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Why This Feels Like A Depression For Most People
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Everyone has seen the pictures of the unemployed waiting in soup lines during the Great Depression. When you try to tell a propaganda believing, willfully ignorant, mainstream media watching, math challenged consumer we are in the midst of a Greater Depression, they act as if you’ve lost your mind. They will immediately bluster about the 5.1% unemployment rate, record corporate profits, and stock market near all-time highs. The cognitive dissonance of these people is only exceeded by their inability to understand basic mathematical concepts.
The reason you don’t see huge lines of people waiting in soup lines during this Greater Depression is because the government has figured out how to disguise suffering through modern technology. During the height of the Great Depression in 1933, there were 12.8 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, there are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen line, as their food is distributed through EBT cards (with that angel of mercy JP Morgan reaping billions in profits by processing the transactions).
These 46 million people represent 14% of the U.S. population. There are 23 million households on food stamps in a nation of 123 million households. Therefore, 19% of all households in the U.S. are so poor, they require food assistance to survive. In 1933 there were approximately 126 million Americans living in 30 million households. The government didn’t keep official unemployment records until 1940, but the Department of Labor estimated 12.8 million people were unemployed during the worst year of the Great Depression or 24.9% of the labor force. By 1937 it had fallen to 14.3% or approximately 8 million people.
The number of people unemployed during the 1930’s is an excellent representation of the number of households on government assistance during the Great Depression because 79% of all households were occupied by married couples with 4 people per household versus 48% married couple households today with 2.5 people per household. The unemployment rate averaged 19% during the heart of the Great Depression. Therefore, approximately 19% of all the households in the U.S. needed government assistance to feed themselves. That happens to be the exact percentage of households currently needing food stamps to feed themselves.
We are now supposedly five years into an economic recovery. The unemployment rate, according to the government, has fallen from 10% to 5.1%. Maybe a comparison to the the Great Depression in 1937, five years after the worst of it, would reveal some truth. It is not easy to do an apples to apples comparison because very few women worked outside the home in 1937 and the average life expectancy in the 1930s was 60 years old. Today, the majority of women are theoretically in the work force and the average life expectancy is 78 years old. In 1937 only 5% of the population was over 65 years old versus 13% today.
There were approximately 55 million Americans in the labor force in 1937, according to the DOL, and approximately 47 million of them were employed. So 85% of the eligible work force was working. There was no BLS to massage, manipulate, seasonally adjust, or fake the data to make things appear better than they were in 1937. Edward Bernay’s Propaganda techniques and methodologies weren’t perfected for a few more years. According to Census information there were 52 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 44, along with another 21 million between the ages of 45 and 64 in 1937. So even considering that very few women worked and many people died by the age of 60, we had a workforce of 55 million out of an age eligible population of 73 million at a maximum. That yields a participation rate of 75%.
These facts reveal the utter falsity of the propaganda drenched duplicitous data dumped by the BLS on behalf of vested interests who have captured our government and have an agenda requiring the public to be kept in the dark regarding their own dire financial situation. No matter how you slice the data, it reveals an absolute parallel to the situation during the Great Depression. There are 251 million Americans of working age and only 149 million are employed, of which 20 million are part-time and 8 million are self employed. Only 59% of working age Americans actually work. The BLS has the cajones to declare that only 157 million of the 251 million working age Americans are actually in the labor force.
This outrageous assumption flies in the face of all reasonableness, facts, and truth. In 1937, even with women not working outside the home and very few people living past 65 years old, the participation rate was 75%. Today, with the majority of women capable and willing to work and older Americans working well into their 60s, the BLS actually expects a critical thinking person to believe the participation rate is only 62.4%, the lowest since 1977. It’s a pure and simple despicable lie. The true participation rate should exceed the rate in 1937, based on the facts. Using the 75% participation rate today, yields a true unemployment rate of 21%, not the preposterous 5.1% shoveled by the bullshit artists at the BLS. The 21% rate ties very closely to the figure arrived at by John Williams at Shadowstats. An unbiased assessment of the facts reveals unemployment numbers and people on government assistance numbers that match or exceed those of the Great Depression.

I also wonder whether the corporate mainstream media purposely chooses not to show pictures of the poor waiting in long lines to be fed because their function is not to report facts and truth, but to perpetuate the lie that all is well in America. I pass the Grace Lutheran church at 36th and Haverford Avenue in West Philly everyday on my way to work. Every Thursday is when the church, in partnership with the Philabundance food bank, distributes free food to the people of West Philly. The line stretches around the block at 7:30 am awaiting the Philabundance truck to arrive. There are old, young, black, white, Latino, and Asian in the line. It looks exactly like the line pictured in the Great Depression above. I’m sure there are similar scenes across every city in America on a daily basis. People dependent on food banks and living in homeless shelters are at record levels. Where are the mainstream media pictures? How does that jive with Ben Bernanke’s self congratulatory book tour about how he saved America by secretly handing Wall Street and foreign bankers $16 trillion?
For the average American family, the US economy has been in recession since 2000, with the Greater Depression arriving in 2008. The working age population has grown by 40 million since 2000, with only 12 million jobs added over that time frame. Of those, 10 million were in the government controlled health, education, social services (HES) sectors, with millions of good paying manufacturing jobs destroyed, replaced by a couple million low paying services jobs. As David Stockman points out, Bernanke and the vested interests he serves continue to spew disingenuous propaganda to cover up the fact average American households continue to experience depression-like conditions. When your real household income is lower than it was in 1989, while your basic living costs for food, energy, transportation, rent, housing, healthcare, taxes, and education have skyrocketed, you just might be experiencing a depression.
“The Fed’s balance sheet has grown from $500 billion to $4.5 trillion or 9X during that span, but job growth outside the HES Complex amounts to less than 2%. For crying out loud, that’s a 12,000 per month rounding error in an economy which has 250 million adults. Virtually every job gained since December 2009 shown in the chart below was not a “new” job at all; it was just a “born-again” job that Greenspan had claimed credit for a few years earlier. Yet Bernanke has the nerve to boast about the Fed’s success on jobs and claim that the “labor market is close to normal”!”

Edward Bernays wrote the book Propaganda in 1928. It was utilized quite well by Goebbels and Hitler over the next decade or so. But the corporate fascist oligarchy, disguised as American democracy, puts Goebbels efforts to shame. Bernays would be thrilled by the efficiency and professionalism with which the invisible Deep State governing power is able to utilize mass media, the internet, public schools, and academia to shape, mold, manipulate and alter the minds of the masses. The unholy alliance between shadowy billionaires, a private bank owned by Wall Street and controlling our currency, the military industrial complex, the sick care complex, mega-corporations peddling consumer goods, and politicians who are easily bought, has left a hollowed out rotting carcass of a nation, with the peasants experiencing a depression, while the lords of the manor feast like there is no tomorrow. But at least the 103 million peasants who aren’t working believe only 5.1% of them are unemployed. It’s a Bernaysian Miracle!!!
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda
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Can't show poverty anymore, it makes Obama look bad.
Ben Carson: Rupert Murdoch ‘is not a racist’http://tinyurl.com/qd4zqjv
Because it IS a depression.
Two out of three Americans have $1,000 or less in their savings account, if they have one at all, a new survey shows.
90% of Americans own a cell phone.
Priorities, bitchezzz!!!
Don't worry.
As soon as Trump is elected we'll be inundated with an endless montage of food lines and homeless in the streets all the while blaming the Republiturds for the economic malaise.
What kind of fool keeps their currency is a bank these days?
Sure, if you want to get paid you have to have a bank account, but that doesn't mean you keep any more than the minimum in it. And if you get a cheque from your workplace? Even better, no need for an account at all.
^The Plan
Pretty much can't be employed without a cellphone at this point.
Poor white americans seem to be more interested in arguing over guns & muslems than solutions to economic disparities. San Fran is turning into a shithole inspite of lots of rich people because the incomes are on such polar opposite extremes.
Poverty is also pretty geographically concentrated in poor rural areas, particuarly the south:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/962488/dec12_farrigan_fig01.png
http://online.wsj.com/media/foodstamp0413.PNG
https://anticap.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/us-map-poverty.jpg
Horseshit.
I have a hard time keeping my employees off of their cell phones and focused on the job.
I wish they would leave them at home.
The last three employees I terminated just couldn't break the habit.
I have a hard time keeping my employees off of their cell phones and focused on the job.
I meant to get employed.
You can't do anything about people fucking around on phones? That strikes me as a management problem..
I friggin hate these people who have thier ears glued to the cell phone while driving 60mph in a 35 mph zone. They drive thru stop signs, too fast thru school zones and are oblivious to other drivers. Cars should not even work if your cell phone if turned on.
And yes, my partner already fired a couple of people for twittering, or FB'ing or talking on thier cell phones on company time. I supported him 100%!
It would seem to me there is at present sufficient technology to disable a phone once it is traveling at a certain rate of speed.......
Sounds like a great idea. Until someone needs to call 911 while being trapped in the trunk or being chased by a mad person.
Yeah I'm all against arbitrary government or corporate lock-outs of technology. Or should we maybe put breathalyzer lockouts on all ignitions, or bank account lockouts on all X or Y party sympathizers?
I hate cellphone drivers as much as the next guy but this is not the answer.
Maybe a better solution would be to create consequences such as loss of license for engaging in such asshole behavior as cellphone use, left lane hogging, or breaking into the country illegally. Maybe a driver's license should become a priviledge via enforcement of existing laws instead of a Right with a capital R.
I love the phone functionality that goes directly to vmail while in car
Almost everyone at my work has that same problem with thier phones including management. It wouldn't be half as bad if they were reading Zero hedge or other informative blogs, but all they do is stupid shit like Twatter, FaceFUCK, clash of the fucking clans, football and sensless dribble. They're faces are buried in those phones.
Someone needs to come up with advertising on the sidewalks because all they do is look down at thier phones, to be honest with you I'm surprised Trump hasn't jumped all over that. Any of you Hedgers that have kids , neck and thumb doctors might be the Gig of the future.
actually the white liberals of the media appear to be more interested in that...I know lots of poor white americans...they talk about football, food, cars, and how absolutely awful Obama and the democrat have been. Though they are blithly unaware of the trillions he has given to the richest backers and wall street....else they might not talk about their guns...they might start using them
"Pretty much can't be employed without a cellphone at this point."
Don't be ridiculous.
I'm 64 and have NEVER had a cell phone/smartphone.
These stupid things exist for only ONE purpose; to give the government/corporate nexus access to your decisions and your life.
Oh yeah, and I've been continuously employed for DECADES, btw, too.
stability and control is all I care about. Look at the middle east and we should be thankful for the our leaders and ability to print endless amounts of money. Putin and Obama have it right.
I sincerely hope that is sarcasm.
If the word is not used in MSM, it is not.
"Can't show poverty anymore, it makes Obama look bad.
Ben Carson: Rupert Murdoch ‘is not a racist’"
You seem to be a Team player (as in Red and Blue), so let me ask you -- do you think this shit started when Zero was elected? As for Ben Carson being the apparent foil to Obama, did I miss the part where he suggested we end the Fed?
Oh leave poor ben carson alone, the man is solid gold. Funniest politican america has ever produced. That guy needs to be interviewed on TV all the time - fortunately it seems the media is starting to make that happen.
Not that I'm voting ever again, but I would take Carson over Fiorina. She is the ultimate oligarch cock sucking politician. At least Carson is just an ideologue who comes from the "I'm a brain surgeon, so why can't everyone be a brain surgeon if they apply themselves?" view of the world. Fiorina has that "American Psycho" look in her eye.
Carly also cut HP value in half, if that doesn't give people pause I don't know what could. Wasn't some sort of market turbulence either, that HP disaster was all on her.
I fully support carson for repub nomination.
China cut HP/Compaq in half duh!
She may very well be the ultimate oligarch cock sucking politician.
One things for sure, she wasn't worth a shit as an executive when she ran Lucent and HP into the ground.
Given the Koch brothers recent interest in Carly, might that be the ultimate oligarch koch sucking politician?
Google "koch brothers and carly fiorina"
Given George Soros, Warren Buffett and Hollywood leftists like Steven Spielberg who have given big donations to Hillary's campagin super PACs, might she be the ultimate oligarch sucking politician?
Google "George Soros and Hillary"
Google "Warren Buffet and Hillary"
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/02/billionaire-george-so...
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/soros-helps-pro-clinton-super-pacs...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3226885/Billionaire-Buffett-prai...
For fuck's sake. Big money likes mainstream politicians that MSM shoves down our throats. Thanks for exposing that.
I don't know, James; Ben Carson hasn't yet achieved Herman Cain-ness.
He may be on his way, though. Repeating the silly meme that the Holocaust happened because of gun control is a pretty good one.
Did you see Carson on CNN with Blitzer? It was the ultimate comedy reel, him trying to explain his idiotic statements in the past by making even more outlandish statements of explanation * repeat. The guy is straight comedy gold.
I like Cain, but he seemed pretty in on the joke. Ben Carson, I dunno wth is wrong with that guy. If it's early onset alzheimer’s I will feel a bit bad laughing at him..
Word read it twice, was like this dude must be on crack...
Can't be a depression , no flappers and men don't wear hats. Also no used duesnbergs for 25 dalla
Don’t the BP ho.. advertisers count for anything?
Worst depression EVA! All Wez gots iz twerkers and cut rate VWs that need stove pipes and bull balls hangin!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fuck America
Yeah,..I said it.
Fuck the federal government, piss on all who ever supported Obama and fuck you
It's a PsyOp Depression with False Narratives & Propaganda.
When the government is placed in charge of "educating" the vast majority of children, we should expect little more than functional illiterates.
When 24/7 pop culture is hammered into the sheeple's feeble minds, comprised of Caitlyn, the Kardashian sluts, and the Jenner skanks, you can be sure that there is precious little time for them to learn about what a shit sandwich the government and Fed have served up to this country.
The default is baked into the cake. Only the timing is unknown. And then millions of mouth-breathing half-wits will riot to stay alive. I can only hope this happens on Obama's watch. He deserves to see his handiwork from the Oval Office. Better yet, maybe the rioters will put two and two together and drag Obama's worthless ass out and turn him into a human pinata on Pennsylvania Avenue.
but Ellen and Oprah love Obama....and that f-tard Colbert & Daliy and every single media person
The media are Fortune 500 corporations and therefore heavily vested in BAU.
You need no more conspiracy than greed to explain all of what the media do not report.
So who can the next president blame everything on, still Bush, or...?
An inevitable rest is coming but the banksters will seize everyone's wealth before that happens. The communist leaders in the early part of the last century were rookies compared to the PhD banksters.
It's hard not to be in awe that they are getting away with this. They have completely destroyed our standard of living but it isn't happening because they say so and here look at the BS numbers, your pain isn't real, just look everybody else is doing fine. I have never heard one mainstream media mention the true number of people on food stamps. How they hell do they get away with that? We all know that people can be made to believe the most absurd things but watching it in action on this scale defies belief.
On the bright side when the EBTs run out the facade will fall... that should be fun.
It's hard not to be in awe that they are getting away with this.
All they have to do is continue to bombard the people with more
class warfare
Russian "Agression"
Global warming
subsidized pope visits
gay/transgender rights legislation
Monday night Football (played in taxpayer subsidized stadiums no less)
inflating the stock market
legalized drugs (pot may have legitimate medical uses but it is the most effective demotivator on the planet)
revisionist history
"legalized drugs (pot may have legitimate medical uses but it is the most effective demotivator on the planet"
Up 10000+
pass it already you bogart
Pretty much the same as an ant hill, bee hive, field of grass, dish of mold, etc. We suck. That's the only reason we put up with this sh#t. All the sorry ass structures that overlay us and ensure the growth of the "crop" are of our own making. We're as hard-wired as any biomass we look down on from our perch of exceptionalism.
Well put. The fungus grew until the petrie dish couldn't hold it. Life was good when there was only a million of us. Everyone free to live and take from nature as they saw fit. Now were at 7 billion and the crabs are pulling each other down into the muck.
Oh and nuclear power, what the fuck were they thinking.
This greater depression is well beyond the Great Depression, and it will get infinately worse to the point of complete implosion anytime now. Frankly, I cannot comprehend why all out contagion has not hit yet. I thought everything was going to finally go at the end of September.
Dont ever estimate the spawn of satan's qe an reverse qe programs. This can go on and will go on until the last man pulls the strings.
Yeah, I thought this thing would have blown well before now.
keep an eye on shit for sale on your local Craigslist....just key in on cars for example and follow it daily like we do this site...its a good bellweather...prices now really dropping off big...
craiglist is the sheet for hunting down good cars, its on my favorites sports car list
THE REASON IT FEELS LIKE A DEPRESSION IS BECAUSE IT FUCKING IS A DEPRESSION.
I ALSO DONT LIKE COMPARING THIS TO 1937 BECAUSE THIS IS WAY WORSE. THE REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE TODAY IS 40 PERCENT AT LEAST
PEAK DEPRESSION BITCHEZZZ
I calc'd these numbers for another thread. NILFs+jobless as percentages of civilian non-institutionalized population in given age range, by sex:
% males, age range
35% 20-24
16% 25-54
33% 55-64
78% 65+
% females, age range
39% 20-24
30% 25-54
44% 55-64
86% 65+
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm
http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/2013/tables.html
Part time employed as percentages of civilian non-institutionalized population in given age range, by sex:
% males, age range
19% 20-24
06% 25-64
% females, age range
27% 20-24
13% 25-64
This article begs the question of how many of those who do not work would work if jobs attractive to the them were available? It is in many states so easy to beat the system and exist on public benefits, which are often quite substantial (Massachusetts, for one). Furthermore, among many there is no stigma in not working.
And the incremental monetary advantage in working versus accepting public support may be negated in whole or in part by the need to pay for child care, etc.
I know several Advanced degreed and experienced engineers that cannot find a job. I'm sure there are many others that would want to work but given the scarcity it's become musical jobs. Every time the music stops there is one less job. People that are not in the field and have not experience are ignorant.
Many of those that have experienced a layoff are fearful every time the word "downsizing" is mentioned. So many are "At-will" employment.
Go look at many of the resumes of some of the younger people and you'll see their experience at a job is usually short. Many due to mergers and downsizings.
Used to be loyalty and dedication got you somewhere. Nowadays it's everyone for themselves.
As an engineer I was let go around 2007. First thing I did after being bored on unemployment for a week was to start my own company. 8 years later and here I am making much more than I was. Its a lot of hard work and persistence. Anyone who says there are no jobs is a complete fool. Create your own. A few other friends did the same and had the same outcome.
I generally ask my clients what they do, and its a similar story. The younger ones are just making things that people want or require. I don't see the want to work for someone else as they take the majority of profits.
BULLSEYE !!!!!!
As a construction superentindant I was "let go" in 2007. I,too,decided to go into business for myself.I had been in the painting business for years before I took the constuction super job,but it was in the 90's.When I decided to return to that,I quickly found that the costs were prohibitive. License,regulations,insurance,etc. made it impossible for me. So I guess you can consider me a fool. Because I think,no I KNOW there are no jobs.
Finally,I decided to forego the opening of a business of my own,and just decided to work alone,"under the table". That is when I discovered that nobody had the money to spend on repainting their houses. So pin blame on us all for being lazy folks who want to suckle the government teat if you like. But the majority of people in this country can prove you wrong. If you think my case is an anomily,check out your local paint store,Home Depot,or Lowes. Ask them how many people are doing thier own home improvement projects,because they can't afford to pay anyone else to do it. I know.I HAVE checked them out.
dog eat dog world
Dogs are Noble creatures - please DO NOT insult dogs by attributing human behavior to them.
Note that there are NO canine species who practice canibalism, so the expression "dog eat dog" has ZERO relevance to dogs anywhere.
There are no jobs. Stigma doesn't fill empty bellies.
I concur with another reader on here that if this shitshow is going to implode - let it happen while Obama is still sitting in the Oval Office so all hell can break loose on his watch. He's the piece of shit who's controlling the strings to the Justice Department, the SEC, allowing Wall Street and the "too big to fail" to get bigger and more lethal all the while it's 'hands off'. THIS ENTIRE GAME is rigged and Obama knows precisely what he's doing. Nothing is by accident, it's by design.
Who made the call and put Obama in office? You don't go from Occidental to President of the Harvard Law Review. It just doesn't happen- without help.
The Pritzker Crime Family were heavily involved.....and got handsomely rewarded.
sorry but wall street loves blaming republicans. I read it every day...about those rich rebublicans in NYC on Wall Street. GOP...in NYC...REALLY? Many of the liberals working in the big banks now are flaming gays and the rest are liberal as can be...there are no conservative in NYC. Though there are many arrogant pricks that believe they walk on water...and careless about politics as long as they money flows to them...they would turn their kids over to the devil for their next bonus.
Obama hasn't made a decision in 10 years without some lawyer explaining to him first... what his decision will be.
For your consideration...
I'm 56..white male...have three fused neck vertibraes since 1976..should certainly be 'classified' as disabled, but then again, like I said, I'm a white male, so I'm stupid...I've been pulling docks on a michigan Lake today...in leaking 5yr old waders...12' treated lumber sections heavy as hell,
The last old bastard gave me two frozen steaks of an unknown origin, a bag of apples and a fist full of grapes...I might go back there and trap those muskrats up under the bank to make that one pay...I have no health insurance 'cause I'm self employed and white and cant afford it...good thing my 2001 chevy Prizm gets 34mpg, or today woulda been a total loss...
I'd say this is a depression...has been since 2009 for the white working man...I'd take a taint sting from a yellowjacket right now for $50 to make it through the week!..make that $100...just so i can get a new pair of waders maybe to finish out the year...Id let a snapping turtle grab the end of my pecker for $1000 and laugh! I'd shoot a 16d through my hand into a block of wood for $500!
I'm gonna look into term Life Insurance tomorrow, on account of I thought I was gonna die today...
Even if the middleclass savior gets 'elected' and straightens this all out...its not gonna be until at least 2018...thats 3 yrs from now...so thats why the thought about Term Life....I did eat the apples though, and was thankful...
Sobering stuff. Thanks.
Hear yah man working 4yrs, only had 3 days off in all them years. Thats 7 days a week. No fking raise either! Minimum wage. Was just offered a twice pay raise & 65 per dim, will enjoy when I say adios stingy mofos! Someone else wants my slave labor more... So will be gone for month till get settled in. Pulling my trailer out of a nuke zone fk this sheet! or better yet zombie zone...
Genuinely sorry for your trouble. You're a casualty in the War Against White Males that's been going on for more than half a century.
clade, tell me ur a Harvard grad poseur on ZH.........please
^^^^^ What he said^^^^^^
Gotta love the statistics. The ministry of work, peace. plenty and prosperity is doing a swell job.
200,000 jobs a month in a country of 320,000,000 is like one new job for every 1,600 people.
Whoopdee f'n doo!
Yup..as these numbers get worse..expect the Israeli trained police state to really RATCHET up on the poor, especially minorities.
According to the 4th turning.... we'll be in "FULL" crisis by 2025.
If anyone has ANY doubt about the US miltarized police being trained by IDF,just watch this video.It looks exactly like what is happening across the US on a daily basis.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/09/hamas-leader-gaza-declares-...
Paying all these people constitutes "riot insurance." It won't be pretty when it ends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCTpBVzSwU
Hezekiah Jenkins singing What This Country Is Coming to"
when a plan comes together, planned by non-Americans, and un-Americans, it's going to be devastating when accomplished, and it's very close.
millennials are in the cross-hairs, your coming into adult-hood in an American democracy, this is why, the constitution, and the federal republic it afforded to Americans was never taught, k-16, because the afor mentioned knew the constitution, and a federal republic were going to be so weakened they'd be useless.
by non-Americans I mean international bankers who run Americas monetary policy, and own Americas largest financial institutions, which enrich themselves through their owners policies.
by un-American I mean, politicians, who believed in the cloward- pliven strategy, and implemented it a everywhere, and every form of public, and govt. union, and unelected, appointed, or contracted workers paid from tax dollars, and crony capitalist.
"by non-Americans I mean international bankers who run Americas monetary policy"
They run every other policy as well unfortunately.
The final step in the cloward- pliven strategy would be implemented the day after Bernie Sanders was sworn in.
Not that anyone is going to read this ...
So here is a star-bangled example of the sickness that now pervades Amerika.
So. I have a great farm friend that lives in Merced California - sweat potatoes, almonds, drought.
This is an area that has some of the worst foreclosure rates and perpetual poverty, unemployment, crime and environmental issues.
To remedy this, California decided to place a new University of California campus in this area - boost education, boost the local economy - whatever. Sounds good.
Fast forward 15 years.
So my friend is driving through town only to see a long line of people waiting in the morning Sun outside some local college building.
The parking lot is full, people are racing around with blue bags in their hands - some folks are pulling wagons.
So my friend, being of retirement age with time on his hands circles his truck around the block and drives into this swarm - just out of curiosity.
So he parks his truck and saunters up to the line and realizes its an USDA Emergency Food Box handout program - some once a month kind of thing - but apparently a good thing because you can actually get meat - rare I guess.
He surveys the line and sees the local disheveled gentry, all the illegals and their anchor babies, but to his surprise half the people in line are college kids = 20 somethings of every ethnicity - holding smartphones of course.
Not sure what is up he quizzes some of the kids who are more than happy to pipe up and explain that in-fact the University of California actually operates this emergency food program and that they heavily market it to students on campus - apparently they have students passing out for lack of food. They weren't drunk. They were literally starving.
Now my buddy is friendly with some UC people from Rotary and what-not so he heads to the front to see if a friend or two is around.
Now I'm just explaining what was told to me over coffee the next day, but here is the irony that should not be lost on anyone.
So my friend heads over to the front and sees over a dozen UC employees (many of whom make over $100,000/yr) all emblazoned with their blue and gold t-shirts and hats taking names, filling out forms and handing out boxes of food to UC students.
So lets be clear.
UC sets tuition and room and board rates for its students.
They write a huge financial aid package that is by and large subsidized by the Federal taxpayers.
UC takes their share of the money for tuition, on-campus student housing, maybe some meal plans and of course that money is for books too. A chunk goes to pay some of those $100K salaries.
After that exercise, the UC student (at least the ones standing in line for free food) don't have enough money for food for the entire semester, so UC then tells them about how to get free food - kind of like Walmart telling their "full time" employees how to get the Obamacare Bronze Plan).
Then the very UC administrators whose fat salaries and handsome benefits get paid by all this federally subsidized student loan debt, take the day off from their jobs to wander down for some down-home community volunteering work to service the very students that can't support themselves.
In essence these Deep Staters on the public dime go on vacation/starbucks to "solve" the very problems they created in the first place.
Now if this was not about food, but some other esoteric event we would ignore it.
But this is about FOOD in America being served by $100,000/yr "public servants."
I illustrate this example (and I can only assume its all true) because it really drives at the shrill shreaking hypocrisy of our times - that those chosen few that keep insisting they are the smartest guys in the room are in fact profiting upon the base misery of our times and with each idea and iteration things are getting worse.
On paper any food program sounds like a vital solution. But in terms of implementation - choosing to employ the very people that should not involved either by conflict or cost just twists the knife that much more.
Again. If anything out there is getting better, please send up a flare.
Until then it seems the "system" is going to continue to strangle itself.
We are watching the destruction, end, of the middle class.
You are either poor, and surviving with .gov handouts or basic minimum survival tactics, or....
You work for the "party" and get a check and benefits from the system.
If you are have a government job, you are chosen, for now.
And I am starting to realize the big scam is having everyone believe it's just them, individually, not succeeding, and everyone else is doing good. Facebook is one great unwitting tool I this scam. Everybody goes on and posts all the great shit about their life. Vacations, new cars, parties, football games. You see that, and think the rest of the world is living it up!
For me, my own wife justs keeps whining why I'm a " failure" and we don't have and do all these wonderful things. Then, we go to a party, and she has a friend take literally six photos of me and her, the first five trashed because I did not look " happy" enough. I finally gave in, and went Hollywood. For a week, I had friends telling ME what a great time I had! I told each and every one, to make the point, that was pic number 6, the rest on the floor, so wifey could perpetuate the scam. Learn from that.
Hardly a depression. At those days, people were more concious to what is happening around them than the fucktards now flooded with social media, tv dramas, reality shows ....
During depression, people were more appreicated & humble of what they got. Now, people just want moare.
If there are so many "poor" people already in the population,
then why does the society/government allow the creation of even more poor people
1. by allowing poor people to breed, and
2. by encouraging the massive decades-long invasion by the poverty of latin america, caribbean, etc ???
Seems obvious to me that the politicians, especially the democrat party, WANT more poor people.
thank you ZH, for giving those fucktards who still hang onto big .gov moar rules regs and taxes are the answer, someplace to post..every fucking big gov gop nut job, and progressive homo dick licker, gets to show us all how blind they remain.
There is only one reason why we don't see depression pictures on the news everyday. Credit cards. People may have used them to keep up with the Joneses in the past , they now use them to survive. Many "middle class ' workers put their 200 a month gas bill on the card and then pay 75-100 on it at the end of the month.
Examle: My sister's daughter is a senior in high school and has been in band since 7th grade. This year the band is taking a "once in a lifetime" trip to perform in one of the big New Years Day parades. Her cost 2600. My sister can't really afford that now, just started a new job, but. how do you tell your daughter , no you can't go. Answer Hello Visa
" Jane Get Me Off This Thing!!!"
Only 14% of US population is on food stamps, yet over 90% of African Americans are on food stamps/EBT.
Statistics are so racist!