If you watch most media you'd never guess what's the real America. From television shows where minimum wage jobs pay rent on $2000 a month flats, to families who never seem to run out of money or get foreclosed on, to messages of if only you follow some green line you'll have enough money for retirement, a never ending weave of fiction is spun. Like prey in the spider's web of tall tales, we're stunned and hypnotized into no longer seeing the poverty and despair all around us.
Here are a couple of video reports where one sees the real America. Families who cannot afford a roach motel, living on the street, trying to stay together. That's the bottom line, today, making it in America is a crap shoot with crooked dice.
This is the new American family experience. Yes, one might have grabbed that flat screen TV and even own an iPhone, but making the monthly bills and having enough to eat even when working is no longer possible.
While we know about the official unemployment rate, the real unemployment rate, people falling off of the need a job count, the horrific tally of Americans on food stamps, even when people are working, it never seems to hit home what America has really become. We are now, all poor. The middle class is an illusion, as evidenced here, here and here.
Comments
update on the 60 minutes family
Due to the 60 Minutes publicity, that family got a job, place to live, but there are hundreds of thousands just like them.
only 1 comment?
only 1 comment on this post and yet this is the real deal... all the other posts about the value of the euro etc, etc... don't mean diddly
this post and that piece of reporting, bravely done by 60 minutes IMO, display the result of a catastrophically failed political/economics system and yet only 1 comment...?
come on ppl
register!
I agree, we need more discussion and a good first step would be for you to register.
I'm surprised too. While this isn't an original article, watching both of these videos drives home how most are truly desperate and America has turned into a financial casino for most.
Spoiled EP readers/viewers
Well, you know, EP readers are pretty spoiled. We are used to excellent posts here.
If you register, you can vote up or down at the top of any blog, and I voted for this blog. But often, there's nothing that I don't understand or I just don't have anything to add. But that doesn't equate to a vote of disapproval at all.
It would be interesting if more people registers and voted on blogs here at EP.
USA joining 3rd world?
We've discussed this question before and not long ago, here at EP. But there's been a request for more comments at this paricular blog. So here goes!
The Mess That Greenspan Made (Tim Iacono) reports that Ann Barnhardt (Financial Sense Online) is joining the goldbuggers.
This is one of very few growth industries in the USA today -- advising people how to gracefully transition into disaster and the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it. What it really comes down to is that the US is devolving into a third world country, maybe complete with the military dictatorship. There's a great two-part summary of this by Ron Hera of Hera Research, posted at ZeroHedge (Tyler Durden).
ZeroHedge Part 1
ZeroHedge Part 2
Personally, I first heard about the 3rd World coming to America from Peter DeFazio (D-4th Dist. Oregon), when he pointed out, way back in the mid-1990s, that the reality of NAFTA was that the entire so-called "free" trade agenda was all about reducing wages in the US to 3rd World levels. DeFazio had actually read the entire NAFTA document (in both English and Spanish), and he has fought long and hard against it ... and against the Clinton administration's and all subsequent administrations' trade policies for that reason.
So, maybe because of my own history, I tend to react to continuing horrendous economic trends not so much as a call to hoard gold and ammo, but more as a call to the American people to rally together and restore protectionism to the American Way. Not that there's anything wrong with survivalism -- it's just that, to my ear, 'protectionism' sounds better.
Returning to the growing interest in goldbug polical-cultural-economic thinking, goldbugs generally have a spirit of piratical adventure wrapped around their tightly held bundles of fear, greed and (yes) plain old common sense. If you just call it what it is, namely "devolution into a 3rd world country," that's not very romantic. Indeed, that's pretty boring and humdrum.
After all, anytime you yearn for a 3rd world country (complete with shooting wars), all you have to do is cross our southern border! Or, if it's adventure and romance you're after, then you may as well take your gold bullion and head out for the Philippines. Jump right into it, before your US government pension dollars become complete junk!
By contrast, our goldbugs tend to picture themselves as preparing for a great adventure into uncharted country -- without ever leaving home! I think that's a characteristically American way of looking at things. It's like Pioneer Days or the Old West all over again. Like The Little House on the Prairie or some other department of Disney Land.
IMO, the "3rd world country" meme is really where it's at -- not the return to the Gold Rush. Of course, it's true that gold is very important in countries like India and China. Nonetheless, the mindset that we may need is simply a drab 3rd World mindset.
The main thing that I know about the 3rd World is that everyone in it wants out. I've heard lately that the big dream of Chinese industrialists is to get enough USDs together to retire in California!
Ah, the irony of it!