Ten facts about the financial condition of the American family than will blow your mind

Or not, depending on your mind. This is pretty depressing and our elected leaders seem pretty willing to accept this decline. Unfortunately, most of us seem pretty willing to accept it, too. Not that we have to if we're willing to shake things up. After all, we outnumber the corporate parasites by a signficant number.

http://www.businessinsider.com/american-families-are-broke-2011-7#

The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families. For many Americans, "flat broke" has become a permanent condition.

Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are.

The financial condition of average American families continues to decline and this is showing up in all of the recent surveys. For example, according to a new Gallup poll, "lack of money/low wages" is the number one financial concern for American families.

To make ends meet, many American families are going into even more debt and more American families than ever are turning to government assistance. Right now, more Americans than at any other point since World War II are flat broke and have lost hope. Until this changes, the frustration level in this country is going to continue to grow.

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Thanks for posting.

Too bad the M$M doesn't relentlessly report on these figures.

until they explode. Another conservative president and congress should turn up the pain enough to light the fuse.

Class warfare has been reality in this country for 30 years. However, the middle and lower classes didn't realize that a war was on. :rofl: :cry: :mad:

outcomes. Before Bush's cake walk/ the war..... Newsweek said we could not afford it.... So to make matters worse, Bush cut huge revenue out of our countries coffers via his tax cuts to the wealthy.... Now we are swirling around the toilette bowl and Obama/Boehner are entertaining giving away mortgage deductions, slashing SS and Medicare... Yep the frustration level will rise....

And all the "master of the universe" plutocrats are thinking about how to do a Galt on the rest of us.

I mean, they're soooo crucial to the functioning of our society. :eyes:

scientists, intellectuals, and workers to be named later.

. When wages started to stagnate (think Nixon with wage freezes & then St. Ronnie of Reagan for the coup de grâce), people turned to (EZ) credit to fill the gaps. For the short term this was do-able, but as the stagnation persisted, debt just piled up and up and up.

"Back in the day", credit was for CONVENIENCE of mostly upper echelon people, so they did not have to write checks on their shopping forays. It was convenient to have "store credit", and pay the bill monthly. These people often had OTHERS do their shopping for them, or had stores deliver things to them "on approval" and would then return the items not kept.... charge accounts made for easier bookkeeping all-round .

The "lessers" did without, bought used, or repaired their stuff until they had SAVED UP for new (whatevers), until dead-in-the-water wages and defunct unions made that less and less possible.

Banks created the mess we are in now, by making EVERYONE slaves to credit (and mostly credit they could not afford). Store charge accounts were due & payable EVERY month, and new charges were often denied if the payment was late. Some stores had "revolving credit" (think Sears, Penneys, Wards), but many did not.

Banks used to at least impose realistic credit limits, but that has not been the case for a long time. (Our first BankAmericard (1970) had a $500 limit, and was only raised after ONE YEAR of on-time payment and was then raised...to $750.00).

It's not unusual now to see people with very minimal incomes having multiple cards with combined credit limits that can exceed their annual incomes.. I know a woman who has take-home pay of $19,200 a year and the credit limits of her cards totaled over $20K..:eyes:

to transfer even more money to the rich.

small businesses not hiring because they have payroll taxes, labor regulations, etc. That's just fucking stupid. I guess the writer thinks we should become a country with low wages, no social programs (via payroll taxes) and no labor laws that protect workers, and THEN the jobs will come back! He totally negates his own point.