REALITY: You may want to consider these economic facts I gathered when thinking about how you will invest your time this weekend. They will either depress you or motivate you 1) 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck 2) 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings 3) 65% of those 65 and older have less than $25,000 4) 21% of all Americans have no savings account at all 5) 43% households spend more money than they make 6) Middle-class Americans today make up a minority 7) Median income of middle-class households declined by 4% 8) Median wealth for middle-class households dropped by 28 percent between 2001 and 2013 9) Middle class take-home pay before expenses has plummeted to just 43 percent of gross pay, compared to 1970 when the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income 10) here are still 900,000 fewer middle-class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began (SSA) 11) In the last eight years the USA took on 8,000,000,000,000 (trillion) worth of new debt and the economy hasn't grown. 12) The US ranks 19th in the world median wealth per adult 13) The level of entrepreneurship in USA is at an all-time low 14) For each of the past six years, more businesses have closed in the United States than opened. Never happened before) 15) The number of Americans living in concentrated areas of high poverty has doubled since 2000 16) 48% of all 25-year-old Americans still live with their parents 17) 51 percent of all Americans make less than $30,000 a year 18) One out of five people live in poverty 19) 46 million Americans use food banks each year 20) 65% of all children in the United States are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government 21) The “officially unemployed” plus those “not in the labor force” equal 102.3 million 22) 70% of all Americans believe that “debt is a necessity to live 23) 53% of all Americans don’t even have a minimum three-day supply of nonperishable food and water stored 24) According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, the actual unemployment rate in this nation is 22.9% 25) The inventory-to-sales ratio has risen to its highest level since the last recession. 26) Since March 2015, the amount of goods being shipped by truck, rail and air inside the United States has been falling every single month on a year-over-year basis 27) Despite the Federal Reserve's first increase in interest rates in 10 years, the U.S. Treasury prime rate has continued to drop, hitting new lows of 1.57 percent just this week 28) The average U.S. household that has at least one credit card has approximately $15,950 in credit card debt 29) The number of auto loans that exceed 72 months has hit an an all-time high 30) The total amount of student loan debt in the United States has risen to $1.2 trillion, more than all credit card debt
The only one of those that seems odd is #9. after paying taxes with additional money withheld, 20% to a roth 401K, and medial/dental/vision for me/wife/kids I still take home about 50%. Can't imagine how the average middle class person takes home a lower percentage than I do.
Every new high school graduate should watch this. It's one of my favorite online videos about opportunity, hard work and persistence. I think he's a blow hard sometimes but I don't respect another human being more than Henry Rollins.
