Why You Are Unemployed

Freedomain Radio lays out a huge number of facts about wealth stratification in America today.

This is one of the best video's I've seen on the web about the nature of the State.

Everything this guy says is money. You should subscribe to his YouTube channel for more. Absolutely epic videos all around.




I covered many of the points he makes in this thread on capitalism. He provides a lot more background and shows how the rich use the power of the government to subvert the markets and loot the middle class of their wealth.

From Busines s Insider

83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.

[edit on 25-7-2010 by mnemeth1]

The story of the credit markets and the destruction of the economy.

If credit markets were Jaguar cars:

S&F for a great find and an informative post. I am enjoying the videos but had a hard time getting through the first one. For some odd reason I kept imagining Max Headroom as I watched it

link


[edit on 26-7-2010 by ChicUFO]

I am surprised no redneck proud to be an American hasn't come flying in on their saddled up bald eagle singing the John Ashcroft song "Let the Eagle Soar"

Telling you that if you don't like it move to Afghanistan. You know the pre programmed responses.like...
The middle class and poor live better than the Kings of hundreds of years ago and better than most people do in the whole world...yadda yadda

I watched the entire first video and parts of the second and third.

The argument, simplified, is this: The rich are so rich because the government over-regulated and gave the poor all the money.

What? Yeah, that's exactly what I gathered from that. Then the argument that we're all brainwashed by 'government' run public schools telling us that the government is good and it's only there to keep kids out of the job market.

Paraphrasing: They (the govt.) don't want to give children business skills because that would create competition for adults!

He goes on to state that he worked since he was 11, giving me the impression that he felt discriminated against because he was so young and thus...full of anger towards the 'prison' of public school. How we should all be allowed to learn a trade at the earliest point possible. Oh yes mr. 'libertarian'-youtuber, I want my child to learn a skill early on so that he can more quickly become a good, little worker bee for some capitalist somewhere. Better that than working for the big, bad government!

He seems determined to create an 'us' versus 'them' portrayal of modern day government. Somehow under this belief that he himself can't simply run for public office if he recognizes a problem...but, god forbid, he suddenly becomes part of the problem. Then he couldn't spout off this belief that government is bad, bad, bad!

I get it though, we should all just tell each other to not infringe upon eachothers 'God'-given rights...that way we won't have use for government.

Who establishes those rights? Government.

Who's supposed to be there to ensure those rights afforded by the government aren't infringed upon? Government.

Who's supposed to protect you from those who don't believe in your libertarian ideals? Government.

It ultimately falls back to government, publicly elected officials there to serve the majority's interest.

I cannot argue against the fact that greed exists, both in the public and private sector. We can only hope to instill the value of the greater good, not the personal self-interest in ourselves and in the future generations.