

That’ll make the American psyche groan.

How many people would have to start looking again for a job to make the unemployment rate rise?

There are only guesses.

The Labor Department surveys about 110,000 people each month in 60,000 households. That’s a big number as far as scientific surveys go and it is intended to represent 240 million employable people in the American population.

So, every one person who is surveyed represents about 2,200 people who weren’t questioned.

Using that formula, only 100 people who weren’t looking for work in November would have to tell surveyors that they were searching in December and didn’t find a job for the unemployment rate jump 0.1 percentage point.

So, if 400 people tell Labor they are now looking for a job — but weren’t in November — then the jobless rate will go back to 9 percent.

The Labor Department estimates that there are 6.6 million employable Americans who have given up looking for work but could be coaxed back into the job hunt if optimism finally comes back into vogue.

If even a fraction of those 6.6 million became optimistic enough to seek unemployment, the jobless rate would suddenly head skyward.

*

John: I stop at Costco at least twice a month and I eat the samples.

However, those samples end up costing me an average of $100 to $200 every time I visit the store.

I somehow never feel that those samples are “free.” Another John

Hey Another John: You just aren’t eating enough. If you keep filling your face with food you won’t have time to shop — and spend.

And, of course, leave the wife at home because she, too, would have to be an eating machine to make out at Costco.

Personally, I always get a kick out of supermarket shopping. At the end the cashier hands me my receipt for $200 and says “today you saved $30” because I used the store card.

To which I reply, “If I keep saving like this I’m going to go broke.”

*

Only two of you — Joe and Danny — passed the test that was cleverly concealed in my column last Tuesday.

In that column I referred to the “external combustion engine” when clearly it should have been the “internal” combustion engine.

Now some of you may have thought this was a careless error by me that was missed by my copy editors.

Oh no!

I like to think of it as a test of your attention level. And only two people passed. So, wake up, eveybody! The holidays are over.

There will undoubtedly be other tests like this in future columns. You may think of them as errors. I like to think I’m just keeping you on your toes.

jcrudele@nypost.com



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/jobless_black_hole_2UGRBpjbWPJCY1ZoqZUFhJ#ixzz1iV48TgZx

[xpac2]

do u get joy out of copying and pasting nonsense that none reads?

[Soul Crusher]

do u get joy out of copying and pasting nonsense that none reads?

No one reads?    Hey moron - look at the views this thread has gotten jackass! 

[xpac2]

All from you reject..this is what happenes when you bump your own post and just put up copy and paste shit..Noone else looks at it..You're a loser and your life is a waste..

Hope this helps

[Soul Crusher]

All from you reject..this is what happenes when you bump your own post and just put up copy and paste shit..Noone else looks at it..You're a loser and your life is a waste..

Hope this helps

LOL.  Keep telling yourself that.   

[Soul Crusher]

Boeing Will Lay Off More Than 2,100 Workers At Wichita Plant
January 4, 2012 12:55 PM
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Boeing says it will shut down over 2,000 jobs in Kansas. (credit: JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)



Aviation industry, boeing, Defense budget cuts, Job losses, San Antonio, Seattle WICHITA, Kan. (AP/CBS Seattle) – Faced with defense budget reductions, the Boeing Co. announced Wednesday it will close its defense plant in Wichita by the end of 2013, moving future aircraft maintenance, modification and support to its plant in San Antonio, Texas, and engineering work to Oklahoma City. Work on the Air Force refueling tanker will be performed in Puget Sound, Wash.

Boeing did not clarify whether the work would be done in Everett or Seattle.

The closure will cost more than 2,160 workers their jobs and end the firm’s presence in a city where it has been a major employer for generations.

The decision was not entirely unexpected. The company said in November it was studying whether to close the Wichita facility, which specializes in modifying commercial aircraft for military or government operations, to address Defense Department budget cuts. The first layoffs are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2012.

The company said the 24 Kansas suppliers on that program will continue to provide parts as originally planned.

“In this time of defense budget reductions, as well as shifting customer priorities, Boeing has decided to close its operations in Wichita to reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and drive competitiveness,” said Mark Bass, vice president and general manager for the Boeing Defense, Space & Security facility in Wichita.

The study came even as the Pentagon had been working to prevent $500 billion in automatic, across-the-board defense budget cuts over 10 years in the wake of the failure by a bipartisan congressional supercommittee to agree on $1.2 trillion or more in deficit reductions.

Wichita had hoped the number of jobs at the facility would grow after Boeing won a contract worth at least $35 billion to build 179 Air Force refueling tankers. The modification work on the planes had been expected to be done at Boeing’s Wichita plant — bringing with it 7,500 direct and indirect jobs with an overall economic impact of nearly $390 million.

Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer said the city, which prides itself as being the air capital of the world, has a long history with Boeing in the community. Brewer noted he worked there for 20 years before the company sold off its commercial operations.

“Many people — generations upon generations — have had an opportunity to be employed there and that could very easily be the end of that … They are a very important part of us here,” Brewer said.

But the mayor said the city would move on and take care of those families and continue working to be the “air capital of the world.”

“This is not the first time we have had something of this magnitude. We have had other challenges and we have always managed to work through it and been able to survive,” Brewer said.

Boeing has had a facility in Wichita since it bought the Stearman Aircraft Co. in 1929. During World War II, employment at the plant peaked at more than 40,000 as the company churned out four bombers a day. For decades the company remained the city’s largest employer.

Then in 2005, Boeing spun off its commercial aircraft operations in Kansas and Oklahoma. At that time, the company still had roughly 15,000 employees in Wichita. After the divestiture, Boeing retained 4,500 workers for its defense work in Wichita but layoffs since have slashed that remaining workforce.

The Wichita facility is facing the end of some programs, such as the international tanker program that supplied refueling tankers to other countries. Over the summer, Boeing announced it would cut 225 jobs at its Wichita defense plant through the end of this year.

Even with the loss of the defense plant, Boeing would continue to have an economic impact in this aircraft manufacturing city. Spirit AeroSystems, which took over Boeing’s commercial operations, continues to build parts here for Boeing’s commercial airplanes.

“But it would be different to a certain extent because of the fact that, you know, it is kind of like family that you actually have and a member of the family is moving away,” Brewer said. “So there is a lot of emotional and economic attachment tied to this.”

The Kansas congressman whose district includes Boeing’s soon-to-close defense plant is promising to keep pressure on the company to bring new jobs to the state.

Freshman Republican Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called Boeing’s announcement that the plant would close a confession that it wouldn’t honor previous commitments.

Pompeo said he’s mystified over why, in his words, the company would squander 80 years of goodwill in the Wichita community.

Kansas officials are upset because they put pressure on the Air Force in recent years to reverse a decision to give a $35 billion contract to build a new refueling tanker a competing consortium. Boeing eventually landed the contract, and Pompeo says the state was promised new jobs.

Gov. Sam Brownback says he’s disappointed in Boeing Co.’s decision to close its Wichita plant despite efforts by what he calls “Team Kansas” to help the company in recent years.

The governor said growth opportunities in commercial aviation work at other Kansas companies might offset the Boeing job losses.

(TM and © Copyright 2011 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

 

[xpac2]

LOL.  Keep telling yourself that.   

proof is in the thread

[Soul Crusher]

proof is in the thread

Absolutely!   Obama is trying to collapse the nation by the second.   

[Soul Crusher]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 4, 2012
Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

By JASON DePARLE



WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”

Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”

One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.

Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.

By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.

John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he was “shocked” by the international comparisons. “Republicans will not feel compelled to talk about income inequality,” Mr. Bridgeland said. “But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack of access to the American Dream.”

While Europe differs from the United States in culture and demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians.

“Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most comparable countries,” Professor Corak said in an interview.

Skeptics caution that the studies measure “relative mobility” — how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because the country has grown richer.

Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.

Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American strength. “If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.,” said Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings, while an American family would need an additional $93,000.

Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped.

While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard’s Almanac, until recently there has been little data.

Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers’ earnings and those of their sons. But when better data became available a decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the “elasticity” of father-son earnings at 0.5, which means if one man earns $100,000 more than another, his sons would earn $50,000 more on average than the sons of the poorer man.

In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.

The causes of America’s mobility problem are a topic of dispute — starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children vulnerable to debilitating hardships.

Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum, who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of racial stratification than its peers.

“The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.”

A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and arrive in them more prepared to learn.

“Upper-income families can invest more in their children’s education and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a good education,” said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists.

The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and employment.

Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have less mobility.

Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility “is overrated as a social policy goal” compared with raising incomes across the board. Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time.

But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970, while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later. Until more recent data arrives, he said, “we don’t know the half of it.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

[Soul Crusher]

AP Item on 'Summer Jobs Initiative' Omits That Most of 180,000 'Opportunities' Are Unpaid
Newsbusters ^ | 1/5/12 | Tom Blumer



An unbylined item appearing at the Associated Press shortly after midnight (captured in full as a graphic here due to its brevity; for fair use and discussion purposes) crowed about how President Barack Obama "is looking to boost summer job prospects for kids," has "gotten commitments for nearly 180,000 youth employment opportunities for next summer," and only says that "Many of the positions would be unpaid training opportunities."

How many? Well, most, according to the Hill's Eric Wasson:

Obama to launch summer-jobs initiative

President Obama on Thursday will unveil a summer-jobs initiative that the White House says is already on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities” in the private sector in 2012.

That is the number of opportunities, which includes mentoring and unpaid internships, that companies have told the administration they are willing to create. Some 70,000 jobs are paid, the White House says.

The initiative was hatched after Congress failed to approve a $1.5 billion summer-jobs fund that President Obama had been seeking as part of the American Jobs Act.

“Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congress to act,” a White House statement reads.


(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...






LMFAO!!!!!!   

[Soul Crusher]

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Closing: 5 Macy's And 4 Bloomingdale's Stores
Yahoo ^ | 1/4/12 | AP
Posted on January 5, 2012 11:41:39 PM EST by Lmo56

CINCINNATI (AP) — Macy's Inc. says it will close five Macy's and four Bloomingdale's stores that are underperforming.

Clearance sales will begin at the stores Sunday and run for 10 weeks.

More than 830 workers will be affected by the closings — 375 at Macy's stores and 463 at Bloomingdale's. But many may have the option of taking jobs at new stores the company plans to open.

The closing Macy's stores are in Topeka, Kan.; Laurel, Md.; Parma, Ohio; Antioch, Tenn.; and Texas City, Texas. The Bloomingdale's closures are in Atlanta; Oak Brook, Ill.; North Bethesda, Md.; and in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

[xpac2]

Absolutely!   Obama is trying to collapse the nation by the second.   

obama is the best thing u idiot americans have... and unlike u he has  a life and a job

[Soul Crusher]

obama is the best thing u idiot americans have... and unlike u he has  a life and a job

holy Shit!     outed!   

[xpac2]

holy Shit!     outed!   

I'm just trying to get u going idiot. i dont care about this stuff> im sure ur posts on getbig eally elp ur cause in the big picture 

[Soul Crusher]

http://theintelhub.com/2012/01/02/senior-obama-admin-official-we-are-going-to-kill-the-dollar


Wow!!!   It's intentional even according to Obama officials

[Soul Crusher]

Hostess Brands Preparing for Chapter 11 Filing

Hostess Brands Inc. is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter, a move that would mark the second significant court restructuring for the Twinkie and Wonder Bread baker in the past several years.

The privately held Irving, Texas, company, which employs roughly 19,000 people and carries more than $860 million in debt, has been facing a cash squeeze amid high labor costs and rising prices for sugar, flour and other ingredients, according to people familiar with the matter. Those costs together have proved higher than the company's roughly $2.5 billion in annual sales, creating losses and cash shortfalls, they said.

Hostess also currently owes more than $50 million to vendors, which have been demanding payments on shortened timeframes after delivering goods because of Hostess's financial condition, one of the people said.

Hostess's filing would mark what's known as a "Chapter 22" in restructuring circles, since the company had already sought bankruptcy protection once before. Hostess, before called Interstate Bakeries Corp., slashed debt and costs during a four-year stint in bankruptcy court that began in 2004. The company has struggled since emerging from bankruptcy proceedings in February 2009.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577151211961572458.html






Wow!

[Soul Crusher]

does hostess make chocadiles ?

[Soul Crusher]

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Food Lion stores closing
JACKSONVILLE,COM ^ | Jan 12,2012 | swampsniper
Posted on January 12, 2012 1:48:04 AM EST by SWAMPSNIPER

All Food Lion stores on the First Coast, including a dozen in Jacksonville, are closing, company officials announced Wednesday night.

The stores will be closed within 30 days, the company said.

Stores in Clay, St. Johns, Nassau, Baker and Alachua counties are also closing. In addition, the Food Lion in Waycross is among the Georgia stores slated to be closed.

The company will convert its Food Lion in Lake City to a Harveys store. All of the other stores in Florida are closing.

(Excerpt) Read more at jacksonville.com ...

[240 is Back]

Food lion has been closing stores in FL since... hm.... 1997, I worked at one in SW florida... crumy store, in the same plaza as that Kmart/Sears mess that was put out of business by the new super walmart across the street.

the store was empty most of the time.  lots of spoilage and waste.  Their prices were high like the high-end stores, but the place was understaffed, and dirty.

I'm not sure why this article is in this thread - do you blame obama for Food lion closing?  Cause kash n karry was bought by food lion in the 90s here, cause they sucked.... then albertson's bought many of the food lions... and Food lion has just been limping thru.  I'm surprised any more of their stores are still open.

Is it obama's fault that food lion was a shity store with higher prices than winn dixie but lower quality products/service than publix, back in 1997?   Are you just hatin obama that much, that you attribute food lion closing to him?

[Soul Crusher]

Some Inconvenient Facts
Townhall.com ^ | January 12, 2012 | Michael Reagan



Mr. President: Do you really think you are riding high with the rate of unemployment standing at a whopping 8.5 percent?

8.5 percent! Wow!!

Perhaps we should take a real good look at the real numbers.

The rate of unemployment was 7.8 percent when you took office, and look how much money you have spent since then trying to improve it. Remember that before you took office our deficit was about $400 billion. Now it's well over a trillion -- $1.5 trillion, more or less, and the national debt totals $15 trillion. Can you even begin to count to 15 trillion, much less deal with that number?

Moreover, as of December there were 6 million fewer jobs than there were in December 2007. You know, when the younger George Bush was president. Oh, and by the way, using the best-case scenario, Mr. Obama, you will end up 4 million short at the end of this year.

By the way, let's not forget that the Congress was controlled by your party from January 2007 to January 2011. And they held the purse strings!

There are also 170,000 fewer people looking for jobs now, and 42,000 of the new jobs end up being temporary jobs during the Christmas season only.

Also while you are touting the unemployment numbers remember that they are national numbers and elections, even though they are national, really take place at the state level; there, Mr. President, it doesn't look so good.

Let's look at the unemployment numbers in some key states:

Florida: 10 percent

Ohio: 8.5 percent

Pennsylvania: 7.9 percent

Michigan: 9.85 percent

Do those numbers worry you, Mr.President? They should. Let's look at some more, shall we?

In Illinois, your home state, the unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. In Nevada, it is 13 percent. And California, the Bluest of the Blue, it is at 11.3 percent. Do you really think you can't be beaten with numbers like that?

Even Ron Paul's chances of winning the White House look good against these numbers!

Republicans need to take a good look at these numbers and run against them, not against each other, and if they do they will win.

Remember, it really is the economy, stupid, and when that's faltering nothing else matters.

Oh! And let's not forget that unemployment in the black community is at a whopping 15.8 percent -- that is a full point higher than when you took office. Do you expect that black voters will ignore the damage you've done to the economy and to them?

Fat chance.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Soul Crusher]

Obama's State of the Union Address to Mark 1,000 Days Without a Democrat Budget
ATR ^ | 2012-01-12 | Mattie Duppler



When President Barack Obama offers his Jan. 24 State of the Union address, it will mark exactly 1,000 days since the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate has passed a budget. The Senate has not bothered to pass a budget since April 29, 2009.

“The Republican-led House of Representatives passed the Paul Ryan budget that reduced Obama’s spending levels by six trillion dollars over the next decade. The Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a budget in three years," said Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist. "When President Obama tries to blame a ‘do nothing’ congress for his problems….he is half right. The Democrat Senate has done nothing.”

The President should be alarmed that as the economy flounders, Senate Democrats have refused to offer significant budget solutions. A serious joint address to Congress must confront the Senate Democrats’ abdication of their duties.

President Obama is sure to try to blame Republicans in both chambers for his administration’s failed economic policies. However, on the 1,000th day without a Democrat budget, the President will be forced to explain how anyone else is to blame; it is his party’s Senate leaders who have ignored their basic Congressional responsibility for almost three years.

A short look back on the fiscal recklessness of the last few years shows that if President Obama is upset about budget hostilities in Washington, he has no one to blame but himself. If he is serious about fixing the ailing economy, the President should demand Senate Democrats get back to work:

•0…Number of Senate votes taken on the massive Democrat spending package crafted last year in place of an actual budget.
•0…Number of votes the President’s FY 2012 budget received in the Senate.
•0…Senate Budget Committee budget mark-ups scheduled last year.
•3…Number of years the deficit has topped $1 Trillion.
•3…Number of years total government spending has exceeded $3 Trillion.
•34…number of months unemployment has been above 8 percent, the jobless rate the “stimulus” was supposed to prevent.
•1.4 million…number of jobs killed by President Obama
•$16.4 Trillion…amount of debt held by the nation after three years of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending binge.
•$80 Billion…Amount by which Obama would have increased spending in 2011 without Republican resolve to cut spending.


Read more: http://www.atr.org/obamas-state-union-address-mark-days-a6680#ixzz1jGgeNEmm