Things Are Getting Worse: Median Household Income Has Fallen 4 Years In A Row

by Michael Snyder

New numbers that have just been released show that things are getting worse for American families.? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income declined to?$50,054 in 2011.? That is a 1.5 percent decline from the previous year, and median household income has now fallen for 4 years in a row.? In fact, after adjusting for inflation median household income has not been this low since 1995.? These new numbers once again confirm what so many of us have been talking about for so long - American families are steadily getting poorer.? Incomes are going down and the cost of living just keeps going up.? This dynamic is squeezing more Americans out of the middle class every single month.? Others just keep going into more debt in an attempt to maintain their previous lifestyles.? As Americans, we really don't like to hear that things are getting worse and that we are in decline, but unfortunately that is exactly what is happening.? Our economy does not produce nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore, the proportion of low wage jobs in our economy continues to grow, and the middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate.? Our politicians can deliver speeches about how great we all are until the cows come home, but it isn't going to change the reality of our situation.? If we want different results we have got to start taking different actions.

When you take the median household income of $50,054 and divide it up over 12 months, it comes to about $4000 a month.

About half of all American households are making more than that and about half of all American households are making less than that.

So can an average family of four people make it on just $4000 a month?

Well, first of all you have got to take out taxes.? After accounting for all forms of taxation you will be lucky if you have $3000 remaining.

With that $3000, you have to pay for all of the following.

*Housing

*Power

*Water

*Food

*Phone

*Internet

*At Least One Vehicle

*Gasoline

*Vehicle Repairs

*Car Insurance

*Health Insurance

*Dental Bills

*Home Or Rental Insurance

*Life Insurance

*Student Loan Debt Payments

*Credit Card Payments

*Furniture

*Clothing

*Pets

*Entertainment (although it is hard to imagine any money will be left for that)

Have I left anything out?

The truth is that $3000 does not go as far as it used to.

No wonder American families are feeling so stretched financially these days.

Most families can't even afford to think about retirement or investments because most of them are just trying to figure out a way to survive from month to month.

Unfortunately, economic conditions for middle income Americans continue to deteriorate.? Being in the middle class in America is like playing a perverse game of musical chairs.? More chairs are constantly being pulled out of the game and the middle class just continues to shrivel up.

The following are some more statistics that show that things are getting worse....

-In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.? Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

-Health insurance premiums rose faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once again in 2012.? In fact, it is been happening for a very long time.

-In the United States today, there are close to 10 million households that do not have a single bank account.? That number has increased by about a million since 2009.

-Back in 1962, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans had 125 times the net worth of the median household.? Today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans has 288 times the net worth of the median household.

-Back in 2007, 19.2 percent of all American families had a net worth of zero or less than zero.? By 2010, that figure had soared to 32.5 percent.

-According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 32 percent of all Americans now identify themselves as "lower class".? In 2008, that figure was only at 25 percent.

-As I have written about previously, 61 percent of all Americans were "middle income" back in 1971 according to the Pew Research Center.? Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are "middle income".

-62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

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

-There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.? That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

-According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of American families dropped "from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010".

-Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

-At this point, less than 25 percent of all jobs in the United States are "good jobs", and that number continues to shrink.

-The percentage of working age Americans that are employed is smaller now than it was two years ago.

-The number of Americans that are financially dependent on the government is sitting at an all-time record, and it just keeps going up.

-If the labor force participation rate was the same today as it was back when Barack Obama first took office, the unemployment rate in the United States would be 11.2 percent.

That last statistic deserves some special attention.

If the exact same percentage of Americans were considered to be "in the work force" today as when Barack Obama became president, the unemployment rate in this country would be well over 11 percent.

But the federal government has pretended that millions upon millions of Americans have "left the work force" over the past few years and that allows them to tell the fib that the unemployment rate has actually declined to 8.1 percent.

Of course we all know that is a bunch of nonsense.? About the same percentage of Americans want a job today as was the case back in 2008.

But 8.1 percent looks way better than 11.2 percent does.

What makes all of this even more distressing is that this is the recovery.

Things are not going to be getting much better than this.? We are rapidly approaching the next wave of the economic collapse and all of the numbers posted above are going to be getting a lot worse.

So even though things may be tight for your family right now, you should enjoy these times while you still have them.

Someday we will look back on these years as "the good old days".

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Nine Things That Happen When You Film Police Encounters

by Austin White

Anyone who has ever filmed a police encounter and put it on YouTube has received some, or a lot, of negative comments for their actions. This is mostly due to a lack of understanding among the general public as to why someone would want to film police as they are detaining or arresting someone.

To explain, here are nine things that are achieved by filming police:

1. You're exercising your right to film police.? You do have the right to film cops.? This right is codified in the Constitution under the First Amendment.? In the past year, New England's highest Federal court ruled that filming cops is protected by the First Amendment.? You don't need any special reason for doing so.? You don't need permission from any bureaucrat.? You don't have to work for a big media outlet.? Get a camera and a YouTube channel and you are officially media.? Congratulations and film away.? If you don't exercise your rights, they atrophy.? Exercise them.

2. In the case where you are recording someone else's police encounter, like a neighbor or friend, you are significantly reducing their chances of being the victim of police misconduct.? Police will be less likely to perform unwarranted searches, plant drugs, beat the person, rape the person, murder the person, or arrest them on trumped up charges if they know there are cameras around recording their every move.? You're reducing the extent to which the predatory armed enforcers are likely to harass their prey.? Police-accountability activist Antonio Buehler was possibly facing years in prison for allegedly assaulting an officer until he later obtained video evidence from bystanders that refuted the claims of the cop.

3. In the case where you are recording your own police encounter, you could be saving yourself from a potentially life-destroying event.? You could be preventing yourself from going to prison.? Anyone who thinks they are not at risk of being arrested is quite oblivious to the number of "laws" on the books, as well as the vagueness of those laws and the ability of the state to interpret those laws however they want in order to put you in a cage.? Every American is now at a palpable risk of being arrested and jailed at some point -- unless you're a cop.

My friend Tj was pulled over by police a year and half ago over a malfunctioning tag light.? Immediately the gang of cops went into overkill mode and began ordering him out of the vehicle, were pulling on his door handle, and suspiciously claiming he dropped something out of the car window.? Eventually the police began threatening to pull TJ out of the vehicle and claiming that he might be a danger to the officers (cop language for "get out or we can kill you") -- all over a tag light.? You can see the video for yourself to see how Tj recording the encounter with his cell phone quickly deterred the cops from perpetrating further harassment.

4. You inspire others to stand up to cops and demand accountability.? Standing up to cops is scary.? They can quite literally kill you and get away with it, as well as everything below killing.? When you film cops and deter them from engaging in misconduct you become a beacon of peaceful resistance to the police-state for other people to emulate.

5. You remind the cops (allow me to put on my minarchist hat) that they are our servants and we are their masters.? We pay the police with our tax dollars to provide security and protect our rights.? We are the employers and the police are the employees.? We have every right to monitor our employees to make sure they're doing their job right.? This is especially essential now that police have become routine rights violators and are far more likely to violate people's rights than private criminals are.

The state watches us, reads our emails, listens in our phone conversations, and is putting more and more cameras around to surveil us in public places -- is it really that unreasonable for us to watch the watchers a little bit, especially when they are actively looking for ways to put anyone they can into cages?

6. You are exercising the only real check we have on the police-state besides civil disobedience (which is becoming more appealing everyday) and armed rebellion.

Police investigate themselves and are the arbiters of disputes involving themselves.? How does the average person stand a chance against that?? Bad cops are very rarely found guilty for their crimes and when they are found guilty the punishment they often receive is a modicum of what the average American would receive.

In the fall of 2010, Orlando Copwatch did a lengthy investigation of an incident where OPD officer Travis Lamont body-slammed an 84-year-old man onto pavement and broke his neck -- simply because the old man committed the heinous crime of touching Lamont's shoulder.? Despite the fact that numerous witnesses called the police station in outrage and spoke to the media about the horrific behavior of Lamont, Orlando Police Chief Val Demings and six other senior officials cleared Lamont of any wrong doing and he lurks the streets of Orlando to this day.

The only effective method we have for dealing with bad cops is filming them in the act and putting it on YouTube so they can receive the shame and ostracism they deserve.? If someone had been able to capture footage of Officer Lamont's actions that night and put in on YouTube for it to go viral Lamont may have ended up in prison where he truly belongs.

7. You are preparing cops to get used to being filmed.? Every year the price of cameras goes down, the quality goes up, the size of cameras goes down, the ability to conceal cameras increases,?? we now have the ability to upload live footage to websites like Qik.com, and there is a growing movement of people happily willing to use these tools to keep police accountable.? There is nothing the cops can do about it.? The bureaucrats can write whatever laws they want to stop us, but the market will help us get around them.? When you get out there and start filming cops you're giving police a friendly reminder that soon every cop's every move will be monitored by the tax payers and that they better start acting more civilized.? You're stimulating a feeling among police that they are being watched.

8. You're standing up for your rights and your fellow citizen's rights and will feel damn good about it.? You'll be able to look back and know that you didn't submit to the police-state like some slave.? The preservation of your dignity and spirit is worth the risks of filming cops.

9. You are reducing the amount of tyranny that your kids will live under.

Yes, filming police is dangerous, but day-to-day life in the totalitarian Amerika that will develop as a result of our apathy will be far more dangerous.? Now is the time to film cops; not later.? The police-state will only get more severe if we don't act now, which means it will only get harder to keep police accountable if we back down.
__
Austin White is a part-time libertarian scholar and guitar instructor in Clermont, FL. His two previous posts at CopBlock.org netted almost 100 comments in total. Austin?s writings have also appeared on LewRockwell.com, infowars.com, the Orlando Sentinel and he blogs at Stop the State.

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I dunno, filming the police while living in a police state can be very very dangerous. But yes, it is necessary. I'm just not going to do it and risk getting my head split in two. To Anonymous 71194, I concur, people should understand the risks involved and only take them if they're willing to face the consequences. "Rights" are meaningless abstractions and guarantee you nothing, if a criminal with a badge wants to beat you on the spot he can and will, and generally the more criminal the police action you film the more criminal the cop. If you think you're in danger like TJ in the instance above, by all means be recording if you think it may help diffuse the situation, just understand you're dealing with hardcore gang members. they can be fired and thoses offices closed. that is another option. many small towns have done so and their crime rates dropped by half. turns out those in state issued costume were the perps. if the town counsels won't do it then throw them out of office and then fire the them. without those overseers tyranny could not flourish as there would be no enforcers Hidden cameras are cheap and getting better. I carry two cameras any time I step off my property. Anyone who doesn't is asking to be abused. That was bizarre. It was as though I was witnessing a "good cop, bad cop" coming from the same cop.
If he had had his head about him at that point, I bet TJ could have refused the cop's request for current-address confirmation.

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12 Things That The Mainstream Media Is Being Strangely Quiet About Right Now

The American Dream

As the mainstream media continues to be obsessed with Anthony Weiner and his bizarre adventures on Twitter, much more serious events are happening around the world that are getting very little attention.  In America today, if the mainstream media does not cover something it is almost as if it never happened.

Right now, the worst nuclear disaster in human history continues to unfold in Japan , U.S. nuclear facilities are being threatened by flood waters, the U.S. military is bombing Yemen, gigantic cracks in the earth are appearing all over the globe and the largest wildfire in Arizona history is causing immense devastation.  But Anthony Weiner, Bristol Palin and Miss USA are what the mainstream media want to tell us about and most Americans are buying it.

In times like these, it is more important than ever to think for ourselves.  The corporate-owned mainstream media is not interested in looking out for us.  Rather, they are going to tell us whatever fits with the agenda that their owners are pushing.

That is why more Americans than ever are turning to the alternative media.  Americans are hungry for the truth, and they know that the amount of truth that they get from the mainstream media continues to decline.

The following are 12 things that the mainstream media is being strangely quiet about right now….

#1 The crisis at the Fort Calhoun nuclear facility in Nebraska has received almost no attention in the national mainstream media.

Back on June 7th, there was a fire at Fort Calhoun.  The official story is that the fire was in an electrical switchgear room at the plant.  The facility lost power to a pump that cools the spent fuel pool for approximately 90 minutes.  According to the Omaha Public Power District, the fire was quickly extinguished and no radioactive material was released.

The following sequence of events is directly from the Omaha Public Power District website….

* There was no such imminent danger with the Fort Calhoun Station spent-fuel pool.
* Due to a fire in an electrical switchgear room at FCS on the morning of June 7, the plant temporarily lost power to a pump that cools the spent-fuel pool.
* The fire-suppression system in that switchgear room operated as designed, extinguishing the fire quickly.
* FCS plant operators switched the spent-fuel pool cooling system to an installed backup pump about 90 minutes after the loss of power.
* During the interruption of cooling, temperature of the pool increased a few degrees, but the pool was never in danger of boiling.
* Due to this situation, FCS declared an Alert at about 9:40 a.m. on June 7.
* An alert is the second-least-serious of four emergency classifications established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
* At about 1:15 p.m. on June 7, FCS operators declared they had taken all appropriate measures to safely return to the previously declared Notification of Unusual Event emergency classification. (See first item above.)

But the crisis at Fort Calhoun is not over.  Right now, the nuclear facility at Fort Calhoun is essentially an island. It is surrounded by rising flood waters from the Missouri River.

Officials claim that there is no danger and that they are prepared for the river to rise another ten feet.

The Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska is also being threatened by rising flood waters.  A “Notification of Unusual Event” was declared at Cooper Nuclear Station this morning at 4:02.  This notification was issued because the Missouri River’s water level reached 42.5 feet.

Right now the facility is operating normally and officials don’t expect a crisis.

But considering what has been going on at Fukushima, it would be nice if we could have gotten a lot more coverage of these events by the mainstream media.

#2 Most Americans are aware that the U.S. is involved in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.  However, the truth is that the U.S. military is also regularly bombing Yemen and parts of Pakistan.  If you count the countries where the U.S. has special forces and/or covert operatives on the ground, the U.S. is probably “active” in more countries in the Middle East than it is not.  Now there are even persistent rumors that U.S. ground units are being prepared to go into Libya.  Are we watching the early stages of World War 3 unfold before our eyes in slow motion?

#3 The crisis at Fukushima continues to get worse.  Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, recently made the following statement about the Fukushima disaster….

“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind”

TEPCO has finally admitted that this disaster has released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl did.  That makes Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster of all time, and it is far from over. Massive amounts of water is being poured into the spent fuel pools in order to keep them cool.  This is creating “hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water” that has got to go somewhere.  Inevitably much of it will get into the ground and into the sea. Arnold Gundersen says that the scope of this problem is almost unimaginable….

“TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.” The mainstream media is not paying as much attention to Fukushima these days, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a major league nightmare.

Elevated levels of radiation are being reported by Japanese bloggers all over eastern Japan.  There are reports of sick children all over the region.  One adviser to the government of Japan says that an area approximately 17 times the size of Manhattan is probably going to be uninhabitable. Of course the mainstream media has been telling us all along that Fukushima is nothing to be too concerned about and that authorities in Japan have everything under control. If the mainstream media is not going to tell us the truth, how are they going to continue to have credibility?

#4 Members of Congress continue to mention Christians as a threat to national security.  For example, during a recent Congressional hearing U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee warned that “Christian militants” might try to “bring down the country” and that such groups need to be investigated.

#5 China’s eastern province of Zhejiang has experienced that worst flooding that it has seen in 55 years.  2 million people have already been forced to leave their homes.  China has already been having huge problems with their crops over the past few years and this is only going to make things worse.

#6 Thanks to the Dodd-Frank Act, over the counter trading of gold and silver is going to be illegal starting on July 15th.  Or at least that is what some companies apparently now believe.  The following is an excerpt from an email that Forex.com recently sent out to their customers….

Important Account Notice Re: Metals Trading

We wanted to make you aware of some upcoming changes to FOREX.com’s product offering. As a result of the Dodd-Frank Act enacted by US Congress, a new regulation prohibiting US residents from trading over the counter precious metals, including gold and silver, will go into effect on Friday, July 15, 2011. In conjunction with this new regulation, FOREX.com must discontinue metals trading for US residents on Friday, July 15, 2011 at the close of trading at 5pm ET. As a result, all open metals positions must be closed by July 15, 2011 at 5pm ET.

We encourage you to wind down your trading activity in these products over the next month in anticipation of the new rule, as any open XAU or XAG positions that remain open prior to July 15, 2011 at approximately 5:00 pm ET will be automatically liquidated. We sincerely regret any inconvenience complying with the new U.S. regulation may cause you. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact our customer service team.

Sincerely,
The Team at FOREX.com

Apparently, Section 742(a) of the Dodd-Frank Act prohibits anyone “from entering into, or offering to enter into, a transaction in any commodity with a person that is not an eligible contract participant or an eligible commercial entity, on a leveraged or margined basis.” So what impact is this going to have on the gold and silver markets?

Nobody is quite sure yet.

#7 All over the world, huge cracks are appearing for no discernible reason.  For example, a massive crack that is approximately 3 kilometers long recent appeared in southern Peru.  Also, a 500 foot long crack suddenly appeared recently in the state of Michigan.  When you also throw in all of the gigantic sinkholes that have been opening all over the world, it is easy to conclude that the planet is becoming very unstable.

#8 According to U.S. Forest Service officials, the largest wildfire in Arizona state history has now covered more than 500,000 acres.  But based on the coverage it is being given by the mainstream media you would think that it is a non-event.

#9 There are reports that North Korea has tested a “super EMP weapon” which would be capable of taking out most of the U.S. power grid in a single shot.  The North Koreans are apparently about to conduct another nuclear test and that has some Obama administration officials very concerned.

#10 All over the United States, “active shooter drills” are being conducted in our public schools.  Often, most of the students are not told that these drills are fake.  Instead, students often go through hours of terror as they think a hostage situation or a shooting spree is really taking place.

#11 NASA has just launched a “major” preparedness initiative for all NASA personnel.  The following is an excerpt about this plan from NASA’s own website….

A major initiative has been placed on Family/Personal Preparedness for all NASA personnel. The NASA Family/Personal Preparedness Program is designed to provide awareness, resources, and tools to the NASA Family (civil servants and contractors) to prepare for an emergency situation. The most important assets in the successful completion of NASA’s mission are our employees’ and their families. We are taking the steps to prepare our workforce, but it is your personal obligation to prepare yourself and your families for emergencies.

#12 Over the past week over 40 temporary “no fly zones” have been declared by the FAA.  This is very highly unusual.  Nobody seems to know exactly why this is happening.

So what do all of these things mean?

It would be nice if the mainstream media would examine some of these important issues more closely and do some honest reporting on them.

Perhaps you have an opinion on some of these issues.  Feel free to share what you think by leaving a comment below….

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/12-things-that-the-mainstream-media-is-being-strangely-quiet-about-right-now

Filed under Big Brother State, Latest Headlines, Lifestyle, Mind Control, New World Order, Open Our Eyes, Police State, Political · Tagged with BBC., break free, cnn, fox news, freedom, main stream media, mind control, new world order, news corporation, news media, police state, political, the journey, TV, world elite, world news

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