Economic Numbers That Are "Too Crazy To Believe"?

I like Zero Hedge.  I like Tyler Durden, both the fictional character and the blogger. Both tend towards hyperbole and over the top rhetoric.  But today Tyler posts straight-up facts, 50 of them, that portend economic doom for us all.  He hopes you are listening, but he doubts it.

For once, I'm buying what he is selling.  If we don't wake up sooner rather than later, we're screwed.  I'm going to pick my "top ten signs the economic apocolypse is neigh"; you can hit the link for the remaining 40.

In no particular order:

- If the number of Americans that "wanted jobs" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

- One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

-There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

-Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

-The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

- According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

- Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

- In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

- A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

- During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.


Need to change your underpants?  Me too...