Robert Oak — Maps of Economic Disaster

America has a problem, a big one, the middle class has been wiped out. It is economic genocide and the target is most of America. The statistics just continue to pour in on how poorly America is doing. Even as the greatmanufactured crisis is over in D.C., the political agenda once again has nothing to do with helping America's middle class. Why jobs are not job #1 by this government we do not know. To drive home just how bad it is below we should some damning maps....

The Economic Populist
Maps of Economic Disaster
Robert Oak

Yikes! This is a national emergency.

Affordable Care Act, a Profit Center, Public Private Partnership, or another Financial Scheme??

Do we need more Financial Schemes in this Country?  Isn't it a national security risk, if only Wall Street Insiders know who the sucker is in American Deal Making??


I'm just an Everyday Guy that has lost some money and watched more disposable income disappear in the modern American Age... The Financial Battleground.  A war for your wages, your income, your savings, and your retirement.


In the US Military we have Single Point of Contact who is responsible for particular expertise, operations, and coordination.  In the army I think that is called the SPO.  The SPO is responsible he gets both blame and accolades as he guides commanders and units through transitions.   

Do you think the USA has a SPO for Insurance, Financial Instruments, & Public Private partnerships??  I don't think you will get a returned phone call from the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, the OCC, FSOC, the Executive Office, your congressman, FINRA, SEC, FTC, the US Media, the American Bar Association, ETC.   The CFPB is supposed to be the latest in a long line of agencies to protect us.  The list of federal agencies that protect us sort of looks like the 16 powerful big budget US Intelligence Agencies, ... except in the case of protecting individuals from commerce  they seem to lose most of their power when a new agency is added.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau  

Dobb-Frank has provided us with yet another federal agency to follow behind the FTC and all the other agencies in protecting citizens from organized corruption and fraud.  But has that agency been given the Power, Authority, Budget, Resources, and Staffing to take a look at the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obama Care)??  

Today it has become even more clear all the risks American face in what is clearly another US Financial Scheme called the Affordable Care Act. 

1) Mandatory Program with Fees or Taxes in which personal data is surrendered and shared among various unknown agencies... enforced by the IRS.  
2) Appears there is no cost controls, policies are termed Insurance, policies exclude many features that would actually be needed for personal health, there is much lawyer language involved in the contract policies for which you will not be covered.  
3) We hear that all policies are doubling in costs, figure that co-pays and fees will also increase in some cases.  
4) All Insurance is a Financial Scheme. 
5) US Health Care is one of the most expensive in the world, no one ever talks about the costs, the executive compensations, the dividends or profits shared with investors, no one is addressing the inflation and overall yearly increases in costs.  It is sort of a spin zone. Or it is a "No Mans Land".  No one seems to be bringing the yearly cost growth to a National Discussion Level.  Capitalism Rules in the land of Insurance & Finance.   
6) The Affordable Care Act seems to be another mechanism for transferring Middle Class Wealth or Savings to Investors or Financial Managers.  The money is going to come from working Americans, I'm just not sure who the money is going to go to.  The health system will expand with more health facilities I'm sure.  But as a Public Private Partnership the wealth will be a transfer from the Federal Government to Investors and executives.
7) Bubbles, Financial Bubbles... Middle Class Savings Gone, Retiree Savings Gone, Home Equity Gone, Education Debt in process, Hurricane Damage losses to the US Wealth, US Wages Down, US GINI Coefficient Wage Gap increasing, Decapitalization of US Manufacturing, Offshore Incorporation, lower investment in US R & D, lower investment in US Job Training, No Real Leadership in Investing in the USA, ETC.   
8) I predict the Affordable Care act will create another Bubble, and transfer more wealth out of the poor and middle class.   
9) We have entered "A New Era of Financial Battles & Financial Profit taking characterized by the Rentier Class".  Executive Bonuses & Salary Increases are enough to keep the game going.  There are always ways to cut costs, cut wages, go off shore, to find new resources, and to invent new materials.  This is a kind of Social Darwinism in which corporations are sovereign, but don't really have to maintain or steward the US Economy or the US Consumer.  In the Affordable Care Act the taxpayer becomes more of a cog or "Profit Center" owned by the vast corporate system to be a monopolistic kind of bubble.

After all who can understand public private partnerships??  We have no National Security in the many areas of Economic, Financial, and Social Risk.  There is no Responsibility in Washington DC OR New York on Wall Street in this Era of Financial War... If there was then we would have a SPO and we would have National Discussions in the Mainstream Media about Financial, Economic, & Banking Literacy.    And as you have notice in federal budget discussion... the real budget data never sees the light of day.  In national budget discussions only the pieces of the budget which are getting cuts and increases are touched on at all.  Most Americans have never even seen the US Federal Budget Lines, the Trust Funds, the Revenue Streams, or the Budget Outlays.    

It is a Financial Battleground with National Security importance.  There is decapitalization in the US Economy, Capital Flight, Loss of Wealth, Loss of Average Wage Rate, Loss of Social Cohesion, and Institutional & Systemic Control Fraud.  None of this can be refuted.  No sane American would want to hide National Security Issues from the Voting Public or from Public Discourse.   

The point is the Affordable Care Act makes the federal budget & citizenry more risky as it was not designed to be simple or to address all the problems.  It is some kind of monster which might help 1% of the population while putting profits in the hands of an other 1%. Emergency rooms are still going to be filled with the uninsured who freely walk across the border and are not covered and seems doubtful they will pay into the program. Drugs are not covered. Inflation is not covered. Industry waste is not addressed. The spectrum of costs, wastes, fraud, and risk are ignored... and control has been ceded to Industry Executives.

I hate to even mention the possibility of more power going to technocrats in our government.  But we should start to broadcast and listen to the personalities that run our other agencies like the FTC, Department of Labor, SEC, FDIC, and FSOC.  Maybe if our agency heads felt more like they were on the National Stage and had more of a feeling of responsibility to the citizenry ... they would take a personal stand & develop their own personal networks to oppose the stupid political clucking out of congress.  The reason I fear technocrats is because of my perception of the EU and the Austerity imposed across Europe which is grinding all middle class people down to poverty.  

Conclusion:

But in the USA we have a chance if we recognize the changes to the global economy, transnational corporations, and the financial battle against taxpayers.  We just might be able to re-institutionalize the fight against fraud, control fraud, propaganda, the dumbing down of citizens & investors, and the loss of American Liberty, the American Dream, and American Privacy.  Maybe we should have US Celebrities that Fight Fraud, that work in our Federal Government, that expose complicated financial schemes which drain the Vitality of America!

Joel Kotkin — California’s New Feudalism Benefits A Few At The Expense Of The Multitude

As late as the 80s, California was democratic in a fundamental sense, a place for outsiders and, increasingly, immigrants—roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class. Now, instead of a land of opportunity, California has become increasingly feudal. According to recent census estimates, the state suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the country. By some estimates, the state’s level of inequality compares with that of such global models as the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and the Republic of the Congo.

At the same time, the Golden State now suffers the highest level of poverty in the country—23.5 percent compared to 16 percent nationally—worse than long-term hard luck cases like Mississippi. It is also now home to roughly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients, almost three times its proportion of the nation’s population.

This is concerning in that California has tended to be prophetic of developing cultural change in the United States. The state is now becoming divided into have and have-not's on a scale not seen prior to WWII and the rise of the middle class....

Some of these trends can be found nationwide, but they have become pronounced and are metastasizing more quickly in the Golden State. As late as the 80s, the state was about as egalitarian as the rest of the country. Now, for the first time in decades, the middle class is a minority, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

New Geography
California’s New Feudalism Benefits A Few At The Expense Of The Multitude
Joel Kotkin | professor of urban development, currently a fellow at Chapman University in Orange, CA and the Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank

What is particularly interesting is that this is happening in a predominantly liberal state the power structure of which is solidly under Democratic control. Those thinking that a national win by "liberal" Democrats will change things for the better should read this article and rethink their position.

America has a serious structural problem arising from many contributing factors. Without recognizing the problem and addressing it comprehensively, the future for most Americans looks bleak.

There is no man on a white horse on the horizon.

While it is true that Joel Kotkin is affiliated with the political right, his analysis in this post is not overly biased in my view.

More Evidence That America's Middle Class Is Sliding Toward the Third World

The U.S. is near the bottom of the developed world in median wealth, probably the best gauge for the economic strength of the middle class....

...a middle-class adult in Finland owns $122 for every billion dollars of his or her nation's wealth. In Canada it's $13. In the U.S. it's 60 cents. Only China (40 cents) and India (30 cents) [in the countries included in the survey] give their middle-class adults less.

It's called "becoming globally competitive." The US is highly competitive,  of course. Among developed countries, the US is winning the race to the bottom hands down.

AlterNet
More Evidence That America's Middle Class Is Sliding Toward the Third World
Paul Buchheit

The Middle Class In America Is Being Wiped Out – Here Are 60 Facts That Prove It

Add it up. It's a loss.

The Truth
The Middle Class In America Is Being Wiped Out – Here Are 60 Facts That Prove It
Michael
(h/t Max Keiser)

Our current f***ed up environment started with Reagan

If you look at the chart below you'll see that labor's share of the economy was pretty steady for the 40 years from 1940 to 1980.

Then came Reagan and "trickle down" economics. That's when labor's share of national income started to drop precipitously.

Corporate profits, on the other hand, rose slowly, but steadily from 1940-1980. When Reagan took office corporate profits started to surge and with the exception of the recent, short, correction during the Great Recession, corporate profits have been skyrocketing while labor's share has been plunging.

What is the explanation for this? It is simply, that the Reagan era ushered in massive deregulation, assault on social programs, huge tax cuts for the rich, outsourcing and union busting, all of which decimated the real earnings of the working class.

While corporations have gotten a greater and greater share of national income and wealth, workers have seen their portion stripped away. All by design.

What's REALLY interesting, though, is how extreme this trend has become under Obama. We have never seen a period of such rapid wealth accumulation by the corporate sector and such rapid wealth destruction of the working class as we have under Obama. This again suggests that claims Obama is "anti-business" are completely hollow.