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How Can You Have a Recovery Without Jobs Creators?
One of the items overlooked by the MSM regarding the dismal economic “recovery” of the last five years is the complete decimation of the self-employed.
There are currently 10 million people classified as self-employed in US. That’s 5% of the total workforce. Incidentally this is also a record low.
It is not coincidental the massive increase in reliance on Government handouts (46 million on food stamps, 47% of US households on some kind of Government assistance) has coincided with a significant drop in self-employment and independence.
It is also not coincidental that many entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals have decided to close up shop. A weak economy generally means weaker sales. Combine this with massive increases in healthcare costs, taxes and the like, and it’s a lot harder to be self-employed today than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
All the talk of “helping small business” and “creating jobs” is just that: talk. Those who actually show initiative to create business shouldn’t be overburdened with tax loads and bureaucratic red tap.
If the political class really wanted to create jobs, they should focus on growing the number of self-employed. If we were to increase the percentage of self-employed Americans in the workforce to just 10% where it was in ‘90s, we’d need to add 4 million self-employed people to the workforce.
Obviously some of these entrepreneurs would fail, but a significant percentage of them would find some degree of success, creating who knows how many jobs.
But let’s go back even further. If we returned to the same level of self-employment as that which existed during the 1960s (18%) we’d create 15 million self-employed and who knows how many jobs.
With the total number of Americans in the workforce around 146 million, this would mean increasing the workforce by over 10%. That would be a truly incredible increase in job growth… even greater than that which the US economy created going back to 2003!
We missed a great opportunity to change the US for the better in 2008. What could have been a wake up call for fiscal discipline instead became the biggest crony capitalist boondoggle of all time as politically connected institutions were bailed out using tax-payer money.
The repercussions of this are still being felt with the system now even more leveraged (meaning more debt) than it was in 2008). This in turn has paved the way for the REAL crisis, which is coming… and this time around, it will be entire countries that go bust, not just a handful of banks.
If you’ve yet to take action to prepare for the second round of the financial crisis, we offer a FREE investment report Financial Crisis "Round Two" Survival Guide that outlines easy, simple to follow strategies you can use to not only protect your portfolio from a market downturn, but actually produce profits.
You can pick up a FREE copy at:
http://www.phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/roundtwo.html
Best Regards
Phoenix Capital Research
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The exponential growth of "money" made out nothing to use to speculate with has resulted in all the "money" used by real people to pay for things in their real lives become relatively trivial inside of that bigger context of orders of magnitude more "money" made out of nothing to gamble with. At the present time, those established systems have the only thing they need, which is enough people who can continue to be fooled enough of the time. Furthermore, it is pretty well IMPOSSIBLE for enough people to "wake up" enough, because they could not begin to assimilate the facts regarding the effects of technology and the background environmental ecology. The vast majority of people have become Zombie Sheeple, that are living in the past, as far as continuing to believe in old-fashioned ideologies and religions.
The established systems are based on multi-generational triumphs of enforced frauds, growing at an exponential rate, to the point where the real numbers in the political economy are stark raving INSANE! (E.g., more than a quadrillion units of various sorts of derivatives, and an average leverage where one has things like 100 times as much paper and/or electronic gold as there is physical gold, and so on and so forth.)
The magnitude of the ABSURDITIES due to money made out of nothing as debts by private banks, who make more of that money by gambling with that money, is off the scale of everything that flesh and blood people are still doing in the real world that they experience. Inside that context, it is down right goofy and pathetic to see people who are forced to care about their employment, while they are working for "money" made out of nothing as debts, to degrees that are orders of magnitude greater than everything those people do with all their money combined together.
I do not believe that most relatively ordinary people are willing and able to go through the processes of comprehending the ways that their lives are controlled by having been born into systems of enforced frauds. They can not begin to understand the degree to which the total of all legal fictions, such as corporations playing with financializations that are based on the runaway creation of more "money" out of nothing to gamble with, that have become something like pretending there are more than 10 planet Earths somewhere in that virtual world, where legal fictions dominate everything overwhelmingly. The established systems are the result of generation after generation of people gradually getting used to living inside of social systems based on legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which have been growing at an exponential rate throughout that time. Inside that context, the ordinary people concerned about their opportunities to be employed in order to make "money" are utterly pathetic losers, to a degree that most of them are not even in the right ball park to be able to estimate the size of that!
The greater tragedy is that the Zombie Sheeple have gradually been brainwashed to believe in bullshit, to the degree to which they not only do not have a clue about the degree to which they are being deluded, but moreover, they have been conditioned to feel that they do not want to know. Of course, one can sympathize with that, since waking up to those facts on any intellectual level still does not provide any realistic responses, nor provide any political practical ways to respond to THE BASIC FACTS THAT THE ESTABLISHED DEBT SLAVERY SYSTEMS (BASED ON LEGALIZED LIES AND VIOLENCE, OR ENFORCED FRAUDS) HAVE GROWN AND GROWN, FOR GENERATION AFTER GENERATION, UNTIL THE NUMBERS GENERATED HAVE BECOME DEBT INSANITIES: I.E., NUMBERS WHICH ARE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BIGGER THAN MAKE ANY REAL SENSE TO ORDINARY PEOPLE, BECAUSE ALL THE "MONEY" THAT THEY USE COMBINED NOW REPRESENTS A TINY, TRIVIAL FRACTION OF THE "MONEY" IN THAT SYSTEM.
The actual situation is MAD Money As Debt, backed up by MAD Mutual Assured Destruction, or globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs. All of that combined has enabled the established legal fictions to become orders of magnitude bigger than the total of the physically real economic system of the whole planet. The MAD ability to kill trillions of people is backing up the existence of units of MAD "money" measured in the quadrillions. It does NOT matter how totally absurd and insane that is, the runaway triumphs of political economy based on enforced frauds has nevertheless succeeded in creating that situation.
The greater tragedies that one can foresee are that the existing debt insanities are going to provoke death insanities. Since it is practically impossible to have any rational debates in the public spaces regarding what has actually happened, the problems continue to get worse, faster, while there is no feasible way to have the reasons for that admitted and dealt with, because doing that would require enough people understanding the degree to which the huge lies have been able to be backed up with lots of violence, until the point where the combined legal fictions, of corporations, as legal persons, playing with money made out of nothing, have become orders of magnitude greater than everything else that flesh and blood people actually do within those systems of high flying enforced frauds.
The basic facts are that money is measurement backed by murder, because private property is based on backing up claims with coercions. The runaway social successes of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, enabling systems of enforced frauds to become the foundation of the political economy, has resulted in all the employment of all the flesh and blood people becoming too trivial a component of that system to matter, within its world of numbers which have become DEBT INSANITIES. Inside of the context of the economy being operated through enforced frauds, the SIZE of the systems of lies operating robberies through legal fictions is GREATER than all of the rest of the physical realities combined.
Since the debt controls were always backed by the death controls, but the vast majority of people did not understand that, and were conditioned to not want to understand that, they can not get remotely close to beginning to understand the degree to which the total of all the "money" made out of nothing has made their own little lives insignificant in the context of that overall fraudulently driven financialization. The vast majority of people who are concerned with their own employment cannot comprehend the bigger picture, because it really is far too INSANE for them to begin to perceive.
It is into that overall context that the effects of technology and automation, along with the new emerging limits of diminishing returns from being able to strip-mine the planet's natural resources, are putting more and more pressures upon ordinary people, that they mostly have not got any ways to gain sufficient perspective upon. Rather, given that the established systems can coast on enough of the Zombie Sheeple continuing to be such Zombie Sheeple enough of the time, those established systems can continue to cruise on autopilot, while they maintain their attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards what their systems of enforced frauds are really doing.
Inside that context, the destruction of self-employment makes perverse sense, as the most personally dismal ways that the runaway enforced frauds are making the lives of people who are otherwise intelligent, and who work hard, become irrelevant inside of the context of the systems of organized lies, operating robberies, that they were born into, and struggled to adapt to become personally successful within. They were always losing ground, faster and faster, with that becoming more blatantly obvious, as the exponential growth of the underlying enforced frauds which were the foundation of the entire political economy became more obviously blatant, as their magnitudes grew to astronomically amplified sizes.
It is so sad, and too bad, that NOTHING those kinds of people could do within the established systems could be sufficiently significant to prevent that tragic trajectory from continuing to get worse, faster, for the foreseeable future. There are no possible reforms within the established systems of enforced frauds, operating as the current foundation of the political economy, which could fix the problems that those foundations are utterly rotten, to the point where they actually are criminally insane. The basic problems are that most ordinary people have been totally brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view. Therefore, they can not begin to cope with the magnitude of the legal fictions which actually surround and control their lives. Those ordinary people, who are nevertheless doing their personal best to operate intelligently and work hard, are lost in the maze of enforced frauds, and they have no thread of Ariadne to find their way through that labyrinth of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, that are the overall conditions of their lives.
What I am predicting is that over the next several decades we will witness the debt insanities provoke death insanities, as the only realistic ways that those systems of enforced frauds (whose numbers pretend that there are more than 10, if not 100, planet Earth's to play with, given the amount of "money" made out of nothing to be used to speculate with), finally go through psychotic breakdowns. Ideally, if and only if, enough people were to more deeply understand how and why the foundation of the political economy became based on enforced frauds (which also means that they would not then return to bullshit "solutions" based on the "truth" of some set of impossible ideals being somehow realized), MIGHT we be able to correct the awesome, astronomically sized errors that have accumulated due to the social success of enforced frauds becoming the foundation of the political economy.
Unfortunately, in a world which is so totally dominated by Huge Legalized Lies, more radical truth is practically pointless, since way, way too small a group of people is willing and able to understand those more radical truths. Instead, we are inside of a runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut, where the primary source of "wealth" is the ability of private banks to legally make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, which "money" then gets primarily channeled through more legal fictions, in the form of various corporations, as legal persons, that use that money to speculate with. As I said, in that overall REAL context, all the money used by all the flesh and blood people has become a relatively trivial amount, and therefore, all the employment, including the self-employment, no longer matters within that kind of political economy based upon enforced frauds.
That runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut is going to turn most people into its road kill. Those who were intelligent enough to be able to work hard to be previously able to be self-employed are going to be the most tragic victims of that financialization based on enforced frauds streamrollering over them. However, at the present time there are no good reasons to believe that those people have a hope in hell of being able to adequately comprehend or sufficiently understand what is really happening to them, and even less able to go through the kinds of paradigm shifts that they would need to cope with those situations, since enough of them would have to do that together, before that could matter enough.
There SHOULD be intellectual scientific revolutions sufficient to address how and why the enforced frauds were able to become atomic bombs backing up electronic money. There SHOULD be similar profound paradigm shifts to be able to reconcile human systems with natural and industrial systems, as all being manifestations of general energy systems. Those are the kinds of changes in thinking which would be necessary to address issues such as technological automation, and the limits to strip-mining a finite planet.
Tragically, the runaway debt insanity situations have no possible solutions within the frame of reference of the established systems. Their only apparent actual resolutions requires that the death controls that back up the debt controls manifest more as death insanities. The only genuinely realistic solutions would require dealing with that more directly, which would require changing the basic ways that we think about those things. There is no way for those who are merely being productive to cope with the ways that the production of destruction controls production, unless they address those basic facts more directly. One way or another, the death controls that back up the debt controls are the central issues. Therefore, thinking about that in radically different ways are what is most necessary!
The FACTS are that our political economy has ended up being more and more built on a foundation of enforced frauds, within which context all the ordinary people, and especially the self-employed people, are having their lives destroyed by factors beyond their control, especially since those factors are mostly beyond their comprehension, unless they go through a series of recognitions of different levels of radical truths regarding the degrees to which they were previously being lied to!
We SHOULD be understanding how human systems blend into the real energy systems of everything else. However, doing that requires such profound paradigm shifts in the basic ways that most people think that that appears to be practically impossible at the present time! I wish that I could still day dream that we still had enough time to be able to adapt, however, more and more, I feel like we have already run out of time. Ideally, we SHOULD have begun adapting decades ago, however, instead, the established systems of enforced frauds responded to the pressures by doubling down, again and again, with bigger legalized lies, backed up with more legalized violence, to drive the enforced frauds that directed the economy to do that ever more so than previously.
In my own little life, I have gradually been developing my ideas for several decades, to move forward through my attempts to understand how and why the monetary system was so criminally insane, in the senses that economics tended to deliberately ignore environmental ecology, while making "money" out of nothing tended to deliberately ignore the basic laws of nature. After several decades of various kinds of work on that topic, I feel like the only things that actually happen are that even more enforced frauds keep on getting BIGGER ... In my own pathetic way, I have been working on my self-employment towards revolutionizing the monetary systems. I already recognized when I was a teenager that the monetary systems were criminally insane, and that, therefore, making "money" inside of those systems was to aid and abet a criminally insane system. However, for the vast majority of people, the monetary system is the State Religion, which more people now believe in than any other old-fashioned religions.
The collective power of people believing in the State Religion monetary systems, of government enforced bankster frauds, where that "money" is made out of nothing, and is mostly faith-based, where that faith was due to a long historical schedule of reinforcements for believing in that bullshit, while being punished for not believing in that bullshit, has resulted in the currently established systems. Of course, what they were thereby believing in was increasingly absurd, since it was all based on the ability to back up legalized lies with legalized violence, driving the entire economy to more and more be based on enforced frauds, where the paradoxes that the violence could never make those frauds stop being fraudulent continued to always get BIGGER, while the consequences of deliberately ignoring the environmental ecology and basic laws of nature outside of the human systems of enforced frauds continued to accumulate more and MORE! People who are potentially able to be intelligent and work hard enough to be self-employed are less and less able to actually do that, as the overall conditions of the whole political economy being based on enforced frauds drive everything to become more and more perversely distorted. However, almost none of those people are responding by going through sufficient paradigm shifts in perception of politics to be able to better comprehend that. Rather, most of them still are nostalgic about returning to impossible ideals, which never actually existed, and never could actually exist.
Above I have reviewed an outline of the basic ways that systems of enforced frauds have more and more "financialized" the economic systems upon that basis, in ways which have more and more destroyed employment in general, and the prospects of self-employment in particular. However, at present, I feel quite justified in presuming that almost none of those people suffering that fate are able and willing to want to understand what I have outlined. There can NEVER be any possible genuine "recovery" within the established economy based on enforced frauds, which does not directly deal with that underlying situation, and does so in ways which do not propose the same old-fashioned bullshit "solutions" based on realizing impossible ideals.
Although I expect very little general agreement, and even less do I expect any practical ways that it could be actually implemented, in my view the ONLY kind of "self-employment" that makes sense for the foreseeable future would have to become "revolutionary." After one gains sufficient perspective regarding the SIZE of the total of all the enforced frauds which run throughout the established political economy, there are no ways that anybody can really function successfully within those systems by merely being intelligent and working hard. All kinds of employment, and especially self-employment, within criminally insane economic systems, are going to be be more and more threatened with psychotic breakdowns of those systems, due to factors beyond the control of those who are employed, or even self-employed, within those established systems, which are MAD and necessarily getting MADDER!
Which is precisely why we are screwed nothing will change it will just get worse
Self employed here - and a small business owner. For the "privilege" of running my business I get to pay over a dozen different types of taxes, most of which have to be filed monthly and that does not include the accounting, business permits, registration with federal, state and local agencies, inspections, audits and of course the annual tax saga which typically takes several weeks to complete.
Once you finish running this gauntlet for a few years, you anxiously await the letter or visit from the next bureaucrat who decided you missed something or filled out a form wrong.
Anyone who manages to navigate the byzantine labyrinth needed to set up and run a legal business is left with little time to do thinks like develop products, market, sell and support them.
Oh - by the way I did actually "build my business" - by developing innovative products that people willingly pay money for. I don't think the politicians or bureaucrats can say the same thing.
Many of these no longer self employed were farmers. In the 60's there were over 200 individual farms in my area for a total of 30,000 acres. Now there are about 20. Same acreage, but now there are only a few large landowners and the field work is done by Mexicans.
I'm lucky to get 20 hours a week at my auditing job. It's too bad, too because I really love my job. Oh well, I'm just a "useless eater" anyway, right?
After a market day like today I'm beginning to think I live in the worse place in America. Being in the business of working with many small companies old and new I continue to see them give up and close their doors. The disconnect between wall Street and Main Street is unbelievable! Still the reality is the economy is dead in the water and propped up by government spending, our deficit is still massive.
The bottom-line is the implications of poor job creation are massive. We are seeing that a huge number of people have dropped out of the work force. Often these people have little in the way of savings, this means the burden of caring for them will be transferred to society. If to many people shift into this category we will slowly wear down through attrition. Finding a fair way to share and balance the work load that goes on every day is one of the most important problems facing our modern world.
Failure to discover a solution to this dilemma bodes poorly for our consumer driven economy and adds to the toxic problem of inequality. Many of the numbers and budget projections of the government have been based on far better employment numbers then we are currently facing or will be facing if this continues. The article below looks at the long-term implication of poor job creation and how it will drastically impact in a negative way both the wealth and future of America.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/09/implications-of-poor-job-creation.html
You didn't create that.
Phoenix Capital: Can't you get some new shit to post? I've been reading your predictions for 5 years now and none of them have come true! You are wrong about everything. Why are you still allowed to post here? It boggles my mind.
After a day like today a lot of us feel wrong about everything, but when you step back and look at what is happening the trends bode poorly for America and the world economy. Debt does matter and printing money and dropping interest rate to nothing will not change that.
At some point the economic efficiency of credit is will collapse and the additional money poured into the system coupled with lower rates can no longer drive the economy forward. When this happens we are at the end game.
At some point the return on loaning money is simply not worth the risk! Why do you want to loan money if most likely you will never be repaid or repaid with something that is totally worthless? When this happens the only safe place to store wealth will be in "tangible assets" and the only lenders will be those who print the money that nobody wants.
The collapse of credit can pose major problems such as what we saw when many sellers were forced to demand payment up front before shipping goods in 2008. More on this subject below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-economic-efficiency-of-credit...
City and county fees/regulations, taxes, Fed regulations and several kinds of insurances make it too expensive to be a small business man. Especially when the deck is stacked against you to succeed.
The true picture behind unemployment
.gov is aboput protecting big business from small business competitors.
They don't want no new employees, they want new FSA recruits. The destruction of what was America must proceed. They have fallen behind schedule. A little Obola here, a race riot there, a sacked industrial base and a dramatic increase in medical expenses, import some third world Typhoid Mary's, maybe a hundred thousand Haitians will do the trick. Don't forget the militarized popo, don't even think about riling up..
The guy is a Doomsday Machine, and you idiots (not ZHers) voted for it.
True story. I'm self employed, going broke, trying to stay afloat as a building contractor. I've let Licencses expire, same with insurance. I'm as Galt as possible, not by choice. You can't complete with the undocumented labor. It has totally decimated the construction trades. They don't play by any rules. Nobody, and I mean nobody is checking them, or enforcing anything. It is bizarre.
So I'm doing a job with a buddy, out of town. In the business park, where the job is, an old step van, with a grill on a trailer is set up. A Hispanic, nice guy, cooks up flank steak over an oak and cherry wood fire. Absolutely delicious. Juicy, mouth watering, and melts in your mouth. Sells a steak sandwich for $7.00. Makes change with a wad of cash that would choke a horse.
Now I know a little about vending set ups. Had a buddy with a "hot dog" wagon in a trailer. Had to be inspected. Hot water for sanitizing. A Heath dept sticker. A business Licencse . Numbers on the trailer.
This guy cooking steak. ( did I mention delicious ?) . No tag on trailer. Steak in a cooler. No water, much less hot. No Licencse. No stickers. No fucking nothing, but wads of cash in his pocket. And No Fucking Body from the state will say a thing. It's not worth it for them. He is a " protected " class. Ticket him, he won't pay or show up to court. Arrest him, or such, you will never see him again. No roots. He's here for the green, that's all. Could give a fat rat's ass about our country, our rules, our system, our economy. As a matter of fact, he probably views us as chumps. Things get rough, he's back south of the order, or some other town.
That is a big part of the problem.
Like my bud, the painting contractor. 5 Hispanics painting for him. Various stages of "legality" . He gets a call from the police. " come get your van". Seems his undocumented, unlicencesd , uninsured employee was driving the van DRUNK. Let him go on his way. Not even waste ink on a ticket, much less an arrest. .....now, I know from experience, if that where you or me.........
Fuck this system.
NoPension, good story. Here is another. Husband and wife in their mid 30's come over from China and can barely speak english. One gets a masters and the other a doctorate. Work for some engineering consulting firms and then go out on their own and form a "minority", "disadvantaged" business. Either one can make over 6 figures working for someone else, but thye are disadvantaged. At the time they were living in a $500k house in a country club community in the mo\idwest. Now they are getting major government contracts with the DoD and NASA. Some of the government programs look at your net worth minus the equity in your house, so guess what? They have traded up a couple of times and now live in a 13,000 sf house on 8 acres next to a body of water. Pool, tennis court. Disadvantaged?
In my line of work, it is asians, latinos and an the occasional black are making out like bandits. Most are first generation. I either work for them or some big company. Fuck me and my career? Fuck this country.
Oh, and these disadvantaged indians and chinese can just walk onto any military base with their contractor IDs and us white guys who have been here awhile have to have these guys sign for us. WTF?
Both those anecdotes are examples of how "the fish rots from the head." The corruption of the government starts at the top, and then works its way down, fractally repeating as it cascades through all the other layers of the system. The rule of law get systematically destroyed in ways whereby one should follow the money to its SOURCE!
Over here we have an opposing trend, but mainly because companies can use "self-employment" as a way around employment and minimum wage laws.
We can't.
The barries to entry for small business' are daunting now. Much more than 7 or 8 years ago.
Most new jobs are created by small businesses.
Good article, short and to the point. Government derugulated to grow bigger and added regulations to the small guy. Then as petty crime increases from the desperate, throw them in prisons to make widgets for the megacorps for .80 cents an hour. If reform does not occur, last stop is throwing 'dissenters' arguing against being robbed in prison to do the same and then you have the Soviet Union. We're nearly there...
When the first 40 hours of your week is spent purely on paying off your mortgage, where is the incentive to work? Oh, you might starve? Yeah, or just work harder. Or do without land. Without land, where do you put your capital?
In order to start out in your parent's garage, your parents need a garage.
Obscenely high real estate prices do more damage than anyone cares to acknowledge.
"Oh, but you can use them phoney high valuations to justify borrowing more money." Yeah, if you have equity, i.e. if you bought some land a long time ago.
Why did MSM come up with the "Young people need to take on more / manage their risk" narrative?
"Risk" = borrow money when you have no idea how to pay it back.
"Manage Risk" = figure out who to dump all your losses onto.
Normally, you start a business small scale, with your own savings, learn from your mistakes, eat your own losses and build from there. But now no-one has any savings.
What kind of person thinks he can start a business with borrowings and no savings, and dump all his losses onto someone else until he gets profitable? That is the kind of person who can survive in today's environment.
The "you didn't build that" agenda has worked! Cloward Piven baybee!
Oblamer has been wrecking small business with his shitty policies. I believe his actions to destroy America are intentional. Act accordingly and thwart it with the best tool you have, your wallet. Stop supporting large corporations with your hard earned money. Live and shop local when you can.
Wrecking small business.
Increasing taxes.
Increasing govt dependence.
Importing epidemics.
Expanding military presence.
Alienating global partners and allies.
Increasing racial tensions.
At least you have to give Oblahblah credit for consistency. Almost everything he touches turns to s**t. That's no small feat.
;)
US Citizen, Press TV reporter dead in car crash near Syria 2 days after Turkey calls her a spy http://wtfrly.com/2014/10/20/us-citizen-press-tv-reporter-dead-in-car-cr...
I'm still trying to figure out what happened to GE.
Everyone else got the "phuck America"bailout and is now hitting all time record highs. That includes companies that have no chance of ever making a dime...and some that never have (like the airline industry!)
Oh, wait...
From 2010:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870462980457532523350...
We can't recover from the Federal Reserve until we end it...