"17 Facts To Show To Anyone That Still Believes That The U.S. Economy Is Just Fine" by Michael Snyder

So...wow. These are some scary facts. But, uh, let's look a little deeper into them.

1) The homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in 19 years.

Can we please not link home ownership to the economy? It kind of screwed us over in 2005-2008 when economists were all like "the economy is peachy-keen because we've got record home ownership". I'd like to see this statistic adjusted for A) homelessness and B) those whose credit sucked before and/or after the recession to the extent that they should not have been allowed to buy under old rules, let alone the new ones. Sorry to the folks who had been fine, but who were hurt by events outside their control (see my first sentence).

2) Consumer spending for durable goods has dropped by 3.23 percent since November.  This is a clear sign that an economic slowdown is ahead.

Not necessarily. This was taken from the link that "3.23 percent" goes to: "There is a clear sign of declining retail sales. In 2011, same-store sales grew by 2.9%; in 2012, they increased by 2.6%; and in 2013, same-store retail sales grew by 1.5%. See the trend? Sales at retail stores grew last year at only half the pace they grew in 2011. The trend of slower sales growth—maybe even negative growth—will continue for 2014." Also, I think it's important to know the definition of "durable goods" ("goods that can last for a long time, like a T.V. or furniture"; via the same article). To me, I'm a little leery of the durable goods argument because they are durable. These are things that people aren't going to buy every year, so a logical assumption is simply that people don't NEED these items. Look, the economy in 2011 SUCKED. We all know this. The price of televisions (for example) was way down as retailers tried to move merchandise. So, since people felt like the economy was improving (which is true), they bought them. This ends up inflating the sales of 2011 and makes 2013 look bad because A) people don't need a new television (and we don't want an economy based purely on wants instead of needs) and B) it's simply a reflection of sales when prices are at market value.

What we need to do is compare growth to previous years. 1.5% growth might be standard growth during the neutral years.

3) Major retailers are closing stores at the fastest pace that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Yeah, I'm not going to bother with the link to this one. How many people shop online? Raise your hands. You're the reason stores are closing. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Do we really need a K-Mart on every corner? CVS is building a ton of stores in my area and I think it's kind of ridiculous because there can't possibly be that much of a market (we had a collapse of pharmacies about 15 years ago). So, let's see. What happens when you flood the market? There will be a collapse. Before the internet, as population boomed, it was beneficial to put a lot of the same business in one small area. Now, with the internet and as leases expire (what's happened to at least one of the two K-Marts closing in my neck of the woods), companies are closing failing stores to consolidate and to not pay more in rent than the building is worth.

4) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of all families in the United States do not have a single member that is employed.  That means that one out of every five families in the entire country is completely unemployed.

So...my grandma lives alone. She's unemployed. She's also 80 years old and has been retired for like 25 years. What does the Bureau of Labor Statistics consider to be a family? A household? Because then, my grandma is part of that 20 percent. Alrighty then, according to BLS, it's TWO related people living together. So, if my grandfather were alive and, let's toss in my grandma's neighbors wife, we'd have TWO, count them, TWO (eh, eh, eh) more households of unemployed people living off the government (and their private pensions).

This actually comes from that "20 percent" link: "A number that I find much more useful is the employment-population ratio.  According to the employment-population ratio, the percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job has been below 59 percent for more than four years in a row…" It doesn't say what "working age" is, but the BLS Glossery seems to imply that 16 is the minimum age. At work, I was reading the employment application for TowneBank and it seemed to say that no one under 18 could apply (maybe they make exceptions). So, if the "working age" includes 16 year olds and, let's say, those who were forced into retirement when the recession first hit, how accurate a number is that 59%?

So, let's see. That 20% includes a LOT of retired couples and that 59% includes a LOT of teenagers and folks a year or two shy of retirement...Can we have some real numbers now?

5) There are 1.3 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than when the last recession began in December 2007.  Meanwhile, our population has continued to grow steadily since that time.

Erm...okay? We live in a quasi-Capitalist society that is creating new uses for computers and robots every day. My part time job includes (at times) stapling covers onto small books, a job that our digital press can do with ease and less error. I'm being replaced, but I don't mind because that is one seriously sucky job (I like the dozen other things I do where I haven't been replaced yet). Books created on the digital are cheaper and better quality...do you really want to go back to what was? Our economy is in transition.

6) According to a new report from the National Employment Law Project, the quality of the jobs that have been "created" since the end of the last recession does not match the quality of the jobs lost during the last recession...

• Lower-wage industries constituted 22 percent of recession losses, but 44 percent of recovery growth.
• Mid-wage industries constituted 37 percent of recession losses, but only 26 percent of recovery growth.
• Higher-wage industries constituted 41 percent of recession losses, and 30 percent of recovery growth.

Our digital "pressman" literally just hits print on the computer screen. Our 4-color pressman is more traditional, but still uses a computer to make the plates. My dad, a REAL traditional printer, used to have to pull mats out of cases and create type letter by freaking letter. HIS was the high paying job back in the pre-computer days. So, you can see, that as the printing industry changes, what was once a high wage job, is now something any monkey can do ;-). 

7) After adjusting for inflation, men who work full-time in America today make less money than men who worked full-time in America 40 years ago.

And whose fault is that? Look at the ratio of the highest and lowest paid individual in a company. It's skyrocketed in the US, whereas in Sweden, there's a law mandating that the highest executive can only make 12 times more than the lowest peon. Companies will do just about anything to avoid paying the government taxes, but it rarely extends to paying their employees more. How many companies offer bonuses to at least 50% of their staff? Not Walmart.

8) It is hard to believe, but 62 percent of all Americans make $20 or less an hour at this point.

Yeah...See my answer to question 7. This isn't a government thing; this is a corporate decision. I believe it's Walmart who, by simply using 5% of it's cash holdings, can give ALL of it's employees a check for $200 (which is a weeks pay for like 75%).

9) Nine of the top ten occupations in the U.S. pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year.

See above.

10) The middle class in Canada now makes more money than the middle class in the United States does.

AND they don't have to pay extra out of pocket for medical care. See this article  and remember that it doesn't account for medical outside of what the government offers.

11) According to one recent study, 40 percent of all Americans could not come up with $2000 right now even if there was a major emergency.

I'm working on it.

12) Less than one out of every four Americans has enough money put away to cover six months of expenses if there was a job loss or major emergency.

This is the plan.

13) An astounding 56 percent of all Americans have subprime credit in 2014.

Yeah, well that whole subprime debacle that tanked the economy in the first place didn't do anything to help these folks while creating a lot more.

14) As I wrote about the other day, there are now 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.

My boyfriend gets a whopping $15 a month in food stamps. He's on disability (massive heart attack and then a stroke that left him in a coma for a week) that barely pays the bills while being told that he'll lose his medicare (he'd pay like $2000 a month for his medications and doctor's visits) if he makes more than $600 a month working.

15) Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

Wonder how many of them are stay-at-home moms by choice.

16) 69 percent of the federal budget is spent either on entitlements or on welfare programs. 

Mostly to people either working or who are retired.

17) The number of Americans receiving benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.

See above. And like I said, my boyfriend would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to work full time, but to do so would kick him off medicare and there's not a company in the world that would (could--his defibrillator means he can no longer get a CDL, his profession before he died 14 times) hire him because his insurance premiums would take AT LEAST the full amount of his pay check.

There's one more thing I'd like to note: I first heard about this via Fox Nation, before taking the link to the original article. I was at first astonished because Fox Nation listed a HUGE amount of the article (usually it's just the first paragraph or two) before cutting off. Anyone else find it a bit telling that they stopped after #9?

"Duggar Daughters Talk Sex, Courtship, and Fear of Ungodly Men"

I was reading this article, which I highly recommend you start with because my response, while helpful, needs a bit of context to show why my way (I'm SO modest, haha), is a better choice.

The article asks "Is there a way to construe courtship that does not engage in female-directed fear-mongering?" Yes, actually. I unintentionally led myself into a "courtship" way of having a relationship and I couldn't be happier.

Since I was a very shy teenager, I never dated--no guy asked me out and I'd die before I'd ask one myself and none of my friends, though I gave them plenty of encouragement, could find a guy they'd allow me to date. Instead of sitting around wondering why no guys liked me (except for a few scattered weeks of misery), I mostly just focused on the friendships (and crushes) I had with males, often wondering about how a long term relationship would be with them.

You see, I'm a reader, and in books, romances are very cut and dry--the princess finds prince charming and they live happily ever after. All through middle and high school, as well as college, I was the go-to person to discuss relationship DRAMA. For all my lack of experience, I was the one offering sound advice (usually, "Are you happy? And if not, DUMP THE SCUM!"). Not everyone listened, but my dad taught me that the only way to survive this thing called life is to let others live and learn--you can't solve their problems for them.

Anyway. So, I've always wanted a fairy tale type, first kiss=true love, long term relationship without all the drama of dating everyone under the sun. But I'm a feminist, independent woman who isn't going to settle for the first dead-beat that offers me a bit of attention. I guess I was giving off these vibes to the guys around me because the first (and still only) guy to ask me out somehow managed to check off all my requirements, even the ones that I wasn't expecting, without even trying.

There are many parts of the "courtship" model that I think modern, secular women and men can benefit from:

**On "Dating with Purpose"--It's important to first acknowledge what type of relationship a person wants. I think that many people assume that they're ready for/or want a long-term relationship when they're not. This is why it's so important to be introspective. 

**On "Self-Assessment"--People don't often acknowledge their own faults and tend to blame others. For example, it took me years to learn that I'm an introvert and to realize that too much "social" makes me a grumpy person. My boyfriend is an extrovert and will drag me to all of his friends houses all the time if I didn't tell him that on certain occasions I just want to be with him and no one else--or sometimes just by myself. I could blame him for causing my grumpiness, if I didn't know my triggers and wasn't able to give him warning. I also encourage my boyfriend to speak-up when he's unhappy so that I can recognize his moods and adjust accordingly (it's stupid to rely on him telling me because he's not inclined to tell people when he's upset, though I am training him).

**On "saving oneself for marriage"--I admit, that this one was/is important to me. I'm a shy person. I do not like PDA. In public, my boyfriend and I will only hold hands and lean against each other. It is difficult for me to hug him when there are people around. We don't kiss when there's an audience. I never had any intention of jumping into the sack with some random guy and was very proud of being a virgin, often shouting it from the rooftops, so to speak. I told him right after our first kiss that I wasn't going to have sex with him for a very long time--my feelings were/are that I only wanted to have sex with one guy and that I'd happily wait for the moment when marriage* happens.

I've been appalled by the Duggar version of courtship when it comes to the need for chaperons. It says a lot that "godly men" are incapable of controlling themselves when alone with a woman and even more that a "godly woman" is incapable of kicking a man in the balls for getting fresh. I encouraged my boyfriend to break down my barriers since somewhere during my years of singleness, I got really awkward about touching guys because I was afraid that they'd either know that I was interested (causing me to die of embarrassment), or that they'd think I was interested when I wasn't. It was a tough first month of dating as I gave my boyfriend all the physical signals that I wasn't interested in holding hands, hugging, kissing, etc while I was mentally trying to get myself to do it. Luckily he trusted me when I said that I'd stop him if he ever went too far which I did have to do on a few occasions, without any trouble. We spent a lot of time during those first days discussing boundaries and my "ungodly" boyfriend has had plenty of control because we know that the endgame is all that matters. I wouldn't be with a guy who couldn't control himself even in the heat of the moment--for better or worse, certain words take all the spark out of my man.

*For me, "marriage" is the unconscious decision between two people to do whatever it takes to spend the rest of their lives together. It's submission by both parties, but it's completely unconscious--it's that feeling you get when you realize (after filling their cup or doing their dishes) that you are serving your spouse but not feeling used because you know that they'd do it for you. A "wedding" is the ceremony when you gain political/governmental bonuses/rights. People who have a wedding aren't necessarily married, in my book.

Law and Order: SVU

I love how they start with the standard "none of these characters/situations are real" spiel and then the episode starts and it's a very thinly veiled depiction of a recent famous case. Like this episode "Funny Valentine" is obviously Rhianna/Chris Brown (heck the character's name is "Caleb Brown"). An episode I watched a few months ago was about a soccer mom sidelining as a pimp (at the same time that this case was actually in the courts).

The problem with NIMBY

I would probably say that NIMBY, or "Not In My Back Yard", is the number one ailment of society in the US.

If a program truly is believed to be well run and a benefit to the society as a whole, then there's no way that it can possibly be a detriment to the neighborhood that it's placed near or within. Something cannot be both a benefit and a detriment. It's either a brilliant program and therefore a benefit. Or it's a worthless program (or might simply need to be run better) and is therefore a detriment. If it's a benefit, there are no real problems. If it's a detriment, then there is no real value. Anyone who says that it's a "brilliant program" but "not in my backyard", they're lying. They either think that there isn't any real benefit (meaning that they think the program will fail), or they're simply selfish. In either case, they're trying to appear to be better than they actually are.

I was watching a documentary about putting a women's veterans home into a high end neighborhood in I can't remember which neighborhood in Connecticut (it would be the states first home for homeless female veterans). I was sickened by the hypocrisy of people saying, "I'm sure it's a wonderful program, but..." That "but" means that they don't truly believe that the program is valuable because they see it as overall being a detriment to their society. One person compared the effects of the home on home values to a strip club or a sex shop--as though they're actually comparable given the benefits the "generous citizens" were happy to proclaim.

A well run homeless shelter can increase home prices because it shows that the citizens actually care about the world. A well run homeless shelter will also increase everyone's home prices as it removes the dredges of society from society (by helping them improve their lives rather than leaving them to die on the streets). Instead of living in a city of wealth vs. slum, a well run, well integrated homeless shelter brings us together as a society, illustrating that no person is better than another simply because of their luck or inherited wealth. Unless, of course, we really do live in a world where only those who are able to overcome hardship and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" matter...which, to me, ignores the fact that it usually takes an army of people who care to convince an individual who knows nothing but hardship, oppression, and degradation to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

I mean, are there any highly successful people in the real world who didn't have a single person say to them at some point in their life "you can do it"?

Google Adwords

Hmm...while preparing to create a couple new ads through my Google Adwords account, I learned that my previous ad (that directs people here) was suspended because I violate some policy of theirs. I assume it's because of my frank discussions about "taboo" subjects. Undoubtedly my use of certain keywords in describing my posts (or the words I've used within my posts) triggered an internal server to disable my ad.

Oh well, I'm not going to fight it. I should look at it as a godsend because it means that I still have $94 to spend on ads given to me freely by Google for one reason or another (I'm still not sure, but I'll take free money to advertise my views). If you disagree with Google, feel free to send them an email on my behalf.

Book Trailers

I don't think I've ever seen a book trailer that didn't come across like an SNL spoof of a B-rated movie. Sigh.

Don't worry, I'll attempt to post lots of examples. :-)

I love the Dark-Hunters to death, but the guys...they just look silly in their action packed trailers. Or maybe it's the cheesy voice over with trailer-voice-dude. Ehh...I watched the Retribution trailer a second time w/out sound and it was sort of better.

 

Inferno's (which I cannot wait to read) trailer doesn't look so bad, but then it's only got like one line of voice-over.



Annnd...Time Untime  goes right back to the cheese-fest. Hmm...though now that I think of it, does perhaps my love of the story decide whether or not I rate the trailer extra-cheesy or not? 'Cuz I didn't like Time Untime nearly as much as I loved Retribution and to me the latter's trailer just made me want to cry.*



So...I guess the ultimate test is to see how bad Acheron's trailer is...Oh ma gad--that actually wasn't too bad. Wish they'd get a new voice-over-dude. It still smells like SNL or CollegeHumor, which pulls all the seriousness out of everything. I mean, satire is serious business, but real seriousness looses it's seriousness when I can't take it seriously because it reminds me of CHEESE!



And last but not least, I guess I should look up the trailer for Styxx since I cannot wait another 5-6 months for the book...and it does not exist yet. Sigh. Hmm...

Anywho. I'm going to look up some more of the book trailers for the dark-hunters for my own personal pleasure. I'll give them a ranking of 1 to 5 with 5 being cheesy enough for a certain mouse with a big head who owns his own chain of pizza parlors. :-)

No Mercy: 3 wedges of cheese



Uhh...this one isn't a trailer...I don't know whether it's fan made or not, actually. While hilarious, as a fan of Bubba, this isn't really the same guy as is in the book.

No cheese here. Ironically.



This next one is from The League series (same author and similar character personalities). Huh...short and sweet limits the room for cheese.

2 wedges of cheese (the voice) for Born of Ice



By the way, gotta give props to Kenyon or whomever for the choice of actor. Dark-hunter.com puts a real face to all the characters of her books and this character's name is Devyn which I can totally buy. He looks like a Devyn, ya know?

Born of Fire (same series as Born of Ice)is up next:

Well--it gains points for being short (like B.o.I.), but loses them (from me) because she shot him at least once in the book.

2 wedges of cheese.



Alright that's enough of those. Plus I ran out of videos available from this author, haha.

*I'd like to go into detail about why I dislike Retribution's trailer so much--it made Sundown look like a freaking gay porno actor :-(. Especially if you know what happened in that car...poor Andy, hahaha.**

**Clarification: read the book. It's really not as bad as I kind of made it sound just now--it's actually a very sweet story which is why I really don't like that trailer.

And finally, before I sign off--I think I finally successfully embedded a video into my post!! Yay! Given that I didn't change anything in my methods, I think that means that google finally figured out their stuff.

"Preacher's Daughters"

Oh my god--that mom with the 16 year old daughter with a boyfriend needs to trust her daughter. It pisses me off that we have video evidence of the fact that they weren't lying about the boundaries discussion and the mom is deluding herself into hating a REALLY great kid!

And then there's the parents of the party girl--uh, you're daughter is going to her first(?) real party at a friend's house and they didn't call the parents of the friend to double check her plans? I'm sorry, but if that was my kid, I would have at least casually asked the friend about the get together.

Double standard? Not really.

In case A, they're just talking and hugging when "caught". The boy has been very patient and respectful otherwise and has not given any indication that he wants to break the mother's rules (except getting out of a stuffy party to go outside said stuffy party to a place where everyone at said stuffy party can still see them--no bushes).

In case B, apparently (I don't have the first episode) the girl has talked about the freedom of porn stars, though I have no idea what the context is. Her parent's know that she's a "wild child" but hope that some small freedoms will keep her on the otherwise straight and narrow. It isn't infringing on that child's freedom to double check the details of the event in question. In fact, I'm sure Kolby (the one with the boyfriend) and the boyfriend will be more than happy for their friends to be questioned about their whereabouts since they have nothing to hide. Since the second girl (Taylor?) is going behind her parents back, she would rebel against such an inquisition.

If I were a parent, my children would either be happy to accept a few small questions and earn their freedom (and if they decided to have sex without breaking any state or federal laws, they'd better be using protection) or they'll spend their time locked in their room. The key to good parenting is training them young then letting go, confident that the training will help them make good decisions. If Kolby's mother isn't careful, her daughter is going to start going behind her back, though as an outside observer, I don't think the girl will get into any mischief. She does have a good head on her shoulders and her mother needs to encourage that.

I wonder which version of parenting Olivia (the third girl who has a baby of her own) had growing up.